Rather than look at the larger picture, something I did in another article last week, and without much further ado, this is the players’ season as seen through my (often myopic) eyes.

Petr Cech
Best Premiership goalie alongside Van der Sar and back to the Cech of old. Mistakes were few and far between and Big Pete has to be in the running for Player of the Year. Rating 9

Branislav Ivanovic
Another contender for the Player of the Year award. Iva was solid both at centre half and full back. It says a lot about Avram Grant’s managerial skills, an oxymoron if ever there was one, that he brought the Serb to Chelsea but then never gave him a game. Rating 8

Ashley Cole
Still the best left back in the Premiership although not up to his usual stellar levels. The problem is that he rarely had support out wide, often being faced with two or three opponents when attacking down the left flank. You wonder what might have been if Arjen Robben was still around. Rating 7

David Luiz
He came, he saw, he conquered and then he calmed down. The important thing is that the boy can play and we can look forward to many years of his defensive and attacking skills at the heart of our defence. Looks like he can chip in with 8/9 goals a season. Rating 7

Michael Essien
Our Bison had an up and down season but at least got through it mainly injury free. On fire at the start of the season but joined the rest of the squad in the mid-season slump. Once Lamps was back in the team his performances picked up again. Rating 6.5

Ramires
Not appreciated straight away by the fans but after a few months even the morons in the MHS who booed him couldn’t but notice that the lad gives the team drive and no little flair. Good first season and, like his fellow Brazilian Luiz, can only get better. Rating 7.5

Frank Lampard
His absence and slow return to form was definitely one of the reasons we dropped so many points in the middle part of the season. It is scary to think we are so reliant on a player nudging 33 years of age, so we just have to hope he beats Sir Stanley Matthews in the longevity stakes. Despite missing 15 league games he has matched our forwards goal for goal. Rating 7

Fernando Torres
The less said the better at this stage. Let’s just hope that the pundits are right and that he comes good next season. The manager, whoever he might be, has to understand that he is not Drogba and the team has to adapt to his style of play if we are to see him at his best. Rating 4

Yossi Benayoun
A season washed out by a serious injury. Like Torres, we will postpone judgment on him till next season. Rating 4

Didier Drogba
Forever the enigma. Was it malaria or indolence that led to his below par season? With DD we can never know. If a manager can get him to play effectively alongside Torres we will have the most potent strike force in the world, if he’s still around to try and make that happen. Rating 6

Jon Obi Mikel
Carried out his defensive duties to the required standard but is still s**t going forward. At least he has grown out his habit of giving away needless free kicks on the edge of our penalty area. He came back looking better in the last few games after being dropped when Frank came back into the team. Rating 6

Florent Malouda
It is difficult to describe a midfielder who scored 14 goals in a season as rubbish but I have no qualms in doing so – Malouda is rubbish. He gives the ball away too often in promising positions and his refusal to stay out wide narrows the scope of our attack. Probably he is instructed to do so by the coach so really it’s no fault of his own. But I don’t like him as a player, it’s my article and I can say what I want. Rating 4

Jose’ Bosingwa
Another injury hit season and never got the chance to really get going. Like Ashley Cole on the other side he rarely has any support out wide and often ends up lobbing harmless balls into the opponents’ area. Unlike Ashley, his defensive skills are iffy and the time has come for Bosi to look elsewhere for a job. Rating 4

Yuri Zhirkov
Is this guy ever fit? Last season he did an ok job at left back but started the season injured and stayed that way for most of it. We were told he was the Russian Maradona when we bought him. Yeah right, and I’m the Maltese Pele. Rating 3

Paolo Ferreira
I’m a big fan of Paolo. He comes in, does a job and just gets on with it. Definitely a million miles better than Bosingwa and should be an automatic choice at right back when Iva is required elsewhere. Rating 6

Salomon Kalou
Great sub but rubbish starter. That just about sums up Salomon for you. Rating 6

Ross Turnbull
Ok as a number two, mainly because of his passport. Played two games all season, conceding four goals in one of them. Rating 5

Daniel Sturridge
Ancelotti must seriously dislike the kid if time after time he overlooks him in favour of Kalou. An extended run in the team will let us know once and or all if he is as good as he thinks he is. We just have to hope that his successful spell at Bolton starts to convince his doubters. Rating 6

John Terry
Still the captain, the leader and the legend and back where he belongs as England captain. Not his finest season ever but still one of our best, week in week out. Rating 8

Alex
Yet another one whose season was blighted by injuries. Played very few games but when he did showed his class and usefulness to the team. Rating 7

Nicholas Anelka
For all the goals he scores he rarely does so in the big games. So for that alone it’s time to say goodbye Nik and all the best. Rating 5

Josh McEarchran
This is a season lost for the boy through no fault of his own. Carlo just didn’t give him enough playing time when injuries to other players meant there were places available in the team. Even the one man who went to mow and his dog Spot can tell that the lad is pure class so why not give him the experience?

