Vesper

laugh of the year OGS is whingeing on saying that Lampard is bullying officials and that Chelsea gets every call their way and Manure get none!!!!!!! he is INSANE edited to add it was from a Sky interview on a stream

lol, Nike is straight taking the piss and the shorts and shirt combined are 200 quid £136 for the shirt, whilst the shorts come in at £64

Jorginho ‘top of the list’ at Juventus, but Chelsea not giving any discounts — report Granovskaia don’t play that https://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/chelsea-fc-transfer-rumours-news/2020/7/23/21334369/jorginho-top-of-the-list-at-juventus-but-chelsea-not-giving-any-discounts-report Jorginho has started Chelsea’s last four games, including last night’s ridiculous 5-3 defeat at Anfield, but that hasn’t really stemmed the growing tide of exit rumors that began in earnest after he had failed to feature in any of the first five games of Project Restart. But even as Jorginho remains a divisive figure in the land of Chelsea, in the land of Sarri, he remains top regista. Former Chelsea boss Maurizio Sarri would certainly to reunite with the 28-year-old, but it appears that Chelsea won’t make that too easy. According to Gazzetta dello Sport (via Sport Witness), Chelsea want to break-even on any potential deal, which means that Juventus would likely have to pay close to the €57m we paid two years ago. Chelsea director Marina Granovskaia has an excellent track record in extracting maximum value from our transfer sale, and there’s no reason to think she couldn’t keep that trend going in this case. While Sarri apparently keeps insisting that Jorginho is the missing piece at Juventus — who are about to wrap up another Serie A title despite less than scintillating play — Chelsea probably have the upper hand in this negotiation. Unless Juventus cough up the money, Jorginho is likely set to stay. So, your move then, Juve.

