From his vantage point in the Matthew Harding Upper, supporter and columnist Giles Smith is maintaining his sanity, even when others (Michael Ballack not included) are losing their cool.


Call me a party-pooper, at what was clearly, in so many ways, for Chelsea supporters, a time for streamers, dancing and general unbridled joy-making. But, walking away from the Bridge on Saturday, even in the midst of the euphoria, the moment my mind suddenly swung back to was this one: home to Wigan, Monday 14 April, 94th minute of 95, Emile Heskey.

Because (I found myself thinking) imagine if Emile had done what he tends to do on those kinds of occasions, and skied it. We would now be two points clear at the top of the league and the masters of our own destiny in both of the season's big competitions, rather than furtively wondering about the possibility of Emile doing something similar to Manchester United in two weekends' time.

(Can we bank on it? Why not? Funny old game, etc. But then, lightning doesn't strike twice, they say. And, to be fair, in Emile's case, some of us were more than a touch shocked to see it strike once.)

Anyway, I caught myself thinking this way, about the Heskey moment, and feeling that little nag of frustration - even as other, less neurotic people were skipping through the streets, waving flags, honking horns, etc. - and I don't mind admitting I felt a flush of shame, and put a stop to it immediately.

For one thing, that way madness lies and, having started out relatively sane, soon thereafter you are gibbering and chewing on the sleeves of your clothes. The ifs and buts game is never worth playing, largely because it's potentially never-ending.

You start deconstructing the Heskey moment, and the next thing you know you're thinking back to that ball that freakishly bounced off Ricardo Carvalho's back at White Hart Lane, conveniently teeing up Robbie Keane.

And so on, and so on, until you're essentially arguing that, if things had gone differently at every single stage and we had won ALL our games in 2007-08, we'd be? well, actually, I can't be bothered to do the maths, but you know what I mean.

But more importantly, it's a bit ungrateful to think that way, isn't it? And a bit greedy? Right now, of all times, when a team which has stuck together through a strangely disrupted season, and whose chances of achieving anything worth remembering were openly written off six months ago, finds the spirit to stick around, give us the immense pleasure of a thoroughly deserved victory over Manchester United, and draw itself level on points at the top of the league with just two games to go.

You kind of assumed the force was with Manchester United, regardless of Saturday's result. But then you saw the way they reacted to the defeat. And you began to wonder. The reaction, in particular, to the awarding of the penalty was interestingly unhinged.

Here's a ref who has the audacity to award a penalty against a United player for handling the ball in the penalty area, and all hell breaks lose in his face. This is something our players were being accused of a couple of months ago, but on Saturday I though we saw it done properly.

And then afterwards, of course, there were the attempts to delay the penalty which, amazingly, got Van der Sar alone booked, when it seemed to me there were a few others in the queue for a carding. Certainly the sight of Silvestre chucking grass into the air, directly in front of Michael Ballack, in some kind of act of psychological warfare which possibly only the defender himself really understood, will live long in my personal memory bank of 'Unsporting Conduct I Have Witnessed'.

Ballack, of course, kept his head together. Clearly what some people mistook for indifference in him, early on in his time at Chelsea, is, in fact, extreme cool. World class cool.

But didn't United's reactions take you back? Back to March 22, I mean, when Sir Alex Ferguson came out solidly behind the new 'respect the ref' initiative.

'We had a pivotal moment some years ago,' the United manager explained to the press, 'when our players surrounded Andy D'Urso. I went off my head with them about that. I thought it was ridiculous and it never happened again. We tell them to shake the hand of the referee at the end of the game. Sometimes it's difficult, but they have to do it. The haranguing of referees is absolutely ridiculous, we know that. It's not right. We see it as an issue. Since the business with Andy D'Urso, we've not done anything like that.'

This, of course, was less than a fortnight after Ferguson himself, along with his assistant, Carlos Queiroz, had been brought up by the FA on an improper conduct charge for remarks they made about Martin Atkinson (who refereed United's FA Cup defeat by Portsmouth and 'failed' to give them a penalty), including, from Fergie, the following splendidly lit firework: 'Managers get sacked because of things like that, and he's going to referee a game next week.'

After the final whistle on Saturday, I found myself watching Fergie's white shirt barrelling across the pitch towards the referee. I actually, for one sublime moment, thought he was going to lump him, but he turned out to be on a peacekeeping mission, pulling away Van der Sar, among others. Still struggling to get that message about shaking hands across, it seems. Well, I hope he keeps up his efforts, is all I'll say.

Meanwhile, you can't by any means take for granted our part of the bargain in the season's big climax, which is to get all six points from two matches including Newcastle away.

A couple of games into the new Keegan era, I'd have backed us to go there and not only win but also make up the goal difference on United as well. Newcastle don't seem quite such an easy touch, though, now, inconveniently. It will be hard, I've no doubt. But everything that's worth doing always is.

What's that? The Champions League semi-final second leg? Tonight? So it is! Blimey. It never stops around here, does it?