By LFC Vancouver member Keith Perkins, 5 April 06.

Some jokes:

Q: Name three football clubs that contain swear words.
A: Arsenal, Scunthorpe and F*****g Chel$ki.

Q: What's the difference between a Chel$ki fan and a supermarket trolley?
A: The trolley has a mind of its own.

A scouser walks into a bric-a-brac shop and sees an ornamental brass rat, the sort of thing women of a certain age love to put on the mantelpiece. He thinks "that'll be perfect for me Mam's birthday", so he asks the shopkeeper how much it is.
"£25 for the rat, £100 for the story", replies the man.
"Forget the story" says the bloke, and so buys the rat for £25. He walks off down the road, but has not gone 30 yards when a rat comes up from the gutter and starts to follow him. Soon more of them appear, and in a few minutes the whole street is a sea of rats, all following the scouser, who keeps walking until he comes to a cliff. He throws the brass rat over, and millions of rats follow, one after another, plunging to certain death. The scouser then runs back to shop.....
"Aaaah", says the shop-keeper, "you're back for the story, eh?"
"Screw the story – how much for a brass Chel$ki fan?"

Q: How does Jose Moron-io change a lightbulb?
A: He holds it in the air, and lets the world revolve around him.

Q: What's the difference between a Chel$ki fan and a broken clock?
A: Even a broken clock is right twice a day!

A family of Chel$ki supporters headed out one Saturday to shop for the youngest boy's birthday. While in the sports shop the son picks up a Liverpool shirt and says to his older sister,"I've decided to become a Reds fan and I would like this Liverpool shirt for my birthday".
His big sister is outraged by this and promptly whacks him round the head and says, "Go tell your mother". Off goes the little lad with the jersey in hand and finds his mother.
"Mum?"
"Yes son?"
"I've decided I'm going to be a Reds fan and I would like this Liverpool shirt for my birthday".
The mother is outraged at this, promptly whacks him around the head and says, "Go talk to your father!" Off he goes with the Liverpool shirt in hand and finds his father.
"Dad?"
"Yes son?"
"I've decided I'm going to be a Liverpool fan and I would like this shirt for my birthday".
The father is outraged and promptly whacks his son around the head and says, "No son of mine is ever going to be seen in THAT!"
About half an hour later they're all back in the car and heading towards home. The father turns to his son and says "Son, I hope you've learned something today"
The son says, "Yes, Dad. I have."
"Good son, what is it?"
The son replies, "I've only been a Liverpool fan for less than an hour and I already hate you Chel$ki bastards!"

Cheers everyone, see you on Saturday.

By LFC Vancouver member Keith Perkins, 19 April 06.

The Easter weekend saw a somewhat staggered schedule with matches being played from Good Friday through to Easter Monday. Our originally scheduled Saturday match at Blackburn was thankfully re-scheduled for Sunday. I don’t know who would be stupid enough to suggest that we should play on the anniversary of Hillsborough, but somebody did. (I have a few suspicions, but I won’t say anything without proof.) Obviously, the League will draw up a schedule prior to the start of the season without any consideration for individual clubs’ preferences.

In our case, if we have a match scheduled for April 15th then we simply ask our opponent to agree to an alternative date. Most clubs will agree even if it means that they might be inconvenienced. If not, then personally I would rather see us refuse to play and forfeit the points than to be so disrespectful to the families as to interfere with the annual memorial. Fortunately, as was the case this year, there is always a way around such obstacles.

The match itself was another grind, which was no more or no less than expected. Once again it was Robbie Fowler scoring the only goal of the match to give us three points. On Saturday, Tottenham beat Everton and so we needed the win on Sunday to keep pace and stop them from catching up to us. Then on Monday, Spurs played their remaining game in hand and lost to Man Ure. That means with our 73 points and their maximum of 70 points that we are definitely going to finish in the top three. I would have preferred to see Spurs win, which would have given us a better chance of finishing second. We still have a chance to catch Man Ure in second place but it won’t be easy to make up the six points in only three matches. Our priority now has to be to concentrate on this Saturday’s FA Cup match against Chel$ki. Our remaining three League matches are worth winning, of course, but not if it means missing out on a chance to pick up a major trophy.

