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

England very clearly play to win. They play to score goals. They want to inflict a damage on the opponent all 90 minutes. And they played with such confidence! Sometimes, the way they played the 1-2s and the triangles, was with so much ease and was brimming with confidence bordering on arrogance. But they knew what they were doing.

Lampard and Gerrard scored a brace each and Rooney was gifted with a goalkeeper error that would go into youtube video of goalkeeper bloopers. Lampard scored a penalty and a header. I was quite pleased that Lampard is taking the key penalties for England, despite having Gerrard, Rooney and Barry on this side. That shows how much his ability is being valued in the England team. The header that Lampard scored was also superb. A quick reflex header to place the ball in the corner of the net. I was hoping to see his hattrick but still a great performance. Lampard could have had a couple of assists, if Heskey finished better.

Very interesting and important weekend of premier league football ahead. If you want to make any key changes to your fantasy premier league, please do so soon. I’ll save something for the preview blog.

It’s official. I’m addicted to BC Huddle. I’m permanently logged in to Huddle – either from my lap top or from my mobile. We’ve just got our 50th member in there. Also now there are more than 60 threads and 600 posts in less than a week’s time. I know that this international break is not the busiest time in the blog. That’s why I chose this time for the launch of BC Huddle. We are yet to see some of the blog regulars over there. But we’ve got a new bunch of football enthusiasts who are keeping the Huddle lively. Special thanks to Churchill, Arab Ali, Malagant and Macooz.

I’m quite enjoying the huddle. The kind of chit-chat and friendly banter that you have on a forum is quite unique. It’s so fascinating to get the views on various things from so many people. As I said before, there are more than a dozen things that are hot and need to be debated or discussed. And, we are all football fans. Even though we are Chelsea supporters, if there is something of significance that happens, such as Argentina missing out on world cup, it begs for a dedicated discussion. We’ve had some interesting threads and discussions this week. Some of them (with links) are below:

Damn, we should’ve kept him: This is where we made a list of players that Chelsea made a mistake of letting go.
Ronaldo is a prick and he proves it: You just have to check this yourself!
Best Chelsea news sites: This one is on the new websites and aggregators for Chelsea related news. I got to learn a few new things there.
All Chelsea streaming sites: An ever improving list of all streaming sites where you can watch the Chelsea matches when they are not telecast live on TV.
FIFA 10 Demo on 10-Sep-09: The most awaited football game of this season releases its demo on Thursday. Quick opinions on how it come out and all that.
Direct freekicks, who must take them: Should it be Lampard or Ballack or Deco or Drogba or Alex? We are spolit for choices there. This one is with an opinion poll. Lampard does not top the poll.
Sinclair’s failed solo attempt against Everton: That was bad from Sinclair. Opinions ranged from ‘that’s how he is’ to ‘that’s why he is loaned. he will learn’.
Is Maradona the right man for Argentina: Will we witness a world cup without Argentina. And if that happens, is Maradona to blame?

It’s fun. It’s just that you need to get used to it. A forum is a different platform altogether and is a different way of connecting and communicating with people. As I said, I’m not only enjoying it, I’m addicted to it. Just come over and throw your opinions around! Get in soon!

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!

You’ll read below the new version of the commenting policy and rules. The cornerstone of this policy is this statement:

“I believe that everyone has a right to their opinion but I also believe that not every opinion is appropriate for this blog”.

The commenting policy is based on my personal beliefs and the blog content. This is not a newspaper, this is a personal blog. Even newspapers edit stuff and reserve their right of not publishing if they don’t want to.

Some people don’t quite understand the concept of blogs yet. See this is like an online diary where I write my opinions and views. I’m a regular person who can think for himself. I don’t have to be essentially correct. I can be wrong. I will be wrong. I may not accept my mistakes. I’m just like anyone. I’m not expected to be the spokesperson for the club. I cannot be expected to rally the fans around. I cannot be expected to hold fans together by instilling faith and confidence in them. I can do all this but I cannot be expected to. Being as hypocritical as anyone is, I hereby lay down the commenting rules, regulations and policies.

