Chelsea vs. Vidi : 4 October 2018.

October had arrived, the leaves had started to change colour, the mornings were getting colder and the evenings were getting darker. It was time for our first home midweek game of the season, and the return to the much-maligned Thursday Night Football with a Europa League match with MOL Vidi, from the town of Székesfehérvár in Hungary.

I had worked an early shift and met up with The Brothers Grim, PD and Parky, at the Milk Churn for a bite to eat at three o’clock. I demolished a bowl of lamb stew, then hopped into the back seat as PD’s Chuckle Bus took the three of us east. What a luxury; I was even able to grab an hour of intermittent sleep as we zoomed up the M4. For a change, we spent almost two hours among old friends in The Goose rather than the usual midweek trot down to Simmons Bar. The two pints of Peroni were sadly served in plastic glasses – an abhorrence – but still went down a treat.

The pub seemed busy, and on the walk down to Stamford Bridge, I commented to the chaps that it felt like there would be a pretty decent turn out for our first-ever UEFA game against a team from Hungary. Of course, the club are to be commended for only charging us £20. There is no doubt that they have learned a lesson from previous campaigns and this seems to be a good pointer that they realise the need to provide competitive pricing for home matches. We all remember the sense of disappointment when just 24,973 saw our Champions League game – Mourinho’s first finale – in 2008. And gates for our last foray into the Europa League were a bit patchy too with games against Steaua Bucharest and Rubin Kazan averaging 30,000 in 2012/13. But although we had purportedly sold virtually all available tickets for the game against Vidi, I was sure that there would be some gaps with fans buying seats just for loyalty points.

Outside the West Stand, the frontage was adorned with Europa League banners.

I am sure a few elitists were thinking “sshh, please don’t advertise the fact”, and there is no doubt that this is undoubtedly UEFA’s secondary competition by some margin, but I am sure that the competition, if we stay in it long enough, will provide a few good trips and a few good stories to accompany them. A return trip to Baku – we half-heartedly watched Arsenal, playing in strange red shorts, win against Qarabag in the pub beforehand – would be a lovely reward at the end of this season, even though the logistics of getting to the game itself might prove both difficult and expensive. Oddly, by the time the “big” (cough, cough) teams drop into the competition in the New Year, it might have lost its allure a little.

Porto. Schalke. Roma.

“You again?”

Last time we played in this competition – a strange jamming together of the old and much missed ECWC and UEFA Cup – the theme colour was red. This time around it is orange. I wondered if FedEx, B&Q, or Terry’s Chocolate Orange were prominent sponsors.

On entering the stadium, there were swathes of empty seats but as kick-off approached, most areas filled up nicely. Behind the Shed goal, I spotted the brand name Hankook, a tyre company that is completely off my radar, and who only enter my consciousness when we dip into the Europa League.

Ah, their corporate colour is orange.

Got it.

The visitors – I remember them as Videoton – had brought a tidy 1,500 or so. We only took around 400 or so to PAOK a fortnight ago, so this was a good show. There were four Hungarian flags draped over the Shed balcony wall. It felt great to be hosting a Hungarian team at last at Stamford Bridge. Hungary are, or maybe were, one of the great football nations of Europe. They handed England the infamous 6-3 defeat at Wembley in 1953 (England’s first ever defeat at home to “foreign opposition”, excluding teams from Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland) and handed out a 7-1 defeat to England at the Nep Stadium a year later.

I can still see that drag back by Ferenc Puskas now.

My first memory of Hungary came in England’s campaign to qualify for the World Cup in 1982. I remember England losing in Switzerland in June 1981, but then watching on TV on the following Saturday as we dug out an unexpected 3-1 win, again at the Nep Stadium. As soon as we were drawn against Vidi, and after I had booked flights to Budapest, I soon found myself immersed in nostalgia, re-watching that very game on YouTube that very evening.

The three words “Trevor Brooking, stanchion” will bring smiles to those of us of a certain generation.

Then, in November of that year, I watched at Frome & District Youth Centre as a Paul Mariner goal took England to the World Cup Finals for the first time that I could experience and savour (I was too young to remember 1966 and 1970), back in the days when I cared.

Budapest in December is sure to be a blast. Do not be surprised if I spend a morning ground-hopping Ferencvaros, Ujpest, MTK and Honved’s stadia, although it is a shame that the famous Nep Stadium has gone the way of many of those imposing oval communist super stadia of yore, razed to the ground and rebuilt as a bland nonentity.

