Do you know that BlueChampions Blog turned 5 this September? Yup, on Sep 1, 2011, this blog completed five years of service to Chelsea FC and its fans. In internet terms, 5-year completion calls for some golden jubilee celebrations. I’ve been so busy that I didn’t even do a blog to celebrate this proud moment for us. Last few months have been quite difficult – family, work, fatigue and travel. I’ve been too tired to even tweet regularly.

Do you know that 80% of the blogs are abandoned within the first month? And that the average lifespan of a blog is only 4 months? So if this blog has turned 5 years, it’s quite special and we should be extremely proud for nurturing and growing it. In the last 5 years, there have been numerous challenges that have threatened the existence of the blog. It has survived all these tests because you have continued to come back and support through its good and bad times.

Maintaining BlueChampions Blog has always been a pleasure for me but then it does get challenging by the day with progression in my career and family. No matter how casual it is, writing a few paragraphs does need some time and focus – both are at a premium now for me. But trust me when I say that the blog will go on – as regularly as it used to be.

Though I haven’t been active on internet but have been watching the Chelsea games. Last week I was in London. I was keen to see the Chelsea vs Man City game at the Bridge. But it was so cold that I feared that I could fall sick and I didn’t want that on my work-related travel. Saw the match in a pub and as always I was the lone Chelsea supporter but that didn’t stop me from my pump-fisting, incident-applauding and yesss-yelling.

Thought it was a very good game. You can see that when this Chelsea team decides to drop deep, they are so hard to beat and they have so much to gain. Against Valencia and Man City, it was bloody obvious that the depth of our defensive line made a telling difference. Having seen us play Valencia that way, I kinda expected AVB to play against Man City the same way. We just couldn’t risk losing that game.

By the way, below are couple of my very relevant tweets on the Man City game:

Before the match:

Back in 2004-05, the team that stood between Chelsea and an unbeaten league season was Man City. Fast fwd to 2011-12. You know the rest.

After the match:

What did I say? Arsenal beat Chelsea. Man Utd beat Arsenal. Man City beat Man Utd. Chelsea will beat Man City to complete a full circle!

I couldn’t see the Wigan vs Chelsea game as I was in the flight. Got to see the highlights later. When you drop points like that in an away match, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for AVB. The guy has been giving his best. Of course, he’s made some mistakes but you can’t doubt his commitment or passion. It’s not great going. That’s for sure. Having shown the league that Man City can be beaten, we should have finished off Wigan. That would have made today’s Man City vs Arsenal game quite interesting. We could have had a chance of being only 4 points away from Man City. After the game tonight, we could be at worst 9 under par.

What is my preferred result today? Anything but a Man City win. Yes, that includes a painful Arsenal win too. For the greater good of the season, I don’t mind Arsenal winning this game. But then, I’m okay with a high scoring draw too – the one where Arsenal go 4-0 up in the first half and concede four in the second half with a stoppage time equaliser. That would be something.

Meanwhile, the champions league draw happened. While all the group toppers were looking to avoid two teams – Napoli and Milan – we got one of them. It’s going to be a really tough tie. Napoli could beat any of these champions league contenders (barring Barcelona and Real Madrid who are in a separate ultimate league). Topping the group means we would get to play the second leg in Stamford Bridge and that’s a plus. I expect to see Barcelona, Lyon, Benfica, Milan, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Bayern and Marseille in the quarter finals.

Before I wrap this one up, few words on my whereabouts. One sure shot way of reaching me is Twitter. I’m almost ALWAYS on Twitter. So reach out to me @bluechampion if you’re on Twitter and want to ping me or check my tweets. Catch you soon! Cheers!

As far as BlueChampions goes, the need for social networking always exists. We, the writers, readers and contributors of the blog are spread all over the world. As you’re aware, I’ve made a few attempts to integrate this community and get the best out of it. With some of the changes that Facebook have made recently, it certainly is the best ready-made option for this purpose.

From a BlueChampions point of view, you know that I’m all into twitter. I’m just loving it. But I’ve always wanted to have a facebook page for BlueChampions. I’ve had several attempts to create a facebook page for the Blog. Being an Apple afficianado, I find setting up stuff on facebook to be a cumbersome process as my demands and expectations were high. Too many questions and too few answers. Anyways, finally, after all these struggles, BlueChampions Blog is now on Facebook.

