Now You're Gonna Believe Them

“You must’ve cheated”
“I didn’t”
“Yeah, don’t give me that. You’ve changed the database to add some big players who wouldn’t ever join your club”
“No, no I didn’t.  Here, have a look at my squad. All these players are those who weren’t wanted by other clubs”
“Ok, well then you must’ve manipulated the scores. Each time you went behind you turned it off and started again”
“Well…..we were hardly ever behind so I didn’t need to”
“Ok, well bless you, you enjoy your fantasy.  It would never happen in real life”

This is a scenario that’s gone on around the world for any of us who’ve played Football Manager and published blogs of our progress.  One of the ultimate addictive facets to the game is the ability to take control of a ‘little club’ and guide them to glory, dreaming of press conferences, awards and team talks where you get to pit your wits against Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Real Madrid.

What we have just witnessed in English football is an achievement of Football Manager proportions.  These things weren’t supposed to come true, in these days of clubs as behemoths burning more money than some countries GDP, football looked for all the world as though without money no club could hope to succeed.  Maybe in cup competitions the minnows could progress, mainly through luck of the draw as the bigger sides knock each other out, and maybe through the luck of timing.  A little club could come up against a big side who field a side to protect their stars as they are days away from a crucial European match.  Plus, cup competitions may only require you to negotiate six or seven matches.  But a league competition?  Surely that goes on too long for a lesser side to prevail?

But Leicester City has defied all the odds and overturned considered convention. 

There are plenty of reasons, or maybe even excuses, clubs can identify to suggest why they’re not currently winning titles.  Maybe they don’t have enough money to buy the quality of player to win trophies, their ground isn’t big enough to bring in enough revenue to afford these players’ wages.  They’ve given youth players a go but they’re struggling to come to terms with the higher standard of play.  All their best players get poached by bigger clubs.  They need a quality goalscorer, or a quality centre-half or a talented goalkeeper.  All those cost money and none of those players are interested in playing for clubs who don’t compete in European competitions.

Leicester has just blown all those excuses out of the water.  They ripped up the rulebook and laughed in the face of “it cannot be done”.  Of course there are a number of factors which have helped them achieve this, mainly the abject performances of other clubs who really should’ve won a league title when only 77 points were required for success.

It’s not just the big boys who’ve had their noses put out of joint and given homework for the summer to work out how they take on Leicester, but clubs who were above The Foxes in early 2015 are all now going to reassess their goals and aspirations.

DREAM BIG

There is a story often given by positive speakers about fleas in a jar.  If you put fleas in a jar and put the lid on, the fleas will jump up and hit their heads on the lid.  They keep doing this for a while until they work out that if they jump just below the level of the lid then they don’t get a headache.  They condition themselves so well they keep on doing this.  If you then remove the lid what happens?  The fleas keep jumping to the level of just below the lid as they’re not aware the lid has been removed.  You can keep them in that jar with the lid off for ages as they’ve been conditioned to believe that jumping any higher will bring them pain.

This is where many clubs who would consider themselves on a par with Leicester, now find themselves.  The lid has been lifted but have they got the ability to realise or the dreams to be able to jump higher?

Some clubs appeared to start the season with acceptance of a relegation battle.  They only really got to work once the drop was a very real possibility and suddenly they put in big enough performances to get them out of the mire.

Leicester’s success isn’t a fluke.  Although it is true this should give many people confidence in aiming to achieve the impossible, you can’t just turn up with a group of players, run around a lot and hope to win the league.  Leicester’s success may actually have been a perfect storm.

Will there be another season when Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea all lose a total of 38 matches between them?  Compare that with last season when they lost a total of 25 between them.  That is not to belittle Leicester’s achievement, it’s not their fault those big four clubs all had a meltdown at the same time.  One of the benefits for Leicester for next season is the panic which now pervades the boardrooms of all four clubs to try and work out how to re-arrange their business plans.  Already two of them have announced new management, with another one rumoured to, and the fourth resisting the urge for now. 

There is no single factor which has contributed to Leicester’s stunning title win and in a way what this has proven is that money alone cannot win you a title, but then Manchester City are evidence you need a little more than just money to win league titles.  The fact Leicester staved off relegation last season from a seemingly desperate position will have gone someway for them believing they could achieve anything.

