OhForAGreavsie

Still good though. 🙂

I'm afraid that this is a better take than the more positive/hopeful posts. My take: - - The injury is just a cover story. The underlying truth is that Ruben's career to date has been about manger's putting faith in his potential rather than selecting him because his performances demand it. - Years ago I predicted that unless Ruben learned how to better impose his ability on football matches he would be lucky to get a gig in league one. He has not been able to do that. - Ruben seems to be running out of people who have any remaining faith in his potential. If the Roma opportunity is real he should grab it with both hands. - I wish the lad well but I gave up on him as a Chelsea prospect long ago.

If there is to be club representation at the event then I hope it's an official not a player.

He's a Liverpool fan. It's not exactly an earthquake level shock if he thinks their players are better than ours. I don't have a problem with what he said. Including the bit you didn't paste into your post.

Nothing to get excited about. It's pretty normal. When I was a lad the tradition was for a new season to start with three fixtures in eight days, Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday. These would either go H-A-A or A-H-H. Nothing to see here.

Exactly. Arsenal wanted him out I'm sure. The rest is just messaging.

Good luck Zappa. Do well.

On the Grealish comparison we can agree though I may not go for 'miles'. On the rest, honest disagreements are fine. Of course.

Yes, I'm afraid Mason hasn't shaken off off the nearly man tag he acquired in my assessment. I can't see TT wanting to be without Mason's workrate as long as he is working with his current squad. Delivering that, as well as more precision in key moments, is a very high bar but that's an important aspect of what TT needs now.

I'm glad the manager is talking sense. Of course this isn't news because he always does. I was very surprised at the gushing praise heaped on our performance by the Match of The Day pundits so I came here looking for some more sober judgements. There are a few of these of course but I do think that some people are more pleased about what they saw today than TT was.

Let's be realistic. That wasn't great awareness. It was a blindingly obvious pass that we all saw before the ball even reached Mason and I'm sure he was knew it was on at least as quickly as we did. Credit where it's due but let's not over egg it.

No chance.

ANY money a club brings in through loan fees improves their situation.

Mana, you've been here too long to still be getting annoyed by this. The club persists in this M.O. because it makes sense. If 'cutting the losses' made more sense then that is what CFC would do. Leave those who know to sort out the periphery. Let's focus on the players who will be here trying to help us win matches and leave Marina to worry about the others. Getting agitated about players who won't be around and will play no role for us is a waste of emotional energy and I know you know this.

Never was good enough in my opinion. At either position.

Let's hope for a Rom hattrick on Sunday leading to a massive confidence wave which the whole team can ride until the end of the season.

I'm sure they've also won the super cup at least once which would make it 6 all. Am I misremembering something? Edit: Idiot! I'm not counting our Super Cups! 😞

In addition to the Wilkins boys there's Ron & John Harris. George McEachran made the bench a couple of times so he & Josh are a near miss.

Take another look at what @Jype said in the post to which you replied here. I'm sure you'll find more you can agree with than you did at first. For my part, I think every word he typed was spot on.

We are basically in full agreement I think. I would though just restate I said my judgement of Rom's impact will be if he makes us a better team, not if we play 'better football'. As you pointed out earlier this is problematic because good football means different things to different people. I should have worded my point better. 🙂 The word I often use is effective. Effective football is beautiful football. The best performance I've seen in the last decade was Bayern's demolition of our side en route to winning the 2020 CL. There were no jinky dribbles, no extravagant passes no flicks or tricks. Just good movement to give the man in possession options with good decision making and simple execution from that man. Simplicity is beauty. I loved it. If Chelsea give me that on a regular basis I will be the happiest football fan on Earth.

Yes, you've fleshed out what I meant when I said the assessment is more complicated if becoming a 'better' team is the yardstick. My biggest, maybe only, disagreement with what you say here is the bit about not caring if the football is of 'quality' or not. When I played winning was all that mattered but when I watch professional football I need more. I've walked out of the Bridge more times than I can count utterly frustrated after a win. Watching the ball bounce off people's shins never makes me feel good. By the way, let's not doubt that there is also quality in defending well. It's not about whether you aim to control the game by dominating possession or by conceding it. Whatever the side chooses to do what counts is whether it does it well.

Take out The Drog's 29 goals in 32 games during 2009/10 and his record becomes 75 goals in 222 games. Just under 1 in 3. This underlines the truth about Didier which gets disguised in our memories by his habit of performing in the big games and his penchant for the spectacular. This truth is that he had notable technical shortcomings of his own. As I regularly admit, when I watched DD at Marseilles I was against signing him. In fact I did a post saying that his touch was hit and miss, his control on the run can be clumsy and he likes a dive. What I did not see at Marseilles was Didier's character and his character was one of, if not absolutely, his major contribution to the team. There were days when, even with JT & SFL in the side, Didier was the true leader on the pitch. Cast your minds back to the number of times the lads were in a huddle and DD was the one doing that talking. His personality is how The Drog compensated for his technical issues. This personality is the only thing which stops me being certain that we would have won more had we signed a technically better player instead of DD. Even so I do believe that. I can't be certain of it but I do believe it. Anyway, The Drog is history and Rom is the future. It's on people like me to get behind Rom and flood him with positivity in the stadium(s). Most importantly don't get on his back if he has a slow start either in terms of goal involvements or general play. We have nothing to gain, and everything to lose by turning our doubts into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Football has GOT to get a grip.

Agreed of course. Let's hope there won't be any blame to be shared out.

No, I don't believe that it would represent an upgrade. What counts is a player's contribution. Jorgi's goals are an irrelevance to his place in the team. He earns his spot by doing his positional job. Fail to do that and he's out, do it and he's in even with zero goals. A centre forward's positional functions include many things, goals among them.