Chelsea vs Leeds Review: Lime bikes and padded seats
It’s 6:15pm…
I have quickly eaten a plate of steak and potatoes. I’m off to Stamford Bridge for an tasty looking F.A Cup Tie. A Chelsea team off the back of a morle sapping League Cup final defeat vs Leeds, a Premier League side in waiting. I’m meet a friend of mine at Wimbledon station at 6:30. As I’ve been working at home all day I opt to take on the slightly chilly Wednesday evening drizzle, by grabbing a rental electric bike. I weirdly end up cycling past my girlfriend and then neighbour who were both heading home after work. I greet one with a kiss and one with a handshake, I’ll let you hazard a guess who got what.
I arrived at Wimbledon station at 6:25pm. Feeling slightly queasy, I definitely hadn’t let my food get down as momentarily my dinner threatened to make a reappearance. I power through and wander through the station down to the underground and meet my friend. We spoke about how he had been campaigning in his local area to get the resident parking fee reduced in his area. He had managed to get 200 signatures and now a breakthrough was imminent, a potential £1,000 a year reduction was on the cards- power to the people!
We arrive at the ground with the irritating drizzle getting in my eyes. I go for the hood up option, to protect my ever thinning collection of hair. We navigate a small queue to get inside the ground, where we’re greeted by carpeted staircases to get up to our position. I can’t say I’ve seen such a thing in a football ground before. My lack of experience in Premier League grounds was starting to show, walking past various food options, a circle bar with seating options and tables. Luxuries that I have never had at my beloved Portman Road. A quick purchase of a bottle of Oasis each (for the cost of £8.50!) and it was game time.
We made our seats just as the teams were coming out, The addition of a padded seat was nice, they’re a lot kinder on the prostate. Atmosphere inside the ground was as expected, aside from the traditional chant of clap clap clap clap Chelsea! It was flat. All the noise was made by the entire end of Leeds fans to our right. Not long into the game and the noise from the travelling fans exploded into life. As the Leeds front line pressed a loose Chelsea pass out of the back, young forward Joseph smashed his finish past the helpless Sanchez for his first ever senior goal. At this point a rowdy Leeds fan behind us was escorted out of the ground by the stewards, a long way to travel for 9 minutes of football.
Chelsea looked every bit of a side who had played 120 minutes just 72 hours earlier, leggy, careless and devoid of any confidence. Blue Billion Pound Bottle Jobs FC do still have talent though, and at points it shined through. With their first real move of any quality they equalised, a quick triangle of passes released Jackson, who finished well in between Meslier’s legs. A classy goal which had come out of nowhere. For the rest of the second half Chelsea controlled the ball better and with 8 minutes to go before half time took the lead. Raheem Sterling switched sides and produced a lovely cut back to Mykhailo Mudryk (yep, I copy and pasted his name off the BBC Sport website) who produced another lovely finish into the far corner.
With that it was half time. Even though we had both already eaten, we both agreed to share a pizza. 5:30pm dinners are dangerous and will very rarely see you through until dawn. I did also find a rouge crème egg in my pocket, but now thought I would save for a later date. By the time the pizza was ‘cooked’ it was time for the second half. Pizza doesn’t really have a place for a stadium snack and now I see why, trying to delicately balance a box on our laps whilst tearing poorly cut slices is not an easy job. We mustered through and both thought the pizza lacked any kind of flavour, cardboard base and lacked any kind of tomato sauce. Still it offered more quality than Chelsea did in the second half, and after young Joseph cushioned a lovely header to equalise for Leeds, it looked like the game was drifting to extra time again. A more experienced Leeds fan in front of me, blew his cover. With his long sighted huge font glaring from his phone screen. I could make out the words “GET INNN!!” in a WhatsApp sent. Kindly I didn’t rat him out.
From a selfish Ipswich fan perspective I really wanted extra time. Leeds have a Yorkshire derby to play on Saturday lunchtime, so would’ve loved another energy sapping 30minutes. It wasn’t to be though and Conor Gallaghers cool, turn and finish meant that BBPBJ (I’m not sure that’s catching on) scrapped through into the Quarter Finals. In truth it was a poor performance from Chelsea and arguably Leeds deserved the win. It’s interesting to see what will happen with Chelsea in the summer, it seems like they are miles off the top four in terms of quality and management. Do the board have the patience to stick with the plan of youth? There is promise in the ranks, but rarely these days do we see long term plans followed through. From a Leeds side of things, I really struggle to understand how this team got relegated from The Premier League last season. I would be very surprised if they don’t get promoted this season, fingers crossed alongside Ipswich.
Post game, we saw a little bit of pushing and shoving amongst some real tough men, before heading to a local bar to have a drink so the crowds could settle down. I ended up with a J20, orange and passionfruit, not bad. Meanwhile in the toilets, some Chelsea fans were celebrating the win with a good smell of their keys, they seemed very happy afterwards!
And with that I headed home, as a blue sided netural is was a enjoyable game. Lots of questions for this Chelsea club to answer at the minute. But I am one who certainly doesn’t have the answers. I’m just a man with a melted Crème Egg in his pocket.
Sport Rating 7/10
Pizza Rating 3/10