Leicester fell to the bottom of the Premier League at the end of November 2014 when they lost 2-3 at QPR.  It was their seventh defeat in the first thirteen matches of the season, and began a run of six straight defeats.  They ended it by beating Hull City but on New Year’s Day they were still bottom of the pile

The table on New Year’s Day morning makes interesting reading.  Leicester were bottom, with Burnley and then Crystal Palace three points above them.  The fortunes of those bottom three eighteen months on is interesting.  Leicester are now Premier League Champions, Crystal Palace are in the FA Cup Final and Burnley have just won the Championship title.

When Leicester lost at Tottenham in late March they were seven points from safety with just nine matches to go.  The proceeded to lose just one of those nine, at home to the eventual champions Chelsea, and drew at Sunderland.  All the rest they won.  Back-to-back wins against West Ham and West Brom saw them finally drag themselves from the bottom of the table in mid-April.  Those remaining seven matches are enlightening when looking back now.  They only conceded in two of those matches, the Chelsea defeat and the final game 5-1 thrashing of QPR.  Fast forward to this season and they have kept fifteen clean-sheets.  More tellingly twelve of these have come in the second half of the season.  Between the Boxing Day defeat at Anfield and the 2-2 draw at home to West Ham in mid-April, they played fifteen matches and only conceded in four.  They lost just once, at Arsenal and the consistency is one huge reason for their success.

WORK ETHIC

They have a work ethic, as so many have identified, and this where they work so hard for each other.  They swarm all over sides.  They don’t need to worry about possession of the ball as they’ve proved their ability to retrieve possession, they lead the league in interceptions, and then counter attack at pace.  They possess a striker, Jamie Vardy, who never stops running and has scored 24 goals.  He also broke the Premier League record for consecutive games scored in.  They’ve identified their strengths and worked them thoroughly.  Not worry about not having the ball as long as they can nick it when their opponents are pushing forward, get it up the pitch quickly and then have a striker who can convert more often than not.  Largely Vardy has made the same run time and again every game, all season and yet sides have still to combat it.  They have a greater conversion rate of chances than any other club in the league.

There is also a fascinating synergy between the last two seasons.  They’ve been crowned Champions after 139 days at the top of the table.  Last season they were at the bottom for 140 days.

Claudio Ranieri deserves all the plaudits heading his way, so do the owners for choosing him against others better judgement.  But the groundwork within the club set up by the backroom staff and Nigel Pearson last season, is what has gone a long, long way towards their success.  The medical staff have found a way of preparing and looking after players who have been able to survive the rigours of a 38-game season without a soft-tissue injury anywhere.  Many felt sorry for him when a re-financed Chelsea ditched him for Mourinho in 2004.  Leicester is his sixth club appointment since then and he came from a less than auspicious experience as manager of Greece.  He was not to know of the turmoil behind the scenes within the Greek FA and was only in charge for four matches.  In nearly thirty years of management this is his first league title.  Few begrudge him that.

Have they been lucky? I think they have, but then again they’ve seized on an opportunity and run with it.  They’ve lost three games all season, with only two clubs ever getting the better of them (Arsenal, twice, Liverpool, once).  Chelsea lost just three last season, which puts that into perspective.  They have been clear of injuries, but then as has just been mentioned, they have created their own luck in that department.  They didn’t seem to suffer from any contentious decisions by officials, possibly until the Vardy sending off against West Ham.  They didn’t have many goals chalked off or many goals given against them where replays suggested otherwise.

What Leicester has proved is that there is no substitute for hard work, planning and preparation.  Ranieri didn’t make too many adjustments to the 2014-15 side but the changes he did make were crucial.  There are all sorts of stats about how little they’ve spent compared to the bigger clubs in English football, but what they have generated is a fantastic team spirit where the players are prepared to sacrifice themselves for each other.  There are no huge egos at the club, no big names.  At the end of last year I read a comment from someone about how Leicester would struggle to keep hold of players like Vardy and Mahrez.  Now I’m sure the club is looking forward to barging in on their rivals transfer negotiations, saying “don’t go there, they haven’t got Champions League football”.

