Tag Archives: Jesper Gronkjaer

Tales From The Cheap Seats

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Chelsea vs. FC Copenhagen : 13 March 2025.

The home game against Leicester City was to be followed by three more trips to London for me in the following week. There would be two more Chelsea matches, but also a drive up to London on the one-hundred-and-twentieth anniversary of the formation of the club on Friday 10 March 1905.

Unbeknown to me, it seems that the club must have sent emails out asking for nominations to attend a stadium tour in the evening of Monday 10 March to mark the moment, and to my great surprise and pleasure I had been selected as one of the chosen few, or rather one of the chosen one-hundred-and-twenty.

I am still unaware who nominated me.

If it is you…THANK YOU SO MUCH.

It was a great evening.

I met up with my good friend Luke in the “Butcher’s Hook” where the club was formed all those years ago, and we chatted to other lads that I know, the brothers Dan and Eddie. Our tour was the last of the night, beginning at 6.30pm and ending at 8pm.

Ninety minutes, how fitting.

This would be the fifth stadium tour that I have attended; the others were in 1997 with a bunch of fellow fans including Glenn and Alan, a solo tour in around 2005, a tour with a friend from the US in 2016 and a tour with a friend from Germany later the same year.

The highlight was the chance to meet up, albeit briefly, with club legends Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Carlo Cudicini. There was the chance for photos, but I couldn’t really say too much to Jimmy and Carlo due to the lack of time.

To Carlo : “The last time I spoke to you was in Beijing in 2017.”

To Jimmy : “You know what, even though you played for Leeds, you’re not a bad bloke.”

There was plenty of laughter, plenty of smiles and giggles, and I loved it that Jimmy’s perfect hat-trick against Tottenham was mentioned a few times. In some ways, the star of the show was the Stamford Bridge pitch itself, bathing under self-tanning ultra-violet lights on a cold Spring evening. Knowing my obsessional desire to photograph Stamford Bridge as often as possible, in as many different circumstances as possible, it is quite likely that I would have driven up from Somerset just to take photos of the pink pitch and the large structures hovering over it.

I include those photos here along with a few others from that night. It was lovely to see a few people that I knew on the three tours. A special mention to Annette and Mark, pictured, who often act as my un-paid spell-checkers on this blog.

Before we disappeared into the home dressing room, the tour stopped by the Chelsea bench. A few of us sat in what is now “the dug-out club” and we spoke about the ludicrous price that the club charges spectators to sit in these twenty or so seats. For the two games against Liverpool and Manchester United, still to come this season, each seat costs a mammoth £12,995.

That’s correct.

It’s not a miss-print.

£12,995.

There have been many words of disdain written about this over the past few months. And this is no surprise. The bizarre thing is that these seats offer really crap views of the pitch. The Perspex tunnel roof, for example, obliterates much of the pitch at The Shed End.

But I have fostered a different opinion of late.

These tickets are clearly aimed at VIPs and the super-wealthy (though, perhaps, the mentally unstable too) and it could be argued that a few years ago VIPs might well be gifted match tickets dependent upon their status. Now, there is an alternative. And if the club can sell such shite tickets – and it’s only twenty of them after all – for such a ridiculous amount of money, then fair play to them.

In an ideal world, the monies raised – £259,900 per game! – would be used to offset the price of match tickets for the rank and file, but I am not naïve enough to believe this will always be the case.

To be honest, this “dug-out club” malarkey is a sign that the suits at Chelsea don’t really understand the differences between sports in the US and the UK, or at least baseball and football. At a baseball game, 95% of the important stuff – the pitcher versus batter duel, the base-running, the infield action – takes place in front of the dug-out and in front of home plate. Over there, seats in these areas are justifiably the most expensive. In football, having seats so low down is not really seen as a positive.

That said, despite all of the talk of the club charging extortionate amounts for some tickets at Stamford Bridge, the cost of my ticket for the game against Copenhagen on the Thursday was just £34, a decent enough figure if I am honest.

For this game I was accompanied by just Parky, with PD unable to attend. I picked him up from his village at 2.15pm and I made really good time. I parked up at my usual spot, dipped into “Koka” on the North End Road for a pepperoni pizza and then headed down from West Brompton to Putney Bridge to meet up with Michelle, Parky, Jimmy, Nick, Steve, Andy and Kim once more.

