Firstly many congrats on going through,you certainly deserved it. We simply did not play with the tempo needed to turn the game around, in particular Ramires and Azpiliceuta were very very poor offensively and the better team over the two legs went through,no complaints. In any comp Wembley is a great stadium,we ought to know as we have been there even more often than united. Recommend you stay in town and then train out to the game on chiltern line. All the facilities around the stadium are crap. Given where you are going home I would recommend car/bus to gerrards cross, loads of pubs there, then if you want to get to marlybone, going past the stadium it is only 20 mins and you can be in the west end in 35. otherwise it is 10 mins from GX. Doing this will save you at least an hour each way if you are coming by road. Only two comment on ball gate is you could see it coming as all the ballboys at our end were larking around but does not excuse the hasard response, it is the job of the officials to sort, (no different to the performance of your goalie, which was by the way the same as we did against Arsenal last week),not Hasard and he definitely should have got a red. Second point I would make is it is the sort of tactics you always get from a lower league team and you are way better than that nowadays and the guys in charge ought to get the message and move on. You have a team that any club would rightly be proud of, they play as a team with a manager that clearly has the respect of the players and fans, but the guys upstairs will need to move with the team for it to be sustained and take it from me it is a mental attitude that makes it happen. If not it just becomes a couple of years in the sun. Anyway enough of the fatherly advise and have no wish to piss on your parade. Well done and enjoy the final. When the PL match at the bridge gets closer lets get in touch and the beers this time are on me Logic
As regards the useful advice regarding the local delights thanks for that . One thing regarding the ball gate incident you're assuming the ball boy had been directed to behave as he did & I'd like to think we're better than that ( who allows kids with mobile phones and twitter accounts has a lot to answer for) ,time wasting in all forms has been come part of the game & we've had enough experience of that ourselves .Hopefully it will blow over and I hope we're not perceived as a club that cheats , if there was a directive from the club to the ball boys then I would be disappointed ,we've proved we're more than good enough to compete against the big sides .
regardless of the ball boy incident (the ref added on extra time at the end anyway so had no effect whatsoever) we deserved it. Chelsea couldn't score against us in 2 games. Ba looked bad too, maybe it's the formation not the player in the case of Torres?....
Stevejack There is a lot in what you say and as i said in my post, no complaints, the right team went through. I am no Benitez fan but watching the game from where we were in the away end you could see that the game plan was to stretch your team down the flanks and make space for BA, Lamps and Mata through the middle. Cole and Hazard(while he was on the pitch) did their job quite effectively, but Ramires, Oscar and Azpilicueta (got to be an all time record score on Scrabble) were crap and made no meaningful offensive move down the right. Azpilicueta was especially disappointing as he ran around like a headless chicken, is easily the fastest player in the team but you would never guess it by the way he was struggling to catch up with play yesterday and 9 out of his ten passes were backwards or sideways but certainly no impact moves, did not take on a player once and did not get into a threatening position once. Compare that when we played Everton and Stoke away, both times he was effective and we are the only team to go to those grounds this season and take all the points.Your team saw he was no threat and simply doubled up on Cole and were able to squeeze the centre. Outnumbered on the left and no space for Ba or Lamps in the centre, job done so we brought it upon ourselves and your team were cute enough to suss it out. Yes our finishing could have been better in front of goal but sometimes it goes like that
To me the real shame about ballboy is it got the headlines when they ought to have been about your team getting to the cup final
Logic, Top post from a top bloke mate. One question though, did you like my ball boy disguise last night ? Sorry mate I couldn't resist
I'd agree regarding ramires, Oscar and Azpilicueta. They were poor. Partly because we like playing down the middle so that was a gamble that played into our hands. I wouldn't blame Chelsea's finishing as they had several long range shots but nothing that tested our reserve keeper Tremmel too much. I was disappointed by some of the challenges from the likes of ramires and Ba, I thought the days of being an ugly side were over after Mourinho left? ;-) Anyway your kind words are much appreciated and the buzz around the city is fantastic as it means so much to us. On a kind note: I'm sure chelsea won't have to worry about relegation this year!