PREDICTIONS ARE USELESS

I tweeted towards the end of November about the incredibly tough run of fixtures they had coming up.  They’d just won at Newcastle and gone to the top of the table after thirteen games.  Their run was Manchester United (h), Swansea (a), Chelsea (h), Everton (a), Liverpool (a), Manchester City (h).  My argument was they’d gained a lot of points against weaker opposition.  They’d only picked up two points from games against Tottenham, Arsenal and Manchester United.  I, like many others, expected them to fall away.  I expected them to find the going tough, players would pick up injuries, etc, etc.  .  Most people were likely to have agreed with me about Leicester’s chances, although there was one chap who reckoned they’d get “12 points there easy”.  Take a bow Ross Bell (@RossBell1984), you were almost on the money.  They picked up thirteen points, winning three, drawing two and losing just one of those six matches, at Liverpool.

When they lost at The Emirates in mid-February many people expected Arsenal to go on and take the title.  They were two points behind Leicester and with a supposedly far superior squad and a manager who’d experienced a title win.  But from there Leicester really hit a rhythm, gaining nineteen points from a possible twenty-one over the next seven games, conceding in just one.  A series of 1-0 wins took them further ahead of the pack.  In contrast, Arsenal’s seven matches earned them just nine points.  In the days of George Graham at Arsenal the fans frequently sang “one-nil to the Arsenal”.  All these years later they’d been “out Arsenal-ed” by Leicester City.  58,000 is the average attendance at Arsenal, whereas Champions Leicester only house 32,000 every week.  Even Aston Villa command a higher average attendance.

NO COMPARISON

Was this the ‘greatest story ever told’ in football?  There have been a couple of contenders to challenge this.  Ipswich winning the title in 1962 a year after winning the Second Division title.  Nottingham Forest won the league in 1978 a year after finishing third in the Second Division.  They then went onto win back-to-back European Cups.  The Forest side is a decent comparison with Leicester in that they didn’t have any superstars, until Brian Clough signed one of the best goalkeepers in the world, Peter Shilton.  But other than that they had a lot of players who inidividually weren’t necessarily anything special, but collectively were very hard to beat.  Liverpool had just won back-to-back league titles and also the European Cup, a year after the UEFA Cup.  They contained internationals such as Clemence, Neal, Hughes, Hansen, Thompson, Souness, Dalglish, McDermott and Ray Kennedy.  They won the league by seven points which is the equivalent of ten points today.

In the sixties the league was won by eight different teams.  In the seventies six different clubs won the First Division.  In the last ten years just three different clubs have won the title.  This is not to denigrate either Ipswich or Forest’s achievements but money has changed everything, especially expectations.  

WHAT NEXT?

Leicester may do quite well in Europe, particularly as their brand of football should be very difficult for foreign teams to contend with as they rarely come up against it.  The key could be to keep the same group of players.  It will be important for them to recruit well, paying particular attention to attitude and temperament.  All the talk coming out of the King Power Stadium is they intend to do just that.  What remains for them next season is anybody’s guess.  So many, including their own supporters, got this season wrong so it seems churlish to try and predict anything further of this wonderful story.  Personally, I’m going to just sit back and enjoy it.  One of the most popular successes for many a year.  Let’s hope that success doesn’t ruin the players or the team spirit.

Go Now

It fuels the fire of every football supporter who believes players have lost touch with the modern day fan.  There have been plenty of “I want to leave” cries by footballers before and few, if any, ever end with the hosting club’s supporters understanding the player’s point of view.

The transfer system in football is a complex and unique one, and for us fans there are unwritten rules which can dictate whether we agree with a player leaving or not.  If your club is doing well and a good, decent, loyal player is sold then we can reconcile ourselves with a belief “the club must know best”.  It can be tough if your club has sold a player for the money, and judgement is held over until we see how well the money is then re-invested.  But it is generally accepted for the employer, the club, to decide when they have had enough of the employee, the player.

This is not like the industries we all work in.  If you fancy moving companies then you just apply to another company and don’t make anything public until you’ve been accepted.  It’s rare for your employer to negotiate with your new one for you to move, and they certainly wouldn’t receive a fee for their trouble either..  But in football we have, what seems, an arcane system of moving people around like cattle. 

The imaginary line is crossed when a player engineers a move.  Of course few of us ever know the truth of why a player is sold.  Perhaps he’s injury-prone, maybe he just didn’t get on with the management or the team, or just couldn’t fit into the style of play they wanted?  Clubs don’t generally like a player to be in control during this process as they would rather keep the supporters onside during the whole episode.

