OhForAGreavsie

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.

On the bench for Rennes tonight.

Wow, that free kick routine with the three step-overs. They must have had a real laugh working that one out on the training ground. And then to have it come off in a game. Amazing!! As for Zivkovic, there's a lot to like in the highlights package above. He looks a very interesting player indeed.

I agree with you that the fans being described are not fickle. There are people here who behave as if they hate Jose and they have always behaved that way. Nothing fickle about them. We're all frustrated. It's the foot stamping I can't stand. My take on yesterday's game is a little different to many of the views posted, including yours in the comment I'm replying to. I don't think we played all that well. We won well, but the performance was underwhelming and even against a very poor side we conceded too many chances. RLC did just enough to merit consideration for the weekend but Baba did not. If I was picking the side, Dave would be back at LB and that would draw Brana into contention for a place whether people like it or not.

And neither was DDA, the poster of the comment to which your message above is a reply. Take another look at what he said, and see if perhaps you might agree with me.

I agree with your implication that this has been a problem for years, and not just at CM. We have tended to recruit players with qualities rather than players of quality. I love Rami for some of his qualities, many of us do, but he simply isn't of the quality a top level club needs. That's how it is for many members of our squad. Given Chelsea's resources our XI on any given day should contain more quality than most opponents it faces. There have been, and there continues to be, too many occasions when our side has not come close to matching that expectation. We simply have to get better at selecting the players coming in to our squad. The brilliance of our manger and the long lasting effects of the system and attitude he installed during his first spell has often papered over the cracks but, in the end, it really does come down to the players. All involved have to up their game.

Thank you TC. It still seems more than odd that we've heard so little about Charlie's continued absence. Had he been able to play, I think Charlie would have been a great option for Vitesse. Given that Josh had made himself first choice there by the end of last season I believe Charlie would have been a perfect replacement for the club, and the club would have been great for him.

On the bench for Rennes this afternoon.

thanks again, you're a star. I did search The Chels website before I posted yesterday and I've just scrolled back to early August in his twitter feed but saw nothing. I confess though that I don't know my way around twitter so I'll just take your word for it and save myself a bit of RSI.

OK, thank you. I haven't read that news anywhere. Where was it announced?

The mystery continues. No sight of Charlie yet and no explanation that I've seen. Does anyone know of any information which has been released? There is nothing on his twitter feed. The last tweet, posted on 31st August, was the fairly enigmatic, "Don't tark to much...." plus an egg timer graphic. We might all have our own guess what that suggests but it's likely that if the absence was caused by an injury we'd have learned about it. Makes it seem more likely that the problem is disciplinary, not medical. If so, it's a big shame but let's hope he's back sooner rather than later and puts it behind him.