Here is the link for the BlueChampions Blog. It would be nicer if this is a smartlink right? As per Facebook regulations, this page needs to have at least 25 fans before we get a www.facebook.com/bluechampionsblog address. I’m sure we can reach this figure fairly quickly, with your help. Right now, it’s liked by only one person and that’s me.

UPDATE: Thanks to you guys! We got past the required number of ‘likes’ within an hour so here is the smartlink – http://www.facebook.com/bluechampion.

The BC Facebook link is right up there in top menu bar in the blog now. So, you don’t need to store this long boring weblink until we get a smartlink. Visit the blog, click on ‘BC Facebook’ on the menu bar and you’ll be in the BlueChampions Community on Facebook. I’d be looking for admins for the facebook page. That’s for later though.

With my incredible iPhone 4, I’m always on Twitter and Facebook. I’ve still not managed to link my Facebook page and Twitter. Anyways, that should happen soon. I’m looking to update facebook through direct updates and also through my tweets.

So the facebook page is the fourth dimension, after (a) the BlueChampions blog, (b) blogging on the official website (c) Twitter. With all these things, I must say that the BlueChampions Blog has found a definite place on the social media network. Catch you there!

I’m extremely proud to say that I’m now blogging (also) on the official Chelsea FC website. Any sports blogger will tell you that this is a dream moment. I’ve known for about a month that my blog would appear on the official website. I’ve been preparing for some time along with the Chelsea FC representative for this. Despite all this, when it did go live, it was an extremely proud and surreal moment. My 4.5 years of Chelsea blogging flashed before my eyes.

It gives me goosebumps to find my name, photo and blog in a space that’s frequented by Chelsea FC players, staff and coaching staff. It is similar to the feeling I got when I was in the Chelsea dressing room as part of my stadium tour a couple of years back. I was thinking, on a different day, Lampard, Terry and Mourinho could have been right there with me. It was such a thrilling feeling.

The day when I registered the domain name www.bluechampions.com, did I think that I’ll feature in the official website one day? No way. But I always knew why online communities are important and how their voice can be heard. Many times, in this very blog, I have talked about how significant these fan forums such as blogs and discussion boards are.

It’s natural that some of you might wonder if this will have an impact on my blogging in BlueChampions. Yes, you’ll have a more proud blogger on the key board. Some might wonder how will this change my style of blogging (will I become more politically correct?). There will only be positive changes. I’ll continue exactly the same way as I have so far, when it comes to expressing my thoughts and opinions.

The club loves to hear from the fans and supporters. They want to know what we feel about the club and the blue revolution. We will only help the cause by being honest and open. To invite the Chelsea bloggers to share some space in the official website is a great indication of how much the fan communities are valued by the club. There’s no two ways about it.

Most important part of this post now. Here are the links of the post and that of my bio. Here is the link to my first post – Who would have thought?. And here’s the link to my profile there. Pardon me for the pretentious look on the picture. Would love to see the BC folks get in there and show your support by adding your tuppence. I’m sure you’ll do.

My sincere thanks to Luca Massaro (Digital Marketing Analyst, Chelsea FC) who is the main man behind all this. He’s been extremely patient and supportive. It’s been great to know him and work with him. I’m sure this new relationship with him and Chelsea FC would continue and get stronger.

Finally, I must say I never thought I’d get to share the stage with Michael Essien. Note that I’m a few notches above him there (thanks to the alphabetical listing)!!

London’s very cold this week. The temperature is in the region of about 6 degree celsius. It’s clear that my protective clothing will do no good in the Stamford Bridge stance at 8pm in the evening. I’ll leave office early and would pick up a cheap but decent coat that need to keep me alive to write my experiences at the Bridge.

I’d also get my dark away jersey tomorrow. I’ve already seen a few wearing that. It looks great. I’d get a few memorabilia stuff too. There’s this miniature of Stamford Bridge that I’ve got my eye on. Not sure if I’d buy it in this trip. It’s expensive and can be a challenge to carry. Let’s see.

I’m planning to get there very early so (i) I just don’t allow myself to be late, even if the sky falls down (ii) I can let the excitement build up and enjoy ‘being there’ (iii) I can watch the pre-match warm up and such stuff. I’m really confident that we would win tomorrow.

