As football fans we are all of the belief that our team is our own and belongs to us. As football fans we are ALL 12 year old children that crave and hunger for success and in doing so, exhibit all childlike responses to every dramatic situation or disappointment. We are insular with our prized possession, our "precious", our Chelsea, we want to be alone in this private world and we rarely share.
Loss, disappointment, and even winning, with all their accompanying emotions, are feelings that each of us are yet to master. Our responses to such things (and others) are typically puerile.
How can you possibly like Chelsea more than me? Who do you think you are? I’ve liked them longer and I know more about them than you! Do you want to fight about it? Chelsea is mine and mine alone. Why? ‘Coz my big brother said so that’s why!
It is therefore natural to believe that when my team Chelsea loses, in the manner in which they did today, then I, I alone feel a loss and pain that is greater in intensity and sorrow and anger than anything that is felt by anybody, and I mean anybody else.
We all feel this right?
Contrary to this belief, pain is rarely exclusive to the individual and is invariably shared no matter what the circumstances.
In conclusion. I feel just as bad as you do!
Do you really believe that you were the only one to look away just at that point when, in the 89th minute, the ball hit the back of the net?
Do you really believe that you were alone in the pain that was felt as it finally sunk home that Chelsea had lost again because of that bloody little fellow Diego Forlan?
I thought he was meant to be crap?
Pain is defined in the dictionary as "an unpleasant feeling caused by injury or disease of the body or mental suffering". Oh how we have suffered.
Is the kind of suffering, pain and anguish that led Anakin Skywalker down the dark road to become Darth Vader. Are we all on that slippery slope to doom and heavy breathing? I digress..sorry.
This article is not an attempt to examine or dissect the "ins and outs" of the 90 minutes or to even to question the thoughts behind Claudio’s tactics and substitutions. To have to think of the game in any detail at this precise point would only re-awaken a suffering that has taken many an hour to bury.
The game though, has left a number of sour aftertastes.
So many frustrations and disappointments, so much heartache. A Gianfranco so ineffective I could SCREAM. This is perhaps the greatest sadness that I carry with me today. Where was you when we needed you?!
But to be honest, there was so much in this game that was good for Chelsea. So many positives could be taken from a very impressive, controlled first half but the second…..
We gifted them, we gifted them and gave them exactly what they wanted. Lack of concentration, sitting back far too deep, too many individual errors. We are so much than this and so much more than our current position in the table.
But hey, at least (on occasions) we glimpsed the brilliance of Chelsea, a brilliance and intelligence of play that we should take heart from.
But one final question remains? Who do you blame? Do you blame the determination and resilience of a United that hungered for the three points more than us? Or did we gift them?
And with that in mind I must decide if I am to send the psychiatric bill to Mr. D. Forlan c/o Old Trafford, Manchester, or, do Chelsea get it?
One things for sure…..NEVER underestimate the dark side of the force……