Twenty twenty twenty-four hours to go
It’s nearly time, and I’m getting excited.
Chelsea have stumbled into this season. They have two good left-backs, no clear idea of who’s at right-back (still), and have lost William Gallas’s considerable ability to Arsenal. They have a midfield that has to fit the Wall of Makalele, Michael Ballack (susp. tomorrow), Michael Essien and Frank Lampard into it, and that’s before we start thinking about wingers. And up front Shevchenko looks for all the world like a player who doesn’t know what he’s got himself into. He is good, we know that, but he’s not showing it yet. With him, Didier Drogba is firing like the massively expensive forward he was supposed to be when they bought him. He’s scary, no two ways about it.
On the other side, Fulham are shorn of half a squad and will have to be at their battling best to get something from the game. Lord knows where a goal might come from, but maybe Wayne Routledge can come up with something. The team will presumably be something like that which got a good point away to Spurs, and let’s be honest, a similar result and a similar game would be ok tomorrow.
Chelsea may well try to bring some width back into their game. Ballack is suspended, and if there’s one thing that would play into Fulham’s favour it’d be a super-crowded midfield scrum-down. Volz and Brown, as well as Diop (if fit) can spoil with the best of them. Chelsea’s best chance is to go with wingers and stretch the makeshift Fulham side to the limit.
It’ll be the first time I’ve seen Frank Lampard since 1993, when my school met his at football. As we travelled down from Bedford to East London that day our coach, Doc Richards, told us about this boy Lampard, and how we’d have to pay serious attention to him or we’d be torn to bits. Every few games this would happen, Doc would get wind of some winger who Watford or Luton or Norwich had had in, and we’d play them and generally not be able to tell which player he’d meant and after a while I began to take less and less notice of the warnings.
But Lampard was to be different; he was to sign on with West Ham shortly after this game, which would be his last for Brentwood school. Excitingly too, he would be playing up front, and I’d be marking him. “Get in early and hard, Rich,” said the Doc, “let him know you’re there” (a generation of football coaches brought up in the 70s saw this as the best way to deal with good players). Alright, I thought, no problems.
We lined up and this Lampard lad was very small. He was about 5′5′ I suppose, and very lightweight in build. He didn’t look remotely intimidating and I relaxed a little. And I did get him early, a ball played into his feet straight from the off, so I got my knee into the back of his leg. It wasn’t hard, but it got them a free kick. After that I could relax, having done what my coach asked (I was too nice a footballer really, always apologising after making bad tackles, and I didn’t like that side of the game). After a while you could tell Lampard was good. He was what people in Bristol call a “shaper”, in that he did simple things but looked good doing them, lots of tidy lay-offs and good control, but honestly he wasn’t hurting us too much, and we were matching our opponents pretty well. I certainly don’t remember Lampard getting much of a sight of goal.
We got to half-time at 0-0. We came out and he’d dropped back into midfield, a sort of Sheringham role after being a spear-head for the first-half. A few minutes had passed and the stalemate continued. We built a rare attack down the right, and a whipped cross saw our centre-midfielder crack a half-volley against the Brentwood post from six yards out. That would’ve been 1-0, and a huge upset if such a thing is possible in schoolboy football. I don’t know if that near-miss knocked the stuffing out of us, but we were 1-0 down soon after. Then another attack saw the ball bobble to the edge of the box. Our defence was all over the place, Lampard avoided two desperate tackles with scary ease, then coolly slipped in a second goal. It was the one thing he did all game that showed why he and not some of the other good players on the pitch that day was going to the big time. They added another and we walked off gallant 3-0 losers. I’d marked Frank Lampard, and done it well, probably the one thing I’ll really remember about playing football as a lad.
Anyway, forgive me for that self-indulgence. Here’s a to a good game tomorrow, here’s to sensible supporters, and here’s to some points!
