A blog of two halves

The giant screens at the new-look White Hart Lane proclaimed festive cheer.

Frank Lampard isn’t the angriest person in Stamford Bridge. There are 40,000 angrier ones.

Memo to managers facing Chelsea over the festive season. Ask TV to move the match to an early slot.

Rarely is anyone namechecked so often in rival chants as Frankie Lampard…and more will follow, come Saturday.

A cruncher looms this weekend as Chelsea return to the Etihad, scene of February’s squirmingly humiliating 6-0 debacle.

In the middle of a high-pressure spell of five games in a fortnight, Frank Lampard is trying to keep his babes grounded.

We need to learn lessons fast.

Despite the disappointment of defeat at the Bridge to Liverpool last weekend there’s still a surprisingly buoyant mood.

If you thought 5-2 was a diet, think again.

With more than 24,500 in Stamford Bridge for Chelsea Women’s opening league game of the season, the tension that usually characterises London derbies was replaced by a carnival feel.