OhForAGreavsie

As you say, the problem is that once again Bats was poor on Wednesday. The goals did not rescue his performance. He has a role in the squad because he's here and a better player isn't. That can, and must, be remedied asap. Full disclosure; I liked Bats when he first arrived. I was wrong.

Welcome Scooter and thank you for your comment. I hope we'll see more. I'm about to challenge some of what you said and propose an alternative reading of Pulli's history. I have to stress however that this is almost entirely theoretical. I saw very little of Chris at BVB so I can't, and don't, claim to know his game as well as you do. What I did see however raised more questions than it provided answers so I was pleased to read earlier comments from people who are equally positive about him as you are. Nevertheless I do think the alternative version might also fit the facts. My first challenge is to say that Sancho was indeed preferred to Chris. The injury might be an explanation for it, but the fact remains that on many occasions another player was selected ahead of our new recruit. Challenge two: Dortmund's 'easing him back' statement could be the simple truth, or it might be an attempt to shield their player from criticism. I'm not sure how it fits with the timeline of the Chelsea deal, but the comment may also have been aimed at preserving Chris's value ahead of a transfer. It's been done before. Challenge three: footballers often benefit from honeymoon judgements early in their careers. During that time they are given maximum credit for everything thing they do well, while anything they do poorly is excused or ignored altogether. Pato is an excellent example. Ahead of his loan to Chelsea, I said I had not seen any of his recent displays back home but gave my opinion that Pato was an ordinary player and always had been. A Brazilian fan felt I was being foolish to make a blind judgement but of course I had seen plenty of Pato in Europe and a leopard.does not change its spots. I fully agree with what you say about the pressure of expectation. Even so, there was a lot to like from Chris in Istanbul. I hope that your faith in him is justified and that my concerns, along with my theories, are baseless.

I thought he might start last night because I didn't think Frank would risk playing Marcos given Emerson's injury.

In fact I thought the speed of his decision making and execution was the outstanding part of Billy's game last night. Ross, for example, does this thing where stops the ball, rolls it forward with the sole of his boot and then, finally, he plays from there. While he does all of that the picture in front of him is much changed and any runners have probably gone off side. That happened several times last night to runs made by Chris and Reece who had to check back. Billy saw those runs and used them. Occasionally with beautiful passes. Super impressive performance from the lad.

Billy put in a tremendous display last night but it was by far the best I've ever seen from him. I say 'but' because that makes it an exception. I've seen him play well before but never this well. We need to see this level repeated before we take it as an indicator of his general output.. Hats off to the lad however; by some distance the best player on the park last night.

SFL is right. Billy showed Ross up a bit last night. Throughout the night he was far more likely to see the right pass and always executed his decision more quickly. Add that he was generally also more accurate than Ross and you'd have to agree with Frank

Agreed, it was a very enjoyable night. I could have watched that for another two hours Really didn't want it to end. I do think there should be a note of caution however. A note best considered in the light of Billy Gilmour's performance. When I nominated Billy for player of the match a bit earlier, mine was the only vote recorded for him at the time. That surprised me a lot. Even at the time of writing, there have still been just two votes cast for Billy. Reece was excellent, but Billy was better. Here's the problem though; that was by far the best I've ever seen Billy play. This suggests that there were special circumstances tonight. Things conspired to make the game very open after half-time. This gave our lads room, and they exploited it really well. Even against Grimsby however, they won't get that kind of space very often.

Seemed a reasonable idea to me. One which was abandoned too soon I'd say but it's hardly the most important issue in the game so I don't care really.

Can water go under a dam and it still be a dam? 🙂🙂🙂

Someone coming close to telling the truth about Fernando. I got so much stick for telling people that Nando was a very ordinary footballer. Got called an idiot and worse. I was so depressed the day we signed him and now Carragher confirms what Danny Murphy had previously admitted. Liverpool people knew the reality. Of course they did. Why do I say Carragher only comes close to the truth? Because he perpetuates the myth that Nando was ever a top player. He had a brief good period at Liverpool but that was very much the exception across the whole of his career. The rest of his time tells of what he really was as a footballer.

