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Preview Percy singing the praises of both HMRC and our ticket office? Don’t worry, we’ve called a doctor. Here’s his look at Saturday morning’s visit of Chelsea...

Next up we get up in the middle of the night for a 12:30pm kick-off at the Olympic where we will play host to West London’s second club, Chelsea.




The Goblin line is closed all weekend if you use that as part of your journey but east of London there would appear to be no engineering works to bother your journey. Which is nice. Check before you leave to be on the safe side though. You know what they are like.

So Chelsea then. So far this season its been won two, drawn one, lost one - giving them seven points from four played, leaving them in eighth place. They went down 2-0 at home to Man City on the opening day, Haaland disappointing with just the single goal on that occasion. A 6-2 win up at Wolves was slightly less impressive than it looks, Wolves looking early candidates for the trapdoor. They drew 1-1 at home to Palace and scraped past Bournemouth with a late winner at Dean Court last weekend.

In amongst all the brouhaha over the 115 charges faced by Manchester City over their financial arrangements, it seems to have slipped beneath the public’s radar that Chelsea are themselves in a spot of bother. It seems that during the Abrahamovic era a large number of payments were made through offshore companies, effectively disguising their purpose and keeping them out of the range of FFP and PSR regulations.

I mean, crikey! Who’d have thought that someone whose background involved amassing a large fortune in the aftermath of the Russian Aluminium Wars (in which people died), and whose personal connections include Vladimir Putin might actually be involved in something less than honest financially-speaking? Everybody, that’s who. Well apart from those charged with ensuring that our clubs are in the hands of persons fit and proper for the task of course.

Apparently (and unlike Manchester City) Chelsea have agreed that the status of the payments may have been less than honest and are currently working with the authorities to work out what needs to be done. Not that this will bother their support who could be heard chanting Abrahamovic’s name when we went there a couple of years back. There again why should it? After all Chelsea are the ultimate club nobody wanted put together to fill a ground nobody wanted. So matters of propriety never bothered them in the past after all.

They have of course been amassing a squad the size of a medium-sized country, meaning that a number of players have missed out on Premier League registration. They did bring in 11 during the summer. However, in a bid to keep Daisy sweet I’ve allowed her to concentrate on those that didn’t immediately get loaned elsewhere, and on those that frankly she could be bothered with.

The first arrival was Omari Kellyman who was valued at £19m in one of those deals that saw two players you’ve never heard of go in opposite directions for large amounts of money just before the end of June, beating the accounting date deadline. For the record Ian Maatsen was the player going the other way. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the nature of the deal Kellyman has yet to trouble the first XI statisticians.




Unlike Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, the former Leicester City midfielder named after one of the minor stately homes in Rutland. Dewsbury-Hall fetched £30m when he came down the M1 to be reunited with Maresca, his former boss at Not Filbert Street who probably brought the player down in his hand luggage.

Renato Veiga came in for a bargain €14m from Basle. The 21 year old made the full Portuguese squad for the recent internationals but as far as I am aware he has still yet to make his full debut for the full side over there, despite being capped at all levels up to and including Under 21.

The Portuguese theme was kept going with the arrival of winger Pedro Neto from Wolves. His fee of £51.3m – together with a potential £2.6m of bonuses – was the highest they paid this summer. He was unlucky to miss out on the last World Cup with injury so a move from Wolves was probably a wise one if he wanted to keep himself in the international reckoning given the current state of the Molineux mob.

Joao Felix was part of one of the more protracted transfers of the window, which seemed to have the sole purpose of getting rid of Conor Gallagher to Athletico Madrid. Taken in isolation Felix’s arrival made little sense, his previous loan spell at Stamford Bridge living long in the memories of, well nobody really.

Shall we move on to the Wild and Wacky World of Association Football? Yes, lets. And everyone’s favourite protection racket PGMOL are in a spot of bother over their part-time referees in Leagues One & Two. They just lost a court case meaning that they owe HMRC the thick end of £600k.

As if that wasn’t enough, the liabilities going forward are also likely to include the expense of paid holidays and other employee benefits. Although the case has technically been referred back to a lower court it's not looking good for the mob.

