Ossie the King

I love Eden, but be honest. Did he start the season in the shape he needed to?

People are trying to look at the situation as a whole and examine where it went wrong, and that involved not just Jose but the board and the players. Either way, the people who are upset, devastated, lost or whatever are still Chelsea supporters. They're the guys you sit next to at the matches, the guys you drink in the pubs with and the guys you travel across land and sea (and Leicester with). They're not the guys you should be trying to wind up. That's not what Chelsea supporters do now is it?

Only because he's got no track record in football and appears to be a glad-handing yes man to Roman. That said Marina is the main dealmaker at the club now and she completely fucked up the John Stones deal to the point where it became a point of principle that they wouldn't sell. It was one of the biggest fuck-ups I've seen a football club make in trying to buy a player and the backup plan was Djilobigi.

Has any club ever won the league and then improved the side by signing he likes of players we had, losing a huge influence in Didier Drogba and selling one of the best goalkeepers in the world to a direct rival?? That's surely unprecedented too. I'm not saying it means we should be one point above relegation but you tell me what position that level of ambition is aiming for? Repeat champions? Top Four? Top half of the table? But what about the club is it you feel connected to? For me, the club has changed radically since I started going and not always for the better. A lot of the fans who used to go don't but there's still a hardcore. But what's there for them to relate to? It was Jose and JT, now it's only JT. And Stamford the Lion but even he's changed and got himself a missus. Funnily enough, the passion that was there supporting Jose in the last few months was as good as it's been for a while. Now what's left? So you want the club to dictate the philosophy and ethos of the club....so that's Roman then? You want a 50-something oligarch to dictate the way we play football? Because there's NOBODY else there who has the influence and everyone around him is a yes-person (hi Marina). My loyalty is to the club I support and Jose was a massive part of that over the last decade because we changed so much in that time. He was the focal point for a lot of fans which is why his name was sung more than any other manager's at any other club. What we have now is a massive void because the club didn't do their jobs properly in the summer and whilst your optimism is lovely, there's absolutely nothing resembling a soul or a philosophy left there now. All that's left is Roman's chequebook.

I think when you don't improve the squad sufficiently, you allow complacency in and I think complacent is the nicest way to describe some of the players this season. Our work in the transfer market was appalling and I think the league is so competitive that standing still sees you drop off the pace a huge amount. It was always going to be harder being the champions, but a lack of quality allied with complacency is just asking for trouble. RLC should've got more minutes, but he also could've put a bit more effort in. I love the look of the lad but he does have the tendency to glide serenely around the pitch, part of which I think is due to it being so easy for him at times in the youth team. I also think Jose was waiting in vain for some consistency from the established names. I think he's the only person at the club who had an ounce of vision to know where he wanted to take us. Some people might not have liked it, some might've thought it wasn't attacking enough but as in 2007, he was dictating the way this club played football. Now we have no ethos or philosophy and we won't do for a long time possibly because it will probably be another series of rent-a-coaches in charge. But we were getting there. We had a philosophy of football, one that valued pragmatism over purity or whatever you might like to describe it. We were the anti-Arsenal in many ways but we didn't do what those other big European clubs do - we didn't invest. Going back to youth, Jose clearly wanted John Stones and Paul Pogba. He wanted a young spine in that team and he didn't get it. He got a 30-something Falcao, a 27 year old Djilobodgi and a 28 year old Pedro. If that's a plan of action then he was always doomed to failure, and so will the next guy, and the next guy etc.

When it was bad under Rafa, he got the vast majority of the abuse. Now there's not that figure so i think the players might bear the brunt of it. Deservedly so too.

Emenalo not going to address how he contributed to our shit summer? He's part of the problem, the cadre of yes men surrounding Roman and NOTHING will change. Relegation might be the only thing that wakes Roman up to the fact that in 10 years of owning the club the only identity we have is that we sack managers.

Jose doesn't have to be HIS perfect coach. He's supposed to be ours. Plus Jose can only do so much. Eden is a grown man and needs to take responsibility for certain things, like being in the best possible shape to succeed at the start of the season. He wasn't and that body language against Leicester has a lot,of people concerned.

