Tuesday 7 May
Chelsea boys keep walking off with the awards: latest player-of-the-season accolades go to Reece James at Wigan and Nathan Baxter at Yeovil.
For all the criticism our academy draws from the media for loaning players out, Cobham graduates make up 5% of the player-of-the-season gongs.
Reece James also bagged goal-of-the-season and Nathan Baxter won five awards including best young player after a season in goal for Yeovil.
Liverpool managed to overturn a nervous looking Barcelona at a raucous Anfield.
Wednesday 8 May
Oh dear, the least deserving Champion’s League semi-finalists will be playing in the final after Ajax stumbled absurdly in the second-half and threw away a three-goal lead.
Fifa upheld the transfer ban. We will still not be able to sign players this summer and will appeal to CAS. Real Madrid and Barcelona have been banned in the past but were allowed to sign players until their appeal was heard.
Fifa have changed the rules because we are Chelsea.
Thursday 9 May
Chelsea 1:1 Eintracht Frankfurt
(Chelsea win 4-3 on penalties)
Phew, after all the other English teams booked their places in European finals with soaring displays of bravery and talent, we booked ours with a typical stumbling display of nervousness and vulnerability.
As it was Eden Hazard’s last kick at Stamford Bridge could be the winning penalty.
The evening started positively when Ruben Loftus-Cheek stroked in a superb opener and it looked like we had Frankfurt where we wanted them.
Sadly, this Chelsea side cannot concentrate for two 45-minute periods in a row and the Germans roared back into the contest in the second-half, equalising and then threatening for the rest of the match.
David Luiz and Davide Zappacosta both showed experience and understanding to clear off the line as we struggled to contain our visitors.
Cesar Azpilicueta then won the tie with a late goal; only for the referee – presumably refs are paid by the hour – to disallow the effort.
Azpilicueta then missed the first penalty but Kepa Arrizabalaga had something to prove after the League Cup final debacle and he did. Trapping one effort fired straight at him and diving well to palm away another. With the added burden of a huge transfer fee the young goalkeeper has looked uncertain at times but has grown into the role as our number 1 and should have a really good campaign next term.
It was a fitting end, if it is a departure, for Eden Hazard but he said afterwards that he didn’t know yet if he would be leaving.
We will play Arsenal in the final in Azerbaijan: – tourist board motto “Our hotel rooms all have modern plumbing and our grain harvest is not as bad as it is sometimes made out to be” – brilliantly there are no scheduled flights between any English airport and Baku in the week before the match.
Still, it is not like Uefa to award finals to repressive regimes involved in torture, holding journalists, human rights workers, lawyers and political opponents in prison. Whatever you do don’t say that Ilham Aliyev is an autocratic shithead in charge of an undemocratic shithole.
At least you will always know the answer to the question: “which is the world’s only capital city below sea level?”
Friday 10 May
Frank Lampard, Cesc Fabregas and others will be scratching their heads this morning. The club have just announced a two-year contract extension for David Luiz, 32.
In itself the new deal is a good one for the club and player. But we have been told, over and over again, that players over 30 are only to be offered one-year deals.
Meanwhile Maurizio Sarri has criticised the charity match we are due to play in New York against the New England Revolution. Clearly nobody at the club thought we had a chance of qualifying for the Uefa Cup final when this match was arranged because flying three-and-a-half thousand miles in the wrong direction doesn’t really set you up for a three-thousand-mile trip in the other.
Saturday 11 May
Reading 2:3 Chelsea
The women secured third spot in a disappointing season with goals from Ji So-Yun, Karen Carney and Beth England. After four and a half years it was Hedvig Lindahl’s last match for the club. We wish her well after 77 appearances.
Derby County lost at home to Leeds in the play-off first leg at Pride Park, while Aston Villa stormed back from a goal down to win 2-1 against West Brom. A Tammy Abraham penalty was the clincher. The goal was his 26th this season, he is the first Villa player to reach 20 goals since Peter Withe in 1980/81. Imagine going nearly 40-years without a decent striker.
Sunday 12 May
Leicester City 0:0 Chelsea
A low-key end to a low-key season. There is almost nothing to report from the game a few stumbles, a couple of saves, but Eden Hazard popped up after the match to say that he has made up his mind about his future but this was not the right time to let everyone know and that it didn’t depend on him alone.
Cryptically that means he wants to leave but has to be sure Madrid are willing to stump up the readies.
Elsewhere and the expected title decider fizzled out after City equalised Brighton’s early goal and then romped away 1-4 to become the first team to retain the title in a decade. Liverpool faces looked bleak as they realised that they’ll possibly win nothing in a season featuring only one defeat.