Maurizio Sarri had, not surprisingly, changed the personnel for this game.

Arrizabalaga

Zappacosta – Christensen – Cahill – Emerson

Loftus-Cheek – Fabregas – Kovacic

Willian – Morata – Pedro

It was a good enough team, but a team that had obviously not played together before.

The teams entered the pitch. The stadium was pretty full. The advertised gate of 39,925 hid around 4,000 no shows I reckon.

But this was a fine effort.

The match programme mentioned the two friendlies that we played against Hungarian teams Red Banner in 1954 and MTK in 1963.

The 1954 game featured stars of the Hungarian team Nandor Hidegkuti and Ferenc Kovacs. Interestingly, this game took place at 2pm on Wednesday 15 December 1954, and just two days after the more famous visit to Molineux of Honved to play Wolverhampton Wanderers under lights. Odd that the Honved game – so much is made of the game being floodlit – is often cited as a main catalyst for the first European Cup which began the following season (without champions Chelsea damn it), and yet our game against Red Banner is never mentioned.

That Wolverhampton media bias strikes yet again.

Regardless, the 1954 game is a beauty of times past.

Us in our championship season. John Harris. School kids skiving off school. 40,000 on a midweek afternoon. Blokes in ties. Stan Willemse. Cigarette smoke. The North Stand seats packed. The lights for the greyhounds. Frank Blunstone.

Beautiful.

It’s worth a watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrlt86APQG4

The Chelsea vs. Vidi game in 2018, sixty-four years after the Red Banner game, and another crowd of around 40,000, was a strange affair.

The visitors created the first real chance from a corner but Emerson was ably positioned to deflect a header over the bar. But, we were soon creating chances inside the Vidi penalty area, with Emerson and a mesmeric slaloming run in the inside left channel, and Kovacic the first to threaten. Soon after, Willian shot wide from well inside the box. Yet again, an opposing team were looking to defend deep and catch us on rare breaks. The away fans, who were not making a great deal of noise in their corner, only raised their levels when an excursion into our half took place.

Pedro was soon to be seen running centrally at some space at the heart of the Vidi defence in that slightly erratic style of his; like the weird kid at the school disco who dances unlike anyone else, limbs flailing in all directions. But he’ like others, was soon running into massed ranks of Hungarian defenders.

On a quarter of an hour, the ball was worked nicely into Morata who had found some space well. The ball fell to his left side, and with the ‘keeper already moving to his left, it seemed obvious to me – I was right in line with the ball and goal – that he should dink it into the net with his left peg. Instead, he chose to touch the ball on to his favoured right foot, and with the ‘keeper having narrowed the angle, the striker was forced to aim at a ridiculously small portion of the goal. He panicked and sliced it wide.

The first of many “fackinells” was heard in the Sleepy Hollow.

Shots and crosses were aimed towards goal with regularity, but their ‘keeper had not really been tested. He came and claimed crosses with ease. There was, as the first-half progressed, the annoying feeling that we were overindulging in too many ostentatious flicks, back heels and feints.

“Just drop your shoulder and hit the fucker” summed up our feelings.

Willian dolly-dropped a free-kick into the path of Morata but he was off balance and fell. I heard The Shed’s moans from one hundred yards away. Ruben Loftus-Cheek, not exactly impressing for most of the first-half, made a storming run into the box, and seemed to be chopped down inside the box. A penalty? Not a bit of it. The crowd were suitably raging. Alan and I spoke, not for the first time, about the goal line officials, or whatever it is they are bloody called. They rarely make a call on anything. I’d like to know how much they get paid for standing next to a pitch for ninety minutes and doing Sweet FA.

Rant over? Not quite.

I have always found it odd that the two goal line assistants – “assistant referees” – always position themselves in the same quadrant of the pitch as the linesmen, rather than the four “off pitch” officials being equally placed around the perimeter. It makes no sense to me, that.

A mix up between Christensen and Arrizabalaga almost allowed Nego to nip in and score, but the shot was poked wide. Vidi again broke into our half on thirty-minutes, with a good move exploiting acres of space in our previously untested defence. Thankfully, the presence of Gary Cahill did just enough to put off Nego who shot meekly at our ‘keeper after easily getting past Emerson. Just after, a poorly timed lunge by Cahill looked to the people sitting close to me – we had a very good view – to be a stonewall penalty. But the moment of concern had passed.

