Danny B

"You have to take your chances at this level". "You have to defend properly". "Players have to create more chances for Torres". "You have to work hard". "Squad's too small". "Players's are unfit". "It was raining and made our kit wet which slowed us down?". "The ball's too f@cking bouncy". "Linesman peformed like Ray Charles". His a rabbit in the headlights....

Picture the match with three sides of the ground completely empty, with only City supporters present in the Shed. No protest, no banners, no antipithy. Just a powerful vote with your feet for one match only. Imagine the awkward post match interview for Benitez when asked his thoughts on a total fan non-show. Imagine what Roman and the board would be thinking as the shuffled in their seats as the rest of the footbal world watches. One match - one protest, one massive statement of fan solidarity and then back to normal, getting fully behind the team come what may. It would be a JFK moment in our history - where were you on the empty stadium day? Banners, booing, one-off songs - it's all p@ssing in thw wind. There have been a million words of frustartion written on this site alone this week, but sometimes actions speak louder than words!

My thoughts and a few facts: - The job done by RDM in turning around AVB’s side devoid of pattern of play, belief, or end product, was nothing short of miraculous – culminating in our best season ever. - For Chelsea FC communications to dumb down this contribution as “playing a helping hand†is frankly a disgrace. - Our squad this year is in transition and result expectations and targets should be factored around this. As recently as mid-October RDM was receiving plaudits from fans, media and the football world for the way we were performing and for the calm way he was overseeing things. - Our current squad is painfully thin when compared to all of our rivals – in midfield steel, at centre-back, and especially up-front. - Every major club has four quality competing goal scoring forwards – we do not even have one. Sturridge is not a centre-forward, at best a one-trick impact player. Torres is a busted flush (he was before we bought him) and sadly will never scale the previous heights. Anyone who thinks he can turn things around is seriously deluded. - Luiz is not a reliable centre-back and is a liability there without Terry. - A porous defence and a lack of goals does not make for a major trophy winning side – no matter how talented the midfield. - Benitez to do a better job than RDM for the remainder of the season is a huge bet and frankly doomed to not pay-out. RDM is "proven" in working with this squad, in having their respect, in having established his own back-room staff, and in the lesser lauded aspects of the role in dealing with on-going Chelsea club and media baggage. Benitez brings nothing more than his own out of date self-belief – but so would Big Ron Atkinson! - Chelsea are in relative decline compared to Premier League peers and in terms of the major European players. The ridiculously short-term approach attempts to address this, but only propagates it. - Pep G will never turn Chelsea into an English Barcelona – that would take a 10 year+ investment and a management team with a vision rather than people around just to respond to the owners latest whim whilst pocketing huge amounts of money. - Chelsea is run by incompetents – devoid of strategy, business delivery, or the proper management of resources. They can be useless and lazy yes-men because dictator RA allows this modus-op. - RA’s funding has helped us, but the waste and brand damage is there for all to see. The majority of success achieved over the last 10 years has been built around a core spine (Cech, Drogs, Lamps and Terry) that more or less predated his tenure, and around that spine, for every decent purchase made there are at least two examples of over-inflated and wasteful deals. - How can we address this relative decline, or even move forward when the horizon is always less than one season? I love Chelsea and always will – but this latest fiasco and the treatment of RDM sickens me.

My first game was early in the season 1968 v Spurs. I was 8 years old and went with my mate Rob, my late Dad and his mate Fred (who I recall was a Fulham fan). We sat in the West Stand benches about half down from the shed end. Don't remember too much about the game other than the score (2-2), and the fact that Jimmy Greaves scored for the y*ds. My Dad loved Greaves; was gutted when he left Chelsea, even more gutted when he joind Spurs on coming home from Italy, and gutted that he missed the World Cup final. I remember him rabbitting on about how it broke his heart to see him playing in white. I do remember my two favourites, Osgood (who scored) and Bobby Tambling playing (I had a pair of Bobby Tambling football boots). The team was probably not a million miles from the one that lifted the cup in 1970 - would have been a match for any of our teams through the years. I have probably got the match programme in a box in the loft, will have to have a hunt around. Happy days...

March 4th - AVB getting sacked. Up to that point we had no right even dreaming of making the last 8. Best goal - Fernando v Barc. Absolute joy and relief for what it meant and also for what he had been through.

Bluebeard aka Mr F@cking Magoo?

We have just won the youth cup so in essence our kids are better than everybody else’s kids. We just have to bring them on. It’s a catch-22; they will never be good enough if we don’t give them a chance. A club like ours has enough resources and experience in the squad to support this but you have to have faith and patience. And we have to do something to respond to Platini’s fair play malarkey. I agree Lamps has probably got an eye on a future media role but JT would love to stay at Chelsea long-term, and we only have to hand over if and when he was ready. And I am certainly not advocating a Wenger model. A squad of French lightweights and no plan B.

How about a strategy that dispenses with a new big name foreign coach every two years, who comes at huge cost, with his own new backroom staff, new ideas and need for £100 million+ of new investment to stay competitive? Instead JT and Lamps to call time on their International careers, take their coaching licences and work under Bobby D as assistant coaches from next 2013/2014 season. They can spend next two summers visiting Ajax, Barca, PSG and Real Madrid (Carlo and Jose will be happy to oblige), take in a few international tournaments and learn some tactical nous to complement their existing winning mentality and self-belief. Extend Di Matteo to a four year deal with the remit to grow one of them (probably JT) to eventually take the big seat, which in turn should help with the goal of transitioning from a team still heavily reliant on a spine established by Claudio to a younger more mobile side, with a least 2 pr 3 home grown players becoming first team regulars every year. Let's put some proper foundations down and last year need not be a once in a lifetime. And we might even start to break even…

A class response would have been for him to say "I do not want to talk about my old club but want to focus on the task ahead with the y*ddos". The trouble is AVB never had any class from day one. His chippy interviews, his delusions that we were playing some sort of total progressive football, his failure to energise or lead the group, or to get across his ideas coherently was all too obvious from the start. He was the complete polar opposite to how Bobby D went about things when he took over. If any manager performed so poorly in any job, - losing the troops, the confidence of his management peers, overseeing rapidly declining performances , then it would be addressed. Credit to our managment for that, and they continued to pay him handsomely to the end of the year. To me, he is very lucky to get a second premier league chance and to continue to receive plaudits based on one season's success in Portugal. I used to think Levy was a shrewd football man but it will only be going one way now for our north London neighbours!