They didn’t cover themselves with glory at the weekend, resorting to the old tactic of barefaced lying, denying that Palace’s clearly offside first goal against Leicester was offside despite all the evidence to the contrary. Loath though I am to cheer in favour of HMRC whose attitude to tax law is to miss out the bits that don’t suit them, I’d shed few tears if their actions ended up bankrupting PGMOL, leaving someone to run the whole shebang with an actual interest in improving things rather than hiding their deficiencies.




In other news, I was on the end of a possibly unique experience involving our ticket office. The card I use for away matches had expired and I had forgotten to update the details. Look when you get to this age these things happen ok? Anyhow they advised me of the situation quickly, efficiently and with the minimum of fuss to get me back online again. Would that all my interactions with our ticketing system were that simple.

And so to us. Well a point’s a point I suppose as uninspiring as the performance was. Ten points for anyone who can tell me what on earth Mavropanos was up to for their goal? The last time I saw someone defend something that disinterestedly they were deliberately looking for a transfer (yes Payet, I mean you). Mind you, such was the lack of enthusiasm from the home support I had to check that it was a goal on the screen.

Having said that, Bowen ought to have equalised well before Ings finally levelled having manoeuvred himself into a good position to get a shot away. In the end it took a bit of quick thinking at the end from Coufal, his quick throw down the line bringing back memories of a similar move out in Prague that led to our penalty.

Possibly the best thing about the whole day was the inventive chant referring to Ings’s hair-transplant: “His hair’s from Istanbul” may be the least geographically correct chant since some wag relocated Moscow down to the Czech Republic (Putin’s still working on that one) in the Ludo song but it has a degree of humour. If the lyricist is doing requests, any chance of someone having a word about Fulkrug? We must be able to come up with something better than “we’ve got a big ****ing German”

Talking of whom, he is still a doubt for Saturday as is Emerson who hobbled off with a dodgy knee at Craven Cottage. Friday fitness tests are the order of the day for those two, unlike Cresswell who made a surprising return to the matchday squad. Eyebrows were raised at Paqueta’s appearance on the bench at first. However, he had played for Brazil as late as last Thursday so had pretty much just cleared Customs at Heathrow. Expect him to start.

Mr Lopetegui needs to work out his best blend sooner rather than later. Having a new boss and so many new faces at once was always going to make that tricky and injury and general unfitness amongst the new boys was never going to help but by now there ought to be the outline of a system everyone can get behind. That looked to be happening in the second half against Man City and, in many respects the international break did us no favours, messing up the momentum to be gained from such a half-decent performance.

Ever the optimist I’m going for us to regain our mojo in this one. Whilst Chelsea are no great shakes, and should be beatable, I think on the whole I will go for a draw this time. So the £2 that was going to go on a present for Ings (10p a tuft I believe) will be wagered down at Winstone the Turf Accountants on a 2-2 draw.

Enjoy the game!




When Last We Met At The Olympic Stadium: Won 3-1 (premier League August 2023)

Eventful day for Aguerd, who opened the scoring with a far-post header from a corner. Chukwumeka equalised and the word’s “pear-shaped” came to mind as Sterling, who never needs much of an invitation to go down, did so under a poor challenge from Souceck. Areola, however, had other ideas making a fine save from Fernandez’s spot-kick. Antonio seemed to have little on in the box in the second half but his finish was blissful perfection to restore our lead. Thoughts of irregularly-shaped fruit reappeared again as Aguerd picked up a second yellow with a full 23 mins plus stoppage to play. However we rode out the time and when Emerson’s run into the box came to an abrupt end courtesy of a poor challenge Paqueta buried the spot-kick to leave the visiting support wondering which new team they could transfer their support to.

Referee Sam Barrott

The official who denied Palace a perfectly good goal at Brentford blowing up early for a non-existent foul. Admitted his mistake which will have put him in the PGMOL bad books

Danger Man: Cole Palmer

Single-handedly tore us apart at their place

Percy and Daisy’s Chelsea Fact Of The Week

A few years ago at their place they paraded Bobby Tambling around the pitch during the interval. At the time he was their all-time top scorer, and probably still is if you remove dodgy penalties and deflections from the occasion. Tellingly, nobody knew who he was.

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