bethos1

Courtois Iva-Zouma-Terry-Azpi Matic-Mikel Willian-Fabregas-Hazard Costa This will be our line up

I wouldn't mind us taking a risk on someone like Koeman, Sampaoli, etc.

Let him go to United, why would I care? I appreciate everything he's done for this club but he's gone now so I don't care how he does at another club.

Ugh why did we put on Hazard so late...

Fuck me I thought the game was at 14:00, already made some plans to go to the movies at 17:00 first game I'll miss this season

He does seem like a really nice guy, let's hope he performs.

I'd rather wait and see how Christensen improves instead of spending 40mil on this guy.

I don't think we will play any youngsters, I hope Hiddink surprises me though.

He made some great goals but I won't miss him, his ability on the ball was so frustrating.

Ugh this team is so slow

Courtois has been quite poor these last few games, he needs to relax a bit

Put on Hazard pls

Why do we only play like this vs Arsenal? Or is just Arsenal choking every single time

Hahahaha wtf Arsenal choking once again

If everybody shows up we might have a chance.

We won't

Probably not fully fit yet

You guys are writing off Baba way too soon imo.

It's from the top down. Barca lose Xavi and they just bring in Rakitic and keep on ticking. Sure, he's a little different, you don't just find a new Xavi, but Rakitic fits what they want. They have a club ethos and a board that gets signings based on that idea. They hire a new manager based on that as well. Our board just seem to have an old copy of FIFA (2008 I think, based on our targets) lying around and build a team like that. Of course it helps to bring in WC players, but we're not doing that. If you want to be frugal, you have to get players that fit your squad and can do well within your structure. Look at Liverpool over the past few years. Absolute mess. Another squad with a mish mash of players. Now, they have a £30M striker that was very good at Villa, but doesn't work with what Klopp wants to do. You need to have some sort of stability and if you keep changing managers, that stability has to come from the board. I'm hoping that there is a silver lining to this awful season. Maybe the next manager won't be expected to win the league and we can start to build a squad that has an identity that we can continue. We all know this but why the fuck doesn't our board know this? How do things get this out of control, it's ridiculous. They get paid insane amounts of money, the least you should expect from them is to build a team that fits well together, not this crap. Let's hope they can get their shit together next season.

That's kind of the issue, isn't it? Ramires works well in a midfield diamond where he can go box to box and has others to do more technical work or be a purely holding midfielder. He was part of Ancelotti's diamond. We have a defence that needs to sit deep because it has no pace, good fit for playing on the counter like Jose likes. We have wingers who like to play with the ball at their feet and be very slow around the box, no one besides Willian seems to want to track back too much. Would be nice for Blue Barca as Roman is constantly being reported as wanting. It's kind of all over the place. Ugh I just try not too think about this too much, it's so depressing. I really wonder how it's possible get a team that doesn't fit together at all.

"Park the bus" is not an easy tactic to play. People say we "parked the bus" in the past year or so, we didn't, we just tried to defend, failing miserably. We don't even have the players for a proper park the bus, our defence is old and slow, our midfield lacks positioning and is light weight, our attack is full of tiny players who can't find the net regularly (Hazard, Willian) and should be played with a 4-4-2 not a lame 4-2-3-1 an useless and unbalacend system. Not any coach can play "park the bus" because they don't know the first thing about defending without the ball. Unless you think, parking the bus means committing all the players behind the ball without any proper plan, then yes, anyone can play park the bus. I'm not saying any coach can do it succesfully but imo every coach can do it. And I agree that our players can't park the bus, that's why I'm against parking the bus with this team. This team is just all over the place, we have attackers who like to play with the ball and we have a midfield and defence of players who are shit on the ball. This team needs some major changes regardless of which coach is coming.

We have the players for a 'park the bus' coach [emoji4] Any coach can park the bus imo, most coaches just refuse to try it.

Which coach do we have the players for?

I wouldn't mind Sampaoli, I loved watching Chile. Sure he doesn't have that much experience but which coach that we can get does?

Why? Do you miss the Ramires-Lampard pivot?