What a great day’s football yesterday. Just great. Almost perfect. If Chelsea had lost (again) it would have been ‘the dream’, but it remains just merely wonderful because they didn’t. They failed to lose for only the 2nd time in 19 weeks. Or 5th time in 14 weeks, it doesn’t really matter. Because they won.

Well, they won one battle, the easy one against Sunderland. What they didn’t win was their own fans. They possibly didn’t win over all their own players. Because that club is still in disarray. The Morinho effect was horrible and obviously very divisive but now he’s gone those divisions are wounds which can’t heal immediately. If this was any other club I’d stretch the metaphor a bit wider and invoke images of nursing back to health, nurturing and caring, blah, blah, blah. But its Chelsea. So it becomes about gangrene, amputations, lots of pain and possibly mercy killing.

For many years I’ve been perplexed about what exactly is any one specific football club? Its not the ground, that’s just a focal point, which can move anyway. Its not the players or managers, as they come and go every few months. And owners change hands every time an oligarch gets bored and a corresponding oil sheikh is looking for an offshore tax loss.

Fans. That what a club is. That is all any club is on any permanent basis. Yet no owner, manager or half the players, treats us with anything but contempt when things aren’t going well. Its a peculiarly one-sided, unrequited love affair. Its all about the giving. Football fans should therefore make the best husbands, wives and lovers, by extension of that caring, loving giving. Jury’s out on that one.

And the fans at Chelsea are pissed off. They loved Morinho, even though he’d gone way off the rails. And their venom is now focussed on Hazard, Costa and Fabregas. Whom they see as the reason for all the recent instability and shit.

Fans are the club. Yet get no vote, no means to appeal or suggest, no thanks. (Unless you count a cursory, dutiful ‘clap’ at the end of each match). But they do have a voice. A massive, collective voice in which to shout and sing their displeasure. And much as I normally like Chelsea fans like I like dysentery, I’m glad they’ve made a stand and told their (horrible) club that they are acting in an unacceptable manner.

Spurs won, fourth place, its the dream; LET THE SEASON END NOOOOOWWWWWW!!!!!!

Bournemouth win again, which is brilliant.

Leicester win and stay top. Remarkably, unbelievably, wonderfully.

And Manchester United lost at home to Norwich. Pinch me.

We just need Arsenal and Man City to draw tomorrow (or get swallowed up in a vast hole that opens up in the Emirates that drops to the core of the planet) and it will be a very happy Christmas all round.

Happy Days

A xxxx