The pre-match in “The Eight Bells” was, as always, a laugh.

I had some good news for them. At long last, I had witnessed a home league win for Frome Town this season. On the Tuesday, in a tight and scrappy game, an Archie Ferris goal on eighty-seven minutes gifted Frome a huge 1-0 win against Hanwell Town from West London. The crowd was 335. In goal for the visitors was Sam Beasant, son of Dave.

A spare spot was available in “The Sleepy Hollow” and so Michelle sat next to Alan and me. Alas, Clive was absent in addition to PD. Alan had met Michelle before; on that trip to Porto almost ten years ago.

I soon spotted that Copenhagen had not taken the full three thousand allocation. This was our third tie against this team. We had played them in 1998/99 and 2010/11 too.  Out of interest, I had pulled up the blog report for the game in March 2011 – “Tales From The Return Of Jesper Gronkjaer” – and I was amused to read this :

The most memorable moments of the entire night’s football involved the banter between the two sets of fans. Again, fair play to the Danes. In superb English, they goaded us with –

“Can you hear the Chelsea sing? I can’t hear a fucking thing.”

“Sing when you’re winning, you only sing when you’re winning.”

The MH responded with a classic of our own –

“Speak fucking Danish, why don’t you speak fucking Danish?”

As kick-off in 2025 approached, we checked our team.

Jorgensen

Chalobah – Tosin – Badiashile – Acheampong

Caicedo – Fernandez

George – Dewsbury-Hall – Sancho

Neto

I was worried about this match. We were 2-1 up from the first leg but if we were to concede early, there was a good chance that both the team and the support would implode on a horrible nervy night.

At the kick-off, the two-and-a-half thousand away fans were bouncing wildly, and I suspected that they would prove to be the stars of the show.

Unlike Copenhagen’s vivid pink away shirts of 2011, this time they were wearing the opposite of our colours.

Chelsea : blue / blue / white.

Copenhagen : white / white / blue.

As the game got going, I became fascinated by the lack of spectators in the East Middle. Apart from a hundred lonely souls dotted around, the whole tier was empty. Never mind the dug-out club, Chelsea had royally messed-up with the pricing structure for that part of the ground, although the middle sections of the West Stand were not full either.

Bloody hell Chelsea.

No shirt sponsor.

A whole tier empty.

Sort it out.

Down on the pitch, my fears were real. There were two early Copenhagen attacks in the first five minutes and then on twelve minutes Josh Acheampong made a timely block on a shot from a Copenhagen attacker. The Chelsea youngster had begun well and would often drift inside during the first half.

Pedro Neto was put through, but their ‘keeper Diant Ramaj burst out to almost the halfway line to clear. This was one of our few attacks thus far, and we were really struggling to create anything.

After half-an-hour, I struggled to remember a single shot on goal, on target or off.

This was dire.

Football is meant to entertain us.

On thirty-six minutes, a nice piece of skill from Tyrique George brought the stadium to life – “fackinell, some skill” – but his touch to Sancho was just a little too hard.

On forty-two minutes, Alan realised that he had neglected to open his “lucky European” wine gums, and as Michelle and I tucked in, Moises Caicedo, as steady as anyone this season, won the ball and played in Neto. He tumbled over inside the box, but no penalty.

For a moment, I wondered if the “Maynards” were going to have an immediate effect.

From the away fans, shades of 2011.

“Is this a library?”

“You’re shit and you know you are.”

There was no witty riposte this time.

We were funnier fourteen years ago.

Well, this was as shocking a game as I had witnessed for years. We all agreed; not one effort on goal.

The boos at half-time seemed – as much as it hurts to say it – par for the course.

Enzo Maresca made two substitutions at the break.

Marc Cucurella for Acheampong, slightly harsh I felt.

Cole Palmer for Enzo, deserved.

On forty-seven minutes – REJOICE – an effort on goal, from Trevoh Chalobah after some typically fine play from Palmer. Then, a shot from Jadon Sancho.

Bloody hell.

“Smelling salts please nurse.”

On fifty minutes, a break down the other end and I yelled out “two spare at the far post” and a cross from their left hit one of them, but the effort was clawed away by Filip Jorgensen.

Ugh.

