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CHELSEA FC: GILES SMITH'S MIDWEEK VIEW

/noticias.info/ rom being beaten at Wembley to handing out a thumping in east London - the past two weeks has columnist Giles Smith looking at defeat from both sides now.

I was always a big subscriber to the John Terry theory about the Carling Cup - namely, that you took it extremely seriously, won it, and then used the victory as a springboard from which to make the leap to other, more important trophies.

Now, though, I'm coming round to an alternative theory, which could possibly apply equally well - namely, that you take the Carling extremely seriously, lose it, and then use the defeat as a springboard from which to leap to other, more important trophies.

Actually, I say 'lose it', but, of course, that's lazy, journalistic thinking on my part, because, in fact, we didn't 'lose' the Carling Cup. We finished as runners-up in the Carling Cup - an immensely important distinction, from the point of view of, not pride so much, as history.

In the same way, one ought not to refer casually, as people tend to, to the medals that our players received at the end of last Sunday's match, as 'losers' medals'. That's not what they are at all.

I haven't had the privilege of seeing one up close, but I can almost guarantee you that the word 'loser' appears nowhere on its engraved surface - nor indeed on the surface on any medal ever handed out to a team finishing second in a cup final at Wembley. It is, of course, a 'runners-up' medal, and doubtless it says as much, probably in capital letters.

If it makes sense to talk of 'losers' in this context, they were the teams who went out in the first round. Alternatively, they were the teams, like Arsenal and Liverpool, who insisted on fielding weakened teams in the competition, and therefore blew the doors off what will probably turn out to be their only serious, fan- and board-appeasing trophy opportunity this season.

So let's hear none of this talk of being 'losers' of the Carling Cup. It's not just a matter of dignity. It's a matter of accuracy.

Anyway, back to that theory about using a defeat in the Carling Cup final as a kind of rocket-launcher. Sounds OK, doesn't it? At any rate, if the direct result of losing at Wembley is to come out and cane West Ham 4-0 at Upton Park, then you can begin to see that there might, after all, be a grander purpose behind that miserable Sunday afternoon in the rain.

And if the result is to come out and cane West Ham 4-0 when you were down to 10 men for the whole of the second half, then suddenly that whole Wembley day-out begins to make sense, even, and I may well go and get my programme out of the bin, smooth it out and, possibly, even read it.

What I particularly loved about the Lampard sending-off - quite apart from its value as sheer administrative comedy - is that, in all probability, West Ham spent the interval talking about how they were 3-0 down, but how they could at least, with the odds now numerically shifted in their favour, come out and win the second half, thus salvaging a bit of pride. And they lost that, too!

We all read that stuff last week about the alleged training ground squabbles and the discontent and the supposedly spiralling crisis of confidence. Yet it seems to me that there can be few more obvious signs that a team is in good spiritual health than when that team goes down to 10 men away from home and then, quite unnecessarily, builds on its lead.

True, it wasn't quite as monumental as that time, two seasons ago, on the way to the title, when we went behind at home to West Ham, had a player sent off, and ended up winning 4-1. But it was still emphatically optimism-inducing.

Tottenham, on the other hand, used their Carling victory as a springboard to go and lose 4-1 at Birmingham, a feat which is proving almost impossible this season for any half-way decent side.

A hat trick there for Mikael Forssell, formerly of Chelsea, one couldn't help notice. Seems that he, too, was determined to do something to get over our Carling defeat.

Imagine, though, that the energy and momentum, the rekindled spirit and the special inner belief awoken by finishing as runners-up in the Carling thrust the team onwards, way beyond Upton Park, into the Champions League tonight, on to the FA Cup at the weekend, and then on again, into the still temptingly open league campaign?

Whisper it, but we could even end up thanking Jonathan Woodgate for accidentally getting his face in the way of that Petr Cech punch. notas_de_prensa_archivo