Just one step to blue heaven

I HAVE always suffered with PMT – that’s Pre-Match Tension – but the week leading up to the Liverpool game was torturous. I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t sleep, I was distracted, my nerves were shot to pieces with the thought that we could have come so close and then throw it away for the third and final time at Anfield.

We got to Liverpool early and it seemed that every Chelsea fan was in the same state as I was – we all looked for reassurance from one another but all that greeted us was other haunted, unsure faces.

So it was great to bump into Steve Kelly who was so matter of fact about his certainty of a Chelsea win that it restored my faith as I headed into the ground.

Much had been made of the fact that the Scousers wanted us to win to prevent United overtaking their titles record, and it was true that the majority we met favoured a Chelsea victory. But the general feeling amongst the home fans was one of a hugely disappointing season which had stumbled along to the point where, in truth, they didn’t care what the result was. They were quiet going in, quiet in the ground and quiet on the way out. It was a surreal experience.

We overcame a psychological barrier with this win. Now that has been conquered we cannot allow our concentration to waver against Wigan. We have a better team and everything points to a Chelsea win, but as we all know, football doesn’t always follow the script. So although many of the fans were singing “we’re gonna win the league” (I wasn’t one of them), Ancelotti hit the right chord with his post match comments – pleased with the result, confident about Wigan but not complacent.

Though we are on the cusp of a potential double, many fans (myself included), do not know what to make of Ancelotti. Is he an inspirational manager or incredibly lucky – or a bit of both? Who cares as long as he can keep it up. If he does manage the double in his first season, he would once and for all bury the ghost of Mourinho which still stalks Stamford Bridge.

Wigan are no pushover and even as I write this the nerves have started jangling again. They have demonstrated on more than one occasion this season that they are capable of upsetting things. Most of us can recall with a shudder how a last minute Emile Heskey goal derailed our spirited chase of Manchester United in the Avram Grant season. As recurrent nightmares go, it’s up there with Steve Guppy’s late equaliser for Martin O’Neill’s Leicester in the 1999 Vialli campaign and the raw wound of Andres Iniesta 12 months ago.

But hopefully with nothing left to play for and a good number of their players off to the World Cup, we can do what is necessary. And if we don’t, we don’t deserve the title. Harsh but true.

The key things about the Liverpool win was that it wasn’t a classic performance but the team knew what they had to do and produced the goods.

It strikes me as somewhat ironic that Ancelotti was brought in by Abramovich because the Russian thought that the Italian could win him the Champions League, but in fact our early exit concentrated our minds on where they should be. I am a traditionalist and a purist and the double to me would be worth more than winning the Champions League three years on the bounce.

Perhaps you can become blasé about your domestic league if you’ve won it 18 or 19 times but we have a long way to go before we get to that stage. As I alluded to last week, the fact that we are even on for the double is mind-blowing for someone like me. I feel privileged to witness a Chelsea team making history, watch players who are transcending to legend status – who will be remembered by future generations of Chelsea fans just as we recall the likes of Osgood and Greaves.

So just two more hurdles to negotiate for Chelsea to achieve immortality and join the English footballing elite.

The players look confident, the scything down of Liverpool ensured positivity surged through the majority of the supporters so it is now a case of everyone keeping their heads, doing their jobs and giving the English media their worst nightmare – the job of writing a positive piece on Chelsea.

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