But any successful company that offers short term gratification has an overarching idea of where it wants to get to over a period of time and a set of principles it holds true. We don't. We have placed short term panic ahead of any type of long term plan. What is our identity as a club now and do we trust Roman?

But he was able to become the best player in England last season under Jose.

Harsh mate. The guy has given us a lot, but at the same time I don't think he knows what he wants.

That exactly is the issue for me. We're a club at the whim of Roman Abramovich which is excellent at times, but also leads to this. And he wants the fans to give him the very name of the club? Good luck.

Bear in mind that it helped that we were shit in the 80s. When Jose took over we were despised because of the money and no-one would let us forget it, so he showed us how to wear it like a badge of honour. Fuck em all, as the song goes. The thing I keep coming back to after all this is, 'who are we?'. Maybe not the day for big existential questions but Jose could've built something long-lasting here. We'll never know though and for me a big part of that is the lack of backing he got in the summer.

Pay off refs?

The issue here is that you're looking at another short-term appointment to come in and apply his style in a half-arsed way for a few seasons with some success (if the board backs him) and then be replaced by someone who will do something else. I think the club has to have a frank discussion about what it actually wants to be and not just in the sort-term, but over the next decade and beyond. The issue there is that no-one seems to be in a position to say that to Roman who is a great man, but not the technician of a footballing dynasty. We don't need a manager, we need an identity.

I know some people want to forget the 80s but unfortunately they happened. We were hated (mostly because we had a lot of really not nice people at the Bridge) and Rick Astley was a real thing. Now if you get to the 90s when Hoddle takes over, everything changes. But let's not pretend we went from Osgood, Cooke and Bonetti to Gullit, Vialli and Zola without some stuff in between.

So we fit the manager to the players? The person above Jose is Roman, despite us having a board. In fact the only person who has come close to challenging what he wants from the team is Jose. Look at United, they were defined by Matt Busby and Alex Ferguson. Arsenal were defined by Wenger. Barcelona are defined not by a president who is elected, but by an overarching philosophy that is based in La Masia. What are we defined by? What is our identity? 20 years ago (and in the 1970s too) we were this fashionable, stylish team that people actually liked watching. We were also flimsy and couldn't last 38 games, so were essentially a very good cup team and a good bet to finish top 6. Now we are whatever Roman wants us to be, except he doesn't really know either. Going back to La Masia though, if people want us to find an identity in the youth team then they're very much built in the mould of Jose. At least when City decided they wanted to be the English Barcelona they went all in and even found time to back Pellegrini. I have no fucking idea what Chelsea wants to be. That is the most worrying thing of all.

Who was waiting in the wings to push them? Let's talk about the deals that were mooted - was JT worrying about the sun setting on his career because John Stones was waiting there to pounce? Do you think he's turned up to training once, seen Djilobigi's second-hand Peugeout 206 and thought he might get dropped for him? Or how about the second-coming of Lampard, Paul Pogba, smashing them in from 30 yards as Fabregas languished on the bench? We stood still and when you do that you get overtaken. What is the club you love? Is it the badge? Is it the stadium? Or is it the people? Now tell me a person more important to this club's identity over the last 20 years than Jose? We were already disliked by a lot of rivals yet we had a chip on our shoulders because of where we were based. Now you have a manager who takes all of that and turns it up to 11. You think we're arrogant, well here's the special one. You think we're nouveau riche scum well fuck you, we're going to stop you playing and then destroy you. What's more amazing is that people think the board will back whomever they place in the seat (for the next 18-24 months) next whilst they try and fabricate some 'Barcelona-lite' ideology of beautiful football.

When Rafa came in, there was anger. Now there's a general mood of despondency. I understand those criticisms, but we won the league last season. We won it playing some great football up until January and then coasted, but nothing we did in the summer looked to give us something more this season. There was no improvement to the squad, in fact it got weaker. That to me isn't Jose's fault, so then expecting him to put young, inexperienced players into a weaker side seems disadvantageous to both the team and the young players. Surely you want to integrate them when you're on the front foot, not when you're looking for consistency of results. I'm not asking for rationality though. Nothing about supporting a club is rational, it's an emotional response. Supporting this club is about the experience of being with not just my family and friends but also about being with thousands of people with the same love. It's those emotional bonds you build that are important and we built that with Jose too. His influence, his personality is all over this club. We sang his name in 2012 because we knew how key he was to that. Maybe we weren't playing stylish football, but some things are more important than that to some people. People talk about right paths and potential but I'm unclear as to what it is you're alluding to. So for instance when the scousers talk about it, they mean get back to 'pass and move, it's the Liverpool groove' and when United talk about it they mean an attacking, wing-based play and when Arsenal talk about it, they probably mean the Wenger-style of play. So what is this right path you're alluding to because for the last decade or so it's been very much Jose's fingerprints on everything. A return to fancy football that lacks steel?

