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Unreal pass from Caicedo to James for 3rd goal!

First of all, Nicolas Jackson is outscoring Lukaku in the league over the last couple of seasons, and is already 10x the footballer with the ball at his feet. And he's like 10 years younger. He makes better runs and plays more intelligently. This would be a horrendous downgrade, of the worst kind, and the exact kind of signing that old-Chelsea was famous for. All of this is irrelevant given that he is toxic and would break the dressing room, and make interviews speaking out against the club, the manager, his fellow players, and whoever else he feels like. All while pining for a return to Inter, or a move to Juventus, or perhaps he will announce that actually he has unfinished business at Manchester United. I cannot imagine a worse signing for the summer transfer window than Romelu Lukaku, and by the same thought process the fact that he currently is on our books makes no difference: the priority remains to get rid of him, and he is only still HERE because no one wants him ffs.

75 goals scored in PL this season. Conte title aside most in the last 14 seasons since Carlo. And one game left. Last season we scored 38. We double it. And some say Havertz, Mount, Pulisic are better than our young lads. From 44 points 👉 to 60 or 61 most likely 63. Position 12 --> 6 What a job by Mr. Poch! Cooking 🍳 👩‍🍳 Not to mention injuries. Next season we go over 80 points. Only Arsenal and City finishing over us is acceptable. Also genius project by Boehly and Co. Ahead of it's time. New contract and increase salary?

Santos needs another loan before playing first team at Chelsea. Our team isn't anywhere near WC level. Even with Conor's flaws, he's still helped us get to a decent position this season and it's not a bad thing to have an academy player in the first team.

Reece is just stupid, and him missing games next season won't matter as Gusto is both fitter and will offer much more in the future. Good win all told though, Palmer's header was great and Caicedo out did the booing as he was excellent VAR is not the issue it is the people using it, they are not trained full and just simply stuck in front of a screen and told 'do it'

Trevor has been our best CB this season. Selling him is lunacy. I don't, full Summer of rest is what he needs. Don't need that moron Southgate running him into the ground because he wants to play ultra defensive football. Disaster as I call him needs to be sold ASAP. Since he has been out of the team we've barely conceded. Absolutely woeful player.

watch the video, a lot of different angles.

To all those of us pushing for Poch to go, I would just say “Be careful what you wish for !!”. He wasn’t responsible for 90% of the bang average players we signed and unlike the Potter reign, many ( not all) have grown under his coaching - Madueke ,Conor,Cole,Jackson to name but 4. The constant change of coach will continue to get us nowhere. Poch should be told now publicly that his job is safe, before he tells us where to stick it !!

Would also be typically us if Spurs lose and then we drop points

Caceido MOTM again. He can't pass, tackle, run, do anything though.

Players that seize their chances when they are presented and don't make a scene deserve praise. We also have Italian clubs to thank for being tight, too.

Try watching it with your eyes open 🤣

Unless Manure take back what they gave us and beat Citeh (unless Spuds somehow lose to Sheff U and we beat Bournemouth, which gives us 5th and EL guaranteed)

I really hope not. He has been an absolute beast since his return. Also doubt he would fetch that much.

Reece James should definitely issue apology for that. Absolutely disgraceful from a supposed captain to risk our season like that.

Reece and Lmaptey were BOTH reds

James is the worst captain selection ever. He doesn't have the temperament for the role.

Honestly this Nkunku + Palmer + Jackson combo has no ceiling

Caicedo has been magnificent

wooooooooooooooot Manure scored nil 1

Marina was particularly adept at extracting nearly every penny from transfer sales.

Would be good money if we get 50m for him.

There is nothing classy about war, there is nothing fair or decent about war, I've been to two different wars, four times and believe me half the shit that goes on you will never see and never know about.

