SilverPolish

Oh I forgot, Three Point Lane is also Four Side Lane for me, although forgetting that dump isnt too hard come to think of it!

It's worth pointing out that RDM has been in charge now for 28 PL games and his record is W20 D5 L3 which extraploates to 88/89 points in a season. Pretty impressive considerng the shambles he inherited, not to mention winning a couple of baubles along the way. I also think it's great that we have a True Blue in post, the only club in the PL with an ex-player as boss currently. As you no doubt know, we have now won 18 major trophies, the 4th of which came as recently as 1997. That breakthrough FA Cup was of course won by goals from our current manager and his assistant, all the way from Hammersmith Eddie Newton. Continuity is important I think, and with those two at the helm we have that.

With all this silverware piling up I thought someone ought to bring along some silver polish to keep things nice and shiny. I did ask Arsenal if I could use theirs as they don't need it any more, but it was all dry and cracked since it's been hanging about so long so I went and bought some. No doubt you will bang in to me from time to time as I am polishing away. I look forward to it.

I got up to 78 (in England) at one point, although a lot of those have gone now. That's only including grounds where I saw Chelsea play, that's what pre-season frendlies were for right!. Four-siders (grounds where I stood or sat on all four sides) were obviously much rarer. Highbury, The Dell, Maine Road have gone, only Portman Road and Craven Cottge remain. I have done a few lesser 4-sides (where I saw a non-Chelsea game from at least one side) at Loftus Road, Upton Park, Griffin Park and Wembley.

Yep. Had my remembrance pint of Guiness yesterday as I do every year.

I realise I am late to this thread, so apologies for that, but I fear the whole farrago still has legs. Some great posts here, particularly Tommy Doc, laying out the grotesque detail. It's been like reading "The Trial" on the way to work at the Ministry of Truth. As though Kafka and Orwell got together, took some bad drugs and had a combined nightmare. No-one picked up on Bernstein's comments about being "baffled" by the leniency of the Star Chamber's punishment. This remember was within the 14 day period that JT had to appeal. So the chairman of the organisation that would pick the 'independent' tribunal that would consider an appeal, (very) publicly stating that he felt the original sanction should have been harsher. To translate, what he was telling JT was that if he appealed he would end up with an eight game ban instead. But then this whole sinister nonsense has diverged so far from any semblance of natural justice that no-one batted an eyelid at his crude and blatant interference in what has been passed off as due process. Incidentally, I object to the use of the term 'kangaroo court'. I've had the pleasure of meeting a couple said marsupials and they seemed very placid and reasonable creatures. I'm sure they would be deeply offended to have their good name besmirched by association with that nest of vipers. I predict the next line of attack will be to get at the club's sponsors. Getting some of the professional rent-a-quotes turning their hysterical fire in that direction could cost the club millions. That would be a very difficult situation for the board to deal with, particularly with UEFA's Cartel Ring-fencing (disingenuously named FFP) regulations just round the corner. Another aspect left unremarked amidst the fury at the 'leniency' of the sanctions, is that whatever personal endorsements JT had will surely have gone. Associating your product with The World's Most Hated Man is not commercially clever, so JT is probably a couple of million a year down from that alone. Who would have thought that a simple five-letter adjective could have such significant implications! I do think there is an anti-Chelsea sub-agenda going on here. The fact that UEFA is bringing in 85 pages of financial jiggery-pokery to stop upstarts like us from barging our way to the top table uninvited in the future indicates powerful vested interests at stake. I bet that bloke engraving 'Chelsea' on the CL trophy, where it will remain for ever, must have peed them off immensely. But, that's only a sub-agenda. This is absolutely part of a much bigger picture. We are witnessing an exercise in social engineering which is outside the remit of this forum, but football is an ideal vehicle because we do tend to get rather silly and emotional about our clubs, and creating an official hate figure out of an opposing team's player is really pretty simple.