Some comments/commenters are of these kind – Trolls. Flamers. Meanies. Vicious. Not Nice. Unkind. Rude. Inconsiderate. Nasty. Whining. Bitching. Moaning. Bastards. These are under microscope. They must be wary of deletion and moderation. Some comments are certainly worthy of deletion based on the below guidelines. If a comment is worthy of deletion, all future comments of the commenter are put under moderation which will be released at my convenience, which is may be, after 2 years.

1. Bigoted comments: Some people are so obsessive that they keep repeating the same thing over and over. If you don’t respond to them, they get wild and start saying even worse things. And if you respond, you’re in a big trap of never ending pointless argument which will result in too much of mudslinging. Such comments and commenters are out.

2. Comments that are just mean to inflame: Some comments are only meant to provoke people. They are not just their opinions. Thye just want to irritate, annoy and provoke people. If you are annoyed, they get their energy to write more. Just like the monsters in Monster Inc. get their energy from the screams of children. Inflaming comments should be gone.

3. Comments that are badly off-topic and spiteful: Some commenters have only one thing to say. Irrespective of what you’re discussing they would say the same thing over and over again. Before anyone could realise the everyone could be in that unnecessarily off-topic war of words. These broken records should stop.

4. Mannerless/impolite comments: Comments that are mannerless to anyone will be gone. For instance, calling Grant a ‘toad’ will get your comments deleted and you might have to go through the slow and painful (sometimes 2 years) moderation process. No name calling. Learn to use logic and information in discussions than abuse or insults. Commenters showing less respect will be off.

5. Comments with no proper names or nicks: Yes, have a good, decent name. If you don’t have one by now, name yourself before you post again. ‘Mourinho=longball’ and ‘Grant=noballs’ do not qualify. No hidden messages or insults in the nick name. Anonymous comments are absolutely unwelcome.

6. Comments with links: This is meant to be an anti-spam measure. If you’re comments have links, they will invariably end up in the moderation queue. Once I’m done verifying it, the comment should be out.

I know what you’re thinking. If the comments of above nature are removed/prevented, this would be a great place to have discussions and make friends, right? That’s my feeling too. And some more elaboration on the ground rules to determine the bad comments.

1. There is NO democracy in this blog: Yup. No democracy. Some commenters might have no problem at all and get all ther comments published and some always have the hard luck with the moderation and such stuff. That’s the way it is. No democracy. Some get off and some get laid. No equality as such.

2. There is NO such thing called freedom of speech either: Or there is as much freedom of speech as you can find on the street. You might think that the girl walking down the road looks like a pig but you won’t go tell her right? It’s like that. You can’t be saying every damn thing that you want to say. Control your temper.

3. The comment moderation standards change with my moodswings: Well, I don’t really mean this. All I say is, the standards do change and I’d keep moving the goal posts. What is nasty and what is not, of course changes from time to time and also based on several parameters.

4. I have no sense of justice: As in, I think like a very regular human being. I have my own beliefs, preferences and choices. I have my own likes and dislikes. When I carry out things based on what I think is right, I might seem like someone that does not have a sense of justice. That’s ok. I’m not a saint and I don’t want to be one.

5. I’m the final decision maker: You knew this already. I happen to be the owner and writer of this blog. So that gives me the little right about what I want to do here. And I can be such a hypocrite that I won’t even bother giving reasons. I’m tired of writing those long emails to people who get annoyed of getting banned or moderated. Why should I care?

So if you thought these rules are some new gimmicks by me to suppress those comments that I don’t want to see in the blog, may be you’re right. You’ll see the truth as we go along. If all the above rules, policies and autocracies result in just 10 comments per article, so be it. I don’t earn X dollars per comment. In fact, I don’t earn anything out of the blog now.

All I want to see is a nice discussion board where some, if not many, Chelsea fans and football fans have a matured, sensible, decent and cultured discussions. I want good commenters and good comments. From now on, the motto is ‘My Comment Is Fair Comment’. If you want to sign this pledge, drop in a comment, a fair comment.

Here is a simple guide to get your own gravatar.

1. Just visit www.gravatar.com and type in your email address.
2. After confirmation, just upload any picture to the gravatar site
3. Adjust to the gravatar size and submit.
   
