Norwich City 0-0 Chelsea: We Want Our Money Back

Today's match report is written by Alex Churchill, Owner of the fantastic Blog - A Girl Who likes Balls. 

Fozzie Bear (muppet alias) has been going to Chelsea for nearly 60 years, so he's suffered everything the Blues can throw at him. And more. Fozzie Bear never gets irate, but he's actually demanding his ticket for the replay free of charge after this sh*tfest. 

From my longest match reviews to my shortest: 

That. Was. Sh*t. 

Ok, ok. I'll try harder. 

I travelled up to a place where no motorway goes and where no coherent mobile phone signal exists. As for 4G. You'd have a better chance on Mars. To be honest, the game had a lot to live up to from the outset, given the excitement on the way up when one of the fan coaches decided to headbutt a pheasant and trash its own windscreen.

Them: If you offered me five minutes in a dark cupboard with Tenacious Double D, I still couldn't pick any of their players out of a lineup of random blokes all similarly dressed up as bananas. 

Us: Nine changes in all including the emergence of the Lesser-Spotted-Kenedy, and the Even-Lesser-Spotted-Luiz, but don't get your hopes up about that last one. From what I hear the club isn't big enough for both he and Conte. 

Bright start home team. Nothing of note really happened in the opening ten minutes, save for a quite sad cross-cum-shot from Kenedy. (If your mind goes there, I am not responsible) I should say now, until it gets to the final ten minutes, when I say "shot," don't be getting any shiny ideas, "half-a*sed kick vaguely in the direction of the goal" would generally be more accurate. 

The play took ages to get going, thanks to a lengthy injury break for one of the bananas. For the duration of the first half, there did not appear to be a coherent plan. To be expected, I suppose, that fluency would be lacking with so many changes, but no dynamism or real prolonged intent either. On 24 minutes Willian, who looked to be the only forward really threatening to set this game off, diddled them completely and played in Pesto (yawn, autospell) but he was (legally) dumped on his a*se and the opportunity vanished.

New song. Terrible song. Still more entertaining than the game: 

We've got Ross Barkley 
We've got Ross Barkley 
He left the f*cking Scouse 
Because they robbed his house

We look like the Championship side. We had ranged from distinctly average, to messy, to woefully incapable of passing to each other. Despite this I thought the "oles" every time Bakayoko passed to another Chelsea player were a f*cking disgrace. Luckily Norwich were dogsh*t in the box. On 34 they could have been ahead but the shot went out for a throw in, which says it all. Luiz had got himself booked, and his body language was frustrated and sulky. Kenedy was particularly sloppy, Michy was isolated, and needs to be told that generally your feet need to leave the ground if you want to win the ball in the air. No shots on target at either end, colder than a witches tit and what do we get at half time? Ed f*cking Sheeran. This can't get any worse.

We emerged from the dressing room in slightly better shape and a header back across the goal from Zappacosta looked promising. Michy was a man in a mission. On 49 he had our first shot on target. By that I mean that as it rolled slowly into the six yard box the goalkeeper was required to bend down and pick it up. His spell of joy didn't last more than five minutes. Sarcastic Granville text: "Magic of the cup etc!!” There were slightly threatening attempts from Bakayoko, who no doubt will take the brunt of the flak following this performance. Another came from Tenacious Double D. Then one went a little closer from Willian. Could it be we're making inroads here? Nope. He slipped past them again on 57, but his shot went into the arms of the keeper. 

Refwatch: Stuart Attwell. I know, who? He wasn't bad, but he had a jaunty way of running that annoyed me. He looked far too pleased with life for a football referee. Started to lose the plot a bit at the hour mark but mostly gave me hope that there may be someone, somewhere who can be trained up to oust some of the fools we have to put up with at the moment. Musonda and Morata were having a good runabout. Sooner rather than later please. Not enough spark on the pitch. Pesto, not his best game and Willian can't do it all in his own. We needed two of him to make a dent in this crapfest. 

Narrow escape on 68. Goal was wide open for them but they almost hit the corner flag. We were ten minutes past the point where we should have made changes if we were serious about the result of this game, and I'm not sure we were. I think Antonio has laid out who is playing against Arsenal. Then he's rested as many of them as he could and put out what is left. If it wins, great, if not, I won't say he didn't care if we lost but it didn't look like he was desperate to win either. On 70 minutes Michy lost the ball embarrassingly and Conte's reaction was to summon Morata back to the bench. Game over Batman. 

With the possibility of money from a replay and presumably a temporary escape from Norfolk, Norwich were slow-walking, if not time-wasting outrageously. It took forever to get the ball back out of the crowd too, although this might have been the fact that all the locals have webbed hands and couldn't retrieve it. Morata and Musonda came on for Michy and Pesto with little time to make a difference. Let that not dissuade a fervent nappy sh*tter - and they were everywhere today - because they just went straight for the jugular with our striker. Tedious f*ckers. Cahill got vile abuse too, largely from a large gobsh*te near us. Rage.

The game was rounded off with some slightly more convincing, though not heart-stopping attempts on goal. Another long range one from TDD was claimed by the keeper on 81 and in the dying seconds Zappacosta thumped one slightly wide. One glimmer of joy? An appearance for Dujon Sterling. A whole four minutes. But in that time though he maintained possession, won a corner and robbed them of the ball, which is the same, if not more than some did in over an hour. 

So: I bet they're glad the televised that. Dud performance from the team and from some of the fans. What is the point in going to a sh*thole like Norwich to sling constant, heavy duty abuse at our own players? Do the rest of us a favour and stay at home. Some observations: 

Luiz - Admittedly rusty, but ignoring the underlying drama that is keeping him out of the side, did nothing at all to convince Conte that he is a better option than any other centre back today. 

Cahill - Nowhere near bad enough to warrant repeatedly being called a c*nt by our own fans. 

TDD - Another blameless one. He must be irritating as hell to play against because he's always niggling the opposition, hence the nickname. I made a comment to Janice (muppet alias) about him getting in between people's legs and we giggled like schoolgirls for at least a minute. 

Little Willie - not one of his vintage performances but shrugged them off all afternoon. If anything was going to happen it was going to come from him. 

Big Willy - I think we’ve hit gold there in terms of a backup goalkeeper. 

Batshuayi - Michy does not work a lone man up front. Kind of like when we put Torres up there and pretended he was St. Didier of Munich. The only times Michy won the ball in the air were in our own box. He is not Morata. Yes, he’s failing to perform, but I don't think he's necessarily being put in a position that would get anything like the best out of him either. 

Another week, another face-off with L'Arse. Minus Whinger who will be in a padded cell somewhere. Yes, it is the lowest of our priorities on paper, but when we're two games from Wembley we'd be morons not to take is seriously. Hands up who remembers Swansea! 

AC
@CFCgwlb