Just Be Civilized!

I hope they sing Jose's name. I'll be more confident he ain't coming :)

Its obviously going to be civil,but very hostile. There are better ways to have requested for fans support,not in such an arrogant manner. he just finished his press briefing,and said 'I'm hoping the atmosphere will be great'...Yeah it will Rafa just wait and see.

Singing Joses name is supporting the team how exactly??

Judging from comments i read here since wednesday,am anxiously expectin rafa to be lynched or pelted..hope am disappointed :)

Keep your jose chants to yourselves and ring out the chelsea chants

How funny the world can be,the same fans who boo jose off the pitch in his last game here now desperately want him back.lol

As I said in another article, sing ur lungs out that we are the champions of europe, chant di matteo's name at the 16th minute, sing super frankie lampard and all the exciting songs that makes the players filled with pride all through the game, after the final whistle, boo him all u want if he still clueless

Hahaha @desmond I'm sure that'll happen mate

@nely, I get what u are coming from, as a fan, atimes the question pops into my mind when rafa makes some senseless subs and some disgusting tactics, that I wonder if he wants us to deliberately lose, I keep rationalizing atimes if he wants us to be weaker than we are now just for liverpool to get a better shot at making top 4 this season or next, I see the sitters torres miss and I get more firmer in my believe that they are on a mission to ruin my beloved club, I mean emile heskey as old as he is will bury majority of the chances torres keeps missing and scolar/AVBi as poor as he was while he was still with us, doesn't make meaningless substitutions in the 80-90th minute, NEVER

I get where u are coming from*** sorry nely

Lmao@bluemel

I will just watch the spectacle as it unfolds tomorrow while keeping an eye on the Spurs-Gunners game. I no longer have the emotional fortitude nor interest to invest in this back and forth..the people i pity are the players especially the younglings..players like Lamps and JT have seen worse but for guys like Oscar, Moses, Eden, Ake and even Mata this has to be a nightmare..we will see how it turns out tomorrow.

What constitutes "civil" in this context Merlin?

Typical Rafa, blaming the board for putting 'Interim' beside his name, the word 'interim' was on the contract he signed couple of months back, why is he rejecting it now? The fans has been hostile to him from his first game with us why has it become a problem now?

And the worst part of it all , we have not even played some teams that always step up against us ( eg liverpool ) and you think even if we stop booing we will remain in top 4 ? common lads lets be realistic here , i mean he has done nothing to earn such time , if this was the first would say it is a coincidence but no it is not . Remember materazzi warned us about this

Then continue the boos lets see the difference it would make

You have been brainwashed by Rafa.

It is so incredibly ridiculous to blame poor results on boos. For a start, it's nothing like as bad as the Media make out and secondly, at least it means there's some kind of atmosphere because it's been like a morgue at SB for some years now and frankly, a bit of noise and an atmosphere tends to help lift a home team! Didn't Rafa himself say at the beginning that the hostility would fade as he won us matches? That's about the only sensible thing he has said and of course, if we were winning matches, if we'd won even most of the games we have stuffed up under his 'management', then believe me, there would not be so much as a whisper of disapproval at SB tomorrow. As it stands, the atmosphere tomorrow will be electric and probably more hostile toward Rafa than that first game against City (where we had a taste of how awful things would become under the tactical void that is Rafa Benitez). Since that game, we have heard fans singing for Robbie (not venemous but fans chanting - again, that's called an atmosphere), a few strains of the overly melodious, tinkly and frankly somewhat gay (and certainly not very aggressive) "We don't care about Rafa" song (in no way poisonous but quite clearly in strong support of Chelsea FC and the team) and maybe some boos towards the end when we've cocked it all up again and Rafa's doing sweet FA about it (or maybe swapping a right back for a right back again). If Rafa thinks that constitutes hostile, then I almost feel sorry for him tomorrow. Other than that, it's the usual pro Chelsea and pro individual player songs so how the Hell does that account for the awful results we've had? Interesting how all the criticism comes from the ones who have never attended a football match in their lives, let alone in England or at Chelsea! If anyone wants to criticise the fans, then they should lay into the ones who get on Torres' back because that really doesn't help. No matter how badly he, or any player, is playing, you do everything you can to support and cheer them in the hope that it might pick them up and boost their confidence for the good of the team. The ones berating the treatment of Benitez are precisely the ones that would (if they ever went) hurl abuse at Torres.