Just after, some tenacious play by Keirnan Dewsbury-Hall, played in initially by Palmer, enabled him to force his way past some defenders and he did well to persevere and flash the ball in at an angle.

We celebrated the unlikely scorer and the fact that we were now 3-1 up in the tie.

Time to relax?

I think so.

However, the goal that they conceded seemed to inspire the visiting Danes even more. Their show of support during the evening really was sensational.

There was a loud song for Cucurella, who was pleasing everyone with some tenacious play of his own.

We had little bits of the game, but nothing to set the pulses racing. There was a nice move and a shot from Palmer that was swept wide.

On sixty-five minutes, Christopher Nkunku for Sancho.

On seventy-six minutes, a Palmer free kick down below us but an easy save for Ramaj.

On seventy-nine minutes, Reece James for Caicedo (“for you, Michelle” as he had not appeared versus Leicester City).

Late on, another shot for Palmer, this one blocked too.

A very late sub, and a debut.

Genesis Antwi for Neto.

At the death of a poor match, there was a close-in effort for the visitors that was blasted high into the Shed Upper and then there was one last effort from Palmer that was saved by Ramaj.

It finished 1-0 to Chelsea.

The gate was 35,820, and oh those empty seats.

A Celebration Of 120 Years

Chelsea vs. FC Copenhagen

Tales From The Return Of Jesper Gronkjaer

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Chelsea vs. FC Copenhagen : 16 March 2011.

Ah, the 16th of March – a momentous date in my life.

Our game with Copenhagen coincided with the 37th anniversary of my first ever Chelsea game. Ironically, our defeat at the hands of Inter last season was on the same date – but I was pretty confident that a similar fate would not befall Chelsea in 2011. In fact, I had hardly thought about the game against Gronkjaer and co – yet another game that had snuck in under the radar.

I took a half day holiday as I had just about had my fill of stressful sorties up the M4 motorway for midweek games. As it happened, this was a very fortuitous move. At around 4pm, with His Lordship alongside me, I received a text from Bristol Tim on the M4. It seemed that there had been a major snarl-up around Maidenhead and that the eastbound motorway would be closed until 6.15pm. I contemplated my options and took the A34 down to the A303 and headed in on the M3.

From my home in Somerset, I had headed north to collect Parky, then east towards Hungerford, north to the M4, east towards Newbury, and then I took that well-timed diversion south to the A303, then east again to the M25 and eventually north to the M4 and then finally east towards HQ. My route to Stamford Bridge had mirrored an elongated Pat Nevin dribble. A bit like that famous one against The Geordies in 1983, maybe.

With much pleasure, we stumbled into The Goose at 5.45pm – my journey had grown to 141 miles, but I could relax. Tim, however, was still struggling to get in and was still stuck on the M4.

We spent a lovely 90 minutes in the pub, chatting and looking forward to possible venues for “the last eight.” One of our topics of conversation – and consternation – was the price of the game…my ticket had cost me £57. That’s a lot of money for a tie which, hopefully, was already won in Denmark. But what can we do? Maybe one day, I’ll resist. To be fair, Rob had looked at the price and had resisted. However, he made it in from Essex for the pre-match banter (which is what 75% of “Chelsea” is anyway, let’s be honest) and then had plans to disappear off to The Imperial to watch the game on the box. I respected his opinion – he had paid ?50 to fly to Copenhagen for the first leg, but had really felt disgusted about paying more for his own seat at The Bridge. I was left with explicit instructions for me to text him my guestimate of the crowd.

In our little corner, surrounded by familiar faces, it was a typical scene.

Smiles and laughter, groans at shocking puns, pints of Carling, mobile phones being checked for messages, friends arriving, faces noted, talk of past games, the Blackpool post-game party and the inevitable hangovers, Barbour jackets, pints of Fosters, new pullovers, shrieks from the far corner, friends from far off places, the excitement of the imminent draw, “get the beers in Parky”, more tales from Blackpool, plans for Stoke away, Russell’s new job, “mind yer backs”, more beers, blokes in work clothes, shared memories of distant fashions and distant games, Bayern Munich away, Juventus two years ago, the classic moments relived one more time, lads in Adidas trainers, “one more beer”, tangled conversations, jokes, banter, football.

