OhForAGreavsie

Wow! What a goal by Fran Kirby. Brilliant turn on the edge of the box, pushed the ball to give herself the angle she wanted and then a fabulous drive off the underside of the bar. Top, top quality goal. 1-0 Blues. I was just about to do a post saying how pleased I am to see Millie Bright back in the starting line up tonight. Fact is that, in effect, it's Fran keeping her out of the side as we changed our shape to get Kirbs into the team. Maybe Millie should rotate a bit more with Drew Spence. I love her too but Millie needs to play. P.S. We're playing Glasgow City in the first round, first leg of The Champion's League.

Gemma Davidson is basically too good for Sunderland. What a player.

3-0 now. Still 25 mins left but that's the title wrapped up surely. Really enjoying watching the ladies play. Eni has been great, Fran Kirby is having her best game so far in Chelsea blue, Drew Spence has just been subbed but has been excellent at the heart of midfield, Gemma Davidson has been outstanding as usual and Ji has been imperious in the ten. A pleasure to watch this team.

I don't see any trap there, certainly not an intentional one. I simply mean that we are here giving our opinions and in doing so we leave others free to judge us if they so choose. In fact the comments we make contain judgements all the time though perhaps not of each other. My own judgement is that I am not given to attacking other members but perhaps others who have read my posts will have a different, and certainly more dispassionate, judgement about that too.

Please Judge away. DDF seems to me to lack patience and perspective but I probably don't want to read what he thinks of me. :) When you you start following the club ZY? Edit: I've just read your profile and although the age given there makes you a fair bit older than me, I have, according to the 1975 date shown, been supporting Chels for 9 years longer than you.

What kind of Chelsea fan can have no interest in a Chelsea match? A different kind to me that's for sure. Personally, I couldn't be uninterested even if I wanted to. It's not for me to tell anyone else how to support their chosen team, or even who to support in the first place, but I do wonder if some people here wouldn't have been happier if fate had made them Arsenal fans. I think they would have been, but I suppose they're just as stuck with Chelsea as I am, so they have my sympathy. Me, I'm Chelsea till I die. It's part of my identity and whether the team is fabulous or frighteningly frustrating they are my team and I support them always. That support is never uncritical, but it is always unmistakeable.

First fifteen minutes were not great but, overall, the best performance I've seen from the ladies. The scoreline is a fair reflection of their dominance. Ji was great and picked up MOTM but Gemma Davidson was outstanding too. Excellent wing play from her, including two brilliant assists where she beat her 'man' and pulled it back to set up easy chances. Title is ours next week if we beat Sunderland, or City fail to beat Notts County. If we draw then City need to win by four goals or more to overtake us on goal difference. In certain circumstances however, a three goal win might do for them. Of course if we loose then any win will do for City.

A key point is that if Patrick was as good now as Studge was when he went to Bolton, he'd be starting at Palace. The further down the pyramid you have to look for a place where a player will get minutes, the further away he obviously is from being ready for us. I don't think Patrick will ever be a starter for Chelsea but he wouldn't agree with me about that of course. Good luck to him.

The club has already said that, if the new stadium goes ahead, the plan is for the Shed to become a home area once again. The number of away fans will fall a little which will mean a big drop in percentage terms. If I remember correctly they will be seated at the south end of the east stand, toward the junction with The Shed. I hope, and expect, that every seat in the new stadium will afford a decent view. The ones I think are designated for away fans do look likely to be those furthest from the pitch however.

Patrick was a player in demand and so I think it is reasonable to assume that his temporary club are paying his wages plus a loan fee on top. It is also reasonable I think to assume that conversations were held with regard to what role Patrick would play in the Palace squad and that satisfactory answers were given. With the natural desire of both Chelsea and Patrick that his latest loan should be at the highest level possible, to hear from a premier league club which was making the right noises and which was prepared to underscore their interest with hard cash would have been encouraging and attractive. It's a balancing act. Do you send the lad out to a lower league because you know he'll play but prove less, or do you send him to a top flight club where minutes are harder to come by, but where, if he's good enough, his minutes will tell club and player more about his capabilities. In any case, I didn't say this looked a good loan. I said a Premier League loan looked good but I definitely think the club were right to give Patrick a chance with a top division club. In the end however, if he's not good enough, he's not good enough. Some people were arguing that Patrick could serve as our third, or even second, choice striker this season. If that was ever true then he ought to be able to get a game at Palace. If he can't however then that's something we need to know.

While watching all of those KDB performances I was reporting back my opinions elsewhere. Following international matches I almost always reported that KDB had outperformed Hazard. In fact, as I type this, I can't remember ever having felt that Eden put in a better display for the red devils than Kevin had. I'm aware of the accolades KDB earned playing for Bremen, and the stats he produced there. I can only repeat however that few of his displays with Werder impressed me. I often felt that Schaff would drop him but he never did. If I'm asked to come up with a reason for the difference between my assessment and other, more favourable, views, I would put it down to the honeymoon effect. There is a phase in every player's career when many people are determined to be pleased with them. A phase when they get maximum credit for what they do well and when anything they do badly is overlooked or excused. For example I read at least one post describing RLC's output last night as outstanding or excellent or something like that. In my opinion, he was nothing of the kind. The pass for his assist was top quality but little else was. He wasn't bad, but, in my opinion, he was certainly not excellent. Either this is an example of the honeymoon effect or else other people are just better judges than I am. Yer read the posts and yer takes your pick.

