On the game

I promised a match report and here it is. I also need to give you an incident report - you will see from recent posts that I clearly have one of those faces that enrages people and makes them want to attack it and the person that it belongs to. Just such a thing came close to happening (again) at the match.

What a game for the neutral - cup tie, 7 goals, the lead changing 4 times, almost a giant-killing. Proof again from Leicester that if you get right in the face of big teams like Chelsea and then score the first goal then the sky's the limit. The only disappointment was that Leicester put 10 men behind the ball to try to defend their 1-0 lead, which was a massive waste of the opportunity. At a time when their plan started working and they could have sent an even bigger statement to Chelsea, what they did instead was say to them we've scored, we've probably been lucky and we're going to try to hold on to that. It just handed Chelsea back the psychological advantage that Leicester had worked so hard to win. It was great that they came out so positively in the second half though.

I was in a box at the game, and as always in a cup match (and as a neutral) I was rooting for the little guys. When they scored, I and a number of others in our box stood up and cheered. The man behind me grabbed my jumper and tried to pull me back into my seat. I turned around and he was trying to stare me out, so I obliged and then when he threatened to have me chucked out I suggested to him that he might like to have a laugh and enjoy the game. There were a number of other people cheering for Leicester and the guy got really upset at them all. The stewards started to get involved to try to calm him down, and then some other Chelsea fans from behind him tried to get him to calm down. My neighbour and I did our best not to laugh out loud when he turned to the man next to him and said in a wounded voice "what really hurts is I've got me own fans turning on me now". Yeah, nice one. Don't let that be a signal to you that maybe you're being a total twat or anything.

Anyway, at the end of the game he wanted to shake my hand so I obliged. He grabbed my hand and pulled me close and started to lecture me that it was 'culturally unacceptable' to cheer for the opposing team in the Chelsea end. He wasn't convinced by (or made happy by) my risposte that it was fairly culturally unacceptable to grab people's jumpers and pull them down - so dissatisfied was he, in fact, that he started to suggest that we make something of it. That was the point at which the stewards got involved in trying to calm him down and I made my way out.

So, 7 goals and one home fan made angry. All in all, a successful night at Stamford Bridge