I slept in this morning so didn’t have breakfast. It was also raining when I left the hotel and I got quite wet. I didn’t think I was going to sleep in or that it was going to rain, but as a grown man, I accept that sometimes things happen that I didn’t plan for.
I’m in the office now, I’ve sent out for some breakfast and I’m dry. My day is good again.
And when you put everything into context, last night was unfortunate but it’s not the end of the world. And knowing what we know about the manager, he’ll be quite upset with last night and he’ll not take sides in this tournament as lightly again. And he did take them lightly.
But you know what, it’s group football so you can afford to take a couple of risks. It’s unfortunate that we took a risk last night and lost, but it’s a lesson learnt and I didn’t expect it to rain this morning.
Chelsea on Sunday
So now, we move on and one thing is for sure, we wont be taking any chances with Chelsea on Sunday, even if they don’t look very good this season, having only won once in five games. Much like I’m not getting carried away with the new Spurs manager (new manager syndrome) I’m not expecting to see Poch struggle for too long at Chelsea.
Poch is a good manager and while it’s okay to make the assumption that he might have got fat and lost his desire, you could look at Ange at Spurs and say he’s got the most desire of any manager in the League. My response to both is, it’s not always about what we see on the outside, it’s what we sometimes get a glimpse of that matters.
Chelsea have a very decent manager and a very good squad. Just because they look like they have a Chairman that just tasted sweets for the first time and has been let loose in the biggest sweet shop invented and found his parents credit card doesn’t actually mean he doesn’t know what he’s doing.
I mean, I think it’s clear to everyone he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he’s not stupid and I suspect this is just an experiment that went wrong and I don’t think it impacts his ability to won or run Chelsea, or to that point, make Chelsea a top four side again. My point is, he could do what he’s done and it was a risk, but the reward was great.
And I think they’ve done it now and I think we’ll see a different approach from them moving forward. Or maybe we wont and maybe they’ll just keep spending. I think they can afford it, so why not.
But if there is hope for Sunday, it’s that they have only won once this season and we did rest a few players yesterday. And you know what, Sunday is important not just because it’s a Premier League match, but for us to see how we cope with a match so soon after defeat in Europe. Some teams can’t cope with the number of games and that was why the manager took a risk yesterday.
But on Sunday we need to see that it hasn’t impacted our ability to perform at the highest level against some of the best teams in the world. Sunday will tell us a lot.