Inside the stadium, it soon became apparent that fewer people than we had expected had resisted the game. All areas, with the exception of the very back rows of the East Upper and the upper corners of the West Stand were full of spectators. Of course, the three thousand away fans were in early and were making the expected din. I suspect that they had been on the Carlsberg all day. Alan had met a couple in The Imperial and he reported that they were buzzing. Their balcony was covered in club banners and flags. Throughout the game, they did themselves proud. Lots of noise. Balloons when the two teams entered the pitch. Lots of planned and choreographed waving of scarves and bizarre hand-jives…lots of singing, lots of fun.

It was back to the CL style programme – white cover, spine – for this game. The programme seller gave me an extra one and I noted a photo of Gill and Graeme inside.

Carlo was testing the 4-4-2 once more and I was a little surprised to see Fernando Torres on the bench.

We had a reasonably well observed moment’s silence in memory of the poor souls who lost their lives in Japan and then the MH serenaded John Terry with the much-loved –

“One England Captain.”

The game?

We couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo.

We couldn’t hit a donkey’s arse with a saucepan.

We couldn’t hit a chef’s arse with a soup ladle.

We couldn’t hit a spaceman’s arse with a ukulele.

We couldn’t hit a red-headed Bourbon Street floozie’s arse with a trombone.

We couldn’t hit Peter Piper’s arse with a peck of pickled peppers.

We couldn’t hit a banjo’s arse with a cow.

The most memorable moments of the entire night’s football involved the banter between the two sets of fans. Again, fair play to the Danes. In superb English, they goaded us with –

“Can you hear the Chelsea sing? I can’t hear a fcuking thing.”

“Sing when you’re winning, you only sing when you’re winning.”

The MH responded with a classic of our own –

“Speak fcuking Danish, why don’t you speak fcuking Danish?”

The Danes also gave many rousing renditions of the theme from “The Great Escape” too. Generally speaking though, we were subdued and were only roused intermittently. As I looked around to check on the gaps in the seats, I spotted a few more American flags…notably those from Southern California, Austin and the Bay Area. Good work.

It was enjoyable to see Jesper Gronkjaer once again. He was a bit of an enigma was Jesper, to say the least. He had blistering pace, but the end product was usually woeful. We ought to name The Shed roof after him, since a high proportion of his crosses ended up heading towards it. Whenever he received the ball, loads of us would often shout “Run Forrest.”

And he usually did.

He had a peculiar running style too, as though his upper body was in a different plane to his legs. His arms tended to move sideways.

We carved out plenty of chances in the game, of course…a few early chances including one for Yuri with the entire goal begging, a Drogba curler which was well saved, a great deep cross from Bosingwa which was volleyed wide by Didier, a couple of Anelka one-on-ones wasted, a Ramires strike saved, some head tennis in the six yard box and a Mikel header hitting the bar, a strong run from the substitute Torres and a deft flick, a deflected Torres shot and an Essien blast saved.

The pick of the bunch though, was a nonchalant shot from Didier which ballooned about fifteen yards in the air and went off for a throw-in down below the TV studio in the NE corner.

Oh boy.

Overall, I thought Drogba and Anelka played two far apart, especially in the first-half. They need to work on their partnership and that can’t be done when they are so distant. The midfield did not really support the front two that well…I have the impression that Carlo advised the team to play within themselves and not overly exert themselves. I can see the reasons for that. Despite the 25 shots on goal, the mood was of frustration amongst the Chelsea faithful, though. Torres looked sharp…I keep saying it…the goals will come. Copenhagen didn’t really threaten too much, but of course the free-kick which rattled our woodwork certainly gave us a scare early on.

As I left the stadium, there were murmurs of discontent, but it only took me a few sobering moments to remember March 16th. 2010 and I was just glad that had made it into the final eight. Carlo’s pragmatism over wild adventure had succeeded and we all eagerly await the draw on Friday.

On the drive home, I contemplated the draw options while listening to a few Spurs fans on “606.” They were just too full of themselves and I’m just dreading our two names to be drawn together in the quarters. Looking ahead, I am hoping to travel to any venue apart from Donetsk. I have visited all of the other six stadia over the years, though I haven’t seen a game at Real Madrid. As I missed out on the trip to the San Siro in 1999 and 2010, a game against Inter would be my personal favourite, though a return trip to the grimy industrial town of Gelsenkirchen would not be a problem either.

On Sunday, let’s beat City.

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