Viper22

Not going to stick around to see the usual suspects embarrass themselves. They must be so chuffed that we drew our first game, they'll be fist pumping while they moan like children. See you all in a week.

Good first half, even if Ivanovic is being owned by Baby Jeff and Fabragas seems afraid of shooting. Oscar and Matic looking strong. Keep it up in the 2nd half boys!

Courtois down in the warm up after jarring his knee and is being seen to by Eva.... I really really hope that isn't an injury....

He dragged us from 6th place and the Europa League to the title within 2 years. Only our second title since he left the damn club 10 years ago too mind you. How in the christ is that premature? He's taken a team that was struggling badly in the league and essentially living off the CL win and transformed us back into the best team in England. Our team for the for the final league game of the 2011-12 season (just 3 years ago remember): ----------------------Turnbull----------------------- --Ivanovic---Terry---Hutchinson---Bertrand-- --------------Essien--------Ramires-------------- -Lukaku-----------Meireles-----------Malouda- ----------------------Sturridge---------------------- Subs: Hilario, Cole, Ferreira, Romeu, Piazon, Drogba, Torres. Our team now: --------------------Courtois-------------------- --Ivanovic---Terry---Cahill---Azpilicueta-- ------------Matic-------Fabregas------------- -Willian------------Oscar------------Hazard- ------------------Diego Costa----------------- Subs: Begovic, Zouma, Mikel, Ramires, Moses, Falcao, Remy. Look at the difference between those squads (I know we were resting a few people that game but even bringing in Cech, Luiz, Kalou and Lampard don't help the squad look that much better). The difference in strength (and age) is massive. He definitely deserves the new contract because he is by far the best manager for us at the moment. We are incredibly lcuky to have such a great manager that truly loves the club and its fans as much as we love him. Hopefully he stays for years to come and forms a dynasty here.

No problem dude I was just teasing. Like I said it wasn't a prediction anyway!

Wasn't really directed at you but i'll explain myself nonetheless. Calling this the worst Chelsea team ever on the back of 3 defeats in 5 pre season games is just plain hilarious. As soon as stuff starts going remotely wrong people start over-exaggerating and saying stupid shit like "this is the worst Chelsea team ever", "we need a dramatic overhaul of the squad" and "we'll struggle to scrape top 4 next season" is unloyal and plastic in the extreme. I tell you what i've seen that's positive: We still have Mourinho (the best coach in the league, probably world), we still have the exact same players who won the league easily for us last season, we still have our star players Matic, Fabregas, Hazard and Costa and most importantly we won the damn league last year. We have not lost a competitive match since then. If we play like this for the first 3/4 games of the season and come away with like 4 points then yeah, time to start freaking out. But I have faith that Chelsea haven't suddenly become a bad team that has forgotten how to win overnight. We haven't lost any first team players. We haven't lost our manager. I have faith that Chelsea will start the season with wins at the very least if not performances to match as I faith in the coaching staff and players that dragged us from 6th place in 2011-12 and the EL in 2012-13 to the title within 2 years.

Oh and btw: Team to play Fiorentina tonight: Begovic, Cuadrado, Zouma, Terry ©, Aina, Mikel, Loftus-Cheek, Traore, Oscar, Moses, Falcao. #CFC

This thread smells remarkably like burning plastic. So many people shitting their pants and throwing all of their toys out of the pram due to pre season results xD. Now having said that, the performances have been pretty shoddy all in all but I still have faith that we'll start the league with 7 points from our first 3 games and go on to lift the trophy. We look off the pace but have a decent enough home game to start and then one of our hardest games of the season next up but against a team that has also looked shit in pre season and off the pace also which will likely result in a 0-0 bore draw that both teams will be happy with. After those 2 games I feel like we'll finally be up and running and ready to play properly again. I imagine if they do (win the league) this squad will once again be hailed as the "best Chelsea team ever" like they were last year rather than the "worst Chelsea team ever" like they have suddenly become now!!! Fickleness. Fickleness everywhere. As a side note we did come back to training far, far too late this year. I'm personally putting it down to the stupid, pointless post season tour. This just proves beyond all doubt that we shouldn't do that again as it will compromise our actual season.

Congrats Skipper

3 things: 1. Mou has said Falcao will start. 2. Don't know how you can guarantee none of them are going to start when you have no idea like the rest of us. 3. It wasn't a prediction of who will start, it's who I would start if I were in charge, hence the IMO in the top left hand corner.

Guys you can't expect Petr to not celebrate at all! He's at a new club now and if all his teammates are celebrating it's hardly like he can shrug and go "I've won the CL and 3 PLs, this is nothing". Also, stop scrutinising everything the guy does, let's not let it become an obsession. He's a quality keeper, a quality bloke and a Chelsea Legend. But right now he's playing for Arsenal and giving his all for them (as he should). Next time we face them we should treat him as such until after the final whistle. No mercy.

IMO: ----------------------Begovic-------------------------- ---Aina-----ClarkeSalter-------Zouma-----Ake--- -----------------Mikel----------RLC------------------- -Cuadrado----------Musonda----------Kenedy*- ------------------------Falcao------------------------- Subs: Blackman, Kane, Ivanovic, Romeu, Chalobah, Traore, Boga, Marin, Moses, Salah, Solanke, Remy. *Moses if not allowed to play, Piazon replacing Moses on the bench.