There comes a time when the player has to step up so a Premier League loan certainly looked a good move at the start of the season. If I remember correctly Patrick also started slowly with his other loan clubs. With luck it'll follow a similar pattern and he'll force his way in some time down the line. Personally I don't think Patrick has the quality to make it here but if I'm wrong about that then presumably he will earn some minutes with Palace.

How do you know that Jose didn't assess KDB? I'm guessing from your post that you did assess the City man so why would Jose, an experienced coach with the time, the obligation and the resources to do it, not have done so too? It seems to me that your real complaint is that Jose did not agree with your assessment. Fair enough, I sometimes disagree with him also but let's challenge the boss about those disagreements, not over things about which we have no idea. By the way, because of the brilliant displays I saw him produce while on loan back at Genk, I became, and remain, a huge KDB fan. So much so in fact, that I then watched over 20 KDB games for Bremen as well as every Belgian international for 2 and a half seasons leading up to, and including, the world cup. During that spell, my own view was that he had many more disappointing games than good ones*. I watched those games as a fan, determined to be pleased by what I saw. More often than not however, I was not pleased. Of course I respect the fact that your opinion differs. *Particularly for Bremen.

England's so called golden generation failed to gain international success because the players, including Gerrard and Lampard, were not good enough. Changing the formation would have made no difference. In any case many formations were employed by the national team during that era.

I've always believed that the law is wrong in the way it asks referees to assess such incidents. I never felt Beckham should have been sent off in France '98 and I don't think that what Gabriel did on Saturday was a red card offence either. In neither case do I see how it could be claimed that what the player did constituted violent conduct. The correct assessment in each case should have been ungentlemanly conduct, and a booking. A booking which would have seen Gabriel sent off anyway. Had the FA reduced the Arsenal man's card from red to yellow, I'd have backed them. As it is their decision is baffling.

Agreed. We should be able to cope well enough with his absence.

No chance.

Play whoever you want Jose just win and take it all the way to Wembley. We're in it, so we aim to win it. No one around here want's to support Arsenal so let's not start thinking like them. I cannot make people care about this competition if they don't and I shouldn't even try to claim that my way is the right way but I do care and I believe that the club cares too. If anyone would like to describe their reasons for being uninterested in the CapOne, I'd read what they say of course. I don't really want to get into a conversation about it however. As a Chelsea fan, I don't feel the need to justify why I want Chelsea to win things. I'm not interested in listening to any excuses from the club as to why they can't attempt to win everything. They are an exceptionally well resourced football club and attempting to win stuff is what I'm paying them to do. If you are Chelsea and your name is in the hat at the start of the season, then your aim has to be to have your name on the trophy at the end of it. We are not Arsenal.

I pretty much agree with you but I would paint the picture a bit differently. I'd say that Oscar is not good enough to be our permanent number 10 but, for now, he is the best ten we have and our team is better with him. I hope all those who have been championing Willian's case to be our ten, are beginning to agree that while Willian undoubtedly looks better than Oscar, he virtually always achieves less.

No, people are judging the one performance they saw. People are not saying Baba is a bad player. They are saying he played badly, which, as you know better than I do, is a different thing. The only possible grade for Baba against Maccabi is fail. That's what the people you referred to are saying. Now, to be fair minded and logical you must be addressing your remark to everyone who offered an opinion on Baba, whether positive, or negative. After all, it can't be any more valid to judge him a good player on the evidence of one performance than it is to judge him a bad one. Are you addressing your remark to everyone? In any case, I repeat, the critical posts I've read say Baba produced a poor display, not that he is a poor player. He may be great, he may be bad, I don't know. We will see, but what we saw on Wednesday was not encouraging.

I thought it was our best performance of the season so far. Admittedly it is possible for us to have been terrible and still perform better than we've done so far.

That is the correct response to the way he played on Wednesday. Despite the fact that many want to be positive for, and about, him he was in fact poor and being dropped as a result was inevitable. I hope those who say he has the right quality are correct, in which case he'll eventually force his way in. If, however, he trains the way he played on Wednesday, we may never see him again.

The only part of the linked report I read was this, "Tall midfielder needs to work on his fitness and his positional awareness." Absolutely correct. Wednesday night was Ruben's best first team outing to date and, as such, was encouraging to those of us who like him but there was still much to query in the performance. Specifically there were times when he simply did not work hard enough to make himself available to receive the ball; times when his teammates had no angle to get the ball to him but he did nothing about it. This is an aspect of his play I've been unhappy with for a long time. I hope Ruben will listen to Jose, who is telling him the truth, and not to the journalists and broadcasters who are always ready to get carried away at the merest hint of a half-decent performance. Ruben did well enough in midweek to merit consideration for a place against Arsenal but no more than that. Keep working Ruben, I believe in you but there is a lot of work still to be done before you've cracked it.

Like most of his performance sadly.

Watching him for the first time this season. He's playing every bit as well as I expected and, according to the commentator, he has been the talk of the Bundesliga so far this season. I don't own a copy of any football game, and haven't done since the days of the ZX Spectrum, but there are some things that can be seen on youtube. It's not my fault Liverpool signed Stuart Downing.