You could say Chelsea's recent results have been enough to drive a supporter to distraction, although Giles Smith is finding that journey harder than imagined...
Blimey. Soon be Christmas, won't it? Is it me, or does it come round quicker every year? And then, before you know it, it's over and you're putting away the decorations again. I don't know. Christmas!
See 'X-Factor' this week? Right result, I thought. I reckon Tesco Mary had taken it about as far as she could. The best four are through to the final, looking at it objectively. I've got a soft spot for Matt, because he comes from where I grew up in Essex, but I've got a lot of time for Rebecca as well. Either of those would do for me, although I have a sneaking feeling One Direction might steal it. I see what they're about, but they leave me a bit cold, to be honest. But then, I'm not really in the demographic, let's face it.
Wikileaks: any feelings? I'm pretty conflicted about it, I have to say. For example: say someone handed you the codes for the American nuclear arsenal on a sheet of paper. Would the best thing be to set fire to it or whack it up on the web? I'm not saying I'm anti freedom of information, but sometimes secrecy is in the public interest, isn't it?
Er, what else?
Holidays! Know where you're going next year? We've had a few ideas - Cornwall is one of them, actually - but nothing definite yet. Some people have already got it all sorted, haven't they? I wish we could be that organised, but we never really get round to it until January or February, and sometimes even later than that.
Umm…
See 'X-Factor'? No - I've done that one.
Er…
No, I give up. It's not working. I thought it might be possible to write an entire column here this week without mentioning football, a subject that many of us, I imagine, quite feel like avoiding at the moment.
I've certainly been doing my best. People who know of my allegiance have been coming up and saying, just by way of conversation, perfectly sympathetically and without malice, 'Here, what's going with Ch…' But I never hear how that sentence ends, because by then I have turned and started to run up the street.
I don't know what's going on with Chelsea, that's the truth of it. It's all very puzzling, and hard to explain and difficult to talk about - and perhaps because, in the end, it doesn't really amount to very much at all, beyond an inexplicable, but perfectly common, dip in form, annexed to a small run of poor fortune. We are, in the useful phrase of Mr. Ancelotti, 'in a difficult moment' - although, as he concedes, the difficult moment is lasting a surprisingly long time, as moments go.
We have dropped points to teams we would probably have been expecting to use for goal-difference enhancement purposes, such as Newcastle, Sunderland and Liverpool. We have missed Frank Lampard more than we probably should have. Didier Drogba may or may not still be suffering the after-effects of malaria, but the entire attack seems to have come down with a mild dose of can't score-itis. (Our last two goals have been a penalty and a massive deflection.) And on Saturday, in the second half against Everton, there was just a slight glimpse of something rarely seen at Stamford Bridge in the last half-decade or so: nerves.
One piece of good news, though: our next fixture is away at Spurs. I think we can all agree that that's a positive. Personally speaking, if we were facing a top quality side in a title-related six-pointer, I think the pressure would probably be too much for me, and I would have to retreat to a windowless cell for the weekend, where someone could break news of the game's outcome by tapping on a heating pipe with a spoon.
Instead, though, we're at White Hart Lane, so at least the computer has been kind enough to relieve the pressure slightly for a week, ahead of far tougher assignments, just around the corner.
Even so, if the team is to capitalise and use this occasion to force the overall project back on track, a bit of concentrated preparation wouldn't go amiss. And again, in this respect, fate and our own success in the Champions League group phase, have played into our hands. Tonight's game in Marseille has no consequences depending on it for either side, meaning that the whole of this week can be spent focusing on the Premier League game on Sunday.
Accordingly, my suggested team for Marseille would be as follows.
In goal: Bruce Buck. Back four: Bryan English, Tim Lovejoy, Jason Cundy, Gigi Salmon. Midfield: Neil Barnett, a couple of the blokes from the Cobham car park…
Actually, thinking about it, can we rest Bryan English? The doctor is always going to be an important figure (especially when challenges like Tim Cahill's on Petr Cech last Saturday are flying around), and it would be nice and settling if he, also, could be fresh for Sunday.
The point is, I don't see why anyone remotely connected with the first team even needed to travel to France this week, with the exception of Mr. Ancelotti, who is required to attend as a matter of decorum.
It might be OK for Sir Alex Ferguson to skip a Manchester United Carling Cup match in order to go 'scouting' in Valencia, and leave such trifling matters to his underlings, but here at Chelsea we have always set a higher premium on basic respect for the game and our opponents.
But even for Mr. Ancelotti it could have been a quick trip, in and out. Marseille isn't that far away. The manager could have been jetted out at the conclusion of first-team training this afternoon and been home again and tucked up in bed by midnight.
But, however it panned out, the midweek distraction is blessedly minimal for everyone, leaving all of us free to point ourselves towards Sunday and White Hart Lane, concentrated, unified, back on track.