Who is this imaginary player you have invented who was on the bench at the CS and has played LB all his life? Because as I saw it that 'technically poor' CB was the only defender on the bench. Our most senior pure LB is Jay DaSilva. Aina has varied but has mainly played RB and Ake had played more at DM. And if you're suggesting that because a 17 year old that only signed his professional contract a month ago didn't get onto the bench ahead of one of the other more senior players we should shut down the academy then.... just lol.

Well yeah if we don't sign any defenders then i'll agree we're in trouble cos we'll have 5 players for 4 positions. Well yeah I want Witsel, Stones, Baba and Reus and they're all pretty attainable considering we have so much money atm. But we might just have to deal with just 1 more defender. (Btw I can't see us not signing another defender cos that would just be suicide. You're mistaking what i've said. Preseason results mean nothing. The performances of certain players do as you can see how they're doing. And on the basis of that we do definitely need signings in pretty much every position but even if we only sign Baba I will be confident that we can retain the league and I am 99.99% sure we will sign Baba so therefore like I said - i'm confident we can win the league again. And as for the panic buy thing - The season starts on the 8th August. Even if we only then realise we need players we'll still have nearly a month to do so. Hardly last minute panic buying. As for our style of play I guess I can just hope that we step it up once the season starts. Let's see how we do against Swansea next week, if we blow them away then I bet all of this will be forgotten. If we struggle and don't win then questions can start to be asked. I agree regarding the underperforming btw, i'm not happy watching Mikel pass sideways every time he gets the ball, Ramires being incapable of passing a ball 6 yards in any direction and Ivanovic's twice weekly brain farts. I get that it's frustrating because it annoys me too. But it doesn't change the fact that we're still the best team in the league. Would you rather deal with Ivan starting and Mikel and Ramires on the bench or Mertesacker, Coquelin and Walcott/Giroud starting? Smalling, Jones and Young starting. Demichelis, Fernandinho and Navas starting. Other teams have far bigger problems than we do.

Well even if we don't and we just sign Baba I still feel like we have the strength to retain the league. We don't need to win the league comfortably. We don't need to win the double. Retaining the league is and should always be our no.1 priority. As for pre-season. The results seriously do mean nothing dude. 2004-05 we won 2 and lost 2. We won the league. 2005-06 we won 2 and drew 1. We won the league. 2008-09 we won 4 and drew 2. We finished 3rd in the league. 2009-10 we won 4 and drew 1. We won the league. 2010-11 we beat Palace 1-0 then lost to Ajax, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Man Utd in the CS. We finished 2nd in the league. 2011-12 we won 7/7 pre season games and won the Barclay's Asia trophy. We finished 6th in the league. 2012-13 we won 1, drew 1 and lost 3 pre season games. We finished 3rd in the league. 2013-14 we won 7 and lost 1. We finished 3rd in the league. 2014-15 we won 7, drew 1 and lost 2. We won the league. 2015-16 we have drawn 2 (technically won 2 if you count penalties) and lost 2. There is no real pattern that I can see there. Our worst pre season was 10-11 when we finished 2nd and our best was 11-12 when we finished 6th.

Me. I have faith in Mourinho because he's a serial winner. I have faith that the board will see sense and buy us the 2/3 players we need. I have faith that the managers of all of the other top teams still don't know how to correctly set up their teams for big games and so will keep losing to both each other and us. I know we've got the best big game manager in the league, we've got the best GK, the best CB and the best player. Remember aswell that our team is pretty settled and other teams are hoping for their new signings to gel quite quickly, I think this may be an issue. We'll just have to wait and see. If after 6 games we've got 14+ points i'll be pretty happy. Any less than 10 and I will start getting worried, but until then i'm pretty happy. I still expect us to win the league next season and then possibly one of the 2 domestic cups. CL will be out of our reach barring 2012-esque magic and luck but that's not that much of a problem atm. I'd take us winning the league ATM which for me is more than good enough, so yeah, i'm pretty optimistic.

So we lost. Not the greatest performance (Remy, Ivan and Azpi were all notably poor) and the finishing from Ramires and Hazard was shocking. Not too much to worry about, we've lost now and for the season ahead it means nothing, we're still the best team in the league and no glorified friendly is going to change that. Arsenal were as average as us tbh, created no clear cut chances at all, we fluffed both of ours and their goal came from a little bit of magic, both teams were poor. Cech had a great game, hope Roman knows that anything good Cech does for them is on him, not Mourinho.

Ivanovic gets on my tits so much sometimes. Try and help Tibo sometimes why don't you?

Hazard..... No....

No ET and 6 subs per team? When did this happen?!?

Not as bad as people are making out. Fairly even game and their goal was a bit of 1 time out of 200 magic from the Ox. Get Falcao on for Remy at HT (or maybe on for Ramires and go 2 up top) as Remy has been struggling badly so far. Willian been stunning.

Lol meltdown central in here because we're 1-0 down at HT!!!! Baba suddenly becoming better than Azpi is my favourite comment so far, along with the mug who predicted that we'd be lucky to scrape 3rd this year xD. You guys crack me up.

Very impressive ladies!! Keep it up!