Another odd aspect of supporter behaviour is how they don’t like players deciding to leave their club.  Why is it that we’re only too pleased for players to join our club, then hate them leaving, when we’re quick to forget they’ve already left another club for ours in the first place?  But that’s the way it is.

Raheem Sterling has been gradually building up to a moment of engineering a move away from Liverpool.  This process can be likened to a game of cards, or chess, and Sterling has now made his intentions clear by playing some of his best cards.  Of course Liverpool hold the ace as Sterling is under contract and if they don’t want to accept an offer then they don’t have to.  Clubs can become so reliant on transfers that they can be reluctant to keep a player who doesn’t want to be there, for fear of damaging morale and ultimately affecting the fortunes of the team.  Then of course there is the Bosman ruling which allows a player to leave at the end of his contract.

‘Bosman’ has changed the dynamics of the player/club relationship and seen the emergence of a power shift towards agents.  Agents are the conduit for the player to engineer a move.  Players can hide behind them when contract negotiations are going on, and they can even be the butt of a club’s ire if they can’t get the player to agree to their terms.

Sterling’s agent is in the process of leaving a larger firm to set up on his own.  It would appear to the outsider he is very keen to promote his own cause presumably in a bid to attract more clients.  It’s an interesting tactic but one which is surely only to provide him with clients who want an agent who thinks only of himself and them, rather than understand the nuances of keeping a player’s employer involved to produce an outcome all parties can be pleased with.

Aidy Ward has worked with respected names in the agency business such as Impact Sports Management and Rob Segal.  His clients include Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Saido Berahino.  Few will be surprised that Berahino seems to be as keen as discussing a new contract with his club, West Brom, as Sterling does with Liverpool.

Ward recently came to prominence after the Evening Standard reported a tirade, attributed to Ward, rubbishing the club, Jamie Carragher and everyone else, it seemed, stating Sterling wouldn’t sign a contract for any money.

Some may argue Ward is only doing his job and as employed by the player he could argue he has the player’s best interests to consider and is only concerned about the player’s career rather than what a club wants.  But what Ward has created is a rift between the player and his employer and unless we end up with a situation where players are employed by agents alone, then this is not going to end well.  You rarely hear of experienced and competent agents as they exist in the background to advise their clients and deal with contract negotiations on their behalf.  Ward appears to be looking for his fifteen minutes of fame and could ultimately ruin the prospects of Sterling, Berahino et al.

Clubs, despite what individuals like Ward may prefer, do still hold the balance of power and so they should, they are the employer after all.  Imagine how any prospective club will be anticipating contract discussions with Ward if he touts Sterling around.  If they do sign him, will they ever know whether he’s happy or not?  Or will it depend on whether Ward decides Sterling needs to move clubs again?

Liverpool bought Sterling from Queen’s Park Rangers academy by Rafa Benitez in February 2010.  He was a regular in the Liverpool youth side eventually being handed his First Team debut by Kenny Dalglish against Wigan in March 2012.  Liverpool have done very well to keep him away from the media regarding club issues.  When Sterling has been in the press it’s been for non-football incidents.  But this whole episode has possibly driven a wedge between the two sides which may never be breached.

When I think back on coverage around the club on Sterling I cannot recall much from him regarding how proud he is to be a Liverpool player, who is favourite player of the past was and how he’s determined to do whatever is required to bring success to the club.  Not every player does this, I’ll admit, but for clubs such as Liverpool, we fans demand players understand the history, understand the stature, are respectful of what we believe it is like to wear the club’s colours.

Of course we don’t want the Harry Kewell example, when trying to convince us all how proud he was to wear the iconic number seven shirt he then struggled to name any of the previous incumbents!  But if you want the fans to worship you then to declare your undying love for the club is a great way to achieve this.  The absence of such a statement rarely matters, though, until contract negotiations hit the buffers and unless you have the supporters on your side you will suffer accusations of ‘not caring’, ‘only interested in money’ or other such fruitier labels.

Sterling, who is reportedly on a £30,000 per week, has two years left on his current contract.  Things started to get messy at the beginning of the year when Brendan Rodgers made it publicly known he believed Sterling shouldn’t sign for more than £100,000 per week as this was more than enough for a player of his age and he would have plenty of opportunity in his career to earn the sort of sums which have been bandied about.  There were suggestions ‘he’ had turned down an offer of this value and this gave him the idea give an interview trying to dispel the rumours about his motivation for his career.  Liverpool were unaware of his plans for the interview and it’s clear they didn’t take kindly to it.  It was a clumsy attempt to explain to supporters that Sterling wasn’t interested in the money, he was only interested in playing at the highest level.