Blimey. Soon be Christmas, won't it? Is it me, or does it come round quicker every year? And then, before you know it, it's over and you're putting away the decorations again. I don't know. Christmas!
See 'X-Factor' this week? Right result, I thought. I reckon Tesco Mary had taken it about as far as she could. The best four are through to the final, looking at it objectively. I've got a soft spot for Matt, because he comes from where I grew up in Essex, but I've got a lot of time for Rebecca as well. Either of those would do for me, although I have a sneaking feeling One Direction might steal it. I see what they're about, but they leave me a bit cold, to be honest. But then, I'm not really in the demographic, let's face it.
Wikileaks: any feelings? I'm pretty conflicted about it, I have to say. For example: say someone handed you the codes for the American nuclear arsenal on a sheet of paper. Would the best thing be to set fire to it or whack it up on the web? I'm not saying I'm anti freedom of information, but sometimes secrecy is in the public interest, isn't it?
Er, what else?
Holidays! Know where you're going next year? We've had a few ideas - Cornwall is one of them, actually - but nothing definite yet. Some people have already got it all sorted, haven't they? I wish we could be that organised, but we never really get round to it until January or February, and sometimes even later than that.
Umm…
See 'X-Factor'? No - I've done that one.
Er…
No, I give up. It's not working. I thought it might be possible to write an entire column here this week without mentioning football, a subject that many of us, I imagine, quite feel like avoiding at the moment.
I've certainly been doing my best. People who know of my allegiance have been coming up and saying, just by way of conversation, perfectly sympathetically and without malice, 'Here, what's going with Ch…' But I never hear how that sentence ends, because by then I have turned and started to run up the street.I don't know what's going on with Chelsea, that's the truth of it. It's all very puzzling, and hard to explain and difficult to talk about - and perhaps because, in the end, it doesn't really amount to very much at all, beyond an inexplicable, but perfectly common, dip in form, annexed to a small run of poor fortune. We are, in the useful phrase of Mr. Ancelotti, 'in a difficult moment' - although, as he concedes, the difficult moment is lasting a surprisingly long time, as moments go.
We have dropped points to teams we would probably have been expecting to use for goal-difference enhancement purposes, such as Newcastle, Sunderland and Liverpool. We have missed Frank Lampard more than we probably should have. Didier Drogba may or may not still be suffering the after-effects of malaria, but the entire attack seems to have come down with a mild dose of can't score-itis. (Our last two goals have been a penalty and a massive deflection.) And on Saturday, in the second half against Everton, there was just a slight glimpse of something rarely seen at Stamford Bridge in the last half-decade or so: nerves.
One piece of good news, though: our next fixture is away at Spurs. I think we can all agree that that's a positive. Personally speaking, if we were facing a top quality side in a title-related six-pointer, I think the pressure would probably be too much for me, and I would have to retreat to a windowless cell for the weekend, where someone could break news of the game's outcome by tapping on a heating pipe with a spoon.
Instead, though, we're at White Hart Lane, so at least the computer has been kind enough to relieve the pressure slightly for a week, ahead of far tougher assignments, just around the corner.
Even so, if the team is to capitalise and use this occasion to force the overall project back on track, a bit of concentrated preparation wouldn't go amiss. And again, in this respect, fate and our own success in the Champions League group phase, have played into our hands. Tonight's game in Marseille has no consequences depending on it for either side, meaning that the whole of this week can be spent focusing on the Premier League game on Sunday.
Accordingly, my suggested team for Marseille would be as follows.
In goal: Bruce Buck. Back four: Bryan English, Tim Lovejoy, Jason Cundy, Gigi Salmon. Midfield: Neil Barnett, a couple of the blokes from the Cobham car park…
Actually, thinking about it, can we rest Bryan English? The doctor is always going to be an important figure (especially when challenges like Tim Cahill's on Petr Cech last Saturday are flying around), and it would be nice and settling if he, also, could be fresh for Sunday.
The point is, I don't see why anyone remotely connected with the first team even needed to travel to France this week, with the exception of Mr. Ancelotti, who is required to attend as a matter of decorum.
It might be OK for Sir Alex Ferguson to skip a Manchester United Carling Cup match in order to go 'scouting' in Valencia, and leave such trifling matters to his underlings, but here at Chelsea we have always set a higher premium on basic respect for the game and our opponents.
But even for Mr. Ancelotti it could have been a quick trip, in and out. Marseille isn't that far away. The manager could have been jetted out at the conclusion of first-team training this afternoon and been home again and tucked up in bed by midnight.
But, however it panned out, the midweek distraction is blessedly minimal for everyone, leaving all of us free to point ourselves towards Sunday and White Hart Lane, concentrated, unified, back on track.
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