Ronaldo is chasing a butterfly and goals are flying in. Is Serie A feeling OK? https://theathletic.com/1942434/2020/07/22/cristiano-ronaldo-ciro-immobile-serie-a-goals-juventus-lazio/ Of all the things we think we know about Cristiano Ronaldo, who knew he was a lepidopterist? The 35-year-old went butterfly catching again on Monday night but couldn’t quite get it in the net. Ronaldo, just a goal away from matching the most prolific season in Juventus’s illustrious history, headed a cross from Paulo Dybala against Lazio’s crossbar for what would have been a hat-trick, allowing “il Farfallino” to fly from his grasp. Felice Borel, Juventus’s ‘Little Butterfly’, will elude him for another 72 hours at least. However, away to Udinese on Thursday, Ronaldo will likely reach Borel’s 31-goal tally from 86 years ago. “I’m not thinking about records,” the Portuguese said afterwards. Perhaps because too many are falling around him. Ronaldo’s two goals on Monday were his 50th and 51st strikes in his 61st game in Serie A. It’s the quickest half-century in the history of the league, faster than Andriy Shevchenko, who got there in 68 — however, the former AC Milan striker would no doubt contend that penalties weren’t as common in 2001, nor were defenders focused on anything other than blunt-force obstruction. The numbers are quintessentially Ronaldo, regardless of his 35 years — an age when strikers of bygone years were either way past their peak or retired. Nothing out of the ordinary then. Ronaldo was five goals behind Ciro Immobile in the scoring charts when lockdown happened. This week, he went ahead of the Lazio man for almost half an hour until a Leonardo Bonucci foul allowed Immobile to draw level from the penalty spot. Serie A hasn’t had two players break the 30-goal barrier in the same campaign since Gunnar Nordahl (34 goals for Milan) and Istvan Nyers (30 for Inter) in 1950-51. Over the next fortnight, the pair have a shot at breaking the single-season scoring record (36 goals) that Gonzalo Higuain wrested from Nordahl (35 goals in 1949-50) with a hat-trick on the final day four years ago. Nordahl’s milestone stood for what felt like an eternity. It was considered sacred, impossible to pass. Sixty-six years went by. Catenaccio emerged and became entrenched, influencing generations of coaches to set teams up to concede a goal fewer, instead of score a goal more, than their opponents. Arrigo Sacchi and Zdenek Zeman then appeared and challenged the defensive orthodoxy, infusing Serie A with a more attack-minded approach and leaving a legacy that continues to serve as a source of inspiration to an up-and-coming and progressive new wave of coaches. Their exposure to other cultures and different ideas is greater than ever before. Serie A has been opening up for a while but the notion of it returning to the free and easy goalscoring days of the 1950s causes consternation and arouses curiosity. In 2015-16, it featured more goals per game (2.96) than any of Europe’s other top-five leagues as Higuain earned himself a Serie A-record €90 million move to Juventus on the back of that 36-goal season under Maurizio Sarri for Napoli. The numbers then regressed and the Bundesliga, with its madcap transitions and gegenpressing storms, reclaimed its status as the most goal-heavy of Europe’s prestige divisions, a title it has held every year but one since 2015. However, the Italians are now pushing the Germans hard once again. Where the Bundesliga averaged 3.21 goals per game over the last year, Serie A is the only other top flight above three per game (3.03) — and that rate has accelerated since the restart a month ago. To put that into further perspective, there have been 128 (one-hundred and twenty-eight!) more goals in 2019-20 so far than by the same stage of last season. This is only the third occasion that Serie A has finished match day 34 with more than 1,000 goals in the bank. At times, it feels as if Atalanta have scored half of them, what with Gian Piero Gasperini and his merry band of Bergamaschi firing seven past Udinese, Torino and Lecce, six past Brescia and five past Parma and Milan. The merciless, never-sated goal-aholics seem to have forgotten the old Italian rule about resisting the urge to run up the score out of respect for your poor opponent. They just keep on keeping on. Atalanta are now only five shy of becoming the first team since Nordahl’s Milan and Nyers’ Inter to punch through the glass ceiling of 100 league goals in a single campaign. They have a trio of players in double figures, as do Roberto De Zerbi’s Sassuolo who, together with Atalanta, provide the thrust of this shift in style in Serie A. De Zerbi moved up in the world to the Neroverdi even when Benevento went down because of the strength of his ideas and courage of his convictions. The same will happen with Fabio Liverani, whose Lecce side will succumb to relegation with Europe’s worst defence. Presiding over a team which conceded 76 goals (and counting) in a season would ordinarily be the kind of stigma that stopped a coach from ever getting another job in Italy. But times have changed and Liverani’s bold approach is set to be rewarded. Expect to see him rock up at one of the mid-table clubs with more talent on offer and lofty aspirations of making the Europa League. Of course, the choice Juventus made last summer is the most symbolic of all. “Sarrismo” entered the Italian dictionary two years ago when he was still coaching Napoli, under the definition of a style of play “founded on speed and an offensive propensity”. This time around, we have only seen flashes of that. Juventus, whose identity is about keeping games tight and winning them 1-0, are about to become the first team to win the