Sometimes you just have to hand it to the Evening Standard. This week David Mellor ran the story that “the Soviet Union is alive and well and living at Stamford Bridge.”
There followed an article in which Mellor points out that when the club publishes transcripts of question and answer sessions with fans (all part of the Chelsea openness) they then edit out the questions and answers they don’t like!
So when Scolari answered fans by saying he needed one or two more players in January, that whole section of the Q and A was removed.
Great stuff, and exactly what we would expect from CSKA Fulham (perhaps now to be renamed KGB Fulham), who last year re-wrote the official club’s history to remove virtually all mention (and certainly all mention in depth) of Ken Bates’ time at the club. Since it was the Bates character who sold the whole wobbly edifice to the KGB crowd, that seems a bit rich.
Anyway, the Standard ran the story denouncing the KGB style tactics at Chelsea – on the same page as the ad saying “Lunch with David Mellor at a Chelsea Match”. I am not sure which bit of all that would be the hardest to swallow.
Meanwhile Scolari himself joined in the rewriting of modern history “1984” style by saying that it was quite untrue that his start at Chelsea was worse than the 3 previous managers. When given the facts by journalists at a briefing he said no, the stats, were wrong, and that everyone should go and check again. He would not back down, despite figures about wins losses and draws were all given to him in blue and white.
And just to make the old communists wriggle even more that likely lovely cheerful chappie from the East End of Europe,Avram Grant, has now said that it was he and he alone who transformed the club after the pouting Portuguese Moaning Mourinho (sorry I should stop reading the Sun, I’ll try this again) Mr Grant says KGB Fulham was in a bad way when he took over and he made it right and that everything nasty he has ever said aboutKGB Fulham was taken out of context.
To prove this he added: “Some of the players there have problems that you can’t find [in] a children’s team”, he said (honest – I didn’t make that up – its in the Guardian.)
Here’s another good Grant-ism.
“Roman thought that I should stay but in this team the owner does not take all the decisions – and I did not want Nicolas Anelka. I didn’t really need Anelka last season and I told him so.”
What fun to see such a harmonious group, past and present, all working together, re-writing reality. George Orwell couldn’t have made any of this up; Stalin must be so proud.