From boo-boy to cult hero: how Marc Cucurella has sparked Chelsea revival Spanish left-back seemed to sum up club’s travails but he has found form to aid late, unlikely surge towards a European place It is safe to say few people at Chelsea predicted this season would end with Marc Cucurella performing a turn as an inverted full-back. As one figure inside Stamford Bridge put it recently, who could have imagined that a Cucurella revival would be one of the key reasons behind Mauricio Pochettino’s team making a late surge for European football? Let’s roll this back. In August 2022, with the new order at Chelsea still asserting itself, Cucurella was invited to Mykonos to meet the interim sporting director. Todd Boehly, it turned out, was a man who knew how to conduct a charm offensive. The American had seen Manchester City fail to meet Brighton’s asking price for the left-back. A window of opportunity emerged. Chelsea’s scouts were long-time admirers of Cucurella. Boehly, keen to do the deal, agreed to pay. Brighton, who bought Cucurella for £15.4m in 2021, were somehow convinced to sell him for £55m plus £7m in add-ons, a deal that left many wondering whether Chelsea’s owners were perhaps getting a little bit too giddy in the transfer market. “He’s a good player,” a Spanish source said at the time. “He’s just not a £60m player.” And sure enough, before long before Cucurella was finding it difficult to live up to his fee. He struggled with injury and illness, his performances were sketchy and he soon became a scapegoat for frustrated supporters, who booed the Spain international when he came off the bench during Chelsea’s first-leg defeat by Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League last season. Here we had it: one of the most pertinent examples of Chelsea’s wild, destructive overspending. Cucurella was a joke, a flop, maybe even a hate figure. Fans winced if they saw him in the starting XI. They saw a defender who couldn’t defend. They saw little evidence of the full-back who had given Brighton so much in possession. They were disappointed when Manchester United decided not to sign Cucurella on loan last summer. Pochettino, though, has refused to give up on the 25-year-old. The vibe has changed since Cucurella suffered in a back three when Graham Potter’s Chelsea were hammered 4-1 by Brighton last season. He is in a much better place before returning to the Amex Stadium to face his old club on Wednesday evening. View image in fullscreen Marc Cucurella was a figure of fun to some Chelsea fans but his recent performances have silenced his doubters. Photograph: Andrew Boyers/Action Images/Reuters There is clearly a defiant streak to Cucurella. He delivered a tenacious performance as a right-back when Chelsea played Brighton in the Carabao Cup this season. Predictions about Cucurella being ripped apart by Kaoru Mitoma were wide of the mark. Cucurella, who also had a good game against Bukayo Saka in October, snapped into challenges and kept the dangerous Japan winger quiet. Admittedly there have been times when Pochettino has been reluctant to trust him. He used Levi Colwill, the young centre-back, on the left during the first half of the season and nobody seemed particularly bothered when Cucurella was ruled out for three months after ankle surgery in December. His return to action in March hardly seemed cause for celebration. But something changed. Last month, with Chelsea 2-0 down at half-time to Aston Villa, the situation seemed terminal for Pochettino. His team had just lost their FA Cup semi-final to City and been thrashed 5-0 at Arsenal. Another humiliation was on the cards when Cucurella scored an early own goal against Villa. Then, thanks to a little tactical tweak from Pochettino, the comeback began. Cucurella’s role was pivotal. Finding the right formula in midfield has been a challenge for Chelsea all season. There was rarely any balance when their £222m duo, Moisés Caicedo and Enzo Fernández, played together. Caicedo was too often left exposed by Fernández, whose physical shortcomings were exacerbated by playing through the pain of a hernia problem for six months. It was better once Fernández had surgery and the energetic Conor Gallagher moved back to play alongside Caicedo, who has gone from strength to strength in recent weeks. Yet the real trick was shifting Cucurella inside, giving Chelsea an overload in midfield. Villa couldn’t handle it. They didn’t know how to combat Cucurella, whose positioning allowed Chelsea to dominate and draw 2-2. It has since been asked why Pochettino took so long to reposition Cucurella. After crushing wins over Tottenham and West Ham, though, he pointed out that he has had to build slowly. “You cannot sit if you don’t have a chair,” Chelsea’s head coach said. “It’s like an engineer who is going to build a building, who says: ‘I want to see so quickly the nice furniture and the flat.’ First of all, we need to build the structure.” It is a fair point. Cucurella, who came through Barcelona’s academy, is technically gifted enough to make the system work. Yet it is a work in progress. Last Saturday, Nottingham Forest neutralised Cucurella by creating a blockage in the middle. Even so, the fact that opponents are having to counter Pochettino’s gameplans is a good sign. But for Cucurella, this is more than a mere tactical story. It is also a tale of resilience. Fans were singing his name – in a good way – during the 5-0 win over West Ham. Against the odds Cucurella, a slightly eccentric figure on the pitch, has become a cult figure. He has done it the hard way.

Sounds like getting Sterling two years ago...

Seems adaptable - ''A left-footed winger able to play on both sides of the attack, Moreira is described as a fast, explosive and technically gifted footballer, most notably excelling in dribbling past his opponent.''

Newcastle have Isak sick and Callum with a new injury. If Isak does not return from illness, Man United might stumble to a draw.

Chilly and Carney back in team training and no new injuries. Shame we couldn't sort it out earlier in the season. I cant help but feel ecstatic. Feels like we have new signing every week. Long may it continue. We have done well to finish above Brighton and avoid the humiliation. Lets finish this long and hard season with 5 wins on the bounce and start next season how Chelsea FC are supposed to. COYB!