The other kids
Often flattered to deceive but Ryan Bertrand, Patrick van Aanholt, Jeffry Bruma and possibly Gael Kakuta look like they have big futures ahead of them. Let’s just hope it’s in a Chelsea shirt. Collective rating 6

The Manager
Carlo’s stubbornness and lack of imagination are probably going to cost him his job. Plan B never entered his way of thinking let alone ever came close to execution. The truth is that for long spells the team looked predictable and not great fun to watch. Match turning substitutions seem beyond his grasp. He says he is not afraid of being sacked. I wouldn’t be either if I had a six million quid payout waiting for me. Rating 5

That stat also conveniently hides the fact that the eight wins and the draw were all against teams in the lower half of the table except for Manchester City. It also does not tell the story of the few chances we create during a game, and how close we came to dropping points that would have extinguished any hope of challenging for the title for as long as we did.

And so it has come to be that for the first time since 2005 we go into the last two weeks of the season with absolutely nothing to play for. One could say that the last two fixtures in 2005 and 2006 were also meaningless but only because the Premiership trophy was safely on display in the trophy cabinet.

Allow me to join the finger pointing brigade by stating that there are three reasons for this season’s miserable outcome and Carlo Ancelotti has to take the blame for two of them.

The first is as obvious as sand would be in a stroll in the Sahara. No plan B with no width. Time after time after time we are like a battering ram trying to break teams down through the middle. There was the odd team here and there that eventually succumbed but on the whole most have coped by simply flooding the central midfield area. It also explains why Torres has looked so awful. For all the criticism that our midfield trio have taken for their lack of creativity, it has not really been their fault. Any combination containing Lampard, Mikel, Essien and Ramires will work its socks off but none of them is capable of going on a dribble to take out two or three opponents.

The fault lies with Ancelotti trying to replicate his AC Milan system with players who are totally different to what he had at his old club. At Milan he had Pirlo, a type of holding midfielder as far removed from Mikel or Essien as my bank account is from that of Bill Gates. While Pirlo could not tackle to save his life, he could spray seventy yard passes to free Shevchenko and Inzaghi in the blink of an eye. And then he had Kaka in his prime, a player who would start a run from his own half and take out half the opposing team in one move. Just ask any United fan who will surely remember his exploits at Old Trafford in the Champions League. We simply do not have that type of player and the system Carlo has dogmatically stuck with does not suit our more muscular midfield.

Or do we? Which brings me nicely to my second point – Carlo’s total lack of belief in our youngsters. Lampard’s injury should have been the time to shuffle the pack and bring in young Josh McEarchran. In the few minutes he was given here and there he rarely put a foot wrong and showed he had the vision, touch, ability and range of passing required at the very top. Yes he is (or was at the time) just seventeen but plenty of youngsters with his exceptional talent have cut it at the highest level and there wasn’t anything to suggest that Josh couldn’t have made it too. He is different from all the midfielders at the club with a creative streak none of the others have in their DNA.

Daniel Sturridge is another case in point. His success at Bolton only proves what I was thinking every time he came on as substitute in a Chelsea shirt. My question to Carlo would be – at the very least was Sturridge any worse than Kalou, Anelka, the often indolent Malouda or a patently unfit Drogba? The answer should be a resounding no, which then begs the question as to why he was not given more starts and playing time.

Finally, the strange goings on behind the scenes certainly did not help. Ray Wilkins’ sacking was the most senseless decision taken since Roman Abramovich took over the club. What made even less sense was the appointment of his replacement. Five months down the line can anyone tell me exactly what Michael Emelano’s cv looks like and what he brought to the table? But then the Chelsea hierarchy does have a history in this department. Anyone out there remember a guy called Avram Grant, brought in to replace Jose’ Mourinho? The same bloke who in two weeks time will establish a new Premiership record by taking his team into the Championship two years in succession, the latest one with no less than four England regular squad members.

What is done is done. Season 2010/11 is gone forever. The only thing that can be salvaged from the disappointment is the lesson learnt – by the players, the coach and the hierarchy. Much is made of stability at any club but again for every stat there are two sides of the coin. For all the stability at Arsenal, they have been without a trophy since their lucky FA Cup win in 2005. Their stability in the meantime has brought in zero trophies while our instability has brought us eight major trophies (ten if you count the Community Shield).

Carlo has to go. Over two seasons his style of play has been too one dimensional. Even when doing the double, the greatest achievement ever by any Chelsea manager, his system was dependant on all eleven players playing at their best most of the time. When that did not happen this year he had no alternative system, or lacked the courage to try a new one. Over the two seasons he has been in charge we have lost fourteen Premiership games, compared to just seventeen in the previous five seasons. And fortress Stamford Bridge is no more. Four league home defeats in two seasons compared to just two over the previous five. What I think tips the scales in Roman’s eyes probably is none of all this. Carlo was supposedly brought in to fulfill the owner’s dream of winning the Champions League. Two years down the line in six knock out games we have lost four, drawn one and won just one. We have failed to win any one of the three home games.

So to hell with all this stability talk Roman. Go get the great Guus alongside God – aka GFZ.

At last “we” had got revenge on the Germans for burying my granddad under a pile of rubble when his house, perilously situated close to a military airfield, was bombed by the Luftwaffe. (Just to put your minds at rest he emerged from underneath the rubble four hours later with just a cut on his leg.)

