A blog of two halves

Treble chance

If you told grandad that Chelsea were still playing last season’s FA Cup in September, he’d think the last game must have gone to 30 replays.

22 September 2020
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Pernille Harder of Chelsea Women (pictured right) beats Lotta Okvist of Manchester United Women. PICTURE: GETTY IMAGES

If you told grandad that Chelsea were still playing last season's FA Cup in September, he'd think the last game must have gone to 30 replays.

Yet Chelsea Women travel to Everton this weekend for an FA Cup quarter-final so absurdly distanced from the fifth-round win against Liverpool in February that many shirt names have changed.

At stake, an away semi against Brighton or Birmingham, and a realistic shout at a first domestic treble, with both league and Conti Cup in the bag.

And if we end up with a midweek Brum v Chelsea semi, it will be immediately followed by the identical fixture four days later in the WSL. Strange days.

Chelsea's men, meanwhile, have to remember which sport they've signed up to after Andreas Christensen was red-carded against Liverpool for a flying tackle that would have been cheered in a wrestling ring.

He launched himself at Sadio Mane, climbed on his back, manhandled him to the floor and landed on top of him, squeezing any remaining air out of the poor man's lungs.

"It was [a red] I felt could be given, or not," said Frank Lampard – his tongue, you felt, firmly in his cheek.

Midweek League Cup action against Barnsley at the Bridge was merely an appetiser to an intriguing clash at West Brom on Saturday evening... Baggies' boss Slaven Bilic watching from afar after being sent off himself. At least he didn't flatten ref Mike Dean (though there's a queue of people who would like to).

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and unless specifically stated are not necessarily those of Hammersmith & Fulham Council.

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Tim Harrison

Tim is our Chelsea FC blogger.

He also writes our Shepherds Bush Cricket Club match reports during the football close season.

Tim has been writing Chelsea match reports since the late 1980s for newspapers and, more recently, websites.

When he first reported on the Blues, the press box was a metal cage suspended over the lip of the old west stand - and you reached it via a precarious walkway over the heads of the fans.

But he has been a Chelsea fan since his father took an excited seven-year-old to watch Chelsea v Manchester United in the mid 1960s... and covered his ears every time the chanting got too ripe.

In July 2005 he wrote The Rough Guide to Chelsea, published by Penguin, which sold 15,000 copies.

His favourite player of all time is Charlie Cooke, the mazy winger who lit up Chelsea's left wing in the 60s and 70s.

When he isn't watching the Blues, Tim acts, paints, writes and researches local history.

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