Kepa doesn't have weak wrists but mechanically he has a big weakness which is his habit of swinging his hands behind his back before attempting saves - particularly those low down to a corner. That is the reason why he sometimes allows balls to go past his hand after he has got it there. There was a deep dive on this - I think in The Athletic - but it may have been somewhere else. Either way, I also like Jackson and have supported him against his critics. However, Kepa is a poor example to make your point with. Ramires, Drogba and Lampard would've been better examples of players who were largely written off by our fan base, only to turn them around.

Certainly not the same thing as stripping the club of assets, from that perspective it is a total non-story. The assets stay within the company. All large businesses are made up of a holding company and a bunch of different companies the parent company owns. We're selling assets between them at fair market value, keeping them within the group. The real risk here is whether or not this behaviour is against financial fair play in the premier league where the rules state that: "For the avoidance of doubt, a Club will be in breach of its duty under Rule B.15 if it presents an Associated Party Transaction to the League (pursuant to Rules E.55 – E.77): (i) as a product of a genuine commercial negotiation where, in their reasonable and honest belief, no such genuine commercial negotiations took place; and/or (ii) as having a genuine commercial rationale to the counterparty when they do not hold a reasonable and honest belief that such a genuine commercial rationale exists." Of course, we don't even know that the club has actually done this deal, what we have here is a twitter thread from an obsessive, known Chelsea hater (obsessed with us and been screaming we're getting banned for years...wrongly, over and over), what we've got here is some loser on twitter speculating about other people's speculation built on top of other people's speculation. I would just ignore it all and trust the club. So far they've been very responsible and even self reported themselves before.

Confidence seems to be growing - I posted the game highlights in the youth and reserve chat

Thank you. No one is denying that an in-form Lukaku is somewhat useful nor that this team could need an experienced CF who can lift some of the burden. The problem is not his ability (even though 100m should get you a far better striker obv) but his personality. If he were able to play the big brother role and be an experienced back up who comes in when stakes are high, for the kind of match that outright suits him like Giroud was (sold him 2 years too early -.-). The problem is that Lukaku is not able to play this role. He is just as immature as Jackson, threw his toys out at the first opportunity, has damaged his reputation with the public, the fans and the dressing room as well as being the opposite of a role model in terms of workrate, attitude and professionalism. He has not grown up one bit in the meantime as his transfer saga last summer and his petulant behaviour at Roma repeatedly shows. If he were the same limited but useful player he is while being a regular professional, I would be happy to have him and not even be salty about the 100m we overpaid. But he is a little kid who thinks he is a superstar and should be treated as such by everyone. Not just for us Chelsea fans but for the sake of European football I hope he just fks of to Saudi asap bc he stands for exactly what is wrong with football in the first place.

not calling him satan (no one has unless they are unhinged) but the bloke is pretty much changing room (and outside in the press) poison he has excoriated the club on many occasions

no way real gets reece james next season first they need to check if he can play a single season without injuries...

Couldn't agree more, soon they will find something else they think he's trash at don't worry 🤣

Put some respect on this man's name. Still incensed there were people ready to ship him out on account of him being injured, and just because we have Gusto, who is also good btw. But James is James. Hope his worst injury troubles are behind him 🙏

some lucky today but credit for the team to not give up of the game

that has been my HUGE worry they play like shit together becuase of Enzo's lack of cover due to his slow pace

If Enzo really is the reason for his disappointing season, I'd rather not have him alongside him. Caicedo has been really good in recent weeks.

Lets fucking go, something just feels different these last few weeks

Mudryk! Great pass from Cole

5 goals last 7 games

I cannot say I don't think Amorim is a massive risk, however like @Strike I need a lot more evidence in the next few games that Poch has 'turned a corner' and hasn't just been fortunate with playing out of form teams. Whilst, I am happy to say Poch has had a lot of issues to deal with, he has also done/not seen a lot of concerning things throughout the season. For me, keeping him on and then him going back to par is also a massive risk for next season.

Palmeiras is not a traditional formative club. The best players in their history were formed by other clubs. The real interest and investments in the academy is recent, maybe the last 08 years, something like that. This is probably the first generation of good players formed in the club, with Estevao, Endrick and Luiz Guilherme. Is much more reliable when a potential talent is formed by Sao Paulo, Flamengo, Santos, Gremio, Fluminense, Vasco etc, because they had many of them in their academies in the past and have more experience identifying the best prospects.

fun fact-which I've mentioned before but (rotating audience 🙂 ): I was at Olimpico stadium (before Gremio arena was built), and watched Gremio coached by Scolari beat Parmalat (italian milk co) Palmeiras that has a young Rivaldo and Roberto Carlos in that line up. https://www.besoccer.com/match/gremio-porto-alegre/palmeiras/199512896 Mario Jardel was the star of the show, but honestly anyone watching RIvaldo and Roberto Carlos knew they were WC players or ready-to-be one. They were what 19-20 then?