A genuinely poor performance it was not. It was, however, a rather terrible result.

A myriad of culpable parties

Chelsea again surrender a lead despite being in a position to record a comfortable win. First Wigan, and now Fulham. What the hell. More bemusing, the fact that this latest setback arrived just days after we put in an excellent shift at White Hart Lane in a game we easily could have won.

Bob will be in the house. We hope an impressive victory will be, too.

Team news and the like from 7:45am EDT.

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Chelsea
TBA

Fulham
TBA

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Ah, fixture congestion. A holly, jolly Christmas indeed.

Will Bob be in the mix?

Chelsea begin this oh so very festive period by hosting Fulham at the Bridge. This represents the first of three games over eight days, a favorable span which includes Aston Villa (h) and Wolves (a) that could go far in spreading some holiday cheer around the place.

Who knew there's a full slate of games in the Premier League, Serie A, Ligue 1, Spain (Copa del Rey)? Though to tell the truth, not a whole lot of must-see TV today. Actually the one match today that we will try to watch just kicked off, so this will have to be a very quick post:

Udinese-Juventus at Stadio Communale Friuli (12pmET, Fox Soccer Channel, RAI Internazionale, ESPN3 USA, FOX Deportes): 3rd vs 2nd Udinese with 31 points, two behind Juve, who are in turn a point behind table-toppers Milan.

Fulham were scoreless last weekend at Swansea losing 2-0 to the newly promoted side, and have just been knocked out of the Europa League in midweek. Not the best of times... The lack of goalscoring form is clear, and ... Continue reading →

For archival purposes.

The journey toward winning another one of these starts here.

Team news and the like from 2:30pm EDT.

Teams sheets:

Chelsea
Cech
Ferreira-Luiz-Alex-Bertrand
Romeu-McEachran
Lukaku-Kalou-Malouda
Sturridge
Substitutes: Turnbull, Bosingwa, Terry, Mikel, Lampard, Mata, Drogba.

Chelsea begin play in the Carling Cup on Wednesday night at Stamford Bridge.

It's round three, and we open with a West London derby against Fulham. Second-rate competition against second-rate competition, eh? Not so much.

Will not play

It would make sense for Andre Villas-Boas to make this competition a priority, similar to the way another Portugese did in his first season with the club.

Phew! It was that time again, and as per usual things were manic. We at In The Stands struggled to keep up with all the kerfuffle and constant will-he-wont-he debacles. However, after much journalistic endeavours, we have managed to finally pin down the most significant transfers on a thoroughly exciting last day of the transfer window.

Transfer deadline day has finally arrived and once again it seems that Spurs will be frantically trying to tie up deals for a number of players in a number of positions.

All the usual suspects seem to be involved – Gary Cahill, Scott Parker, Chris Samba and Leandro Damiao but there is a new name emerging and an interesting one at that.

Although we know that Harry Redknapp was in the stands watching Bryan Ruiz play for FC Twente last night, it doesn't seem that the manager was all that impressed with what he saw.

By all accounts, Harry had left before the Costa Rican's late equaliser but son Jamie, speaking on Sky after the game claimed that his Dad had said Ruiz had ‘done OK', but the generally impression was that he failed to make his mark on the Spurs boss.

While the stories that have emerged today concerning Bryan Ruiz have stopped short of suggesting that he has issued a ‘come and get me' plea, they do infer that the FC Twente striker may be holding out for a move to Spurs.

Firstly, the Costa Rican dealt with the rumours surrounding a move to Fulham whose manager Martin Jol would have seen plenty of Ruiz during his time with Ajax.

Over the course of the weekend, rumours of an approach from Spurs for Costa Rican international Bryan Ruiz continued to gain momentum and when you look at his scoring record, it's a surprise that English clubs haven't been linked with the player before.

Ruiz is 26 later this month and currently plays his football at FC Twente in Holland where he averages around a goal every other game.

By Dominic Vieira, writing from Lancaster, England

It's like a 7 year old writing a Christmas list. Madrid based newspaper MARCA are notorious for linking Real Madrid with a series of world class players, how many times has this been done?

By Sean McElroy If there is such a thing as a CONCACAF group of death, I think Group A is it, with three strong teams vying for...oh yeah, probably three spots. But, alas, Group A shall (hopefully) yield some excellent soccer. Off we go! Mexico Nickname: El Tricolor Manager: José Manuel de la Torre Current [.