We’ve had a total of four Premier League, four Champions League, and one League Cup Final against Moronio’s millionaires. In all of those, we’ve only won one; and that was by one disputed goal. Strangely enough we conceded no goals in four Champions League matches but gave up eight in four Premier League matches. For me, that’s not a concern simply because the past really has no bearing on the future. If we take a close look at those four Premier League matches, we can see how close they really were. The early season 4-1 loss at home was the worst result of the season by far, but even with the lopsided score we were still in the match at 1-2, up to about the 60 minute mark. We were also well in the match at Stamford Bridge where we ended up losing 2-0 and had the shock of seeing Robben collapse to the ground after being shot by a sniper in the stands. Oh, right, it was something else that caused him to collapse; I just can’t remember what that was.

Sometimes you have to be better than your opponent and sometimes you just have to be lucky. It could be said that we were very lucky to beat Chel$ki in the Champions League semi-final last season, because of the disputed goal. I could go over all of the same arguments again but what’s the point? We won, they lost. We scored, they didn’t. If you want to talk about luck then consider this: We lost two league matches against them last season. Both were by one goal, both scored by Joe Cole, both of them deflected shots that fooled Dudek. In the League Cup final, we scored early with a patented Riise net-burster, and then held them off until the last few minutes of the match. A Chel$ki free kick deflected off Stevie G’s head and ended up in the net. 1-1, and off to extra time where we ended up losing 3-2. Who were the lucky ones there?

This coming FA Cup semi-final is more like the League Cup final, or the second leg of the Champions League semi-final, of last season. In both cases it was down to one match with the outcome to be decided on the day with extra time and penalties if necessary. Cup matches are often made for upsets and it is common for results to go against League form - just look at how rare it is to achieve the “double” of League and FA Cup. Last season we played Chel$ki and beat them shortly after they won the League, this season we are playing them in a semi-final just before they are sure to win the League. They may have the same distractions as last season, knowing that Man Ure can still catch them. Especially as they play each other in a couple of weeks time (another case where I hope they both lose, but by then it will hardly matter anyway).

One more thing to consider: When it comes to FA Cup upsets, we’ve been on the wrong end of quite a few. Last year’s FA Cup third round loss to Burnley was the most recent. Some of you will remember the agony of watching us lose to Wimbledon in the 1988 final. In that season, we had an amazing run of 29 matches unbeaten from the start of the season. We finished off in style with a memorable 5-0 win at home to Nottingham Forest and were Red-hot favourites to do the double. But on the day, we just weren’t good enough. A more illuminating example took place in the 1989-1990 season. In mid-September, we beat Crystal Palace 9-0 at home. That was a real wipe-out with 8 players on the score sheet. Later in the season, in January, we played them away and beat them 2-0. So far so good, we went on to win the League that season. We obviously had the easy ability to beat them, with an aggregate 11-0 score in the two League matches. Then came the FA Cup semi-final. We lost 4-3 after extra time. For me, that’s more of an omen than anything. Just compare the results we’ve had against Chel$ki this season in October and February.

Rafa has had a good run of FA Cup success against stubborn opponents this year. Just think of Man Ure and Birmingham in the League, with no wins in four matches against each of them over his first two seasons. Then think again of our League results against Chel$ki. This time it’s our turn!

Drop us a line and let Keith know what you think of this article

As most of you might have found out via email last week, author Paul Tomkins has offered LFC Vancouver members a discounted rate on his new book Red Revival. Paul wrote last year's "Golden Past, Red Future" which was an excellent read, and his articles appear on the official site on a weekly basis as well as other sites such as RAWK.

If you're interested in buying it let us know and we'll do a bulk order. We'll save money on shipping from the UK this way, and all together it should come to $25 CDN which is reasonable, hopefully even less (it's hard to say without knowing how many books will be ordered). If we get 10 people interested we'll go through with the order, and we'd like to thank Paul Tomkins for the offer.

On the first anniversary of Istanbul, 25 May of course, there's a game between the Brazil U20 team and Canada's U20 team right here in Vancouver. We have had tickets offered to us via the Vancouver Whitecaps for $20 each and that includes all the service charges and everything. It's in the Bronze area (which is more fun if you ask me). If you're interested let us know and if we have 15 people we'll get the tickets. Let us know over the weekend, at the Chel$ki game would be ideal.

Also, let us know if you're interested in tickets to the inaugural game of the Whitecaps tournament that goes on sale soon, featuring Cardiff as well as the Indian national team and China's U20 team. We could get a deal on those as well. And let us know how you'd feel about discounted Whitecaps tickets for LFC Vancouver members.

If anyone has anything else to say (buy/sell, jokes, rants, raves, whatever) drop us a line.

P Gill

send us an email if you have anything to announce, sell, or would just like a rant/rave.