Mike O

I guess the next time a commentator underlines a wholly improbable outcome with 'you couldn't make this up', the answer will be 'oh yes you could'.

Boca Juniors. They're a big club... Or Paris St Germain

Dear Chelskikid. I am 47 yrs old and live in Kingston upon Thames. All my life, I've been surrounded by mates and muppets, my age, from my neighbourhood, who support Liverpool (or Man Utd), Why? Because apparently they were quite good in the 70s. Sad, isn't it? Sad, but not new and not something you can blame on Chelsea. Next time you come on here, I suggest you try and think of something interesting to say.

Excuse the typos- I can hardly see my iPhone this morning for good reasons...

Let's put this in perspective. RDM's job has been to rescue the season and do the best with what's been left to him. Statistically, the results do stack up. Yes, he's lost 2 games but one of those was to the probable champions, thd other to 2 of thd best goals you'll ever see. Draws to Arsenal and Spurs. Both ahead if us. are creditable. Only the Fulham result is, IMHO, disappointing. Call me controversial, but the style of football we played in the late 90's, with RDM at the heart of it, was by far the most exciting to watch. Fluid, fast, fierce, fantastic. I'm guessing as a manager, he'll want to bring Doms of that back given the chance. But if hasn't been his job to do that this season...

A point that may be being missed here is the effect of not giving him the job. Regardless of what you may feel about his capabilities, anyone else coming in now is going to be wearing a 'not RDM' cap for a long time. That cannot be good for clubhouse morale...

Can't believe this has got to page 4 and no-one's mentioned Jokanovic...

In the cold light of the morning, a little perspective. Regardless of the outcome of last night, there isn't a contender in the last 7 who can touch Barca. Even without their usual UEFA 'help', they should wall this competition. Time for CFC to regroup, draw a line under an era, and for Roman to draw some conclusions from all this on what does and doesn't make for a good set up.

I was thinking more of Shevchenko but thanks for your erudite views anyway.

Yup. Be prepared to have any member of your support staff sacked at a moment's notice and to have ludicrously over-priced and frankly useless strikers foisted upon you on a whim.

Boys, We've been invited back to play in the CFC fans footy tournament at Cobham. As you'll remember, we performed superbly well under an incredible manager two years ago but missed out on a place last year. Now the key thing to register herein is that I don't have time to sort this out this year so someone else will need to step up to the plate. First task is to register interest with the organisers asap so sign up below if you want to play. Loz can then appoint someone to manage team and sort out all comms. The mail I received on Sunday is below (from Cliff Auger, a bit of a CFC legend himself) Hi all, Chelsea have given us the go ahead for the Supporters Football Tournament to be held once again at Cobham. The date will be Sunday July 10th 2011. You have all either expressed an interest in entering a team or have entered in the past. If you want to compete in this years event please officially enter by MONDAY, APRIL 18TH 2011 at the latest. We will try to get a place for all entered teams but if there are too many a draw will be made at the last fans forum of the season. At the moment, the only guaranteed team that will play this year are last years winners cfcuk. For those of you that have not played before, it is an 11 a side competition and the only difference to normal rules is that we have roll on, roll off substitutes. Going on past experience, you will need a squad of 15 or so. There will be a small cost for each team which covers the price of the referees and the St. John's ambulance people. Any extra money received and proceeds of the raffle on the day are donated to charity. I will let everyone know the amount when costs are added up. It is hoped once again that the club will send some of the Chelsea Old Boys down for the day to help out and will also provide prizes for the winning teams. A refreshment van will also be on site. If you have any questions please let me know. Cheers, Cliff Loz has the email address so lobby him to register asap. Mike

Cor this is a bit more like it. Chelsea performances that have me hankering for the good old days of the 90's... Welcome back to the glorious concept of 'consistently inconsistent'. Except that you'd need to win the occasional match to prove the inconsistency bit.

Thanks for all you warm wishes. Life is very busy, full of 12 hour workdays, dealing with my teenage kids, watching the occasional K match and still standing in freezing cold fields of a Sunday morning whilst my boy plays rugby. My blues / funk guitar playing is coming on apace (how's that funk collection of yours growing, Kev?) and my legendary management skills are being honed every Sunday as I lead Spring Grove Monday FC to occasional glory. Miss you all (even you, Dorset), Mike

Wotcha, This is my first post in 25 years but I thought I'd take the opportunity to tell you why Willkins got shunted. And this is as given to me by a cabbie who does occasional work for the club... so it's totallly kosher, right? Anyway, it's all to do with a big falling out between Wilkins' missus and the wife of a director at the club. Apparently the director's wife was having an affair but still being all high and mighty to the lowly likes of Mrs W. Mrs W found out about the affair and had a confrontation. Major fall-out ensued. The Wilkins' had to go. Hope that's cleared all that up. Mike

Hi, it's me and my once a year post. Anyway, I've finally declared to myself that South Africa 2010 is the worst World Cup ever, and God knows USA 1994 took some beating. My reasons? 1. Collecting the world's greatest footballers together in one place and then getting them to play with a beach ball, so negating most of their abilities. 2. Empty seats. Everywhere. Even at the bloody QFs. Fifa should hide their heads in shame. 3. Vuvuzelas. Old topic I know, but just play yourself a vid of any other high profile non-WC2010 match to remind yourself what proper, reactive, emotional fan support sounds like to get yourself all tearful. 4. Sepp Blatter. Goal-line technology. Twat. 5. France. A national disgrace. I've got no problem with that but if I was Irish I'd be even angrier now... 6. ITV and Clive bloody Tyldesley. Git. 7. John Terry, conspirator extraordinaire. Just for saying 'we need to talk'. Sigh... 8. The worst example ever of the Middle England press (Mail / Express etc) deliberately de-railing the England team. And scuppering us out of £billions through kyboshing 2018. 9. The weirdest epidemic of injuries to major players ahead of the tournament. 10. Rooney / Gerrard / Barry / Johnson / Lennon / SWP / Capello. Please feel free to add your own...

