Chelsea 1-1 Liverpool: I feel robbed because we almost got over the line.

Match report written by Alex Churchill from the fantastic Chelsea Blog - A Girl Who Likes Balls. Batten down the hatches and hold onto your hats, she tells it exactly as it is. 

Us: The now standard nine that go on the team sheet every top game, with The Beard preferred over Morata, unsurprising when you factor in Van Dick, as Alf Garnett (sitcoms alias) rechristened him yesterday. And Willian gets the start that he usually fights out with Pedro Pony.

Them: I just don't care. Eleven tedious w*nkers. One of whom was dressed as a radioactive f*cking marshmallow. Led by the most tedious of all, Jordan Horrendousen, as he was dubbed in the Shed Upper. Who by all that is right and just in the world based on his capabilities should be flipping horsemeat patties somewhere in the northeast. 

So it's standard now with them. You want to get through the first half an hour without them banging in two goals, or preferably conceding at all, so that the game actually becomes something more intelligent than everybody bombing up and down and seeing who's ahead when the final whistle goes. As expected, the pace for this opening spell was absolutely relentless from both sides. Horrendouson started whinging on precisely 1 minute. He makes Rooney look stoic. (That fat Scouser what moved to America) The first decent chance from them came on ten minutes, but went soaring over the bar. In the first quarter of an hour, thanks to the feigning of injuries and trying to hide the ball, Mane had gone from being someone I don’t give a toss about to someone I actively wanted to punch in the face. It made it ten times funnier when he shanked a half chance wide. 

Refwatch: Andre Marriner?! Are you serious? Why not just sprinkle us all with petrol and torch us. It would be less painful than a match with this moron in charge. His general atrocious, attempts to police a game of football started to go downhill in the third minute, with the most laughable example of an advantage I've ever seen in my life. Here's a hint. It's not an advantage if they are still kicking you. A couple of minutes later again. Apparently when you retain the ball for 0.4 of a second after being fouled it is not an advantage. The nicest thing I can say about him is that I was a bit surprised he wasn’t more sh*t. 

We were stringing some good play together, but the end product wasn’t there. That said, Eden was clearly in the mood today, after dumping Alexander-Arnold on his a*se he swaggered away with that walk of his. The one that says “I’m going to f*ck you right up.” As was entirely predictable, the pace of the game waned slightly, else they’d have all collapsed, but we were getting towards that magical half hour mark when BOOM! Hazard. Though the radioactive marshmallow should have saved it from where we were sitting. First blood to us, accompanied with loud chants of No Noise from the History Boys. We could have had another almost straight away. On 27 minutes a ball was pinged into the Beard, but without enough pace on it to make his header damaging. A minute later though, Luiz, who headbutted away just about every troublesome ball that came his way, was making a clearance for us. Then the score was maintained by a block of epicness by Rudi. Just get to half time Chelsea, please. 

Predictably, the darks arts were in play. Robertson  had an automatic two hands on the back of anyone within reach. On the half hour Marriner, being a twat, awarded a free kick after a ludicrous Milner dive. The fourth roll was probably unnecessary, and the size of his cranium repeatedly smacking the pitch registered 4.2 on the Richter Scale. I’ve never seen him so animated. Even with the worst case of crabs in history you never will again. Another one of them was hanging onto Willian with two hands as he tried to lay what would have been a perfect ball to Eden. My favourite? The embarrassing sight of Van Dick rolling about on the floor feigning agony and waffling about how hard done by he was when The Beard put him on the floor. After he’d spent an entire half molesting him. By all sense of moral decency he should have proposed marriage at full time. Even for a Scouser the hypocrisy was damning. But the away end was blissfully quiet. And we had managed not to do anything stupid by the time the break came. Get in. 

I expected an onslaught of teeth and hair from their front three now after Klopp lit a rocket under them at half time, and yet it was strangely lacking. In fact some great play almost set Eden in straight away. Mighty Salah, in the meantime, was backing out of going up against Rudi at the other end. Eden had so much space it was laughable, after Klopp’s arrogant insistence that they weren’t going to man mark him. Horrendousen couldn’t even get close enough to foul him. He was having such a shit day that he was lying in the centre circle playing possum. Of course he made a miraculous recovery as soon as the ball was put out though. 