Opinions were divided as to whether he managed to get this across, but what it did do was shine the spotlight on his subsequent performances.  Fans were rightly justified in expecting him to take this determination onto the pitch and almost drag his team through to a top four finish in the Premier League.  To almost all observers his form seemed to dip alarmingly.  Other than a goal against Newcastle, he was unbelievably poor in front of goal with numerous examples of him ballooning a ball over the bar when put through on goal with a gaping net seemingly at his mercy.  It would be very difficult to accuse Sterling of ‘busting a gut’ to try and help Liverpool qualify for the Champions League.  Much as I don’t agree with the churlishness of the “call yourself worth £150,000?” accusations every time a pass is misplaced or a touch is poor, as if every player who is paid that amount is faultless, you have to say Sterling has given more than enough ammunition to this means of attack from supporters.

Contrast this with Luis Suarez.  The summer of 2013 was full of rumours and counter-rumours of his desire to play anywhere other than Anfield.  There was the suggestion he wanted to go to Arsenal, when it was clear to all concerned there’s no way Liverpool would sell him to a top four rival.  Once the uncertainty came to an end the subsequent season was a memorable one for both Suarez and the club.  No one could accuse Suarez of not trying at any point during that season as Liverpool came as close to winning their first League title since 1990 as they’ve ever done.  This is where supporters are right to compare the difference.

Considering Sterling's performances this season, when the absence of Suarez and Sturridge propelled him to 'star status', in my opinion he has regressed as a player.  Last season I was really impressed with his development in being able to kick a ball over distance.  There were countless examples of him playing a through-ball to Suarez or Sturridge to run onto and he was even seen shooting from distance on numerous occasions.  This season we have seen little of this and I am left with the view Liverpool is not weakened by his absence.

So my advice to you Raheem is go.  Go, if you don’t think Liverpool can satisfy your exacting standards and requirements.  You may never find a club who truly loves you, you may never find a club you truly love.  You may end up like a Michael Owen, only truly loved when wearing the colours of your country rather than any of the domestic shirts you wore.  I cannot really stomach the idea of Sterling lining up for Liverpool at the start of the new season, but if you somehow manage to come through it all I, along with many others, will expect you to concentrate on what you’re paid to do and do your utmost to help us get back into Champions League football.

But where would you go?  Manchester City? Chelsea? Arsenal? Real Madrid?  None of those clubs are likely to guarantee you regular first team starts, although they are likely to meet your agent’s salary targets.  Real Madrid would be an interesting one, especially if Benitez gets the job.  But are you prepared to for the public scrutiny in a way Gareth Bale has had to come to terms with?

And what if you are still with Liverpool in August?  What will your agent make of this and will this drive a wedge between you and him rather than between you and the club. 

One aspect which does cause me concern if Sterling is still at Anfield in three months’ time is how a post-Gerrard dressing room deals with him.  Gerrard down the years has done so much for young players at Anfield and has often been the glue between players and club, but he’s not there now and we could be in for a period of latent mutiny.  If this does transpire then the seeds of this uncertainty can be seen to have been planted throughout the Sterling saga.

Maybe the best thing for all concerned is to say ‘thanks for coming and have a nice life, now let’s move on’.

Je Suis Chelsea

Like many I was shocked and appalled at the footage of Chelsea fans denying a Parisian entry to a train on the Paris Metro.  If that wasn’t bad enough, the fans then delighted in chanting about being proud to be racist, as the Frenchman was black.

Next morning Chelsea Football Club released a statement saying if any of those involved proved to be season ticket holders then they would be banned for life.

Of course many supporters of other clubs couldn’t pass up the opportunity to stick the boot in and claim they weren’t surprised, or that it confirmed everything they hate about the club.  It seems to be beyond their understanding they’re simply exhibiting prejudice of a similar nature to that of the racists.  You cannot label the whole club & particularly all Chelsea fans as racist purely because there were a few idiots who wanted to throw their weight around in a foreign country.