The weekend was just perfect. We beat Aston Villa 3-0 with three very good goals while Man Utd dropped points against Blackburn. Nothing’s over yet but certainly Man Utd are falling apart. They have a very good team and a great manager but the disappointment of the last couple of weeks would certainly be a setback for them in the title race.

Hoping for a big win for Chelsea tomorrow. Hopefully it’s a 4-0 or 5-0 with a hattrick from Malouda. I’d love that.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t watch the match as ESPN went off sharp 15 mins before the match. Then I realised that it is an issue being faced by many in India for the last few days. I was only going by the BBC updates and the numerous text messages sent across by my cousin. Purely based on his (he is a Chelsea fan, of course) text messages, I’d say that we had a poor first half filled with nervy defending and purposeless attacks. The second half showed some promise and we should have certainly won with the number of chances we created. Drogba was invisible and lazy until the free kick goal which was taken even before the wall was ready. Overall, the score did reflect the match. Both of us were disappointed but Man Utd will also drop points, you’ll see them do it big time, trust me.

Fergie and Wenger must be quite pleased with this result. This might even have given a ray of hope for Wenger. In a way this result helps as we don’t go to the Arsenal with complacency. With a great opportunity to extend the lead being squandered, Chelsea must know that they need to be on top of their game to ‘batter’ Arsenal and regain and extend the lead. Okay then, let’s wait for Karma CW’s first ever post in BlueChampions then!

I do see some new visitors arriving at BlueChampions from ESPNStar. If you’re one of them, warm welcome to this Chelsea community. Take your tour of this little blog. Let me help you there a bit. If you want to know who am I and how I became a Chelsea fan, read this page. If you want to read some of those 750+ posts on this blog, check out the archives. If you want to get in touch with me, it’s here. As you’ve made out by now, the menu bar would take you to various important links of the BlueChampions Community.

That’s it for now. Take care!

The balance of Roman’s interest-free loans to Chelsea to the extent of over 300 million pounds has now been converted into equity capital. What this means is that Chelsea is now practically debt-free. Chelsea is more debt-free than most top clubs in Europe. UEFA are certainly tightening the noose on the multi-million acquisitions of European clubs by the billionaire owners. We know how much UEFA loves Chelsea. I’m sure they’ll make up rules in such a way Chelsea gets seriously disadvantaged. This is a fantastic response from Roman to UEFA’s proposed rules and regulations. Now Roman tells them, ‘okay, we’re debt-free, now what?’.

We’re lucky to have an owner like Roman Abramovich – he loves football, he loves the club ands he wants and is committed to the financial stability for the club. Some rival fans would die for such an owner for their club. Let’s begin this wonderful year by thanking Roman Abramovich for his love and commitment towards the club.

Once again, wish you all a very fantastic year ahead. May this be the most successful year in the history of Chelsea FC. I do have some minimum requirements from this year. When we end the year 2010, I’d like to see certain things:

1. We should have won either the premier league or the champions league. This is in addition to the FA Cup, Community Shield and the Club World Cup that I might want us to win.

2. We should have still have Ancelotti in charge of Chelsea. Let’s put our faith in Carlo Ancelotti and support him as much as possible than finding annual replacements for the role of manager at Chelsea FC.

3. Our young players must have become first team regulars. Names like Kakuta, Matic, Borini, Sturridge etc must be household names and they should be known as the next Ronaldo, Lampard, Gerrard, Zola, Drogba, Torres of the premier league.

4. Rafa Benitez and Arsene Wenger should still be in charge of Liverpool and Arsenal respectively or vice versa. Actually, the vice versa bit sounds very impressive for me. Basically, I want these people to remain in charge because otherwise they might get more ambitious managers.

5. Jose Mourinho should not have taken the reins at Man Utd. Let him not take that role. JM at Man Utd sounds like a perfect marriage as he could start another trophy wave for them. Let him go to Spain.

6. You could add the rest . . .

My laptop recovery or the replacement is not going to happen any time soon. So, these’s going to be some tremendous inactivity in the blog except for these litte mobile-blogged pieces. I hope to be active in the BC HUDDLE. Let’s catch up there!

