Stamford Bridge is indeed falling down and long may it continue | OneFootball

‘Stamford Bridge is falling down’ sing the Fulham faithful, to the tune of the children’s nursery rhyme that uses the word ‘London’ at the front end instead.

The nursery ryhme deals with attempts, realistic or fanciful, to repair the bridge. That perfectly sums up Chelsea Football Club right now, with Todd Boehly failing spectacularly and in such amusing fashion.

As it happens, in real time I didn’t think Chelsea were that bad in the first 45 minutes, although having had time to reflect, I’m now convinced the reason they were still in the game was more down to some defensive errors on our part.

Let’s face it, despite them being one of the dominant forces in the Premier League since the turn of the century, St James’ Park hasn’t always been easy pickings for the West Londoners these past several years.

Even under the FCB, we beat them on five occasions at SJP, one of the most memorable being a Moussa Sissoko home debut inspired comeback to win it 3-2 at the death, a decade ago.

These days, I expect us to swat the Blues away. Joe Willock’s thunderbolt did it this time last year and yesterday, we ran out deserved 4-1 winners.

You need to go back to Supermac and a 5-0 drubbing of this lot 49 years ago to find the last time we scored more than four goals against Chelsea. In fact, yesterday’s tally was the most we’d scored in this St James’ Park fixture since Andy Cole got a brace in a 4-2 win back in 1994.

The Mag rightly called out the hysteria ahead of this fixture. Resurgent Chelsea up against a Newcastle United team on the ropes and out of gas, or words to that effect.

How so?

A win against an awful (nine man) Spurs side that lost its discipline and a draw against a Manchester City team who on another day would have won at Stamford Bridge, seemed to be the rationale.

Newcastle United, meantime had recently despatched Arsenal and Manchester Utd without conceding and up until Rhaeem Sterling’s equaliser, hadn’t conceded at home in the league since August. That of course was so easily lost in the aftermath of our painful loss at Bournemouth a fortnight ago.

No matter, we were supposed underdogs and with a bench propped up by no less than three keepers, maybe the press corps had called this one right?

I’ll not wax lyrical about us, plenty of other articles will be doing that, but it would be remiss of me not to mention Jamaal Lascelles’ redemption for his first half mistake that led to their goal, when he put us ahead at 2-1. I’m so pleased we aren’t reading how his error cost us the game, as he’s been a saviour these past few weeks because of Sven Botman’s injury. Then there’s young Lewis Miley. A fabulous home debut with a fabulous assist for Isak’s opening goal. I could go on…..

Instead, where to start with Chelsea? The Mag featured an article last night highlighting that three of their players, two of whom didn’t even start this fixture, cost more than the entire Newcastle United squad assembled to face them.

Chelsea’s captain, Reece James, showed a real lack of discipline and was deservedly sent off for pulling back the irrepressible Anthony Gordon who had tormented him the whole game. Maybe James knew the game was up? It was his second yellow, his first offence being totally avoidable when he was booked for kicking the ball away. Not what you want from your captain.

Thiago Silva is 39 years of age and despite their enormous spending spree this past 18 months, Chelsea are still placing reliance on someone whose legs have clearly gone. If the circumstances surrounding how he gave away a corner at the Leazes End in the first half weren’t comical enough, the way he handed his fellow countryman, Joelinton, our third goal on a plate was just too funny for words.

Nicolas Jackson, a relatively modest by Chelsea’s standards, a £32m signing from Villareal, was truly dreadful, and so was the ‘slightly’, more expensive Argentine world cup midfield enforcer, Enzo Fernández. As for Conor Gallagher, I’ll leave that to the comments section as I’m sure one or two of our regular pundits will have more to say about the England international than me.

I could go on but will stop there, the last thing to say is that despite Chelsea’s unhealthy collection of yellow (and red) cards, it was Newcastle United who bullied them out of the game, Chelsea more losing their control and discipline than being up for the fight and trying to match the toon’s intensity.

Forgive me, I’m from a bygone era, so will highlight some painful memories from my youth. Does yesterday make up for the two four-nils and the six-nil on MOTD in the early 1980s? Of course not, but it was wonderful to see the away end empty, with more than twenty minutes left on the clock.