closed Swansea 2-2 Chelsea

[Eidur the Spider 4,515]

Not his biggest fan but thought Oscar had a decent game today. 

[kellzfresh 7,226]

We created more than enough chances to win this match and restricted Swansea from creating much. No one should blame Conte for anything, he did well. 

Our defense yet again has cost us points. Courtois with a stupid tackle and cahill dwelling on the ball too long. 

Costa is a good striker but concentrate on the match ffs. We wasted 15mins of the 2nd half on the Costa show, fouls, diving and antics and we lost momentum after that. If we just continued our passing patterns instead of looking for a red we would have dominated early and could have gotten that 2nd goal. 

Hazard was good in the first half, poor in the 2nd.  Why doesn't he shoot??? Argh!!!!

Willian and Oscar with their usual average, ok, 5/10 performance. Matic as usual a non-existent entity when we attack. 

But we should have put our chances away, we badly need a midfield goalscorer. Costa as the only player that can score goals in our starting lineup is not good enough. It's not good enough. It is a major weakness in this team. 

Oh and the ref is a useless bag of ****

[Special Juan 27,103]

We only ever seem to really turn the screw when we go behind. at 1-0 we went through the motions without lacking the killer instinct. Conte has a lot of work to do with this side of the game, when we are in command we need to raise the tempo again and kill off teams.

[xPetrCechx 13,546]

[coolhead23 1,146]

Not sure if it is just me ... But I feel we were complacent at time, just not players but should go out to our coaching staff as well ... We kept slowing the tempo just like we did under Jose ... Conte has lot to do but wouldnt blame him for the 2 goals conceded, only thing that can be at fault is subs should have come in earlier. 

However it is big improvement overall in the way we play ... players have decent level of freedom despite needing to have discipline to their roles. Long way to go but we are on a positive track. 

[nono 791]

I'm not that upset as I'd be last season though. So that's an improvement. 

What sucks though is that Arsenal have had 3 points gifted to them from penalties and here we are being robbed of 2 points. That's basically a 5 point swing from referee decisions alone and that's just 4 games into the season ! 

[nono 791]

46 minutes ago, Special Juan said:

We only ever seem to really turn the screw when we go behind. at 1-0 we went through the motions without lacking the killer instinct. Conte has a lot of work to do with this side of the game, when we are in command we need to raise the tempo again and kill off teams.

I thought of making a thread on this but didn't. It's really weird and you can count on it with us like clockwork. There is no urgency to the play unless they go behind. If we had played like we did in the last 15 minutes all game we would have battered them.

[Barbara 15,149]

Marriner made mistakes

Conte made mistakes

Costa made mistakes

Eden made mistakes

Cahill made mistakes

Courtois made a (forced?) mistake

We can't help the referee robbing us - as usual. Diego is a striker, missing goals is part of the job. Hazard is already much better this season than he's been at any point last season and I like where his evolution is going. The only things we can change is Conte stubbornness on not playing Cesc and taking way too long to change the team and our terrible defenders. Cahill or Terry must leave the first team (in an ideal world, both should be bench warmers, but we don't have good defenders at all). We should have won and I think these are the kind of points we shouldn't lose. We've only played terrible, terrible teams so far, I can only imagine when we get to face decent opposition. 

Conte needs to take a few more risks. It almost looks like we don't have a big ambition, as if the title was City's already. We should be more incisive especially because being in the top 4 alone is a hard task. Moving on from the lost points, but Conte has to start changing things either in the lineup or much earlier in the match than near the 80th minute.

[Laylabelle 9,296]

Dodgy ref performance then again Costa could've been booked for driving and gone...

So frustrating!! So many chances wasted and our set pieces wtf..still it's a point. That ground is shite with us and didn't lose..

 

[mccg 1,528]

1 hour ago, Laylabelle said:

Dodgy ref performance then again Costa could've been booked for driving and gone...

So frustrating!! So many chances wasted and our set pieces wtf..still it's a point. That ground is shite with us and didn't lose..

 

Hazard was average ,too many players who played internationals played, and Fabregas etc on bench??? But yeah 2pts dropped  end of

[Azpinator 2,325]

Fucking Swansea. From the ball-boy incident to this. We absolutely have to smash them at the Bridge!

If only there was a way we could smash Andre Marriner as well.

[Blue-in-me-Veins 4,067]

Think a lot of people are criticizing the "usual suspects" just because we drew. 

We currently lead the league in ExpectedGoals against at about 1.79GA/game. And Swansea created jack shit all match before we fell behind 2-1.

Fabregas wasn't needed at all before their equalizer. We had chances to kill off the match, and didn't take them. And that's the greatest takeaway for me. 

As much as I hate to see Matic AND Kante playing aginst the lower teams in the league, we were still able to create more than enough real goal scoring opprotunities. 

[Tomo 21,681]

16 minutes ago, Blue-in-me-Veins said:

Think a lot of people are criticizing the "usual suspects" just because we drew. 

We currently lead the league in ExpectedGoals against at about 1.79GA/game. And Swansea created jack shit all match before we fell behind 2-1.

Fabregas wasn't needed at all before their equalizer. We had chances to kill off the match, and didn't take them. And that's the greatest takeaway for me. 

