nofacej

I don't understand the logic, if you think he's a poor coach why don't you want him sacked? Are you hopeful for sudden improvement or is it a Lampard loyalty thing due to his legendary status at the club? I'm not convinced he's a poor coach yet, but it is increasingly looking that way.

Sevilla ended last season in 4th and we barely scraped 4th in the Premier League. If you ignore the bullshit marketing hype that the Premier League is the best league in the world, it's not a bad result. It's not a great result either - as Chelsea should be aspiring to be much better than 4th - but considering where we are in the rebuilding process, it's not cause for alarm just yet. And for the record, I'm not convinced by Lampard either but I'm willing to give him a fair chance.

So how many points has this guy cost us already this season?

It took Guardiola (a much more experienced manager) 2 seasons worth of big money signings to win the league having inherited a much stronger and more experienced side. This is Frank's first season where he's been able to make signings (Kovacic doesn't count to me). If you were to put the timelines side by side, I think it's fair to say that, in terms of squad development, this season is pretty equivalent to Pep's first season. Like you, I also want this season to be much better than last season, but I don't expect Chelsea to win the league this season. What I'd like to see is a much improved campaign this season and Chelsea winning the league within the next 3 seasons. Whether or not Frank is the man to lead Chelsea to that title is up for debate, but for now it's way too early to be making judgements one way or another. If there's been no improvement 3 months from now and Frank still hasn't settled on a starting 11 then I'll start to question his suitability for the role going forward.

Personally, I think your examples work against your argument, not for it. In Klopp's first couple of seasons at Liverpool they were a lot like us. Decent going forward, but with a dodgy keeper and defence and it was only through big money signings that Klopp was able to elevate them to their current level. Similarly, Pep took over a much better City side than Lamps did with Chelsea, and despite spending big in his first season, keeping and defensive woes lead to a pretty underwhelming first season. Pep got it right in his second season (with the help of even more signings) and stormed the league but in both examples there's a similar pattern. It's too early to judge this Chelsea team, but I think we can all agree that the Palace game was full of positive signs and with Ziyech and Pulisic still to come I'm feeling a lot more positive about things than I was even a day ago. And regardless of Lampard's long term suitability to manage us, I'm very happy with the signings he has made so far.

This thread has been pretty toxic for a while now and I think unnecessarily so. I'm not one to make excuses, but let's give Lamps at least a game with the new signings he made to fix our defence before ruling that he's failed to fix it. This obviously wasn't the result we wanted to see, but it's also the dying gasps of last season's team before all the new signings come into the side and [hopefully] make a real difference. Had Silva been ready, Mendy been between the sticks, and Pulisic/Ziyech been fit, then this game would have looked very different.

I think Lamps got it wrong from the outset but his hand was also somewhat forced by the injuries, late arrivals, and Kovacic's suspension. Whilst I personally would have liked to see Ruben hauled off earlier, I can understand why Lamps waited 60 minutes to do so. Let's just hope that he gets it right against Liverpool (one thing's for sure, Ruben won't be in the starting lineup for that game).

Haha this scoreline is so undeserved. Much better stuff since Barkley's introduction though.

The main positive to take away from the performance so far is that we have so many players set to return from injury or integrate into the squad that we won't be playing with this horrible formation again and at least have something to look forward to.

We've been forced to rely upon him because our squad's not good enough and hasn't been for a long time. Ideally Hazard should have been the cherry on top of an otherwise excellent team. Imagine what his assist stats would look like if our strikers could reliably finish the opportunities he's crafted them.

I see this narrative a lot and I'm always confused by it each time I read it. Conte brought in the following regular starters: Kante, Luiz, Moses, and Alonso. That's 4/10 outfield players. or 40%. That's close to half the team. If we look at it just in terms of defensive players, that's 4 out of 7. These are big changes to the squad. Conte is doing a wonderful job at Chelsea, and I couldn't be happier with him, but can we please stop pretending this is the same squad as last season and that Conte has performed some kind of voodoo? Let's instead celebrate the fact he's not afraid to cut underpeforming players, or to integrate previously overlooked players into the match day squad, and most importantly that he's got us set up in and playing his brand of football remarkably quickly, and better yet, that it's proving to be incredibly successful.

So much this. Winning a league is a case of going even with the other title contenders in the head to heads, and picking up more points against the weaker sides. Beating your direct rivals makes it easier, but consistency against the also rans is what will win the league.

Live score I was using says Fabregas and Chalobah were both shown a yellow in the 98th minute.

It's really encouraging to see Conte not getting carried away by our performances and continuing to stress the need to work hard and improve. Such a stark contrast to the overconfident comments Ancelotti used to make prior to that horrendous patch of form we suffered under him.

I know it's easy to say after the match, but I was expecting a bad result in this game. Hopefully Conte has learned a lot from this match and our squad improves as a result. I've always thought the League Cup was a waste of time, so I'm not bothered by the L. Why does England need two Cups when the other major leagues only have one?

Sadly I've come to agree with this sentiment.

Our squad is in decent shape. It's not the strongest team we've had, but it should be good enough to comfortably make top 4. I also think people here tend to overrate Manchester City and United's squads, or at least underrate ours.

Of course he's expected to get into the top 4. I'm confident he'll achieve it too.

What the fuck am I reading? Hope for 6th place? We won the title two seasons ago with more or less the same players. Last season was an aberration. I expect top 4, and I hope for the title though I accept that it'll probably be one of the Manchester clubs.

Even if I were to concede that Anelka in his prime was superior to Costa, as you say Anelka never played for us in his prime, and the comparison we're making is between the current team and the team that played under Carlo. For me Costa is the better player of the two given the scenario, and regardless I think he'd be much more compatible with Drogba than Anelka ever was.

Hazard would easily take Malouda's spot, and Costa is a better striker than Anelka was and also has experience playing on the wing. Lampard/Ballack/Essien is one of the strongest midfields we've ever seen in the Premier League, but I think we were better when we had Makelele in the holding role, and it's possible Kante could get in the team in that role. 1/2 of the back four is still playing for us, and of course they're going to be superior in their primes. Cole and Carvalho were fantastic defenders and would walk into any team on the planet in their primes.

Really happy with the result, pretty happy with the performance, and loved Conte's boldness with substitutions and celebration. Bring on the next game (opposite feeling to last season).

If there's any substance to the exit talk, we should put our foot down. We can ill afford to lose a striker of Costa's calibre at the moment. Ensuring CL football next season has to be the top priority, and the Premier League is going to be extremely competitive this season. Let him go after that if he wants.

If he was confident that Napoli would accept our bid if Everton were out of the picture, or had assurances from our board that we would match Everton's bid, then he might. I would be surprised if there weren't backdoor deals between buying clubs and players done on the regular in an effort to limit transfer fees.

In that scenario the player would also have to agree terms with Everton for a transfer to go through. It's entirely possible Everton would withdraw their bid if the player or his representatives told them he didn't want to sign. At the end of the day we just have to wait it out and hope our board can get the job done.