MrExcalibur100

Sane without space to run into is really not good. Not just in this game but his attributes don't make him that useful when he has to play in tight spaces. He's stinking the joint out so far.

He also did the same thing at Juventus. I used to think differently of Conte but this season he's shown me he's just another Mourinho 2.0, the only clear differences being his team plays better football against the weaker teams and obviously the 3 at the back system with wingbacks. Conte is just as negative and insufferable. I now see him in my view as the 5th best manager in the league.

That is a bunch of rubbish mate. Sorry

Notice how high they press City when they are trying to pass out from the back. Even with 3 CB's Man City are not being allowed to breath. Conte's teams are happy to sit back, defend deep and let the opposition recycle the ball and build from the back, just like last weekend against Spurs. The word "high press" doesn't exist in Conte's football dictionary. It's a tactic he rarely employs which makes his cautious approach even more unbearable to watch

Yeah, okay. They lost Coutinho and barely even felt it. Klopp isn't a manager that gets carried by one single player. Look at his Dortmund teams as well and the high overturn in players season in season out. He just kept on rolling. It's his footballing philosophy that makes his teams' so dangerous.

This is Liverpool's xi for the game btw:

That doesn't make much sense. We're talking about the 2017/18 season in which Conte has been outcoached by Pep, Poch, Klopp and Jose. "Football matches are situational". That's just a cliche/buzzword that means nothing. So because every manager has good and bad times we shouldn't criticize Conte's bad times? What are you talking about.

Remember we had a chance to go for Klopp if we sacked Mourinho earlier than we did during the 15/16 meltdown. On this forum. I was calling for Mourinho's sacking and going for Klopp at all cost. Another one our board messed up

Now this is how you take the game to one of the big boys , this is a perfect game by Liverpool (so far) not our much hyped display against Barcelona. Conte will never ever do with Chelsea what Liverpool is doing to City right now. Guardiola will need to change his formation back to a 4-3-3, bring in Sterling and sub out one of the back 3. It's a shame Aguero can't play

The news hit me really really bad. I can't believe Butch is dead. Football is the loser today. Truly one of football's good guys.

Who mentioned De Bruyne are you blind? De Bruyne takes set pieces for his team which factors into assists. Players like Lampard, Beckham, Leighton Baines and Gerrard had more assists than the likes of Zidane, Xavi, Iniesta, Silva and Pirlo but I don't believe they're more creative players, they were great set piece takers and good playmakers but they weren't great playmakers like those other names. When Hazard was given the set piece duties for Lille his assists numbers blew up. I don't like these sort of debates because its me arguing with people who don't know much about the game and its a waste of time.

Let's be honest the platform just isn't there for him to be there all the time in big games both in terms of his teammates and the brand of football which inhibits him (Not just him but his teammates as well). How many memorable European performances have any of our attacking players in the post 2012 era had in the CL other than Willian's recently? It's few and far between and the reasons for that are pretty obvious, at least to me. Still Hazard has already shown his mettle in big games despite all of the above: Let's not pretend like none of these things happened.

Assists can go either way. David Silva and Ozil have had seasons or have gone stretches with very low assists. Iniesta barely has any assists even in his best seasons but no one can doubt his creative output. It's not really the best reflection of creativity because you are dependent on your teammates actually scoring from your passing. That's why nowadays football people tend to look at "chances created" which is basically a pass that leads to a goal scoring opportunity/ and "key passes" which in an amalgamation of created chances and assists. Neverthless Hazard does have 11 assists this season in all competitions which is the joint 1st highest in our team (with Willian).

Why should anyone feel sorry for a manager who simply has an inferior coaching philosophy to the rival manager while actually getting paid way more in salary. We get outplayed every time we face Spurs the same way we get outplayed every time we face City and most times we face Liverpool. It's logical that after a while this luck will run out and the opposing team gets what they deserve.

Pains to say it but Spurs have literally outplayed us in every game in the Conte era. Is that an exaggeration, I don't think so. The only thing is in this game they got the result their football deserves.