4. Clear the cookies/cache in your browser. That’s it.

After you submit, it should look like below. General mistake is that after uploading the image, people may not click and select it to make it display next to your email address as shown below. For those who are not able to see their gravatar should try this now.

Whenever you post your comment in BlueChampions or in any site that is gravatar-enabled, you’ll see your thumbnail popping up next to your comments. For a demo, see my comment below. Give a face to your nick name. It’s fun to see your thumbnail next to your post right? Just try it out.

Let me speak to them directly. Ok guys! I’m talking to you. I’m talking to those who enjoy reading the arguments and discussions but do not comment. I’d like to know those reasons that keep you away from pouring your points of view in the comment section. And I’d like to see if I can do anything to address those reasons by any kind of improvements.

If you are a non-commenter, before we proceed any further, let’s take this poll.

The way I see it, for a good Chelsea fan who is fan enough to follow the games, be updated and visit the blog to read article/comments, there should be a real good reason for not dropping in their tuppence. I’ve listed down some of the possible reasons that makes people not to comment. See in which category you fall under:

I don’t have time:

Most of you would say this, I guess. When someone has enuogh time to have a taxing day job and run a family at home and also run a blog, you should have enough time to post a comment. Admit it. To read an article and browse through the 50 odd comments, it should take 5 to 10 minutes. For dropping in a three liner should take you less than a minute. What are you saving those 60 seconds for?

I don’t see any point in my commenting:

What would you say when people say ‘is my single vote gonna make a difference in this election?’. In here, for starters, different views or different ways of saying it will mean more interesting discussions. It’s fun to develop your own persona in this community. See, we’ve all not met each other, we don’t know each other but we have some kind of perception of what the other person is, with what we write. Believe me, it’s fun to be known as an XYZ.

I don’t like confrontations with fellow-commenters:

You know what, confrontations can be fun. And the plus is, it will not end up in landing blows. It’s more like the Terry vs Ten Cate match. In the end you can say ‘we are emotional people who tend to get intense once in a while but respect each other immensely’. but I won’t like to the F-word here. And it’s upto you whether you want to further the conversation/argument or to ignore it. If you have the right logic, you might even have guys rallying around you to support you. You guys do that, don’t you?

I don’t see any value added by the comments:

If you think that you have time but also think that comments are waste of time, let me tell you that we are in 2008 where people take blog opinions very seriously. Whenever you read in papers that fans were happy or unhappy, they don’t just refer to the 40,000+ guys in the stadium, it includes all fans who follow Chelsea through all possible means. What makes you think players or managers (or even Roman Abramovich) are not reading what you write. The internet is a great leveller. Even if Roman types the words “Chelsea fan blog” in google search, he’s going to see the blue champions link and might even read. To make you a little more comfortable, Telegraph.co.uk has mentioned BlueChampions as a featured blog under the Chelsea club profile. When this is the kind of coverage blogs get, you should realise that your opinions count.

I don’t know what to comment:

I don’t believe this. When you read the articles or the comments, you must feeling something right? ‘good comment, bad comment, horrible article’ or whatever. We don’t expect an expert analysis or a research theory from you, just what you feel about the match, or a news story or a debate topic or the article or the comments. That’s it.

So guys, come out of your shell. Come up with your ideas and opinions. I want to see new commenters and and if possible, brand new point of views. My message to the existing regular commenters: You guys make my day, everyday. Keep up your good work

So, what’s BC Shout? This is a live chat room where you can discuss football. It’s live as in Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger. Type your nickname and say what you want to. As simple as that. Sometimes, you’d feel like having a longish discussion or argument with someone over here but the comments section is not quite live and also others may not appreciate your one line conversations with someone else in the comments section. So you can set up a time with someone over here to discuss football.

Also this can be used as a live update tool while you are watching the match. No logins required. You can just open the shout page and keep typing in what you feel about how the match goes. Our friends who may not have access to live telecasts can view this page to get the first hand live updates from the choicest of Chelsea fans!

Okay, go shout!

P.S: The plan is get impersonators banned without a second thought, so that you all can enjoy and be safe!

The revolution theme was too flashy and heavy and some of you complained about the black and white theme for being too minimalist. Here we are with a colorful yet simple theme. The name of this theme is ‘Remix’. Of course it is. You might appreciate the simplicity as well as the style. When I saw this Remix theme, I simply could not resist.