In your analogy, Mourinho isn't the CEO is he? That would be Roman and the board so doesn't a lot of what you're saying pertain to them? I'm intrigued though as to what the right direction is because I'm fucked if I know? Is it the old 'Barcelona-lite' thing where we try and copy them so people really like us? What is the right direction for Chelsea now?

Isn't counter-attacking play an attacking philosophy? Obviously it is but I thought I'd just ask the question. Even then, it's one of a number of tactics Jose has employed. His philosophy (not simply attacking) has been to capitalise on team's mistakes and allow them the time to make them, then strike when they over-commit. He exploits the spaces teams create when they leave spaces by pushing forward too much, usually on one of the wings. When teams defend deep then it's very hard for any team to break them down, but even then he's shown an ability to do that usually through Fabregas or Hazard. But I think ultimately our failings come down to us not investing in players in the summer. You want to talk about attacking philosophies then where was the board's attacking philosophy? What was their plan to launch a defence of the title? I can see Man City's and I can even see Arsenal's a bit, but what was our's?

Not sure if you were around when Rafa was hired but right now it feels almost as bad. People are there to support Chelsea but Jose is a massive part of this club. It's hard to explain but a lot changed around the time Roman took over. We changed massively, but as much as Roman was the instigator for that, Jose was the architect. His attitude fitted not just with what Chelsea was before, but what it was after the money arrived. It's almost impossible to overstate the impact he had but I can't think of someone we've loved as much as him. Even when things were tough, we stuck by him simply because he was that important. Chelsea is a club like no other, right down to the fact that many of us own part of the pitch itself. I don't really know what our ethos or perhaps even our identity is going forward because we don't have that core of players (JT, Lamps, Drogs etc.) like last time. It's a hugely worrying time.

We do want to play football, and contrary to what some might say we do play football. The team provided Eden with such a platform last year that he was able to be the best player in the league. Truth is that for three years we've heard how Eden is a 'slow starter' which we all laugh off but why on Earth should he have that attitude? Why should he start every season a little bit overweight, a little bit off form. I could go even further and ask why he doesn't put the extra work in after training ends like Frank did, like Didier did (I'm a great striker, but why don't I just teach myself how to become a deadly free-kick taker because it might come in handy once or twice), like Beckham famously did and like Ronaldo (a player who doesn't have Eden's natural talent in my opinion) did in the gym. But I won't because that would be unfair.

Real Chelsea? I'm not sure what that is anymore so you might have to explain? Is it the Chelsea who destroyed Arsenal 6-0 or Swansea 5-0 or smashed Barcelona for 3 goals in the first 20 minutes? Maybe we're of difference ages but I'd say that 2006 vintage was 'Real' Chelsea when we had Duff and Robben flying down the wings, with Lamps smashing them in for fun and Drogba a tank of a player up top. This notion that Jose can't coach a team to attack is bizarre and oversimplified, possibly because he's such a pragmatist and is happy to win 1-0. But it really serves no purpose to try and shit on a guy's legacy. He's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but give the guy some credit when he deserves it.

That's something I've said about Hazard, but you're right that Costa came back a bit podgy too. Maybe that's on Jose though. We started the season slow and you wonder what the hell we were playing at in pre-season. That sorta reminds me of when someone is blagging a presentation so throws in buzzwords and technical terms. I'm just going to run this up the flagpole, but you can look at any of his teams across the years and see patterns of attacking play that produce measurable results. The league has become more competitive though and you need to constantly improve your squad or you fall behind. We didn't do that and what's worse, the players we already have (except Willian) performed poorly.