‘Unconvincing’ is our middle name now. A nervy 1-0 win against QPR has further confirmed it. At least we’re still in the cup. There were some decent attacking moves from our side and while they were nice to see didn’t actually produce a goal for us. We needed something like a penalty and we got exactly that. Still think it was a soft penalty and you would see them not called more often. The way I see it, it’s a penalty nevertheless as Sturridge was in a position to head the ball into the goal and the push from behind (no matter how light it was) denied him.

I’m a big supporter of same treatment for events and incidents inside and outside the penalty box. It’s sometimes sickening to see the fouls during set pieces that don’t get called because they are inside the box and the referees seem to think it’s okay for such things to happen in the box. If anything the rules for the incidents inside the box should be tighter. So, this is a penalty. And for all the pushing and shoving that denies our players during set pieces, we need more such penalties to offset.

The game had a fantastic backdrop in the form of John Terry vs Anton Ferdinand racial abuse incident. There was a big aniticipation on what would happen in the handshake ritual. Will Anton and Terry shake hands or not? Will the whole QPR teams refuse to shake hands with Terry? It’s quite clear that JT’s handshake list is becoming shorter by the day. Being the captain, leader and legend, he needs to be more careful and wary of his on-pitch and off-pitch behaviour. He’s not proven guilty but being aware and careful would have saved him and the club a lot of time and effort and focus could just have been on football.

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How about a quick round-up on football news and rumours? I used to do such round-ups before on this blog where I’d pick on the top football news and add my tuppence to them. Either I felt like doing one today or I want to start this as a feature. I’m so fickle I don’t really know which one of these and if it would stay that way! Anyway, I do consume a lot of football news and rumours and of course, have my reactions to them. What better place than this blog to capture them all?

We need to remind ourselves that the transfer window is open because there’s hardly any business. Yeah I know, the big transfers don’t happen in January. Only that Chelsea have made transfers worth £100m or more in the last three winter transfer windows. So far the big transfer news is the re-signing (resist your temptation and don’t read it ‘resigning’) of Thierry Henry with Arsenal. No doubt he’s a great premier league player. He’s also a player I love to hate. Huge respect for him but never liked him. I’m sure he will be useful at Arsenal this time around too.

But consider this: Arsenal FC have gone and installed a Theirry Henry statue in the stadium and Henry re-signs for Arsenal. So he will be walking past his statue as he comes in for another session of training. How odd is that? There is already some fears among the fans of Henry that if he fails in this stint the last memory of a spent force or a fallen giant that cut a sorry figure. I’m guessing he will do well if he has a very clear role – a role that will support and not lead the attacks.

@StupidFootball “Wow. It looks exactly as I left it!”- Thierry Henry on seeing Arsenal’s trophy cabinet.

We have also been waiting for Harry Redknapp to sign David Beckham, haven’t we? Looks like Beckham was going to PSG to unite with Ancelotti but that has died down. He’s still a free agent though. Just wondering how will Chelsea operate with someone like Beckham with that crossing and longpassing ability! Meanwhile, Ganso was rumoured with Spurs but Redknapp has quashed all that with a strange rebuttal. Harry says he doesn’t know who Ganso is! He’s quoted saying “Ganso? I have never heard of him. I don’t know him, where does he play? What position? I don’t get to Brazil much. We got Sandro from there but other than that, no”. How sad is that?

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There goes the FA Cup. Another defeat at home. Now please don’t call me a hater but this is terribly sad. The buck certainly stops with the manager.

I didn’t get to see the match. Will watch the recording later on. Hoping that WXWAX comes up with the match reaction post otherwise I’ll gather my rants and ramblings later tonight.

Don’t moan anywhere else. This is our space. Try to cheer up!

The damn finally burst.

On Sunday Chelsea scored as many goals as they had in their previous seven matches combined.

2 months of frustration. And 7 glorious goals.

Poor old Ipswich Town, a team in disarray, were the whipping boys. 3 goals in the first half alone. And not a chance that Chelsea would let up. Not this time. Not after the pain and humiliation they’ve endured. They bombarded Ipswich with 18 shots on target. That’s 15 more than they managed against Wolves.

Said Ipswich’s interim manager Ian McParland, “The boys are a bit shell-shocked… we were either going to give a good account of ourselves or take a right thrashing. Unfortunately it was the latter.”

2 goals for 21 year-old Daniel Sturridge. That makes seven in the last five days, including his reserve match bonanza midweek. Sturridge has always scored against lesser opponents, never against the best. But surely in this time of need the young man is making his case for an opportunity to start against the big boys?

“Every player has to be ready when the moment arrives,” said Ancelotti. “Daniel deserved to play and did well. In the future he’ll have opportunities.”