Whilst I'm at it, why is everyone in the Press missing the point? Is it deliberate? Take this from a BBC article today: "A section of the club's supporters has been unable to forgive Benitez for his association with Liverpool, or forget the rivalry he formed with then Blues boss Jose Mourinho." - it has absolutely NOTHING whatsoever to do with that. I freely admit I don't like the bloke but there are, have been and will be in future many players and manager who I don't much like but frankly, if they are good at their jobs, I couldn't care less what they're like as a person, I'm unlikely to have any of them round to dinner or spend the evening in the pub with them! The fact is that Rafa is an incompetent manager and he has done absolutely nothing since coming to Chelsea to persuade me otherwise. He only ever opens his mouth to swap feet, the awful results with a quality squad of players strongly indicate that the tactics are not working (neither the game plan from the start nor the fact that he does nothing to change what is clearly not working), his man management is dreadful (he has already ruined Ba who arrived less than 2 months ago with confidence high and scoring goals aplenty) and I see nothing to give me so much as a glimmer of hope that he can turn this horrible slump around. Nothing is guaranteed in football but having gone up to OT for years now feeling like we had every chance of beating them, I find it very hard to imagine anything other than us getting knocked out of the Cup in a couple of weeks. I had hoped we could complete the European set as a sweetener for going out of the CL and thought we had every chance but having struggled badly to inch past Sparta Prague, winning the trophy seems like a pipe dream, even less likely than the CL last season. We have to win every league game up to and including the Sp*rs game now if we are to have any hope of finishing in the top 4 (have you seen our run in from that Sp*rs game on?!) but for the first time in years, I simply can't see us managing to put a run together to go and win such winnable games as West Brom, West Ham and Sunderland at home, Southampton and Fulham away. Rest assured, the fans WILL cheer the team and the players, so there can be no excuses there. We should be so far out of sight of Sp*rs and Arsenal that we could afford some slip ups but we're all over the shop at a time when we can't afford to drop any more points at all. The 5 point gap to the top that was unacceptable when Di Matteo was fired has become 19 and we have finally ceded 3rd position despite strengthening the squad a little in January. The players are the same, the Manager HAS to take responsibility but he is soooo arrogant that he really doesn't believe it's his fault. All I ask Rafa is that if you really are a genius, then prove it, give us a sign of your wonderful management, otherwise please don't wait 'till May, just **** off!

The money and self-aggrandisement but he's blown that by being so crap that he is extremely unlikely to win any of the 5 trophies that were there for the taking! Except he hasn't blown it at all, I forgot for a moment that he hasn't damaged his reputation at all because the poor results are all my fault as a fan for not falling at his feet and worshipping at the alter of Benitez!

@SpanishBlue, you have highlighted my bone of contention with Rafa's attitude, through his rants he just confirmed what has been the fans fear all along when they alleged he doesn't care about Chelsea when he insinuated he would be gone at the end of the season and it would be their loss not his if Chelsea is playing Europa league next season, he was saying the truth just like his friends say, just it only confirmed the fans were right about him too.

This obviously has to do with more than just Rafa's incompetence... it is clearly more of a personal beef/hatred... What if our next manager happens to be as incompetent as Rafa, are we going to do the same thing????

Its definitely the 'agenda' rafa was talkin about in his post match outburst

Spot on Spanishblue. There you go,nicely put. Some people feel this is blind criticism but they obviously just don't get what Rafa is trying to do here. At first it was the opposition team approach in our home games,then it was the lack of squad depth(with Moses and Mikel at the AFCON),then it was the fatigue in the team(with the rate of fixture piled up),and then it was the players attitude on the pitch,now its the fans booing the team. Its absolutely irritating to see the trend of excuses littered all about. The man has not come out for once to say I got it wrong here tactically,its one excuse to the other.

Let's not forget another excuse he has used - the players didn't take their chances and the game would be different. He has used that a few times, especially the games we have lost. So it's also the players fault, not his.