Throughout the first-half, the away fans had not been too involved, which surprised me. Our support was so-so. There was this annoyance that we were over-elaborating in front of goal. And we were certainly taking more touches than usual. But, of course, this team – with Fabregas and Loftus-Cheek involved for the first time together under Sarri – were playing together as a unit for the first time. I suppose it would be wrong to come down too hard. But there was tangible frustration as the first-half ended.

Not long into the second-half, Arrizabalaga managed to palm away a shot from the impressive Nego, and at last the away fans found their collective voices.

I often used to think back to the days when we would tend to put out a “B” team for League Cup games and often Frank Lampard would be rested. And I remembered how many times we would be drawing and so poor Frank was often brought on to provide extra quality. And I thought about our Eden. I thought back to Anfield last week, his substitute appearance changing the game so dramatically. Within a couple of minutes, he appeared on the touchline.

He replaced Pedro.

What an ovation for Eden.

Truly the man of the moment.

The chances still came and went as we tried to pierce the Vidi defence.

Ross Barkley came on for Loftus-Cheek. The jury is still out on our Ruben, from my perspective and that of others I know at Chelsea. I know that body language is not everything but he just looks too languid. Where is the urgency?

As he entered the pitch from under the East Stand, I watched Barkley trot over towards Kovacic, who had been raiding down our left with aplomb, and I observed Barkley make the “switch” gesture with his hands. Kovacic was having none of it, so Ross returned back to the right-hand side. I presume that Sarri had said to the substitute “see if he wants to switch, it is up to you to work it out.” I can’t believe that Kovacic would have blindly refused instructions. I like that; that the manager gives his players a little freedom. I have this fear that football – for so long a free-spirited and spontaneous sport – is getting too similar to gridiron football where every move seems to be choreographed ad infinitum.

Corner after corner, cross after cross. We kept trying. At one stage, it felt like it was like death by a thousand crosses. At one corner, I experienced something new at a Chelsea game. I was almost bored by the thought of another corner drifting aimlessly into the box, to be headed away yet again. The consistency of our misfiring was getting tedious.

But the runs of Kovacic were firing life into us, though, and he was linking well with others. One dribble from Eden was the stuff of pure fantasy. We began pushing more men into forward positions. A fine shot from Barkley raised our spirits. Morata was joined in the box by Hazard, Barkley, Kovacic and Willian. I hadn’t seen so many boys in blue in such a tight area since policemen started sniffing around Fred West’s patio.

Surely a goal would come.

With twenty minutes remaining, Eden – now switched over to the right – moved the ball to Barkley who passed to Fabregas. He lofted a great ball towards the run of Willian, whose careful knock-on set up Morata, arriving perfectly, to smash a volley past the Vidi ‘keeper. What a great goal.

Alan and I then, with the both of us laughing and sniggering uncontrollably, carried out the worst “They’ll Have To Come At Us Now / Come On My Little Diamonds” ever.

We had spoken about how strange the Hungarian language is. What the bloody hell does a Hungarian accent sound like?

Alan’s sounded Germanic. Mine sounded Latin.

Oh boy.

Regardless, we were ahead.

Phew.

Victor Moses – who? he? – came on for Willian.

Ross Barkley, impressing me, flicked a header against the bar from a Hazardous free-kick. But in the final ten minutes, Chelsea almost annoyed me. Vidi had shown the occasional threat. And rather than close the game down, we still attacked and attacked.

“Sarri is not your typical Italian manager, is he?”

One barnstorming run by Emerson petered out and we were left exposed. In the final five minutes, our defence looked tired and prone to catastrophe. Arrizabalaga saved down low, clawing away a shot from Kovacs, but for all of our worry, Vidi failed to exploit the tiredness in our ranks. Our defence, I have to admit, had been pretty ragged when tested throughout the night.

There was still time for Morata to miss when set up by Eden.

The whistle blew.

Our second 1-0 win in the competition was met with sighs of relief rather than whoops of joy.

It had been one of those nights.

On Sunday, we are at Southampton and two of the team are going behind enemy lines. Stay tuned for further adventures of The Chuckle Brothers on this station.