Must have become a boring routine for you! Me ditching a familiar theme and coming up with a new theme and talking as if this is what I was waiting for. Well, it’s kind of becoming a routine for me too! But I don’t think we have ever gone a step backward with every change. That’s very important. Here is a customary opinion poll. If you wonder if I really bother about these results, I certainly do. Even when 80% of you feel that a certain theme is brilliant, I still try to find what the 20% is not happy about and check if I can address that. So please take this seriously and do let me know your comments.

Talking about comments, we’ve got a brand new feature which is not brand new because it is an extension of an existing feature. Okay now, we have a page which captures all comments on this blog. What’s special? It captures the comments from all posts, displays the latest 50 comments, each upto 500 characters or so. Nice isn’t it? Well, you could be missing a few features but I can assure you that they are in the pipeline.

I’m not going to explain too much about this theme. I know you’re better served when you help yourself.

After the introduction of identicon, here comes another new signing of BlueChampions blog – Comment Karma. It is important to have a comments section that promotes and appreciates arguments and discussions that are healthy, intellectual and insightful. That’s where Comment Karma can help a bit. You must have figured it out by now. You can now earn or lose karma depending on the quality of your comments. Interesting? Read on. Even otherwise, read on.

What is comment karma? This is a way appreciating or condemning the various comments that are posted in this blog. You can always drop a line that you liked or frowned at someone’s comments but with comment karma, you can literally vote on others’ comments. You can give them either a ‘thumbs up’ or a ‘thumbs down’. You cannot vote on your own comments and you cannot vote on a comment for more than once.

In blogs, there is something called ‘comments to views’ ratio. If there are 10 comments for a certain post and the post has been viewed or read about 50 times, then the ratio is 5. The ratio for BlueChampions ranges from 5 to 10. Generally a majority of the viewers do not comment, for various reasons. That’s how, in some posts, you’d see about 100 votes in the opinion poll but only 20 comments under the post.

Though we interact only with the commenters, there are many other people who read our comments and form opinions and take stances. I hope everyone including the non-commenters, starts using the comment karma option so that the commenter know about the quality of their contribution.

The process is very simple. In the comments section, in the commenters’ panel on the left hand side, do you see a blue thumbs up and red thumbs down? All you got to do is to click one of those. The page won’t refresh or reload. You’d stay where you are but the karma count would have changed. If you find a black thumbs up/down icon, that means either it’s your own comment or you have already voted on this comment.

You read a comment and vote a ‘thumbs up’ when you think that the comments is:

(i) it is well thought-out
(ii) it is well presented
(iii) the tone of the comment is polite and courteous and
(iv) it contains the substance

Remember, you’re voting on the comment and not on the commenter. It is perfectly logical to vote ‘thumbs up’ to someone who has an opposite view to mine. It’s just like telling your rival ‘you played well mate’.

Similarly, you give a comment ‘thumbs down’ when you find a comment that is

(i) in bad taste
(ii) abusive in nature
(iii) just to flame arguments
(iv) annoyingly off-topic

In short, you’re not voting on the opinion of the commenter or how much your views align with the comment. You’re voting only on the usefulness of the comment to the discussion, the quality of the comment, how well it has been constructed and presented. Alternatively, you can even not vote on a comment, if you don’t have a strong opinion on the comment. If someone says “Yeah, I think so too. Anelka will do well” or something like that, you can just leave it alone.

How does this comment karma thingy help? Commenters would realise the value of the comments to the community that we’ve formed here. When you read a comment that impresses you, give them a ‘thumbs up’. It’s certainly makes you feel good, when you realise that for a certain comment of yours, you have about 25 karmas. It’s a nice recognition within this community. It’s quite possible to have 100 comments under an article of which 70 are among just three commenters. The rest of the population might enjoy their banter or can get sick of it. Comment karma is a way of letting them know without really poking your nose in a heated debate or without disclosing your identity.

If we find commenters with consistently good karma values, probably they could get a pleasant surprise! Hope you give a ‘thumbs up’ to this idea!

P.S: I thought I’d let you know that Tony Glover (who writes for ChelseaBlog) would start writing for BlueChampions very soon!