scudetto with a defence breached more than 35 times since Milan in 1962. More teams are taking more risks at the back than ever. Veteran strikers accustomed to man-marking and shutters-down backlines have thrived in recent years, with Luca Toni and Fabio Quagliarella topping the scoring charts despite being well into their 30s. Both have unabashedly credited those achievements with falling defensive standards and the imposition of playmaking roles on goalkeepers and defenders. StatsBomb data tells us that 11 of the top 20 players for open-play passes per game in Serie A are either full-backs or centre-backs. Gone are the days when those positions focused exclusively on shot-stopping and thwarting strikers by any means necessary. If rule changes over the last 30 years have tended to favour attacking play and the protection of forwards in acknowledgement of football’s metamorphosis from sport to showbusiness, with goals being the game’s most entertaining aspect, the latest innovations have catalysed change at an even more radical rate. The presence of more cameras and a video assistant referee means defenders can get away with less than they did in the good old days, much to the chagrin of retired forwards such as Alessandro Del Piero and Christian Vieri, who would have loved to play in this day and age. When it comes to refereeing, each country has its own idiosyncrasies. For instance, officials in the Premier League rarely utilise the monitor and on-field review. Referees in Serie A take the strictest interpretation possible of the already problematic handball rule. There have been 165 penalties this season, a 51 per cent increase on a year ago. Genoa and Lazio have been awarded the most (15). Inter, by contrast, have had the fewest given against them (four). As for the top-scorer stakes, Ronaldo and Immobile have both broken Roberto Baggio’s record for spot-kick goals (11) with 12 each, vastly inflating their own individual tallies. As of two gameweeks ago, 50 penalties had been for handling offences, which can be broken down as follows: 30 for blocking a shot or a cross, eight for deliberate handball and 12 for the arm either being above shoulder height or in an unnatural position that increases the size of the player’s “silhouette”. Rather than digress on law 12 itself, we can all agree 165 penalties is a hell of a lot of penalties. Walking away from the spot as triumphantly as Lecce’s specialist Marco Mancosu (eight penalty goals this season for him), let’s turn to how the number of goals in Serie A has spiralled even more out of control since the league came out of lockdown. Buckle up: since then, the rate has found another gear, like Chewie heeding Han Solo’s call to jump to lightspeed in the Millennium Falcon. Before the restart, Serie A was averaging 2.91 goals per game. Since the return to play, it has hit 3.38 goals per game, the highest of any of Europe’s top-five leagues in this abnormal six-week dash to finish the season. Italy spent longer in lockdown than those leagues and started later with more fixtures to fulfil. That has meant less time to get the players in a sufficient condition to sustain optimum performance levels for 90 minutes. As a consequence, we’ve had some thrilling turnarounds, including Lazio going 2-0 up then losing 3-2 to Atalanta, Parma suffering the same fate against Sampdoria, or Juventus taking two-goal leads against Milan and Sassuolo only to fail to win either match. Serie A teams were already dropping points from winning positions at a higher rate than the other top-five leagues before the pandemic interrupted the season. But upon the resumption, things have escalated considerably. One-hundred points have been thrown away from winning positions. Parma have allowed their opponents to launch comebacks in five of their last seven games. If fitness and having to play in the draining mid-summer heat constitute two factors, another is the lack of time between games, as raised by the Inter head coach Antonio Conte. The short breaks limit the hours that can be spent on the training ground, meaning injured players miss more games than usual, exacerbating squad depth issues while the extreme rotation it provokes also serves to create imbalances that make for rollercoaster games and emotions. This is manna from heaven for seasoned strikers such as Andrea Belotti, who scored in seven consecutive games for a struggling Torino side through June and July. The five-substitutions rule is another agent of chaos. As Parma coach Roberto D’Aversa has acknowledged, this piece of legislation has benefitted those with deeper squads such as Inter who, after playing awfully at Parma’s Ennio Tardini, threw on Ashley Young, Victor Moses and Alessandro Bastoni, all of whom were involved in the goals that turned a defeat into a late win. Sampdoria striker Federico Bonazzoli has established a post-restart reputation as a super-sub while Atalanta forward Luis Muriel, who already broke Marco Di Vaio’s Serie A record for goals from the bench in a season, didn’t need the final hour-half of games to become even looser to wreak havoc. Coaches in Italy always like to say another game begins after the 70-minute mark but this sense is more pronounced than ever since the season resumed. Goals from substitutes have leapt from 0.36 per game pre-lockdown to 0.52 since. As Ronaldo chases Borel, games continue to leave coaches, players and fans alike with butterflies in their stomach. No one can say with any certainty what is going to happen, which is why even the title race still had an air of suspense and trepidation about it going into last weekend. For the neutral, it has made for a fun campaign to follow. It may be peak summer but Serie A is raining goals.