P.S: I’ve been playing FIFA 10 for a week now. The game’s just fantastic. I’m really enjoying this while hoping that PES still beats this one :-)

Chelsea Forum: I hope you know how a forum works. It’s just a discussion board. A blog is all about the latest article. It could be on a certain topic. In the world of football, there are always about a dozen live topcis to discuss on. It is quite difficult for a blog to keep up with all the happenings in the world of football. Primarily because, that’s not what a blog is all about. The post in a blog is always about someone’s views or opinions about one or a few things and the idea is not to talk about everything that happens in football. There could always be various things that you want to talk about but would look out of topic to discuss that under a certain blog post. Also, the updation and its frequency of a blog is with the individual who runs the blog. I might not update the blog one day because I felt too sleepy. That should not be a deterrent for discuss football matters here with your bunch.

This is where a forum fits in beautifully. BC Huddle has multiple categories such as Chelsea matches, non-Chelsea matches, football debates, news and rumours, fantasy league, football games etc. This makes it very easy for you to be able to discuss multiple football matters at the same time. In a blog, you have a certain people with two horns and only they get to post articles while the rest can only comment on/under the articles. In a discussion board, you all can grow two horns. Anyone can create a topic or thread or an article. Everyone is a writer as well as a contributor in a discussion board. Among other things, you can also create polls under the threads you create. Also, you could be creating threads in some categories while responding to other threads in some other categories. As you’d have figured out, forums can be very dynamic.

The other important thing about BC Huddle is that it is a Chelsea community. When I say it’s a community what I mean is, there are various tools and features that can maintain this group as a very organised community. First up, there is a profile page for each and every fan there. Once you sign up, in your profile page, you can pretty much write your own autobiography with some key details that any fellow fan would like to know about you.

Also, just like in Orkut and other such networking sites, in BC Huddle, you can create your own groups and have people join these groups. No surprise to you – I have created a group called ‘All hail the special one’, which is a group for all Jose Mourinho fans. Similarly, you can create your own groups where you can share messages, pictures and stuff.

There is also a member list which has the full list of all BC Huddle members along with their post count. From there too, you can click the member name and see his/her complete profile that includes detailed information such as the list of all threads and posts made the member. Also, you can add members to your contact list. You can also add them to your friends list after mutual acceptance through friend requests. You can send private messages to those who are added as friends in your contact list.

Did I tell you about the albums and galleries? Each one of you can have your own albums where you can add images which may or may not be viewed by the rest of the members. Isn’t this something some of you always wanted to see here? Gives me an opportunity to put all my Stamford Bridge images!

We will have multiple moderators in the forum. Some of you could be the moderators. When I say moderation, it does not mean what you post will be held. All threads and posts will be published as soon as you hit submit. What the moderators would do is, check the published stuff to see if there are anything objectionable. If there are, they would give you a ‘yellow card’ that would carry a certain ban on viewing or posting or both and a ‘red card’ if there is a need. Only moderators will be able to see the yellow/red card under each member’s name.

Each member also has a ‘user title’ which is a result/indication of how many posts has s/he made. Every member starts with the title ‘Chelsea fan’. After 50 posts, you’d become a ‘Chelsea supporter’. After 250 posts, you’d join the ‘Chelsea academy’. After 1000 posts, you move to the ‘Chelsea reserves’. You need to do 2000 posts to make it to the ‘Chelsea bench’. And then once you hit 5000 posts, you’ll finally get a chance to be a ‘Chelsea player’. To be ‘Chelsea starter’, you gotta hit 7500 posts. Once you complete a milestone of 10000 posts, you’re the ‘Chelsea captain’. It’s not over yet. When you cross 15000, you truly become a ‘Chelsea icon’. Once you touch 25000 posts, man, you’re ‘Chelsea legend’ and you stay that way for the rest of your BC Huddle life!

That’s about the user title. There is also something called the user reputation. The reputation does not have anything with the number of threads or posts. It’s just like the karma thingy we had earlier. If someone liked your post they add some reputation points to you. If you hurt someone or abuse, your reputation might take a hit.

