Firstly, in a rare moment of magnanimity, I will say now that I almost, half agree with some of the chest beating rhetoric we have seen in the UK press today regarding last night's Chelsea 'heroes'. It would be churlish and mean-spirited to deny that there was something wonderful (in the true sense of that word) about watching the improbable unfurling from the impossible in the second half of a thoroughly entertaining game...
However, while I can understand Chelsea players and fans wanting to see an amnesty on the yellow cards shown to their players in the semi-final against Barcelona, I can't help but feel like those suspensions somehow represent the true legacy of the kind of football Chelsea played over the two legs of the match. They didn't play, they defended, and when you defend without the ball for 80-odd percent of a football match, you give away fouls. You give away yellow cards. I cannot see a more logical progression of events than one whereby an entirely negative approach to a match (never more cynically revealed than in Terry's sending off) over both legs results in you having players suspended because they have basically been asked to play against the law of averages with the amount of tackles they have had to make.
Cruel, unjust and unfair is how some Spanish reporters labelled last night, and to an extent that is as true as it ever is in sport, a notoriously arbitrary moralizer, but a sense of justice is visible through those suspensions and for that reason they must stand.
Oh and also a small part of me is pleased to note that Fabregas has still got that cabinet maker on hold...
Like I say, magnanimity has never been my long suit.