A week after the final, The Times of Malta published a supplement with a few articles and photos of the World Cup. The supplement included all the results and scorers of the matches. I got hooked. While my parents took their siesta away from the hot Maltese sun, I used to sit quietly on our balcony, memorizing every single stat in the Times supplement. Nearly 43 years later I can still tell you confidently that that the Germans beat Switzerland 5-1 in a Group 2 match and Held, Haller (2), Beckenbauer and Seeler scored the German goals. Pak Doo Ik scored for North Korea in their 1 – 0 win against Italy in the shock result of the competition.

This infatuation led me to start poring over the results in The Sunday Times of Malta when the new football season started a few weeks later. The headline “Osgood is Good” caught my eye one day. As a seven year old it didn’t seem corny. A quick glance at the league table showed that this team called Chelsea was top of the table, and a love affair with Chelsea started that day, sometime in September 1966.

I loved the team, but my true love was Ossie. The history books show that he broke his leg soon after and didn’t pull on the blue shirt till nearly a year later, missing out on the 1967 FA Cup Final.

I spent my meagre pocket money at the stationer’s, buying up every magazine that included even just a couple of lines about my hero. Ossie came back from his injury with a bang. The goals flowed, and he regularly headed the Chelsea scoring charts. In 1970 he was top scorer in the First Division as Chelsea won their first ever FA Cup.

Ossie was a player the likes of whom English football had never seen and probably will never see again. He was built like a typical English centre forward of the time, big, 6 foot 3 inches tall, and strong, but he had the skills of a small nimble striker. Think of a cross between Emile Heskey and Wayne Rooney’s best attributes and you can start getting a picture of what he was like.

Ossie was a man for the big occasion. Three times Chelsea made it to the final and three times Ossie got on the scoresheet. In the 1970 FA Cup winning run he scored in every round, a feat still unmatched to this very day.

Ossie’s bad boy image cost him a regular place in the England team then managed by Sir Alf Ramsey. His 103 goals in 279 matches for Chelsea definitely deserved more than his meagre 4 England caps. Ramsey selected him for the England squad for the 1970 World Cup, in which England were defending champions and amongst the favourites. In his autobiography Ossie relates that for the tournament he was rooming with the great Bobby Moore. Ramsey confided in Moore that he was going to pick Osgood for the second group game against Brazil after a rather tepid team performance in the opening match against Romania, in which Osgood had come on as substitute. Moore passed on the good news to his room mate. A couple of hours before the match Ramsey named his team. Osgood wasn’t in it and promptly stormed out of the dressing room. He didn’t win a cap again until Ramsey was close to the end of his tenure in November 1973 in a friendly against Italy. (England lost 1-0 at Wembley that night to a goal by the present England manager Fabio Capello).

After the success in the early seventies, in 1974, true to form, Ossie and his mate Alan Hudson fell out with the Chelsea manager Dave Sexton. Sexton gave the board an ultimatum – either me or them, and the board backed the manager. Ossie was sold to Southampton. While he went on to win the FA Cup with his new team, Chelsea went on a slide that was to last a decade. He came back three years later and played a further ten games scoring two goals. But the old magic had died. The legs were giving way after years of playing on potato fields that passed for playing surfaces in the seventies, and being hacked by cumbersome defenders who found that kicking Ossie was the only way to stop him.

I could write a book of my Ossie memories but one game sticks in mind. Chelsea were 2-0 down from the first leg of the quarter finals of the 1970/71 Cup Winners Cup. Ossie was handed an 8 week ban by the FA, which, as luck would have it, ran out 2 days before the return leg at the Bridge. (Bans in those days went by weeks not games and included European games.) Sexton had told Osgood he was not in the team, telling him he did not think he was match fit. Ossie threw a tantrum and Sexton relented. Chelsea were 1-0 up and out of the competition with five minutes of normal time remaining. Ossie scored the equalizer. He and Tommy Baldwin scored two more in extra time and Chelsea were safely through to the semis. They beat Man City in the semis and the great Real Madrid in the final after a replay. Ossie scored in the original final (1-1) and in the replay (2-1) two days later.

I met Ossie a few times, long after he retired, in the Chelsea Village Hotel where I was staying. Even aged 40, I found myself behaving like a ten year old in his presence. But after a few minutes you felt like you were talking to a long lost friend. He had all the time in the world for all the fans who queued up to have their picture taken with him, many of them dads like me with kids born after Ossie had long retired.

March 1^st 2006. Ossie passed away. I cried when I heard the news on Sky Sports. My friend had died. I went out and bought myself a plane ticket and paid through the nose for a ticket to the Spurs home match for what turned out to be his final farewell. But if ever I spent 300 quid well, that was the day.

