One game. That’s all that’s been played this season. Just one game. The players are barely warm, the league table of no significance yet (though any time Arsenal can be seen in the relegation zone is a time for celebration) and it can only be the earliest of early days for what will unfold over the next 9 months. The season is truly embryonic. And will grow, nurtured by the love and care of all concerned and then inevitably end in a heap of blood and shit next May.

And yet already, barely an hour after its conception, the season has its first major drama.

Doctor-gate.

This is what happened. Chelsea were drawing 2-2 at home to Swansea, late in the game after their goalkeeper was sent off. Safe to say: Morinho was not in a happy place. Chelsea traditionally start seasons fast and furious. And win early games. He was looking for someone to blame. His traditional favourite song that the refs are conspiring against him was inappropriate as the sending off of Courtois was unarguably correct. Even by the most argumentative fucker around.

Then an incident. Chelsea’s best player (probably the best player in our land currently) Eden Hazard, midfield wizard and part-time ball-boy-abuser, is fouled, hits the ground as if taken out by mortar fire and lies there clutching his head.

Ahhhh, great, thinks Morinho. A free kick to us in a useful area, perhaps we can win this game after all.

But Hazard remains on the floor. Seemingly lifeless. A wounded Belgian.

So the referee, as is his job, his duty and his human instinct dictate, worried about the player, signals not once, but twice, for the doctor and/or physio to come onto the pitch. Despite protests from Morinho, both rush on to attend to the little actor lying in a heap.

Jose is apoplectic. Because having received medical attention, Hazard must leave the pitch until play resumes. Which means he’ll miss the whole free kick thing. Leaving Chelsea with, temporarily, just 9 men on the pitch.

Free kick taken, nothing happens, match ends, 2 points lost, Morinho loses it and blames the stupid medics for ‘not understanding the game’. They shouldn’t have gone onto the pitch to tend to Hazard, he was fine. Like Mr Spok, Jose can make such medical assessments with just a glance from 50 yards away. Its a gift.

So he has now banned the Doctor from pitchside and basically has made her life miserable. For doing her job. Once summoned by the ref she simply has to go onto the pitch. Her duty is to the injured player, not to the manic obsession of a deranged manager. If she’d refused to attend the player she would have been derelict in her duty of care.

There are now accusations of sexism against Morinho; ‘he wouldn’t have said that if it was a man’ but really I don’t believe that’s true here. He just needs a scapegoat for the ‘disaster’ of a home draw.

But from a political perspective, from the feminist viewpoint and logically, Dr Eva Carneiro is a really fit babe who looks great running round the pitch with her dark curly locks. She did nothing wrong and should not be punished.

Doubtless this highly skilled sports medicine specialist will soon be seen at Manchester United, Real Madrid or Juventus, with a nice little ‘settlement’ from Chelsea in the bank to make the whole ‘constructive dismissal’ thing just go away.

Roman? Where’s yer cheque-book??

Happy Thursday

A xxxx