By Chris Wright
Last week, Pies outlined a flawless gameplan for Chelsea to get the better of Barcelona at the Bridge. Recognising incredible tactical fortitude when they saw it, Roman’s mob followed our ‘demonic anti-football’ blueprint To. The. Letter and duly ended the first leg of the Champions League semi-final with a 1-0 lead. Tentative maybe, but a lead nonetheless.
Six days on and Chelsea now face the unenviable task of preserving said tentative lead for at least 90 minutes of Barcelona wave attack onslaught in the Camp Nou cauldron. Not only will they be facing Barca (which is daunting enough as is) they will be facing a Barca who, in between both legs of the semi, have been all but forced to welsh on the La Liga title for the first time since 2007/08. The Champions League became a shade more important to them all of a sudden.
With that in mind, here’s our six-point plan for Chelsea. Basically we’re advocating more of the same shenanigans as last Wednesday – only much, much more bastardly…
1. Don’t play David Luiz. Just don’t. Seriously, you’d be better off playing Liza Minelli at centre-half tonight.
2. No need to specifically mark Messi; he’s on a goal-drought and woefully out of form. We’re talking ‘purple downwards arrow’ out of form here. The work-shy little berk hasn’t scored in his last two (TWO!) games now. Instead, focus all attention on kicking Andres Iniesta up in the air for 90 minutes. Make sure all Barca’s chances fall to Cesc Fabregas’ left foot.
3. ‘Parking the bus’ is a phrase we’ve heard garbled fairly frequently in the run up to tonight – indeed, it seems Chelsea may have used the Arsenal game at the weekend to practice the art of sticking an AEC Routemaster broadside afore their goalposts. Tonight, however, Chelsea must aim bigger. Why not try ‘parking the aircraft carrier’ instead? We’re thinking something like this…
(This way for more examples of Pies’ MS Paint mastery)
4. Crib from the very best in the business at pissing off Barcelona – Mourinho that is, not Petr Cech…
5. Assuming he overcomes his knee-knack, give Dider Drogba a target time of ‘at least half-an-hour‘ this time out if you know what I mean? Nudge nudge, wink wink, a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse ‘ave a cup of tea me old cock sparrah.
6. Defend like titans once again, ‘anticipate contact’ left, right and centre, hide the ball under Cech’s padded bonnet at corners, pull, grope, twist, elbow, dislocate, etc and then hope and pray like Pienaar and Kaka combined that this kind of thing isn’t actually happening in an subterranean bunker somewhere deep beneath Catalonia…
Ask Robin van Persie for details.
In summary: As we said before the first leg, Chelsea need to leave Barca licking piss of thistles for the rest of time with a performance so grotesque and calculated it’ll be talked about and held up as an example of how football shouldn’t be played from 10:00pm tonight until the sun implodes.
What are we saying Pies fans? Anyone out there backing the Blues to pull this one off? Let’s hear your predictions?
We’ll have 2-0 Barca.