We have had many great players playing for us since Ossie retired in 1977. Zola, Vialli, Dennis Wise, Desailly, Kerry Dixon, Gullit, Lamps, JT. But there was only one king as far as I am concerned. Peter Osgood (1947 – 2006)

Do we have a squad to challenge for both the Premiership and Champions League this year?
The collective departure of Joe Cole, Michael Ballack, Juliano Belletti, Deco and Ricardo Carvalho in the close season have, by my reckoning, saved the club something like half a million quid a week in wages. But it his also meant the loss of five experienced international players who between them can count on 326 international caps. It’s all very well saying that this is the year in which the youngsters are going to be given a chance but a look at the substitutes’ bench in recent weeks does not exactly send shivers down the spine of the opposing team.  In the Birmingham game the six outfield players who sat on the bench had made a total of 48 Premiership starts between them, 45 of which by Jose’ Bosingwa. I’ll do the maths for you. The five remaining players – Sturridge, Kakuta, McEachran, Van Aanholt and Bruma have started three Premiership games between them. For the statistically inclined that’s 0.6 appearances each. It’s one thing blooding the youngsters when the team is 3 – 0 up at home and another when you are 1 – 0 away to Birmingham on a freezing November afternoon. The step up from the youth team to the first team is a big one in any sport at any level. But nowhere is it bigger than in the Premier League or the Champions league for that matter.

The short answer to the question I pose above is NO, not with that sort of bench.

Are we the same team without Frank Lampard?
Is the Pope catholic? Which team in the world can afford to lose a midfield player who regularly gets twenty goals a season while doing more than his fair share of tracking back? Over the past few years most of the team’s top players have been out for and extended period of time – Drogba, JT, Joe Cole, Ballack, Essien, Carvalho but this is the first time we have had to make do without Lamps and the truth of the matter is that there is not one player in the squad who is remotely capable of putting in the kind of shift that Lamp’s is able to week in week out. Since his absence the three midfield starters have come from Mikel, Essien, Malouda, Zhirkov and Ramires. We’ll be lucky if at the end of the season all five score twenty goals between them, let alone come anywhere near Lamps in the goalscoring stakes.

Together with Petr Cech, Lamps is absolutely irreplaceable in any Chelsea line up.

Does Ancelotti have the faith in his youngsters that he says he does?
In the one game Ancelotti decided to start with three of the youth team products together, in the League Cup against Newcastle, the side went 3 – 1 down early on in the second half. Kakuta was taken off at half time and replaced by Kalou who got injured a few minutes later with Josh McEachran coming on instead. Since then not one of the four youngsters has made a start in either the Premiership or the Champions League. Starting with Ferreira in central defence against Sunderland wasn’t exactly a vote of confidence for Jeffrey Bruma. Which would lead one to believe that deep down the coach doesn’t really believe that any of them is ready to start in high pressure games, which are basically all the games we have left between now and the end of the season bar the two remaining Champions League group games.

Has Ray Wilkins departure had any effect on the team?
The Ray Wilkins departure is destined to remain a mystery until someone directly involved in the issue decides to sit down and write his memoirs. It is always difficult to gauge the importance of a number two at a football club and it is certainly too early to decide on the impact the assistant coach’s sacking has had on the team. But two defeats in two games against teams in the lower half of the table gives one food for thought. Paul Walsh, who was co-commentator for the Birmingham game, made a good point for once in his life. He remarked that the two assistants, Emelano and Clements have no Premiership experience and that Ancelotti has no experienced hand on call to bounce ideas off. Not that Carlo is that way inclined anyway. The one failing I would accuse our manager of is that even when things are going wrong he sticks to his formation. Not for him the game changing substitutions a’ la Jose’, who in moments of crisis often played with four up front and three at the back. We will never know if Ray Wilkins ever suggested any radical tactical changes to his boss. I certainly don’t see Emelano or Clements doing it.

Can we still win something this season?
Three defeats in four games does kind of dampens one’s optimism but it is far from the end of the world. First of all no team in the Premiership looks remotely capable of stringing six or seven consecutive wins together, the sort of run that puts daylight between you and potential championship rivals. The return of Michael Essien will make a difference but we need the medical department to pull up their collective socks and get a few of the injured players sorted out asap. Why did JT have to go to Italy to have his injury properly diagnosed when it now transpires that he has been playing through the pain barrier for months on end? Then we need Roman to take his wallet out in the January transfer window and get us a flair player, one who can open up a defence on his own when all else is failing. Our system is too dependant on fast accurate passing. When a few of the players are not on song we look laboured and predictable. Rarely do we ever see one of our players beating his man or taking on the opposition defence single handedly. My dream of a return of Arjen Robben will live on until the day the Dutchman hangs up his boots. Failing that I will whisper a name very slowly – Craig Bellamy. I know it might sound crazy but just think of what the crazy guy would be capable of in a six month loan.

And when we do get a mention we seem to be everybody seems to love us. Bloody hell, this is something I have never experienced in forty five years of being a Chelsea fan. We even get the odd, begrudging mention when the pundits are raving over the Gooners’ beautiful (albeit ineffective) football.

In a world were sensationalism takes precedence over substance, where the debate over whether Coleen had a boob job or not is more newsworthy than the recent spending review, I would say that this absence from both the front and back pages is a positive development. If you’re old enough go back forty years and try and remember when Chelsea made the headlines for any length of time for anything other than negative stories.

The first headlines I remember were about the fallout between Dave Sexton and Peter Osgood and Alan Hudson. Then came the long saga of the club being perennially on the brink of bankruptcy. When Ken Bates took over he quickly became a one man headline making machine, not least when he announced that he was putting up an electric fence around the playing area at Stamford Bridge. Then came the foreigners thing with Chelsea being blamed for every ill befalling English football and the lack of players eligible to for England. When Jose’ Mourinho finally arrived in 2004 he made Ken Bates look like a shrinking violet with the press. You don’t get a more headline grabbing introduction than when someone declares himself as The Special One on his first day at work.

