And so a new month rolls around and with it, April Fool's Day. I trust everyone has been having fun enjoying all the pranks. And no, that front page headline you read about Theresa May's government about to collapse wasn't another one.
Neil Warnock, the beleaguered Cardiff City manager, might, on the other hand, argue that April Fools Day arrived a few hours early, as his relegation-threatened side - one which has been fighting against the odds following the morale-sapping Emiliano Sala tragedy - lost to Chelsea yesterday, after the visitors came from behind with a clearly offside César Azpilicueta equaliser, then a Ruben Loftus-Cheek header that followed an incident in which Antonio Rüdiger should have seen red for bringing down striker Kenneth Zohore when through on goal.
As a whole, Chelsea's winning performance stank. I know that's supposed to be the mark of champions, winning despite the odds, but when you get to half time and wished it was the 90-minute mark, having seen nothing to feel in any way accomplished (and paying Sky £8.99 for the pay-per-view privilege), you know you're watching a dreadful game. Cardiff, to be fair, offered little, and sympathy towards Warnock's complaints about yesterday's officials notwithstanding, their looming relegation is sadly inevitable. That doesn't, though, excuse the awful errors of referee Craig Pawson and his assistants. Azpiliqueta and Rüdiger's good fortune masked Chelsea's poor display yesterday, one for which head coach Maurizio Sarri needs to share the blame.
When you win and your supporters still boo you, something must be up. Chants of "We want Sarri out" and "You don't know what you're doing" might be largely reactive, but even the most fickle football fan doesn't call for the manager's head without good reason. Even when Antonio Conte was looking like he was attempting 'death by cop' last season, destroying any value in Diego Costa by sacking him by text and becoming increasingly sulky as the season wore down, the fans were still, largely, behind him. Perhaps winning a league title at the first time of asking helped.
Sarri is still, mostly, unproven. The praise heaped upon him from every grandee in the game for the way he had Napoli playing has largely evaporated, as whatever worked in Serie A isn't in the Premier League. True, Chelsea are still sixth and just a point behind the increasingly Spursy Tottenham; and, yes, that numerically puts Chelsea in with a chance of Champions League qualification. But does Sarri really know what he's doing? Is he really prepared to gamble with the Chelsea future of Callum Hudson-Odoi by publicly admitting that he only watched 20 minutes of his full England debut? To me, that's not a coach trying to apply tough love on a precocious teenage starlet, that's just vindictive grouching. And thus, things continue that way.
Watching Hudson-Odoi's face yesterday, as Eden Hazard, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and then Olivier Giroud went on, spoke volumes. If - and it's probably, now, a case of when - he moves to Bayern Munich, and Chelsea and, indeed, the Premier League, are shorn of a prodigious young talent, we will look back at Maurizio Sarri's obstinacy. Yes, we get it - the lad needs to improve his game. Show me an 18-year-old in any profession who's the finished article? But Sarri is in danger of doing to Hudson-Odoi what Conte did to Costa - diminishing his future value to Chelsea Football Club.
Let's face it, the teenager, along with Hazard, will be off this summer. I can't see the Chelsea board having it any other way, knowing that both players have only a season to run on their contracts. Which makes for an interesting summer ahead. Chelsea will no doubt lose their two prized assets, along with others, and I'm pretty confident that Sarri himself will be on a plane to the Stadio Olimpico, where a certain Associazione Sportiva Roma appear to be coveting the tobacco-loving 60-year-old. And, no, that's not an April Fool joke, either.
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