Madrid, City, Bayern, Barcelona, PSG. Even Spurs and Liverpool have a superior philosophy to us. Our approach in big games is still the same ol' sit deep and wait rudimentary counter-attack. Hardly any of the other top players in the world play for such a team. Which brings me to another concern I have. See how many of our transfer targets turned us down last summer. They'll have seen the type of football Chelsea is known for and would have wanted no parts of it. Danilo would rather join last year's 4th place team as a reserve full back than join the Champions and be a likely starter.

The only thing he needs to to be a true great is to leave Chelsea and go to a team that plays possession based, attacking football, is littered with world class, technically gifted players and plays to his strengths.

And even Lampard. Drogba took an entire season off because he didn't see eye to eye with Scolari but no one cares about that anymore. We can't continue to hold Hazard to absurd standards when he doesn't even have anything near to the proper platform to ever live up to them. There's way to much hyper criticism and hyper analysis. "Oh why didn't Hazard play well in game "x" and "y". Reading some of this stuff you'll think this guy was playing for Brazil 1970 or Guardiola's Barca. This is far from the case. We're not even on Liverpool or Spurs' level footballing philosophy or/and playing style wise

So let's focus on one thing at a time. (first bolded part) Do you really think the bolded parts have less to do with Hazard and more to do with the quality of team, investment in the team and the defensive tactics of his manager(s) in such games. It's obvious to me what the problem is. (second bolded part) Most of Hazard's best big game performances either come at home or against teams that play a similar brand of football to us. The reason is that in any one of these 2 scenarios Hazard generally sees more of the ball and can thus have a greater influence on the game (with notable exceptions being City and Barcelona because of just how dominant those teams are in possession). If you take that into consideration Hazard drops a minumum of 7.5-8.0/10 in most big games he plays And if you were referring to all his games in general then you're totally wrong. Weaintgotnohistory.com do a player of the match poll after every game and if I could locate their yearly summation somewhere you can see there is a great stability in Hazard's performances. It's mostly 7.5's and above 85% of a 38 game season.

As you can see Hazard's form hasn't nose-dived since 2018 only since the City game when he was humiliated by Conte and made to look stupid: https://www.whoscored.com/Players/33404/Fixtures/Eden-Hazard (Of his 15 goals almost half of them have come in 2018.) Hazard was poor at the Nou Camp but its hard to criticize him for the home game considering he spent more time trying to win headers vs Pique than with the ball to feet. I can't blame him for City as well for similar reasons. Hazard didn't even play so poor today, he was just too deep worrying about Son and when he got the ball in dangerous positions they did a good job of crowding him out. Alonso doesn't offer the right penetration or speed on the left side to distract teams with his runs into the box. Anyway I'm done schooling you for now. I won't waste my time on you again as its clear you know little about Hazard or football in general.

Hazard is not inconsistent at all. He's been handsdown our most consistent attacking player since 2013. You can't do it. I challenge you to name an attacking player within that time period that has been more consistent. This is this vapid criticism that was only valid in 2012, Hazard's 1st season here.

Don't mind them. By the time he's gone these people will recognize how average we are and how much work needs to be done to rebuild this team. Hazard (and Kante) have helped paper over the cracks for 2 years now.

This season he has 15 goals and 10 assists, is our leading goalscorer (his 2nd highest goal tally at this stage of the season for us), our 3rd highest assists getter, our biggest chance creator, our highest rated player on all footballing metric sites and so on. And doing all that after recovering from a broken ankle without a preseason. Most reasonable CFC fans will say he's been pretty good this season. But I'm not surprised you think otherwise since most of your posts these days have descended to "HAHAHAA I told you so" codswallop on the Hazard thread. You've fallen off badly.

Saying Hazard has been extremely poor in the last 2 seasons isn't criticism. It's just trolling. But i'll live it to him to continue yapping his mouth here. His quest for attention won't last long because: (1) Hazard won't continue to play poorly (2) Hazard will probably leave at the end of the season. Then @OneMoSalah will have nothing of value to contribute to this forum anymore. Once decent posters falling off the deep end to mediocrity.