2 goals for Lampard. Late in the match, perhaps. But also vitally important for his confidence as he comes back from a devastating sequence of injuries that have robbed him of almost half a season.

A goal for Anelka, his first in ten matches, and one for the profligate Kalou. An own goal for Carlos Edwards to put a cap on Ipswich’s woeful day. And by all accounts (since none of us could watch the game on television) a fine game by youngster Josh McEachran.

In all, three of the younger players got a start including Patrick van Aanholt, who left with a “slight hamstring tear” to be replaced by another youngster, Jeffrey Bruma. Cynics (who, me?) will note that this is the first senior game in which the team hasn’t conceded a goal while Bruma’s been on the pitch this season. Again, all of this against a slumping opponent near the bottom of the second division. But it will nevertheless encourage fans who believe that Chelsea’s younger players deserve more playing time.

So what can we read into this? Did the big win save Carlo Ancelotti’s job? Will it spark a Premiership revival? Will Chelsea flow with confidence and more goals going forward?

I think we can safely say that Blackburn Rovers aren’t looking forward to Saturday’s visit to the Bridge. But beyond that it might be dangerous to take too much from a single game against an over-matched opponent.

“When we scored the first goal, everything was okay. But we have to play more games to say the bad moment has gone,” said Ancelotti.

Roman Abramovich flies into London this week for talks with Ancelotti. No-one seems to think he’ll sack him. In fact, fans gave Carlo a nice chant near the end of the game.

“It’s very nice, obviously, to hear the fans like that,” he said. “We all have to be close, and the fans showed fantastic support today.”

Presumably Roman’s meetings will center around player needs and costs. BlueChampion will delve deeper into that later this week, so watch this space.

For now what we can say is that it appears that Ancelotti and not the bungling board will have the loudest voice in the transfer discussion. As we discussed in mid-December, that’s a great sign for Ancelotti’s future with the club. And it may also portend more suitable signings than were made over the summer.

But all that’s in the future. For now, it’s a giant sigh of relief. The second-biggest FA Cup win in Chelsea’s history (the biggest was a 9-1 victory against Worksop in 1908.)

Tension has been removed from the locker room and the practice field.

Today, at least, all is right with the world.

Finally found video of the goals. I hope it stays up long enough for you to see it.

Without pain, is their pleasure? Without want, is there satiety?

Without the bitter taste of defeat, would victory taste as sweet?

Sports fans aren’t known for being philosophical. They’re known for booing losing teams and leaving grandstands empty.

But they’re not really angry. They’re protecting themselves against the pain of losing, even if it’s losing by association. The angriest, most disillusioned fan still keeps a wary eye on their team, daring to nurture the dream that something good might happen.

Liverpool won 11 First Division titles in 18 years in the 70′s and 80′s. A magnificent record. But if they win Premier League next year, which do you think will have given a fan the greatest pleasure: the 1989 title which ended their amazing run, or the 2011 title, their first in more than 20 years? I think we know the answer.

You can’t truly enjoy winning without first having experienced losing. That’s why Jose Mourinho is so exalted. He brought Chelsea their first league title in 50 — 50! — years. Since then, Blues fans have come to expect their team to win. But didn’t last season’s title taste sweeter than 2006′s? A four year wait will do that for you.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that sometimes we need to eat our veggies. The club is going to lose sometimes. It won’t taste good. But it’s necessary and inevitable. Manchester United seem like a fixture at the top of the table these days. Did you know they didn’t win a league title between 1966 and 1992? Not a one. 26 years without topping the First Division. Even had a visit to Division Two.

So Chelsea won’t win the Premiership this season. Right now not even a Champions League spot is assured. Consider it a healthy dose of broccoli. Eat it with a smile and a hopeful look to the future.

Whatever you do, don’t look to Saturday’s home game against Ipswich Town in the FA Cup as a barometer of the club’s performance. It’s true that the FA Cup is the only remaining domestic competition Chelsea could hope to win. So it’s suddenly more important than it used to be. Nevertheless, I can’t imagine we’ll see too many Chelsea regulars playing. These guys need rest after the intense holiday schedule.

And Ipswich just fired manager Roy Keane and are in a bit of disarray. So the struggling NPower Championship team is not a very good measuring stick.

Perhaps the most interesting story Sunday is whether Daniel Sturridge can take his 5-goal form from a midweek reserve game and translate it into another FA Cup goal, something that’s become his specialty. The other “kids” should get more playing time as well. I would imagine we’ll see Bruma and van Aanholt at the back, along with Kakuta and McEachran in the middle. The senior players will likely be on the bench ready for a rescue in case things get sideways.