What about the bread and butter? Yes, you create threads like nobody’s business. You can create threads based on some news item, some rumour, some observation you made, some piece of opinion or some something or the other. You can also subscribe to certain threads that you find interesting and are keen to follow. That shows up in your control panel. Check out all the links on the top in the navigation bar and also on the side bar. Anything that you want to change about yourself as a member is done from ‘your control panel’ that you see on the sidebar.

There is a calendar as well on the top navigation bar. I intend to update the calendar with Chelsea fixtures and other events that could be of interest to us. There is a fantastic ‘search’ function as well. If you want read all the thread and/or posts with the term ‘penalty’, you could just do that. The ‘new posts’ link just lists down those posts that were published since your last visit and now.

Back to the sidebar. I’ve put a list of key links to some of the most common websites that we might use on a daily basis as a Chelsea fan and a football fan. As of now, it has almost all the links that you might want. I will pdate it with some more in due course. If you get any doubt about any of the features, just hit the FAQ button under the header logo. There is a very comprehensive and neat list of all possible questions that you might have. The link of BC Huddle in this blog is right under the header and navigation bar. I intend to leave it there that way, if you were struggle for the link.

So that’s pretty much your lot. I could have missed a few things in this post. If you start using BC Huddle, you’ll realise that there are a lot of stuff in there that is more fun as long as we have more people using it. This, I think, is the first step in creating that BlueChampions community. Get in & enjoy!

As of today, September 1, 2009, BlueChampions completes three years of Chelsea blogging and steps into the fourth year. BlueChampions has been very much a part of my life. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed running this blog and keeping company with you lot. We’ve not met even once but we have certainly formed a community here. Very often we do find ourselves in places where there’s no football fan to debate about use of technology for refereeing or there is no premier league fan to argue why foreign ownership is not bad or there is no Chelsea fan to passionately discuss who should be at the tip of our attacking diamond. I bet you got a place where you can do this arguing, debating, discussing and always come back every day for more.

Today is the day of the flashbacks and nostalgia. I want to take you through this little journey of this blog which started in the drawing room of some guy in India and now . . er . . continues to be run out of that very drawing room. I’ll also heavily use the post of the last anniversary as it still is very valid.

I’d be lying if I tell you that I didn’t expect this blog to grow so much. When I started the blog, I definitely wanted this to be big. I certainly had a vision. I wanted this blog to grow. I wanted this blog to be talked about. I thought today could be a day when I can talk about how this blog was born and how it was raised.

Officially, Sep 1 is the birthday of this blog. On 11-Aug-2006, I created the original version of this blog. I didn’t know much about website hosting so I went for one of these free blogging softwares. When I registered for the blog with blogspot.com, I had to choose a title for the blog. The first title that came to my mind was bluechampions. I wasn’t sure if that would be available but to my surprise, it was. So it was bluechampions.blogspot.com. I didn’t quite like how the comments area appeared in blogspot. So I moved over to wordpress. It was quite strange considering that it took months for me to see a comment on the blog. From 13-Aug-2006, it was bluechampions.wordpress.com. These sites (bluechampions on blogspot and wordpress) still exist. Check them out.

From the day one, I started writing football/Chelsea articles. Almost everyday, I was writing one article. There were no comments at all and in fact, no one else was reading the blog as only I and my mate had known that such a blog existed. This went for a couple of weeks. I wanted to host the blog on my own domain. I bought the domain bluechampions.com on 1-Sep-2006 and published my first post in the blog. My first post in all these versions of bluechampions has been the same:

I speak Chelsea!

Okay, this is a Chelsea fan blog! The posts would mostly be the views, opinions and factual statements of a Chelsea fan. Whether you agree or disagree, you’re free to post your comments.

Though it looks like a stupid first post, my idea and philosophy around the blog has been very much the same. I have always said that I write my views and opinions, which means I don’t do research, I just write what I’d have tell you. It’s just views and opinions, as simple as that. And I did use the term ‘Chelsea fan’ twice in a post that had two lines. That kind of underlines that there would be some bias and you’d be smart to expect some bias, in fact. I guess that’s exactly what I wanted to convey from that post.

The first comment on this blog, very very coincidentally, was from a gentleman called Jose, who said:

Yo. Tevez has gone to west ham. Next season he’ll join us.

That’s all he said. That was the time I was hoping that we sign Tevez. This gentleman, the first commenter didn’t not visit again to comment. His first comment was the first for this blog and the last for him.

