Theres no getting away from it. Saturdays result was awful. It’s difficult to draw any positives from the game. No individual performance can be said to be anything more than “adequate”, most could be described as bloody awful to pathetic. It would be unfair to name any one player as being the worst of the bunch, the club is egalitarian in nature and they shared the crapness out amongst themselves. Mido was Β probably the pick of the bunch with some nice footwork and a few nice touches. However he spent the majority of the match playing deeper than normal. He was acticely looking for the ball rather than it being delivered to him.

And there is the crux of the problems with the team. In midfield we had no one, other than Downing, who had the capacity to actually deliver a ball to the forwards in a meaningful way. And when Downing joined Mido up front, that creative ability was simply lost. Mean while the midfield adopted the interesting tactic of letting Chelsea have the ball knowing fully that at some point they would get the ball back. They usually got the ball back just after the kick off following a Chelsea goal. However they then gave the ball away and treat the Chelsea midfield as if they all had bad breath and wouldn’t go within 2 yards of them, three yards if they were down wind.

The defence looked static, no energy and little enthusiasm. It looked like DGL was alive and well and playing in the back four. The odd set peice we got saw little impact from the team, it’s as if they had not planned for the game, hadn’t thought about what they could and couldn’t do.

The substitutions; there was no point. Nothing changed, nothing happened. Alves must be wondering whats happening.

It’s been predicted for a fair while now that a long hard season lies ahead. With little sign of any players being lined up in January, with little sign of any change in coaching or management, then it’s almost a racing cert that it’s going to be a long hard season. Our hopes for a turn around in form lie in Arca coming back and delivering a series of brilliant performances that see him called in to the Argentine squad and so be on international duty when we need him, and Huths membership of BUPA ending.

I’m not holding my breath. Looks like we have got the Christmas slump in early this year.