I have only seen a few comments seeking to justify this in some way, and some of them even suggested ‘what has happened to this country’ as a reason for it.  Again, if you are outraged by foreigners coming over here acting like the own the place, then you can hardly defend those who do the same elsewhere.

There are several things to note about this whole unsavoury event.  Firstly, it’s irrelevant which team they were supporting, in fact you could argue it’s irrelevant the reason they were in Paris.  People are far more ‘brave’ in groups than they are on their own, and that includes men and women these days.  What we had here was a group of English men portraying thuggish behaviour in a foreign capital city, purely because they’re English.  Let’s just imagine one of these fans trying to get on the tube at Leicester Square only to find a group muslims, Poles, Turks or Bulgarians, unable to speak any English, barring their way?  You can imagine the calls for throwing these foreigners out of our country.

We expect, even demand, people from other countries respect our country and traditions and yet time and time again British people go abroad with an arrogance it’s everyone else who is at fault. 

How many people arrive in Tenerife and head straight for Lineker’s Bar?  How often do you see Britons in Spain passing all the local restaurants and cafes looking for one advertising ‘full English breakfast’?

What you will also have heard said many times in Paris the other night was groups of supporters looking for somewhere to eat and drink and turning down options because they were too full of locals (this would’ve been phrased in more Anglo-Saxon language).

Watching the footage of this incident seemed to take us back about 30 years to a time when English fans went abroad in the belief we owned the place.  Of course many will point to there being elements of these incidents within plenty of clubs in the country and hopefully the fact it has now been brought to the attention, it should deter people from repeating it.  But I must admit I thought Chelsea had left that type of ‘supporter’ back in the 1970’s.

These blokes will have family members who have seen the footage.  Some of them will have children, they may possibly work with people who found the whole business abhorrent.  Their employers may be very interested in what they’ve seen.  As this footage is now on the internet it’ll be very difficult to completely remove it. 

This is how I suggest we deal with the perpetrators.  Personally, I still believe in public shaming people.  Just banning them from grounds will not change their views, and this is the key.  There’s little point continuing to punish people unless they understand what they have done is wrong.  They must be educated so they can see how wrong their behaviour was.  Their pictures are already being spread around the net and hopefully their names will be soon too.  There may be the view you are giving them further publicity, but the publicity you are giving them will have repercussions for years.  When employers receive job applications one of the first things they do is ‘google’ the name to see what comes up.  If they see all the coverage about this incident they are likely to think twice about giving them a job.  In this way there is a great opportunity for the suspects to admit their mistakes.  As I said earlier, people are far more brave in a group than on their own and one or two of the group may well have been uncomfortable with the chanting, but weren’t ‘brave’ enough to stand up and say so.  They now have an excellent opportunity to distance themselves from this. 

Get your face on camera apologising to the victim would be a good start.

Many have long pointed out the idiocy of supporters chanting racist abuse one minute then cheering a black player from their own team the next.  It is perfectly plausible to think that just after the ‘we’re racists and that’s the way we like it’ chant, these idiots then went onto sing of their love for Didier Drogba.

Of course an education programme takes time, money and motivation.  It is far easier and cheaper to just ban these people, but you’ve not dealt with the cause, only the effect.  If you have blisters on your feet it is far cheaper to put a plaster on it, yet the problem is your shoes are too tight.  Much the same as it’s fairly pointless continually locking up drug addicts without curing them of their addiction.  Unless these people see the error of their ways they will not change.  They should be made to view the footage again and then have it turned round to show them as the victim and see how they’d feel about it.  The anger of their social circles should also shame them into looking inward to ask themselves whether they really should be treating others in this way.

It also should be pointed out there is racism within all cultures and religions and white people are certainly prejudiced against in a number of situations.  However, it hardly progresses the issue further if we hide behind the rather juvenile “well they’re doing it, so why can’t I”?

Much as it took Italy a long while to truly accept the English back in the country after Heysel, this will make things tougher for supporters of other clubs going to Paris and it could well impact on non-football fans.  If you think that’s unfair then consider Parisians are merely demonstrating an underlying prejudice against the English in exactly the same way many supporters of rival clubs have been waiting for an incident such as this as a reason to spout their hatred of Chelsea.

This has nothing to do with Chelsea, they are powerless to control who does and who doesn’t support them.  These were middle-aged English men who are part of our society and we are all responsible for our society.

Let’s hope society can deal with them.