Despite a Europa League clash against Malmo being just around the corner, there is still time to laugh at Chelsea’s current Maurizio Sarri-inspired misfortune
If you feel it’s somehow immoral to derive enjoyment from the misfortune of others, try watching this without laughing:
Then try watching this without laughing (and fair warning, this does contains footage of obese white men swearing):
Sunday’s 6-0 annihilation at Manchester City was Chelsea’s biggest defeat of the Abramovich era, their largest in fact since they were hammered 7-0 by Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest way back in April 1991, when their manager was Ian Porterfield, their chairman was Ken “Electric Fence” Bates and Stamford Bridge was a Main Stand full of luvvies and a couple of cattle sheds full of racists (insert your own John Terry punchline here.)
When it was all over, Porterfield’s distant successor, Maurizio Sarri, provided some more unintentional humour. “We started well, but after four minutes we conceded a goal in a stupid way,” said Chelsea manager and indeed, if this is to be his last match in charge, he’ll at least have the memory of that opening 240 seconds to cherish.
They didn’t even see it coming. “My feeling this week was really good,” the blindsided manager continued. “It was good during training and the technical meeting and the warm-up.”
His optimism was shared by the Chelsea social media team, who were confident enough to tweet this on arrival at the Etihad.
? Fully charged for a big game in Manchester.
Where are you cheering on the Blues today? #MCICHE pic.twitter.com/f7KfBIxhqK
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) February 10, 2019
Is it fair to single out the gimps running the Chelsea account, when all clubs have moronic social media habits, deploying hashtags like #BusinessTrip and #InThisTogether as if the mere act of parroting a slogan can cover up the nightmare of bitterness and recrimination that lurks within every dressing room?
No, but let’s do it anyway. This is a masterpiece of fate-tempting, with the soundtrack echoing John Williams’ work on Jaws and its subtle suggestion that if you enter the water you might just get a great white’s teeth ripping through your jugular vein.
Then there’s the slow “Reservoir Dogs” style walk which has only been used by approximately 1,367,986 directors since Quentin Tarantino tried it in 1992. Finally we see Olivier Giroud, who seems to have got part of a cotton bud rammed in his ear, before the words “We are ready,” are superimposed over a shot of Eden Hazard. Presumably the caption writer forgot to include the words: “to get this over with as quickly as possible before signing for Real Madrid in the summer.”
If that’s what they’re like when they’re ready who can wait to see what happens when they get caught off guard?
Fans might have assumed things couldn’t get much worse after a 2-0 defeat at Arsenal and a 4-0 humiliation at Bournemouth, but anything is possible when David Luiz is having one of his off days.
We could take a moment here to say how good City were, but where’s the fun in that?
“In the last three matches away we’ve played very badly so we need to say sorry,” Sarri admitted afterwards. He at least deserves some sympathy as everyone knows he has the job security of a blind lion tamer, but Chelsea’s supporters have been laughing about Steven Gerrard falling over for the last five years, so even Liverpool fans, whose imodium consumption tailed off slightly following their 3-0 win over Bournemouth on Saturday, must have derived some pleasure from their pain.
“Whoever laughs at someone else’s trouble will be punished,” says Proverbs 17:5.
When they get round to updating this shallow and rather sensationalist book, someone needs to add a subsection, saying: “Unless it’s Chelsea.”