A lot has been said that I agree with but my over-riding feeling was that every England player was scared sh*tless. There wasn't one member of the team who you might think was enjoying their football. That has to come down to Capello. What the f**k has he been saying to them? No leadership on the pitch didn't help either. Top tips 4 Slovenia: 1. Cheer the team up 2. Then drop Rooney 3. And Heskey 4. Give tha captaincy back to Terry 5. Play Joe Cole behind Crouch 6. Tell Gerard that if he drifts infield again from the left he'll be off 7. Show Lamps a DVD of all his CFC goals 8. Remind Lennon he's quite useful at running past people you get the drift...

Well done boys, From an old K's fan

We must have been separated at birth. I too spent most of the 70's wishing to become David Bowie and was lucky enough to realise my dream in 1980 when a bizarre chance meeting in New York allowed me to take over his persona for the next three years. It started when I bumped into him at a Warhol party some time in June and blurted out how much I was loving his performance in 'The Elephant Man' which was runnning on Broadway at the time (I'd seen it 32 times in 6 weeks, so felt well qualified to give him my opinion). We got talking, him about his new fascination with 16th century Japanese sculpture, me about how I'd spent 4 days solid (with no sleep) trying to perfect the guitar riff from 'Stay' to no discernible avail, when he let slip that he really wanted a break. Well one thing led to another, and owing to the fact that I had his hairstyle down to a tee and had never really looked after my teeth, we agreed to do that whole 'Prince and Pauper' thing. Which is why you can thank me for the Scary Monsters album, my role in Brecht's Baal on TV and the original version of Cat People. On the other hand, he was well pissed off that I agreed to duet with Queen on 'Under Pressure' (he really hated Freddie) and was also narked off that I got to snog Susan Sarandon in 'The Hunger'. For his part, he effortlessly charmed my mum for 3 years whilst also buggering up my French A level and losing me my place as open side flanker in my rugby team. He also scored with quite a lot of girls whom I'd previously thought of as 'out of my league' (when we switched our roles back, they weren''t interested in me at all - what does that tell you about Mr 'I'm a Momminpoppa coming for you'?). Anyway, things came to a head (literally) after I'd written Let's Dance and had decided to dye my hair blonde. He found his way back stage on the third night of the Serious Moonlight tour, stormed into my dressing room and gave me what-for, demanding to take his rightful place back. I agreed and quickly spent the next 5 minutes teaching him the words to 'Up the Hill Backwards' and 'Modern Love'. The next day, I was back home with a fiver in my pocket and a crap haircut. Still, I'll always have my memories.

I thought Frank was poor as well. And don't get me started on Mikel... Hate to say it, because I can't stand the fooker, but Ashley was unbelievable today. And is there a better striker in the world at the moment than DD?

I'll stick a tenner on JT leaving for Inter in the summer. There's a very good piece in the Guardian today about how the Italians are laughing their heads off at us over this as they don't give a stuff about who shags who.

Hope Eidur didn't get Perroncel and the landlady mixed up in the dark... euuuurghhh

Hiya, Just back for a rare visit to see what the reaction to JT is. I frankly haven't been through all 19 pages but I'm starting to get the gist. I don't know if anyone else has made this point by but my over-riding view is that this is bloody typical behaviour from the British press in a World Cup year. Remember Gazza and dentist's chairs? I stated on another forum in November that we could probably expect our media to start trying to crush the team before they even set foot on a pitch from early January and hey presto! Why? God knows, but my view is that it's rooted in good old fashioned snobbery. The papers don't like the money they earn (neither do I), the perceived lack of class (ditto) etc etc but most of all they don't like them representing us on the world stage. Step forward the Mail. Now step back and f**k off This isn't to vindicate JT, he's well in the clag, but to attack instead an editorial mindset that at no point thinks we should build the team up this year. Here are a few more predictions pre-June. 1. A raft of documentaries on C4 /C5 on British hooligans abroad all through May 2. An outing of an English international in April 3. Drug scandal for back-room staff in March 4. Press sting on player for pimping 5. Tax allegations vs another Fill in your own...

It's alll a bit special needs, isn't it?

Video technology to be used as follows: Referee gets to call for it on goal-line decisions. Captains have two opportunities to call for it per game at their discretion. Any argument about it slowing the game down is nullified by the amount of time already wasted through play-acting and rowing about decisions. In rugby, the video ref process rarely takes mmore than 30 seconds. That's about half the time it takes a centre forward to execute his triple salko with pike when 'tripped'' in the box, followed by his near death convulsions. There are responsibilities that come with this, mind. If a captain calls for the video ref to validate a penalty claim, he has to be crystal that his player has not dived. If the video shows any sort of diving / play-acting on the part of the plaintiff, he gets carded or better still, sent off. In a single move, you'd kill the notion that it is ok to cheat in football as long as you're not caught. As for the 'we'd have nothing to talk about' argument, I for one am sick of having this same discussion every year for the last 30 years. Right, that's my annual post out of the way.

Jesus, I might have to start posting again...