TERRACE TALK: Chelsea - Fan fury at gutless, limp effort against Everton
The gutless display the travelling 6,000 had to endure was simply unacceptable.
This team has run out of excuses. In a week when we succumbed to a late equaliser against Stoke which makes a decent finish in the league highly unlikely, and limped out of the Champions League, was it too much to ask to see some sort of performance against perennial bridesmaids Everton? Apparently it was.
Mid-March and our season is effectively over.
The team has run out of excuses — there is no-one left to blame, no-one else to hide behind.
Their frailties have been laid bare as have their lack of character and fight — and that is something as supporters we will not accept.
The lack of backbone in the team is evident and it’s something we are just not used to seeing.
In recent years we have seen the likes of Ballack, Drogba, Essien, Desailly, and even players like Lampard, Cole etc who will put up a fight and put in a boot where necessary.
The current lot, with a very few exceptions, are a bunch of cowards.
In the game against Everton there was a sustained targeting of Costa — Chelsea teams of old would simply not have allowed that.
The team would have ensured that fire was met with fire — instead this team left Costa to be singled out with pretty predicable consequences.
Yes, the referee should have done something about it but we know better than to expect anything from the adjudicators of our game — either on the pitch or off it.
All I’m going to say about the “biting incident” was that it wasn’t a bite — it wasn’t even an attempted bite — if he had wanted to bite him the pictures show he had every opportunity to do so — but he didn’t.
Barry confirmed he had not been bitten.
But that has not stopped the hysteria in the press and I fully expect some sort of added punishment.
I can’t help but imagine Antonio Conte tuning into every Chelsea performance with a sense of uncertainty.
He apparently is an individual who speaks his mind and minces no words in terms of his opinion — remind you of anyone?
How would certain individuals react to that?
There was much anonymous bitching to the press under Mourinho, this cannot be allowed to continue whoever the new manager is.
The poisonous atmosphere it caused around the club was disgraceful and hopefully the individual(s) was identified and will be jettisoned in the close season.
To have even a chance of re-establishing ourselves quickly we need the manager to be solely in charge — for any dissenters to be dealt with.
But this does not extend just to the squad of players — how is a manager meant to put into place his ideologies and methods when the owner keeps foisting his football mates into the mix.
It is time for Roman to ditch Emenalo, Grant and the rest of the hangers on who bring nothing to the table.
The constant interference of these people will only further complicate matters and how the owner can’t see that is beyond me.
It’s hard to believe that some of these players who are having shocking seasons were exemplary last season — most notably Matic and Hazard.
The Belgian especially has been almost anonymous and many theories have been put forward.
Initially we were led to believe that Mourinho had destroyed his natural attacking flair by insisting on him playing his defensive part too.
Then we were led to believe that it was his desire to join PSG or Madrid and so was putting in minimum effort.
His father has come out this week and insisted than there is no chance of him leaving Chelsea this summer and secondly that last year’s player of the season has been suffering from an ongoing groin injury.
If so, why is he being played week in week out? As for Matic — who knows — from the footballing equivalent of the terminator to the footballing equivalent of Frank Spencer — someone please explain that to me.
Anyway, enough of the doom, suffice to say that there are only three tasks left for this Chelsea team this season — beat West Ham, beat Tottenham, lose to Leicester — you know it makes sense.