Since the John Terry affair nine months ago the tabloids have only had Ashley Cole to dig their grimy nails into, but somehow they haven’t managed to come up with something sensational to keep the story on the front pages. While St. Cheryl does her best to keep the story alive, Cole has kept his head low and got on the business of being the best left back in the world by some distance.

One man should take the credit for this and his name is Carlo Ancelotti. His was never going to be an easy job. Two managers had tried to fill Mourinho’s massive shoes and failed. Then came Guus Hiddink who in a matter of months won over the hearts of the Chelsea faithful. When Carlo took over, he not only had to win over the pro-Jose’ brigade but also the newly founded Guus Hiddink Appreciation Society.

I will hold up my hand and admit that when Ancelotti took over I wasn’t quite sure whether he would be up to the task. With AC Milan, his star was fading fast and he

looked stale. Silvio Berlusconi, with no elections looming and too busy chasing nubile eighteen year olds, refused to release some of his ill gotten funds and Milan were going nowhere fast.

The first signs at Chelsea didn’t look encouraging and despite the early results I am sure I was in a majority that was not enamoured of Ancelotti’s diamond formation in which Frank Lampard looked like a kid who got lost on his first day at school. But credit to the man, within a couple of months he acknowledged the error of his ways, reverted back to the tried and trusted 4 – 3 – 3 formation and duly won the double.

There were a couple of lows during the season that not surprisingly coincided with Chelsea being in the headlines. In the Premiership the slump came around when the John Terry affair hit the front pages, while the elimination from the Champions League was preceded by the hullabaloo of Jose’s return to The Bridge. Jose’, as is his method and right, milked the event to its very last drop with the result that our players approached the game not a hundred per cent focused as they should have been when playing a top European team.

It thankfully looks like the lesson has been learned and much as we bloggers hate it, Carlo and the rest of the Chelsea hierarchy have made sure that CFC column inches have been meagre since March and when we have made the headlines it was for the right footballing reasons.

For all I know at this very minute the News of the World has one of its reporters somewhere in Pakistan working on an exclusive in which a leading Chelsea player is alleged to have shagged Bin Laden’s daughter. Or that another player is the illegitimate son of a paedophile priest (what would the NOTW pay for that kind of story?). But if the past few months have been anything to go by it does seem highly unlikely.

If nothing else Carlo Ancelotti has shown that there really is more than one way to skin a cat. Jose’ created a siege mentality to create a winning team. He made sure that everyone hated Chelsea to motivate his players, which worked for him. Carlo has gone right to the other end of the scale and with his effortless and understated charm made Chelsea’s everybody’s favourite second team, which works equally well for him.

Those who missed out on watching the match at The Bridge or on the telly and just heard the coverage later would have thought that one team tried to play all the nice stuff while a bunch of dirty bullies kicked their way to victory. Despite the best efforts of Jamie Redknapp and Graeme Souness who managed to get a few good points across, both Richard Keys and Andy Gray did their best to stick to their pre-prepared script that Chelsea bullied Arsenal out of three points.

Gray and Keys have been doing this job for eighteen years now and bloody hell it shows. Not in that they are better at it than when they first started out but because they have been saying the same things for the past ten years at least. I sometimes think that their post match comments are reruns from games we watched in previous years.

On Sunday Chelsea beat Arsenal because of four reasons which are: 1. We have a better goalkeeper than Arsenal, 2. We have a better defence, 3. We have a better midfield, 4. We have a better attack. Which boils down to Chelsea having better players and a better team than Arsenal. Full stop. Any other words uttered on the matter are a waste of time, spouted by the biased or by those who know nothing about the realities of football.

As a final resort, some pro-Wenger apologists said that the outcome would have been different had Cesc Fabregas been playing, conveniently forgetting that Fabregas has been on the wrong end of many a stuffing, both home and away, when Chelsea have played Arsenal in the last five years.

Make no mistake about it, Andy Gray and Richard Keys have the best jobs in the world. Keys sits there asking the same questions he has done for the last ten years and Gray spouts the same old drivel, as he has done for the last ten years. And both get paid loads of money for doing so. As for their pro-Arsenal, anti- Chelsea bias, it just makes me switch channel as soon as their ugly faces hit the screen.

One last word about Sunday’s match. Many of the newspapers came up with the quote from Arsene Wenger that his team had Chelsea on the ropes. Either Wenger is not a boxing fan or else his senility is affecting his judgment as well as his eyesight. Those old enough to remember the Rumble in the Jungle (Ali – Foreman, Kinsasha, Zaire 1974, heck, it just occurred to me that it’s such a long time ago that it isn’t even called Zaire any more) will remember what happens when you have an opponent on the ropes and fail to land the killer blow. You end up getting knocked out yourself. So for all of Wenger’s pride at having a top team on the ropes for some periods of the game, a look back at history will quickly dampen his enthusiasm for his team’s periods of ascendancy during a game.

