You don't really want a Christmas article do you? Haven't you got last minute shopping to do? As Paul McCartney said to his ex, there's always time for one last stocking filler.
And so ends (almost!) another year. We find ourselves in a different league, as has happened far too many times in our history. This time last year we were looking at the table in fear of being dragged into a relegation battle and our fears were proved right. As fans we could see how utterly rancid we were playing but the blinkers in the dugout couldn't see the big iceberg looming like a big piece if ice in the murky waters of Relegation Ocean.
When relegation finally occurred it was a release from the pain. Instantly we became hot favourites to be promoted straight back up and have had to bear the burden ever since. Until the Norwich game most fans felt that we would finish somewhere in the top six but that automatic promotion was unlikely. There was an element of ignorance and downright head in the sand, all is rosy in the St Andrew's garden from the management. It took deep unrest from the fans and the media alike to point out the inconsistency and lack of cohesion in the team and for the whole club to take a verbal battering before it was recognised that changes were required if we truly had ambition.
Fortunately things started improving almost immediately, the players began to perform with passion, strangely coinciding with most of them playing in their correct positions and the whole club has developed a swagger. A Mourinho arrogance. An attitude that can only be worn by people who have something to be arrogant about.
The diatribes launched by Sully and Brucey at the fans have been most distasteful. I understand Sully's desire to get more bodies into the ground (there was one in my seat against Preston) but he has to accept that the fans disappeared in the summer following relegation, the refusal to admit the failings of the management and a thousand other reasons. Bruce just needs to get closure and accept that, at the time of protesting, the fans were 100% correct. We don't want any more or less than our club to be playing well and to make us proud. Up until the Norwich game we weren't doing either.
The new season began with some alleged crown jewels departing and the only slight chink of hope was the arrival of three young lads from Arsenal's academy.
The Blues were placing their faith in the hands (well, feet actually) of three boys who couldn't get a game for Arsenal reserves most weeks. And then Bruce went all in on the flop and placed all his chips on number twenty eight, Coventry's left winger Gary McSheffrey. Bruce was quick to deny reports that he had been purchased purely on the length of his name and the potential profits in the club shop.
At long last he was right. The Arsenal three are worth the entrance fee and McSheffrey is leading every statistic there is about the club. The Blues are finally playing like a team that deserves the label ‘promotion favourites'. There is nothing lucky about scoring three goals for four games on the trot., two of them away from home. Anyone who saw the Preston and Sheffield Wednesday games will attest that Blues were far from convincing but the truth is that at long last we can score goals. Preston and Sheffield will have both been disappointed but this game is simple, it is about scoring goals, well, more than the opposition anyway.
Every week we hear the opposing manager tell us that his team deserved something from the game but they will soon have to accept that the sheer quality of our finishing is going to leave most teams behind. Bendtner and McSheffrey have quite rightly earned the plaudits as the best two strikers in this division although if the truth be known we were all putting our faith in Jerome and DJC at the start of the season.
This festive weekend we allow the public of Southend to watch the best team in the league. This division is well and truly wide open though with most teams capable of beating each other and any team that embarks on a run of wins quickly finds itself touted as play off material. Southend need only look at the position of Colchester to recognise that it is not always big gates and big money that leads to success. Sustaining it though is a whole new ball game and this is where clubs like the Blues have an advantage with the strength in depth.
Southend will be putting all their eggs in the Eastwood basket which brings me on to one of the finest examples of terrace humour this season; in appreciation of Eastwood's romany roots apparently he is being serenaded with ‘the wheels on your house go round and round, round and round ……'. Genius.
Keep right on. Remember if someone gives you a present and whilst you are opening it they launch into an explanation as to why they bought it for you then it is a crap gift. And they know it. A gift should be self explanatory. So take a hint if you get deodorant! I'm hoping to get ‘PA for beginners'.
Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all. Premier League here we come.
PS Anyone got a spare ticket for QPR? I'm skint! All donations gratefully accepted and acknowledged!