Top-heavy Chelsea need improved defence to challenge ‘big six’ rivals https://theathletic.com/1941626/2020/07/22/chelsea-big-six-rivals-mini-league-arsenal-liverpool-city-tottenham-man-united/ Providing the next three matches go well, the future beyond them looks incredibly bright for Chelsea. Frank Lampard’s rebuild is already set to be supercharged by the quality additions of Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner, and now Kai Havertz, the most coveted young player in Europe alongside Jadon Sancho, is keen to be part of the next great team at Stamford Bridge. Lampard will not be expected to complete the construction of that next outstanding team as soon as 2020-21, although Chelsea’s most impressive transfer window for half a decade will certainly mean they’d go into it with realistic expectations of getting much closer to the Premier League title-winning points tallies posted by Liverpool and Manchester City over the past three years. Tonight’s visit to Anfield provides another opportunity for Lampard to measure the gulf to true excellence, even if Liverpool’s spectacular intensity has understandably dipped a little since officially clinching their first English league title for 30 years. It is also a chance for this transitional Chelsea squad to refine their approach to the big domestic clashes that will have a decisive influence on their own quest for trophies in the future. Chelsea’s results against the Premier League’s traditional “big six” this season are a real mixed bag, as you might expect. Victories away at Tottenham and Arsenal were achieved with performances imbued with the kind of resilience Lampard wants to see more often, while the home win over Manchester City that confirmed Liverpool as champions was the result of arguably the most complete display since he took charge. But naivety has also come to the fore in the less flattering moments: somehow failing to protect a 2-1 lead at home to 10-man Arsenal in January, missing several chances to clear the ball before Hector Bellerin sidestepped a hobbled Tammy Abraham to curl in the late equaliser that secured a 2-2 draw; twice undermining some bright moments against Manchester United by crumbling in defensive transition; succumbing to their own errors away at City and at home to Liverpool after competing well for long spells. Chelsea sit fourth in the “big six” mini-league and can move above City into third place with a draw against Liverpool, who are unsurprisingly occupying top spot. The head-to-head table supports the broader evidence that Arsenal and Tottenham have fallen away from English football’s elite, while United’s remarkable success against their biggest domestic rivals supports the growing optimism around Old Trafford that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is building a team to be feared again. But there is another aspect to the “big six” mini-league that should be of relevance to Lampard: with the Liverpool game still to play, Chelsea have already conceded more goals than all but Arsenal in matches against the other Premier League giants and kept only one clean sheet — the convincing 2-0 away win over Tottenham in December. The arrivals of Ziyech, Werner and possibly Havertz should help alleviate the fact that Chelsea have also scored a relatively modest 12 goals in their nine matches against “big six” opponents, but Lampard knows from his own experiences as a player at Stamford Bridge that dominant teams are made at both ends of the pitch. Chelsea’s overall tally of 15 goals conceded against the rest of the “big six” is distorted slightly by that 4-0 opening-day collapse at Old Trafford (above) — a scoreline that told us nothing reliable about what to expect from either club for the rest of this season. But the broader pattern cannot be denied; in five of the nine matches, Lampard’s defence has been breached at least twice. You can question how important it actually is to dominate your “big six” rivals if you want to win the Premier League title. There are, after all, 28 matches against the other 14 teams in the division with 84 more points up for grabs, a number big enough to sustain a title challenge on its own in some seasons. Antonio Conte steered Chelsea to the title in 2016-17 with 93 points, despite losing at home to Liverpool and away against Arsenal before his inspired shift to a 3-4-2-1 system, and to Tottenham and Manchester United after that tactical tweak. Their secret was that they lost only one of the other 28 games, a shock 2-1 home defeat to Crystal Palace in the April, by which time the resolve of the chasing pack had been well and truly broken. But it wasn’t until Chelsea dispatched City 3-1 in a brilliantly dramatic game at the Etihad in the December that Conte’s players seriously began to believe they were on course to win the club’s second championship in three years. If not quite crucial for the overall points total, these matches really do matter in terms of swinging the momentum of a title race and establishing who the best team in England actually is in the minds of the contenders. Two years earlier, Jose Mourinho’s approach was, above all, to make sure Chelsea didn’t lose to the rest of the “big six”. He won a relatively underwhelming four of the 10 matches but only lost one, a 5-3 thriller at White Hart Lane in January 2015. Carlo Ancelotti was more aggressive in 2009-10 and was rewarded with seven wins from 10 games against his domestic rivals, with 19 goals scored. Chelsea should have won the title much more comfortably that season, and would have done were it not for sloppy defeats against Wigan and Aston Villa. Both of those title-winning sides defended significantly better, against both “big six” opposition and overall, than Lampard’s current team have done. No champions in the Premier League era have ever conceded as many goals as the 49 let in by Chelsea this season, and there are still two matches to play. The team that came closest to achieving the feat — the Luis Suarez-inspired Liverpool of 2013-14 — found the limit of trying to outscore their opposition with an infamous 3-3 draw against Crystal Palace a week after the Gerrard Slip game. Chelsea have already done the kind of transfer business that should help bring their attack up to a title-winning level, and the signing of Havertz would raise the potential ceiling even further. But both against their main Premier League rivals and beyond, Lampard will need to find significant defensive improvement if he is to build a team as complete as the best sides he once played in at Stamford Bridge.

