For Arsenal Youth Read Chelsea

On Wednesday 22nd August, Vital Chelsea ran an article entitled ‘For Chelsea Read Arsenal’, in which our lovely London neighbours had a little snipe at the fact our home game versus Sparta Prague had gone on general sale (You can read the article Here.)

The Lotto Chavs reckoned we were due a bit of stick after slating them for always having tickets on general sale. Despite the fact that this was a second leg qualifier in which we were already 2-0 up, in a stadium with 20,000 more seats than their hole, that actually sold out anyway, they still thought they had a point.

Now, can you guess where I’m going with this?

You bet your arse you can.

Last night Chelsea faced Rosenborg in the first game of the group stages of the Champions League at Stamford Bridge. Despite advertising this fixture on general sale, the Chelsea faithful only managed to russle up a pathetic, yes that’s pathetic, 24,973. When you consider the capacity of SB is a more than adequate 42,000+, then this really is a poor attempt.

Now, if you look back to earlier in the year, the Arsenal youth team faced Man Utd in the semi final of the Youth FA Cup. Demand for the game was so high that the fixture was moved to Ashburton Grove the accommodate the Gooners.

When you bear in mind that this was just a youth team game, the fact that over 38,000 Gooners were in attendance on a night that the first team squad took on Aston Villa at Villa park (all sold out on a weekday night btw) is just astonishing, putting the Chelsea boys completely to shame.

At the end of Merlin’s article, he enquired if anyone ‘had any humble pie?’, well I think for this one we’ll need to build a brand new humble pie factory, complete with 100’s of employee’s working overtime till Christmas day.