The Daily Hilario: Monday
I've been a Chelsea supporter since 1965. Over the intervening 61 years, my/our club hasn't qualified for European competition for most of those years. Indeed, before 2004, we had never qualified for the leading European competition and to reach the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup [the broad equivalent of today's Conference league in status] was a real achievement.Why am I saying this? Because, being a Chelsea supporter in the long-term is not the non-stop glory days of the Roman era and, indeed, what we expected when the American money bags arrived in 2022. For many of the people on WAGNH, this is your/their only experience and it has, very understandably, become an expectation. But it simply shouldn't be. We have no right to anything. We have to earn it. In 1997, as a middle-aged man, I cried like a baby for over an hour in the terraces of Wembley when we ended our 26 year [real] silverware drought. I thought I'd seen the impossible when I watched Guy Poyet score a brace against Spuds in 1999 to put us top of the Premiership for the first time ever. I realised a lifetime dream when The Special One brought the Premiership title in 2005 and felt that I could now die a happy man after that 2012 night in Munich.The mistakes made by our current owners are evident to even their most ardent advocates. Their much-too-belated acknowledgement, if genuine (which I have great doubts) will truly be assessed after their actions between now and the end of the summer transfer window. It will be the 'proof of the pudding'.I really fear that the fragile mentality of our players and staff, that has been so evident since Maestro Tuchel departed, will result in us ending up this season in largely the same mid-table mediocrity that BlueCo gave us in their first season.An Arsenal four-pack bottle job and a Spursy relegation will go someway to offsetting my gloom for the next month.Whatever happens, my love for Chelsea will never die, even if my lust for its incarnation occasionally does, as it does now. "This too shall pass."Forever keeping the blue flag flying high.
0The Daily Hilario: Monday
I've been a Chelsea supporter since 1965. Over the intervening 61 years, my/our club hasn't qualified for European competition for most of those years. Indeed, before 2004, we had never qualified for the leading European competition and to reach the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup [the broad equivalent of today's Conference league in status] was a real achievement.Why am I saying this? Because, being a Chelsea supporter in the long-term is not the non-stop glory days of the Roman era and, indeed, what we expected when the American money bags arrived in 2022. For many of the people on WAGNH, this is your/their only experience and it has, very understandably, become an expectation. But it simply shouldn't be. We have no right to anything. We have to earn it. In 1997, as a middle-aged man, I cried like a baby for over an hour in the terraces of Wembley when we ended our 26 year [real] silverware drought. I thought I'd seen the impossible when I watched Guy Poyet score a brace against Spuds in 1999 to put us top of the Premiership for the first time ever. I realised a lifetime dream when The Special One brought the Premiership title in 2005 and felt that I could now die a happy man after that 2012 night in Munich.The mistakes made by our current owners are evident to even their most ardent advocates. Their much-too-belated acknowledgement, if genuine (which I have great doubts) will truly be assessed after their actions between now and the end of the summer transfer window. It will be the 'proof of the pudding'.I really fear that the fragile mentality of our players and staff, that has been so evident since Maestro Tuchel departed, will result in us ending up this season in largely the same mid-table mediocrity that BlueCo gave us in their first season.An Arsenal four-pack bottle job and a Spursy relegation will go someway to offsetting my gloom for the next month.Whatever happens, my love for Chelsea will never die, even if my lust for its incarnation occasionally does, as it does now. "This too shall pass."Forever keeping the blue flag flying high.
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