Just got up after getting to bed at 4 after a great day out. A few observations:

1. We occasionally moan about the players' attitude. Last night, they were heroes, working their socks off and looked asbolutely gutted to lose. In fact, their support was as poor as I've known at away matches so the team or their actually showed us up for their endeavour.

2. We are defending much better. This may be David Geddis' influence. Dabs was immense. Andy O'Brien was getting a bit of abuse on the tube back to Screach's car but I didn't think he did badly at all.

3. Speed and Lee had good games. Nobby was OK without creating much. Bernard worked hard and skinned his marker for pace BUT we are deluding ourself if we think he's any sort of competition to a fully fit Laurent Robert. Dyer did OK when he came on. Fully fit, he could have nicked it for us.

4. Bellamy was OK and Shearer toiled to no avail.

The real point I wanted to make is that Ken's expensively assembled squad were no more than a match for us and that should worry Chairman Bates more than it worries us. The Chelsea fans we spoke to admitted they'd been lucky and thought that had we attacked from the off, we'd have tonked them. Anyway, I wrote a match report after our league game with them just after Christmas last year and commented that we weren't even in the same division as them. This is no longer the case with players back from injury and an addition or two to the squad: we really can compete with them and are probably building a less fluffy outfit that will soon overtake them. I feel immense optimism actually. That was a Cup tie and someone had to win it, but, I think if we play like that in future, we will win more than we lose and will make steady progress.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2001

Answers

BTW, in his programme notes, Bates was trying to persuade the fans that Chelsea are actually richer than Man Utd. This reminds me that, when the Chelsea fans started singing "You never win in London", I did try to start a chant of "Send in the Bailiffs", but to no avail.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2001

Glad to hear you made it safely back Dougal .....all the way down the garden path and thru the right front door, that is!

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2001

Screach, I thought I'd leave the full match report for you. I take it you got back safely?

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2001

Ta for the report - having only see the 'highlights' i was hoping my assessment wasn't wrong, i.e that the lads did well. To read the rotten media you'd think we were murdered by Chelsea which we evidently weren't.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2001

We more than matched them. Our support WAS sh*te, though. Apart from a chorus of "Chelsea stayed at home to watch it on the telly", I don't think we made a peep from first to final whistle. Some lad moans in the Ronnie about the team not applauding us when they went off. On this occasion, they'd have been justified in sticking two fingers up at us.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2001