Good post. Thank you. I feel I want to write an essay in response but I'll try to contain myself. There are two things I want to say before I try to make my point as briefly as I can. First, I'm not a chant starter myself. I don't have that kind of personality. I don't say I never have, but its a rare event. Second, I absolutely don't hold myself as the judge of what is, or isn't, a good fan. I go to more games than many do but I've never claimed that this makes a better, or a bigger, fan than someone else. When it comes to support however, 'support' not supporter, there are some types which I do feel is better than others. Can I take it we agree that support in a ground can influence a team's performance? Otherwise, our conversation is pretty moot. 'Good' is obviously a subjective thing but, in this context, I mean any type of support which helps the players to perform well. For that to happen, it needs to be something which transmits to the pitch so that must be something visual or auditory. 95% of the time that's going to be auditory and to make a difference, it necessarily needs to be loud. Just being loud doesn't make it good however. Some chants, no matter how loud, don't do it in my opinion. It's not about the words, it's about a sense of excitement, emotion and timing. Sometimes just a general noise is way better than a coordinated chant.

On the question of support, I saw SFL's post match press conference this morning and he faced a question about racist chanting. I was in The Shed and I didn't hear any. Am I getting deaf?

The lack of good support is a big problem and getting bigger. There was one lad near me who only got really loud when he was yelling at the Valencia fans to stop singing. I hope the irony of that dawned on him at some point. I honestly think Stamford Bridge has no clue how to support a football team and I for one have no idea how to fix it.

Oh lordie, no. 🙂

Yes. Front row directly behind the right hand goal post as we looked at the pitch. So actually a little way left of you.

Yep Willian playing well as is Fik. He's making himself very hard to drop.

I'm almost right above you. 🙂

Don't really agree here. Ten years ago people were saying that ten years before that a shot stopper would be enough. Truth is a shot stopper has never been enough. Even before the advent of the footballing keeper, there were other facets to the game. The way I like to put it is that good shot stopping is, and always has been, an entry level requirement. Being good at it doesn't guarantee you'll make it in a Premier League squad; not being good at it guarantees that you won't. I'm not anti Keppa. I just think that a different keeper between the sticks, and an extra £71m quid of quality outfielder running around would have served us better than the way we handled it.

Reece got through 45 minutes for the development squad at The Bridge last night. Think he will get at least one more game at that level followed probably by some minutes against Grimsby before he'll be in contention for the PL squad. Interesting moment when Callum took a corner in front of The Shed to huge cheers. Six or seven minutes later, Reece took one from the same quadrant. Only me and few others applauding. That'll change.

He's a decent keeper but I keep thinking of what I said in summer 2018. There is no way he's £71m better than Marcin Bulka.

Not true. I certainly did and said so. I did also say however that if this was the price (signing a player who couldn't help us) we had to pay for having Roman, then I was happy to pay it. I remember someone replying to disagree with me by giving a lot of stats. I said that, having watched Sheva at the world cup that summer, I preferred the evidence of my own eyes. The other person responded to that with yet more stats. I think both you and @Tomo make valid points. I agree with you that who you want and who you can get are not the same thing.

I largely agree with you despite believing all along that, if Reece remained with the squad, he would force his way into the team. He is not a magic spell however. He isn't, singlehandedly, going to transform us. Like any defender Reece needs a 100% success rate to completely rule out danger but, as it is for everyone, that level of success is completely impossible. Where I think he will help immediately is in distributing the ball. I'm not referring to his supurb long range deliveries. He'll have to settle in and overcome the new boy's tendancy to try too hard before we can expect him to be consistent with those. No, I mean with ordinary continuity passing. I think Reece will produce a better pass completion rate than Azpi and that's significant. Unexpected turnovers are the most dangerous of course.

I remember that there was talk of dropping the cup tied rule but it is still (back?) in this season's uefa competition regulations. It is regulation 43.06 on page 41 of the 2019/2020 Champion's League regulations. Dont know where it is in the Europa League regs but it will be there somewhere, because the regulation mentions both competitions.

In a recent presser Frank specifically mentioned that the ban included January, which suggests that this is the club's working assumption. I would love to know the thinking behind CFC's decision not to ask for the ban to be suspended. If it really is because we want to minimise the risk of an extension, then we must have very little confidence in the strength of our appeal. CAS will decide if the appeal is valid or frivolous on its own merits. Even if they ultimately uphold the ban, CAS can still decide that at least we had good grounds for the appeal. Only if they don't think that, only if they think we've just wasted everybody's time, will there be a risk of further sanction. Hoping that, in those circumstances, they'll take it easy on us because we didn't ask for a suspension, makes it seem like we don't have much faith in our case. Makes it seem we're more worried about the ban being extended, than we are hopeful it will be overturned.

Think we definitely need a striker, regardless of how Tammy does this year. In fact, even if he does well, I think a case can be made that we need two.