Having got that off my chest, I must move on to more positive stuff now. I have regularly used this column to have a go at Jon Mikel Obi. While I do not take back what I have written about him in the past it is only fair that I use the same medium to state that this season he has been Chelsea’s best player in the ten matches we have played so far. My main gripe, or two of them actually, about him were the tens of needless fouls he used to give away on the edge of our penalty area and the fact that whenever the ball went to him he inevitably slowed the game down, giving the opposition those extra couple of seconds to get men behind the ball. At this point I ask you to note that I have used the past tense because this season he has been a revelation.

I do not recall one single foul he has given away when he didn’t have to, his positional sense has improved no end and his ability to get himself out of tight situations and play himself out of trouble rivals that of the most skillful players in the team. At the risk of making a fool of myself, I will state what has been crossing my mind over the past few weeks – we have at last found a worthy replacement for the great Claude Makalele. I am still whispering it at the moment but I am sure that come Christmas we can go ahead and shout it out loud from the rooftops.

One last word about another midfielder who stood out last Sunday – Ramires. He got plenty of stick after the Man City game for being overpowered by Gareth Barry, Nigel De Jong and Kolo Toure. But after last Sunday’s game we got a good idea about why Carlo Ancelotti spent 18 million pounds of Roman’s money on Ramires. He really is a box to box player mixing his innate Brazilian skills with endless amounts of energy. Against Arsenal he showed that he can hold his own in what is the battle in midfield in a Premiership game.

The final analysis two months into the season is so far so good. Apart from the Newcastle defeat it has matched our expectations with the added bonus of playing the most attractive and effective football in the Premiership by a mile. Eat your heart out Arsene.

A compensation deal was quickly arranged with Tottenham. Spurs get twenty million quid in cash plus another million for each point that England get in their Euro 2012 qualifying group. They will get a further ten million if England qualify from the group or twenty million if they don’t. Spurs also get to start the next season with a twenty point bonus in the Premiership, have a place in the Champions League guaranteed for the next ten years and have a new 50,000 seat stadium paid for by the FA.

An agreement was also reached with referees’ supremo Keith Hackett. All Spurs home games will be refereed by the local rabbi while the rabbi’s son will take charge of all away games. Sir Trevor Brooking, while hailing ‘Arry as the best player ever to play at West Ham, said that the FA was in talks with UEFA to see if the arrangement with the rabbi and his son could also be extend to European games. Brooking was quoted as saying that if need be England would withdraw its World Cup 2018 bid if UEFA thought that would help. UEFA asked for a week to give England a reply saying they have to get permission from the Russian mafia before making any decision. A UEFA spokesman said “We like to conduct our business in an open, transparent manner and like to involve all parties concerned before such a major decision is taken.”

The next day a photoshoot was organized and ‘Arry was pictured alongside The Victory in Portsmouth wearing an England shirt and an eyepatch, at London zoo cuddling three lion cubs, standing between cardboard cutouts of the Kray twins, holding the World Cup aloft at Wembley and with Jamie and Louise on a tropical beach wearing a flag of St. George mankini with a caption underneath saying “’Arry’s got the balls to take us to glory.”

The euphoria lasted less then twenty four hours as the day after the photoshoot ‘Arry was pictured with a MacDonalds takeaway bag on the front of The News of the World with a headline screaming – ‘ARRY’S SHAME – THE EVIDENCE. The front page article, with more on pages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, says that the kid who served ‘Arry was an undercover News of the World reporter who said that ‘Arry was not charged for the Big Mac meal. “I asked ‘Arry if MacDonalds could now become the England team sponsors and he smiled. We have it on the restaurant CCTV. I have no doubt that this is part of a sinister plot to kick Nationwide out as England sponsor. The new sponsor will be a foreign multinational company which is responsible for destroying the rainforest and making every kid in the world obese.”

The fallout is immediate. Jamie Redknapp is sacked by Sky and Richard Keys issues a statement saying that he never liked Jamie. The police raid ‘Arry’s house and find a garbage bin full of MacDonalds wrappers at the bottom of the garden. The Chief of the London Metropolitan Police is pictured standing next to the bin holding a greasy box of half eaten chicken nuggets. The CPS issues a statement saying that although technically it is not an offence to put used MacDonalds wrappers in a garbage bin they will look further into the matter. The Health and Safety people, who were also present at the scene of the crime, say they will be taking action against ‘Arry because they found a fire extinguisher in ‘Arry’s shed that had not been serviced for over a year.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg issued a joint statement saying that the time had now come to clean up English football. All the Labour Party leadership candidates issued their own separate statements, while Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in separate but similar statements said that this sort of thing never happened on their watch and both blamed the Tories with the Liberals as their conniving partners. Alistair Campbell issued a statement saying there was only one man to sort this mess out – Peter Mandelson. Mandelson then issued a statement saying he loves any game where balls are involved and will help if asked by the FA. He also said that with him around there won’t be any hanky panky with the female secretaries at the FA. The Daily Star tracked down Mandelson’s partner Reinaldo for a comment but none was forthcoming.

