It's been a while, eh?
A few months of great personal change, long hours and a dash of laziness kept me from blogging all season, but a vacation filled with football discussion and a gift from Secret Santa nudged me towards picking up my pen... er, keyboard, again. There are few things that give me more joy than updating this little journal, something I hope to do more often now.
As of today, Chelsea are leading the Premier League and are yet to be knocked out of any competition. Yet, it feels like the world is ending. That is what being chewed up and spit out by Tottenham can do.
| Kane applying the chokeslam (Image credits: yahoo.com) |
That was some performance from the hosts. Spurs surrendered the lead but banged in four without reply before you could say "Cahill". A delightful and devastating show of pressing and movement left Chelsea reeling and bereft of ideas, outplayed for the first time in months.
My excuse is that Tottenham are used to playing on Thursday nights.
I woke up and read that Steven Gerrard is leaving Liverpool, and felt very odd. He's the latest player to decide to effectively retire among the first generation of players I grew up watching.
Nobody taught me that I was supposed to be hating him and his team, so I quite enjoyed watching him play (Goodness knows how many days of my life I spent on Lampard vs Gerrard arguments though). Reading the news this morning made me think, once again, of the 'old' Premier League, the 'classic days' when van Nistelrooy, Thierry Henry, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard did battle to win their teams supremacy among the 'Big Four'.
You know the player one instantly thinks about when his team's name is mentioned? He was one of them. Gerrard is a player that defined Liverpool for several years and emerged as one of the icons of the Premier League. His team's only hope when nothing seemed possible, a real-life Roy of the Rovers. Even as player after player left, he chose to stay and fight. And what fights some of them were.
The league title remained agonizingly out of his reach, but it doesn't matter. He's had a decorated career at one of football's revered clubs, inspiring them to several famous victories and leaving an indelible mark in the minds of a generation of supporters, Liverpool and otherwise. One of the greatest players of his generation.
What a hit, son. What a hit.
