Morning:
8°c
It's been a while since the first Battle of Stamford Bridge, but the omen for Chelsea fans, as far as Liverpool's Champions League visit on Wednesday goes, from a millennium ago is encouraging.
On 25 September, 1066, the invading armies of Norway, under Harald Hardrada, were routed in Yorkshire.
Admittedly the 2008 version - fought in two stages on the Fulham Road on Saturday, first between Didier Drogba, King of the Divers, and his colleagues; then between the Yeoman Stewards of Chelsea and Manchester United - featured none of King Harald's countrymen. But with John Arne Riise leading a revenge mission on Wednesday night, the historic form of Norwegian raiders at Stamford Bridge may settle fretful home supporters a little.
Certainly they will take heart from Saturday's defeat of United, a game so laden with incident and contention that it's hard to know where to begin; with Drogba's infantile petulance towards Michael Ballack and Steve Clarke, United's indifference to anything but a perfectly correct award of a penalty, the sublime irony that Andriy Shevchenko should finally prove his worth as a goal-line defender, or the hilarity of United players scrapping with those meaty-looking chaps in yellow jackets for the benefit of the CCTV cameras. To Rio Ferdinand, we will return elsewhere.
And then there is the endlessly captivating issue of Sir Alex Ferguson's complexion. It is no longer sufficient to settle down for such a fixture with a six-pack, a bowl of Walkers finest and the remote. To complete the chairside accoutrements these days you need a Dulux colour chart, to record the progression of those cheeks from baby pink before kick-off, via crimson and (what else?) claret either side of half time, to electric Heinz Tomato Soup when the ref pointed spotward.
Why the psychotic Glaswegian enforcer was so aerated was a mystery, given that by resting Ronaldo for most of the game and Carlos Tevez for its entirety he appeared to be throwing the match. You couldn't really blame him if he were, with Barcelona arriving at Old Trafford tomorrow, and knowing that his goal difference advantage over Chelsea and the weakness of the remaining League opposition (West Ham and Wigan) enabled United to lose at Chelsea and remain title favourites. But it did make the whining about refereeing decisions even more tiresome than usual.
For Avram Grant, meanwhile, Saturday might begin to thaw the icy disdain of the fans, not just because Chelsea won with such a richly impressive performance, but because the Israeli finally showed a dash of Mourinesque passion.
If the championship is lost on goal difference, as seems probable, perhaps Grant will reflect that what cost him the title was his own negativity: just one extra Chelsea goal every other game would have made all the difference.
If, however, his team can replicate that 11th-century result on Wednesday by seeing off the Viking invasion force (and history, old and new, teaches that Norwegians can be self destructive when the heat is on), he may live to fight another season. Then again, he may not. Our own King Harold outlived his great victory at Stamford Bridge by exactly three weeks when he died in the Battle of Hastings, and ominously the Champions League Final is exactly three weeks from Wednesday.
Either way, my eve-of-battle thoughts and prayers are with Chelsea. All lovers of English football, with the obvious exception of Sir Geoff Hurst, have long since had our appetites for 1966 and all that thoroughly sated. God willing the time is at hand to dwell instead on a joyous precedent from 1066.
Feckless Rio's the thick end of wedge
When Hollywood's dominant comedic genre concerns the lovable stupidity of the feckless young male, why isn't Judd Apatow making a movie about Rio Ferdinand?
Rio is so thick, he makes T H Ickhead, seven-time recipient of Thickland's Golden Dunce Cap for Thickest Thicky of the Year, look like Isaiah Berlin.
Accidentally kicking the woman steward isn't the issue.
It doesn't say much for his finishing school, but he's sending Tracy Wray a lovely bunch of flowers. The point is that, on the day he emerged as favourite to captain England, and two days before a Champions League semi-final - having just seen central defensive partner Nemanja Vidic stretchered off - he deliberately kicked a wall. A brick wall.
Every time he heads the ball he halves his brain cell count and if Barcelona resort to an aerial game tomorrow night, then he's even-money to leave the pitch as an amoeba. Bless his heart.
My heart is with lovable Fulham
Something outlandish was required to relegate events at Stamford Bridge to only the second most melodramatic west London v Manchester meeting of the day, and Fulham duly provided that at City.
Whether or not this presages the Governor's pardon on the way to the lethal election chamber, that startling recovery from 0-2 down with 20 minutes left to 3-2 winners counts at least a stay of execution, thanks partly to Birmingham squandering a two-goal lead of their own against Liverpool.
Fulham play Birmingham at Craven Cottage on Saturday in an archetypal relegation six pointer, and for their last game have the closest thing such famously appalling travellers could imagine to the perfect away fixture - a trip to a Portsmouth side concerned solely with the forthcoming FA Cup Final. Take the points there, and an escape little less miraculous than West Ham's of a year ago will almost certainly be theirs.
All neutrals will hope that this most charming and mannerly of clubs, with the most charming and fuggin mannerly of owners, can pull it off.
Even with Chairman Mo, the Premier League is a far gentler and less vulgar place for their presence, and in Jimmy Bullard they have a midfielder whose play, hair and general demeanour echoes the mid-1970s era of Tony Currie, Stan Bowles and Frank Worthington, when England had a knack of producing gifted and lovably roguish midfielders. Jimmy would be a grievous loss to the top League, and so would Fulham. Fingers crossed.
Could it soon be over and out for Roger?
Concerns for Roger Federer continue to mount. The most graceful and genius-sprinkled sportsman of my lifetime hasn't been himself all year and yesterday in Monte Carlo, in the final of a Masters event he came close to exiting in the first round to a complete unknown, he met his clay-court nemesis Rafael Nadal.
Having lost the first set to the rampaging Mallorcan bull, Federer took a 4-0 lead in the second before suffering a neo-Henmaniacal collapse in self-belief. This nervous, brittle creature isn't the Fed we know and love, and, after a bout of glandular fever, he now remains world No1 in name alone.
If Nadal fails to retain his French Open title in June, it will be Novak Djokovic who stops him, and as the least successful punter in Britain I am reluctantly lumping on the latter to prevent the Swiss making it six Wimbledons in a row.