Which they might, in this broccoli of a season.

Ready to make some history, eh? Let me be honest with you. I’m not too much into this double of premier league title and an FA cup title. A double of premier league and champions league would be something very special. I’m not undermining the importance and challenge of winning an FA cup title by any means. It’s a great effort to win the FA cup when you are also draining mentally and physically with premier league exploits. It’s just this double does not sound as big to me as it’s made out. The one thing this double reiterates is Chelsea’s dominance in the domestic level. When a team wins the premier league and the FA cup, that’s a conclusive proof of their superiority in the country.

I’ve bee saying in this blog for many weeks now that FA cup was not the priority at all when the premier league was yet to be won. Hindsight says we have managed both these pursuits very well. Now that we are in a final, against Portsmouth, you just have to go there and win it and call it a double. In terms of desire, both teams could be equally passionate about winning ‘this’ trophy. Portsmouth wants to win this trophy so they can end this wretched season on a high. Having been relegated, they have the opportunity to topple the premier league champions (oh yeah, that’s us, Chelsea!) while they’re walking out the door.

Chelsea wants to win this title so they can be 7th team ever achieving this for the 11th time in English football history. The rarity does make it a great feat but I still wonder why has it happened on only so few occasions. By winning the double, Chelsea can formally announce that Jose Mourinho’s ghosts have been exorcised. In the past few seasons, Chelsea haven’t spent much in the market. In fact, Chelsea has ended up spending less than clubs like Spurs and Sunderland. This double would also be a great re-instatement of fact that we have a great squad already. And the double means more purchasing power for Carlo Ancelotti.

I’m excited to see Carlo winning things and thereby getting a free hand on whom to buy and whom to sell. As subtly put by Ron Gourlay, Roman would still like to question and challenge transfers, not with an intention to approve or disapprove, but just to ensure that they all agree on what’s good for the club and that they are on the same page. Ancelotti winning the double in his first season in England makes him the Don here. That means more respect, more freedom and more control. So, winning the double could be a fantastic finish for an outstanding season for Carlo.

The season’s not over, the world cup has not started but the transfer rumours are all over the place – Ashley Cole to Barcelona, Essien to Real Madrid, Ibrahimovic to Chelsea, Fernando Torres to Chelsea etc. You can know my views on the transfer rumours and possibilities on www.twitter.com/bluechampion. As I’m on twitter practically all the time, I’ll also break news as soon as they are available from any source. Okay, let’s get back to the finals.

Apart from toppling the champions on their last day of a relegated season, Pompey’s other motivation could be that Grant would like his little revenge over Roman. We saw Jose Mourinho doing one over Roman in the champions league. Grant would love to do the same. What’s more satisfying for Grant than beat Roman’s champions with his relegated side in cup final? I think Pompey dream run would come to a sad end on Saturday, just like what happened to Fulham this week. I fully believe Chelsea would win and win emphatically. With Chelsea in this form, ‘cupsets’ just don’t happen. I know Grant is one lucky manager (not a snide remark but a statement of fact) but the match would not be decided on these moments. The moments of luck can only tilt the matches that are even. I think Chelsea would dominate the proceedings on the pitch and the scoreline would exactly reflect that.

Would I play the youngsters? No way, not until the match is secured. Having come this far, this is no time for experiments. We have great talents but tomorrow we’ve got a job to do. If we get to a stage of comfort like we got against Wigan last weekend, I’d surely bring in youngsters to get the feeling and experience of being at the Wembley in a cup final. These are moments that connect the young players more to the club and the team. We have a first team that can do the job in the first half so I think we’d see some young players or Carlo can sentimentally allow certain players to make their last appearance or such stuff.

So what’s the worrying thing for me this Saturday? It’s not Terry’s fitness (or his father’s confession), it’s not Chelsea’s complacency, it’s not Avram’s ass, it’s indeed the Wembley pitch. With world cup around in a few weeks, and a rain forecast for Saturday, we don’t want to lose anyone for injuries because of this bad Wembley pitch. The one good thing about Wembley is, Didier Drogba is gonna score.

Chelsea will be deemed the home team for this match and hence will wear blue while Portsmouth will play with white shirts and pink shorts (whoever thought of it!). So there’s a good news for you (while I want to hide the bad news that Chris Foy would be officiating this match). Those who are psyched out at the lovely dark away kit of ours can sleep peacefully tonight as we line up in blue. Let’s gear up for the last piece of action from the Champions (oh yeah, that’s us again). Sorry if I’m arrogant, I think we will win this one 4-0. If Drogba scores them all, he reaches the 40-goal mark for this season. Any bets on this? Let’s go do it. The Champions for The Double!