Is Tomori, at this point, so poor, so bad, that Lamps thinks the Shit Triplets (AC, Zouma, Rudiger) are all so much better that he (Tomori) might as well be on a beach already?

(Video): Frustrated Chelsea defenders scream at helpless Kepa as he leaves dangerous cross https://www.chelsea-news.co/2020/07/video-frustrated-chelsea-defenders-scream-helpless-kepa-leaves-dangerous-cross/ Chelsea have just conceded 5 goals to Liverpool, yet their goalkeeper’s worst error was after all 5 had gone in. If you ever want to see a goalie in painfully bad form, just look at this. Liverpool flash a free kick across the box – not even a particularly fast one, and the keeper stood there like an icicle. The ball literally travels 3 feet in front of his nose and he can’t move from the spot, so transfixed with terror is he. The defenders are screaming at him not because he should come for it – it’s long gone by then – they’re screaming at him because they can’t believe he didn’t. You can see the horror moment in the clips embedded here:

Nottingham Forest's season imploded against Stoke City with a dramatic defeat that cost them a place in the Championship play-offs. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/53412704 A five-game winless run heading into the last round of fixtures left Forest needing at least a draw against the Potters to guarantee they finished in the top six. That miserable run was extended to six games in nightmare fashion against Stoke, with Swansea's 4-1 win against 10-man Reading more than enough for the Welsh club to usurp Sabri Lamouchi's side in the play-off places on goal difference. In a turbulent start for Forest, Adam Davies made a fine double save to keep the hosts out early on and Jordan Thompson foiled Lewis Grabban with a goal-line clearance before Danny Batth headed home the opening goal for Stoke. Tobias Figueiredo equalised with a header from a Joe Lolley corner just after the hour, but Forest's play-off aspirations were left in tatters by two goals in five minutes from James McClean and Lee Gregory. An injury-time own goal from Nuno da Costa completed one of the most staggering nights in Forest's history. Reading 1-4 Swansea City: Swans secure play-off spot in sensational fashion as Nottingham Forest crumble against Stoke City https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/swansea-reading-championship-play-offs-18636498 Swansea City pipped Nottingham Forest to a Championship play-off spot on goal difference after an astonishing 4-1 victory over Reading at the Madejski Stadium. Rhian Brewster put the visitors ahead in stunning fashion before George Puscas levelled things with a penalty minutes after Yakou Meite was sent off for Reading. The Swans threw the kitchen sink and more at the Royals as they desperately looked to get the goals required to achieve their play-off dream. Wayne Routledge put Swansea back ahead with his fourth goal of the campaign midway through the second half. And a trio of goals from Stoke at Forest along with late efforts from Liam Cullen and Routledge saw Swansea finish above Forest on goal difference as they secured their place in the top six in remarkable fashion.

that Forest collapse HAS to be top 5 all time in the 150+ year or so history of final day English football look at the time the goals were scored Forest were tied 1 1 then Stoke scored 73rd minute 78th minute and then 96th minute on an own goal and Swansea were 1 1 until they scored in the 66th minute, 84th minute, and 91st minute so in the last 24 minutes plus 2 stoppage time goals, there was a SIX GD swing! and Swansea finished +1

wowow what a fucking shit final day Charlton out because the worst team on the league beat the 3rd best team on the league on a 91st minute game winner and fucking Forest blew a +5 GD AND a 3 point lead to and now crashed out of the promotion playoffs and they did it getting SMASHED to shit Stoke side at home by 1 4 shameful

YOU and that bellend started it not me that USATim shitehawk (after calling Lampard 'YOUR' (as in not his) manager) then said to which YOU replied to ME

no if Leicester beat manure we still only need a draw we would be on 64 then manure on 63 if we lose then them drawing fucks us I said before the game we only need 1 point out of 6 possible to clinch

you and your sock puppet USATim came in swinging m8 none of us did at all in match threads, we NEVER go off on the USA about shite it is a non starter in fact, earlier today I listed Weston McKennie as a possible target down the road for MF, as Puisic could play agent Christian

lol the funny thing is Klopp actually LOVES to win these types of crazy games more than some dominant 1 or 2 nil controlled machine drilling you can just hear it in his voice

it is not propaganda it is a simple documentation of criminal acts

yes.let's compare drunken foolishness to this, and this is just ONE USA sport

surely we have a plan for two new CB's, a LB, a DMF (Or the 2nd Cb will be Rice who will be sued there as need) and a GK on top of Havertz

Jorgi (if you mean that counter for the last goal) he dove in unless my memory is affected by the four 12% alcohol peanut butter fudge stouts I have almost finished

no they attacked our entire nation for no reason that is not going to not be responded to, at least by me, if no one else

I though this was directed at us if not, then my apologies

oki incel, you roll with that

no I am demonstrating a defence of us Brits and that poster came in guns a blazing and slagging off the nation

fuck off I NEVER attack ANYONE on here until they have a bloody go first then it's gloves off if they persist, which they did

I only picked the one true last kick of the game point loss nothing else that was a true dagger and it isn't like I have not been talking about it until just now

has there ever been a season where we had to cheer on teams we HATE so often???????????????? shoot me now