Max Clifford issued a statement saying he is advising a sixty three year old lady from Poplar in East London who, he said, kissed ‘Arry when they were in the same class at The Tower Hamlets Primary School and fifty five years later was ready to reveal all. Bidding for the story was expected to start at around half a million quid. “What went on between the two eight year olds has been preying on her conscience for years. Food rationing was still in place then and it is amazing how far a pound of sugar could get you in those days. This is a huge story. We have interest from as far afield as America, Australia and Papua New Guinea.” The Daily Mirror reported the headmistress of the school at the time, now a sprightly ninety five, as saying the story couldn’t be true. “’Arry was a good honest East End boy and never got up to this sort of thing. Besides there were no bushes in The Tower Hamlets Primary School. There still aren’t any today. They got nicked ten minutes after we put them in.

Forty eight hours later ‘Arry had his contract terminated, got a twenty million pound payoff from the FA, Spurs were relegated and the rabbi and his son had their refereeing career put on hold. David Levy was on suicide watch.

The next statement came from the FA who said that this time around they wanted the fans to be involved in the choice of manager and would be surveying people in English football’s two main hotbeds – Newcastle and Hollywood. Paul Gascoigne won hands down in Newcastle while Vinnie Jones gave David Beckham a good run for his money in the Hollywood poll.

Since no clear winner emerged the FA issued a statement saying it would listen to the voice of the real fans and appointed all three as joint England managers. “It worked in Rome in 60BC when a triumvirate consisting of Caesar, Crassus and Pompey led Rome to great things. We see no reason why it shouldn’t work here too. The new managers can each bring in their own staff.”

And so it came to be that England walked out for their first friendly game of the new era on the 11^th August 2010 at Wembley Stadium against Hungary. England wore red and white sarongs designed by Victoria Beckham, Jimmy Five Bellies carried the drinks and Guy Ritchie sat in a director’s chair behind one of the goals to take in the atmosphere to start work on his new film – Three Lions in the S**t.

Michael Ballack was not every Chelsea fan’s cup of tea although his contribution to the team has been, in my opinion, immense. He brought personality to our midfield and whenever he was in the side I always felt we were better for it.

Belletti came when he was past his sell by date and though his long range goals, particularly the one against Spurs, will be forever remembered, he failed to make a real impact on the team.

As far as Joe Cole is concerned you will not find a single Chelsea fan who has a bad word to say about him. Whenever Joe was given the chance he gave his all for the cause and on many an occasion was instrumental in Chelsea winning games. I am sure I speak on behalf of every Chelsea fan when I say “Thank you Coley”.

Coley was one of the first signings of the Roman Abramovich era for what now looks like a piffling six million pounds. Compare that with the thirty million we paid for Shevchenko, eighteen million for Jon Obi Mikel, God knows how much for Veron, Crespo and Mutu and the fee paid to West Ham in June 2003 now looks like daylight robbery.

Like many of Ranieri’s signings in the summer of 2003 spending spree he was bought because he was available without the manager having specific plans of where and how he was to be used. Joe struggled for any sort of form and although stats for the season show that he made fifty appearances and scored three goals most were either as substitute or, if he was in the starting line up he was often taken off.

In season 2004/5 things didn’t start well but when Arjen Robben was injured on that infamous night in Blackburn Joe really came into his own. Within a few weeks he scored a wonder goal against Norwich and played his best game in a Chelsea shirt against Barcelona in the Champions League.

Whenever injuries permitted Joe was one of the star performers in a Chelsea shirt. But what really endeared him to all Chelsea fans is that he always gave a hundred percent in the Chelsea blue and never once complained, even when he (and we) felt he wasn’t getting a fair crack of the whip.

The decision not to renew Cole’s contract will forever remain a mystery. Today’s departures, three as I write this, will probably be joined by Deco who announced some time ago that he will be returning to his native Brazil after the World Cup. For the life of me I cannot see the economic sense of letting Joe Cole. His replacement will cost big money both in a transfer fee and wages, which looking at it simplistically, means that Joe’s replacement, over say a four year contract, will end up costing much more.

As it stands today the squad looks seriously threadbare and it will be interesting to see where the replacements will come from. On what little we saw of them last year Nemanja Matic, Gael Kakuta and Jeffry Bruma are ready to step into the squad comfortably. Of the players we had out on loan Franco Di Santo certainly missed his chance to prove that he is genuine Premiership material. On the other hand Miroslav Stoch won the league in Holland with Twente while Michael Mancienne at Wolves proved that he has the quality to become a top class Chelsea player.

Today’s departures plus Deco represent at least three hundred thousand pounds a week in wages. Could the big brass at the club be clearing the decks for the marquee signing that has long been touted? Kaka, Fernando Torres? We live in hope and trust in Carlo and Roman.

At another club, new owners come in, undermine the manager to the brink of humiliation, and then sack him because of what they call a breach of contract.

And then we have charade of the annual awards for player of the year. The Premiership top scorer is overlooked in favour of the runner up, whose club also finished runner up in the league. Also overlooked, this time not only as player of the year but also from the PFA team of the year, was the midfielder who scored a record number of goals in his position. Yeah right – there are at least four midfielders better than Lampard in the Premiership. Which begs the question of whether would anyone swap Frank Lampard for Antonio Valencia, Darren Fletcher, Cesc Fabregas or James Milner, this years “top” four midfielders? I am not even sure anyone in his right mind would even consider swapping Super Frank for all four of them.