They began to press more, but I wouldn’t say we were under the cosh. The biggest save from Kepa had been when Dave played a ball back to him that went a bit wayward. He was called into action though on 57. Universal opinion around us was that Courtois never would have got down to that, he was so quick to the ground. More a suprised observation as to his capability than a dig at our former keeper. We had opportunities to win it too, namely a one on one that was kept out by the radioactive marshmallow. But legs were getting tired, it had been relentless. 65 and Morata came on for The Beard. It gave them a different kind of problem to mark up front, but I was sceptical. Yes the long ball wasn’t working, but he just wasn’t going to menace Van Dick enough at the back, and far from simply affecting our goalscoring opportunities, it meant they were unharassed in attempting to start off playing the ball out from the back. The Beard had relentless antagonised the Scouse defence all afternoon.

Salah left for Shaqiri on 66. It was basically like giving us a twelve men. He was mugged twice in two minutes, once by Alvaro; he missed a complete sitter, and a free kick into the box missed everyone. Kovacic had a shot saved on 68 going towards the corner, but the game was getting scrappy. It was rife for someone to be punished for an error. Luiz repelled it off the line on 72 minutes, before Willian was off for Moses. We could really have done with Pedro Pony today. They were really pinging the ball about now, trying to get the tempo up again. Victor was away on 76 minutes, whence Milner did all that someone of his limited IQ and imagination could and brought him down. Horrendousen went off for Keita, and they looked to be running out of ideas. But we were running out of steam. Ten minutes to go and Barkley was on to match Keita’s energy, but when the chips fell after all the changes, it was slightly in their favour, though they still couldn’t put it in the net. A free kick went straight to Kepa, Keita followed it up with an appalling shot.

The clock was moving so slowly that if he had hair, Alf Garnett would have been ripping it out. Milner was off, and Kepa told Marriner to f*ck off as stood and had a drink before putting the ball back into play; while the referee, for the first time in at least a decade, appeared to have suddenly developed a conscience when it came to time-wasting.

Sturridge on. Their last roll of the dice. Don’t you dare even think about it you nasty little git. Morata had begun to deliver some crunching tackles to break up their play, but out of nowhere, minutes after his introduction, one of a number of our rejects now resident on Merseyside went and equalised. Who else but the guy who did nothing but whine at Chelsea with a goal the likes of which he will never, ever repeat in this lifetime. Four minutes added on, during which there were handbags in their box as we tried to get it over the line, Marriner didn’t notice when they gave themselves 10 yards headstart on a free kick and Luiz responded by sarcastically taking one of ours basically off the pitch to shut him up when he couldn’t resist interfering with one of ours that was a foot out of place. 

So: Jesus wept. The bellends think it's May. You know when you're closing in on the league and every last point you can grab is taking you closer to the trophy and you disproportionately overreact to them all? That's what they were like. It didn't seem to register that Salah was all style and no substance, Mane was dogsh*t and Firminho was anonymous. Which let me tell you with those teeth is no mean feat. They were reliant on a never-has-been who until this week has never stayed fit for four days in a row in his entire career. And certainly won't ever score another goal like that.

I feel robbed because we almost got over the line. But that said, we are the only ones so far to have played multiple top end rivals, I think, and we are still unbeaten. We've played these muppets, who along with the Press Plebs think they are the second coming, twice in a week and come out without losing. They've only escaped from double defeat by the ill-judged grace of something deeply skulduggerous and unholy. e.g. Sturridge doing something that justifies his employment. All we've heard in the opening weeks of the season is yackworthy waxing lyrical about how, with City, they are far ahead of us and the rest of the pack. One more fixture takes us into yet another sh*tty international break. And they've got to play City in theirs. So by just getting it done at Southampton we could find ourselves level with both of them at the top. Their coach just went past me on the way out of West London and as it slowed to a crawl I felt the urge to run and kick the giant red b*stard with my girly little foot. I settled for more gin instead. And chuckling mightily at the coincidental draw (at a stupid time on a Saturday night) that is going to see Frank return home in the cup. 

AC -  A Girl Who Likes Balls.