As soon as I started the blog, I began working on the traffic. Back then, I used to post comments and responses in every football blog or forum around just so that this blog link can appear there. I knew that ChelseaBlog was the only Chelsea related blog worthy of note then. I started posting comments in the Chelsea blog with the bluechampions link underneath my comment. To my surprise, I was banned in Chelseablog for promoting my site. Fair play, I didn’t really know the rules of the game then. I did try to establish some contact with the admin there to let me publish my comments but all those attempts failed. I didn’t try to post comments in that blog since then. I guess I’d still be a banned user there!

I started making a lot of friends and visitors, mostly of other clubs. The traffic did grow, a bit slowly though. All through this period if there is one thing I did relentlessly, was to keep publishing posts, irrespective of how many people read it or commented on it. Also, I did one more thing – switching between themes and templates. I guess from then till now, I must have used more than a dozen templates for this blog.

I then had a tie-up with Soccerlens for some time but I couldn’t really keep it up. There were many offers from many football aggregation sites but I didn’t go for any. Ole Ole did come in talk to me on getting this blog hosted on Ole Ole. I did have some live chat with them but then I did not want this to be oleole.bluechampions.com, I just wanted this to remain bluechampions.com, with all the ownership and freedom of what I wanted to do with this blog. That’s one reason why you don’t see any advertisements on this blog. I’m getting at least one advert proposition per week but I just don’t want to spoil the look and feel of the blog or to make it difficult for you to load or read. Plus, I get loads of emails to the BlueChampions mailbox – advert proposals, link exchanges, tie-ups, feedbacks, post requests and many such other things. Gosh, I need an agent, a manager and a personal secretary right away.

Meanwhile, I kept trying out additions and improvements. Back then we had opinion polls but it took time for me to introduce polls with multiple choices. Then came the gravatars – the online face for each contributor. There was this forum or message board that I started and I guess that was a failure or I failed to keep it going. I still think a forum for BlueChampions would be just right – more on that later. Then we had this BC Shout which is still a hit, I must say. I don’t see any other football blog that has a live chat feature. There are a lot of things I want to do but I’m not really a technology person, you see. All that I do with this blog is purely based on the knowledge I gained from the internet and hours of trials and errors. Well, I need a web designer too then.

The biggest milestone was the contact from Chelsea FC. I’ve boasted about that a lot already. It doesn’t matter what and why they contacted me for. My take away from this is that BlueChampions has got the attention of someone at Chelsea FC. That thrills me more than anything else. We’re still working out what we can do for each other. Meanwhile, I’m also looking at various things that would take this blog to a ‘new level’. It’s just that some of these things are expensive in terms of cost and time. I’ll take care of the cost. If you can lend me time, that’ll be great.

I have now written around 730 articles and you have written around 28,400 comments. The blog is really flourishing. But as I said, I want to do more. What I have in mind is to build a large Chelsea community on the web that consists of various facets of which the blog is one. While I continue to write on the blog, I want the BlueChampions brand to be more comprehensive. My vision is that BlueChampions should have a blog, a chatroom, a message board, a facebook style profile pages for all users, an online merchasndise store, a goodies download corner and much more.

As you might have noticed, this is too much work for someone who’s a married man and a father that also  happens to have a day job. This is why I’d come to you. To use corporate language, I will go public. I will have to go public because I need reliable volunteers. I’d need some Chelsea fans who can afford the time and still willing to spend that for free. All I can promise is to share what I get out of this – fun and satisfaction.

And finally, I must say I owe it to you guys! I blogging because you guys are reading. I do read all the comments and I do read all your compliments and appreciations. I may not be able to comment because much of my internet time slot goes just for publishing posts. Thank you very much guys. I know that you talk about the blog to your friends, you’ve got your friends and acquaintances to visit this blog, some of you are very loyal visitors and a big thanks to all the ones that comment and keep the blog lively.

Before I sign off, let me tell you that we now have a full-fledged message board called BlueChampions Huddle. This BC Huddle will have to evolve with time. I’ve set up the whole message board. All that you guys now need to do is to keep it going. Go there, create threads, create polls and discuss and participate. More detailed information on BC Huddle sometime later. Cheers!