As much as I hate to see Matic AND Kante playing aginst the lower teams in the league, we were still able to create more than enough real goal scoring opprotunities. 

Remember that Arsenal vs Barca match were Barca took apart Arsenal on a big level for 20 mins but Almunia just kept saving? Probably the best 20 minute period of football ever (certainly in modern era) despite no goal.

I genuinely believe that if we did that for 90 minutes (I know that will never happen just talking hypothetical) yet kept getting denied by keeper, people would come here and rant about our "shit" performance even tho it was the perfect performance and one of the best in history despite it ending 0-0.

I can get the frustration at the result, but their has been a lot of encouraging signs under Antonio so far.

[DYC. 7,542]

2 minutes ago, Tomo said:

Remember that Arsenal vs Barca match were Barca took apart Arsenal on a big level for 20 mins but Almunia just kept saving? Probably the best 20 minute period of football ever (certainly in modern era) despite no goal.

I genuinely believe that if we did that for 90 minutes (I know that will never happen just talking hypothetical) yet kept getting denied by keeper, people would come here and rant about our "shit" performance even tho it was the perfect performance and one of the best in history despite it ending 0-0.

I can get the frustration at the result, but their has been a lpt of encouraging signs under Antonio so far.

That was amazing. I smile whenever I think about it.

Barca's first half, in the first leg I think, vs City in 14/15 was almost as good. Orgasmic stuff.

Didn't see the full 90 (end of the 2nd half) but yeah. It was frustrating but there's no reason to panic as the team should have won. I still think Cesc needs to come into the team asap though.

[Tomo 21,681]

1 minute ago, DYC. said:

That was amazing. I smile whenever I think about it.

Barca's first half, in the first leg I think, vs City in 14/15 was almost as good. Orgasmic stuff.

Didn't see the full 90 (end of the 2nd half) but yeah. It was frustrating but there's no reason to panic as the team should have won. I still think Cesc needs to come into the team asap though.

Its why I'm hating Pep in the PL, the bloke has reinvented football completely and his philosophy benefits his clubs not only while he's there but years after aswell.

However thankfully I believe we have one of the few managers capable of keeping pace with him over 38 game's, if not this season certainly next when he has had a year with his team plus few more new player's.

[The_Flash 1,144]

I've taken some time to calm down from that joke of a game. I honestly don't know why any bothers when Ref's engineer result so much as they do. Yesterday goalie takes out Rooney blatantly and no penalty.

That guys falls over Thibout and they get a penalty and then that second goal was a disgrace if that Ref couldn't see that and the linesman for that matter can't see that tackle on Gary they shouldn't be in the job.

Imagine if that had been us?

Does ANYONE think that would have stood for us??

Then Fabianski's tackle on Diego was a disgrace and no penalty for us.

Also some of the other tackles by Swansea were awful and it seemed to be us constantly getting booked. 

It was disgusting and sad we couldn't snatch a winner and so gutted to hear John left on crutches

I read this online from Sutton who I almost never agree with but today I do 

"...Chelsea deserved to beat Swansea on Sunday and they feel they were robbed of victory by the referee. It is extremely difficult to argue with them.

Yes, Antonio Conte's side will rue the chances they missed in their 2-2 Premier League draw at the Liberty Stadium, but the bottom line is that Andre Marriner cost them two points.

Marriner's decision to allow Swansea's second goal was an absolute shocker. There is no other way of putting it, because Leroy Fer's foul on Chelsea defender Gary Cahill before he scored was as blatant as can be..." Chris Sutton BBC Sport 

 

[Chelsea Legend 11 4,062]

Andre Marriner... Wow how he is still getting Premier league matches is beyond me. 

This is the same guy that was standing 3yds away from Aguero when he elbowed Reid in the throat. How many things is he gonna miss before the FA demote this wingnut for poor performances??? 

If the last two game weeks aren't deemed unacceptable for the standard of the Premier League I don't know what is! I mean forget the TWO fouls on Cahill that led to the goal, what about Amat's 6 fouls? 3 after already being cautioned? 

The reason the Premier League is considered a tough league has more to do with the standard of refereeing than it does parity amongst the teams in the competition. This is quite simply the worst collection of officials in Europe... All of them have this God complex about them and its becoming more and more obvious that something is fucking rotting at the root. Long before Halsey outed his former employers anyone who is even remotely paying attention can see the corruption that exists in the league. 

Utter bullshit.

[Azpinator 2,325]

1 hour ago, Tomo said:

Remember that Arsenal vs Barca match were Barca took apart Arsenal on a big level for 20 mins but Almunia just kept saving? Probably the best 20 minute period of football ever (certainly in modern era) despite no goal.

I genuinely believe that if we did that for 90 minutes (I know that will never happen just talking hypothetical) yet kept getting denied by keeper, people would come here and rant about our "shit" performance even tho it was the perfect performance and one of the best in history despite it ending 0-0.

I can get the frustration at the result, but their has been a lot of encouraging signs under Antonio so far.

West Ham's Adiran's superhuman performance against us about 2 and a half years ago comes to mind. You know, the goalless tie that made Mourinho of all people say that West Ham played 19th century football.