As for the manager of the year I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Apparently it is more of an achievement to sneak into the fourth place in the league, mainly because of the shortcomings of other teams, and lose an FA Cup semi final to a relegated team than do the double. It is not that Harry Redknapp managed his team on a shoestring budget either. Under Harry Spurs outspent every other team in the Premiership bar Manchester City.

But the strangest thing of all is the elevation of Avram Grant to the status of managerial greatness. I would like to lay my cards on the table before I go on. I DO NOT like Avram Grant. The minute he took his seat on the bench in the opening league match against Birmingham in season 2006/7 I knew trouble was brewing. I couldn’t see how a primadonna like Jose’ was going to put up with a chaperone on the bench. My fears were confirmed when a few weeks later Jose’ was on his way and Grant was appointed manager.

Some Grant sympathisers will say he took us into the Champions League Final, something Jose’ failed to do in three years in charge. That is an undeniable fact but it is also common knowledge that in the previous months, especially after the League Cup Final defeat to Spurs, with the team going nowhere fast it was the senior players who were dictating tactics not Grant. The bottom line is that under Avram Grant Chelsea ended up without a single trophy for the only time in the past six seasons.

This year Grant made a re-appearance at Portsmouth. In the league they were in a far from a hopeless position when he took over, although off the field things were in a mess. But it was not like he was left with eleven youth team players to fight for survival. His FA Cup Final team had eight full internationals in the starting line up. Even without the nine point penalty Pompey incurred for going into administration they would still have finished last in the Premiership, seven points from safety.

Now Grant is in pole position for the manager’s job at West Ham from a manager who had half his team sold off, humiliated in public by his chairmen (the plural is intentional) but actually managed to keep his club away from the dreaded drop.

If this season is anything to go by I will give you a few ideas as to where to put your bets for next season – West ham to go down and Avram Grant to win manager of the year. And while we’re at it, why not a tenner on Spurs not making the group stage of the Champions League?

The day Jose’ Mourinho waltzed into Stamford Bridge in the early summer of 2004 the manager’s seat at Stamford Bridge was never the same again. His now famous quote that he was a special one, not one out of a bottle, broke a mould. As a Chelsea fan what made me even more excited that day was his other bit of brashness. When asked if Chelsea would win the title the next season there was no pussyfooting around. Yes we will, because we have the best manager and the best bunch of players. Very refreshing after a year of listening to Claudio Ranieri talking about learning to walk before we could run and all that crap.

Once the trophies were delivered as promised, the deification of Jose’ was complete. Every other manager in the Chelsea hot seat would have Mourinho as an albatross around his neck.

I admit to having had my doubts when Ancelotti was appointed. His last league win was in 2004 and he had endured an abysmal last couple of seasons at AC Milan. But from the day I saw him crack a couple of jokes with the assembled press in his broken English I thought straight away that we were on to something. It was a complete metamorphosis of the image he gave in Italy.

At the end Carlo showed three qualities that have led us to success this year. First of all he came in with little fuss and decided, or perhaps accepted, to work with what he found. No entourage of backroom staff and no barrage of new signings. He had a go at getting Andrea Pirlo but once that came to nothing he just got on with the job. Yuri Zhirkov, Daniel Sturridge and Ross Turnbull were not his signings so it was really a case of making do with what was available. In January, with four players at the African Cup of Nations plus a few others out injured, he still didn’t go to Abramovich for money to sign new players.

Secondly he had a Plan B. No manager anywhere in the world is ever going to win anything sticking to just one system. He started with a midfield diamond, moved on to a Christmas tree formation and ended the season with a 4 – 3 – 3. His ego didn’t prevent him from, in a way, admitting he was wrong. We started off like a house on fire but very soon, as had happened with Scolari, teams sussed the system out and came up with counter measures to cope with it. Our full backs were blocked from making their runs and we started to look predictable. No problem, just change the system, the goals flowed and we were back on course.

Thirdly he knew how to pick the team up after a difficult time. The first came in December during which we were knocked out of the League Cup and won only two out of six league games. In January we won five out of five. Even worse was the period when we got knocked out of the Champions League, lost at home to Manchester City and drew at Blackburn. But that was followed by eight wins in nine, winning the league, getting into the FA Cup Final and scoring thirty six goals in the process.

Forget the rubbish that this wasn’t a great Premiership season qualitywise. So many points were dropped not because the top teams were weaker but rather because so many of the so called smaller clubs got better. Fulham in the final of the Europa League was testament to this. This really was the year were there were no easy games and the fact that we scored so many goals was proof of our quality and not the other way round. In the Champions League both United and Chelsea were unlucky. We were as usual denied clear cut penalties in both legs against Inter, and as much as Robben’s goal against United had me jumping out of my seat in joy, United were by far the better of the two teams over both legs. So while no Premiership team made it to the semis it could and should have been two.

Yes we all wanted to win the Champions League but there is always next year. For the time being we can content ourselves with being champions of the strongest and most competitive league in the world. And of having at last found a manager big and good enough to fill Jose’s boots.

At last we can say – the king is dead, long live the king.