Thank God January 2017 has been confined to the history books, brought back memories of Black November 1995. At least last night we saw a game and the fact that Chelsea are the best team in the country at the moment, the table never lies, we’ve bettered them once and matched them once because we certainly earned the draw we got last night, altogether a fair result.
There was also some noise in the ground which makes a change and tells you the crowd can turn it on when the game is a biggie which isn’t what the team wants, it’s what they want every game. Maybe our support now sees Chelsea in a similar light to Manchester United because there was a bit of ‘hate’ floating around.
Even though we again dominated the stats we didn’t do enough when in and around their goal, one shot in the first half that the ‘keeper saved is all I can remember. A few months ago we were having half a dozen shots on target in each half, in fact sometimes many more. Firmino should have knocked in one of the two chances he had in the second half because when teams defend in depth chances need to be taken, although that’s stating the obvious. I can’t think of too many more real chances apart from our goal.
I’ve not seen the penalty decision and I’ve not seen the replay of their goal but regardless we give away too many free kicks and inevitably we will pay the price. From where I sat I don’t know whether Mignolet should have done better with the goal but to be fair it was a hell of a shot and caught everyone unaware, including the crowd. Jürgen was right when he said Costa wasn’t a nice guy but I wish we had a few unpleasant ones in our team. He reminds me of Suárez, so much determination coupled with the nasty streak. We could do with a bit of meanness in our midfield but that doesn’t mean you give even more free kicks away; it means the opposition don’t like it.
Now January is out the way, the game every other day [or so it seemed] has been laid to rest, only a top four finish to concentrate on we can still turn this into something far better than expected. I’d have taken top four in August; I’ll definitely take it now. Don’t lose to the Gooner’s, Spurs or Manchester City, beat the others and we’ll be back in the Golden Egg draw come next August. It’s down to the Kaiser and his boys.