Vesper

1 nil Lewis-Skelly

https://redditsoccerstreams.org/event/england-albania/1508774 https://soccer-100.com/event/fifa-worldq-uefa/albania-vs-england-live-soccer-stats/724926

hard pass

I hope we do not get rat-fucked and FIFA tosses in an actual power team against us

Planned-for-the-future squads: Chelsea at the top https://football-observatory.com/WeeklyPost496

Paul Scholes criticises Cole Palmer’s dip in form: “I’ve felt for a while that for Cole Palmer, it’s almost been too easy for him to play in that Chelsea team. He knows he’ll play every week and be the best player. I think he needs challenging more, and I don’t get the impression that they [Chelsea] are desperate to win anything.”

Palmer had a scan on Monday to see how things were looking, and Simon Phillips has reported that while there were no problems on the scan, pain remains in the hamstring area, with another scan set for Wednesday. He said on Substack: “SPTC sources can confirm that Palmer has now had the results of that scan and it has come back all clear. However, the pain in his hamstring is still there. “Our sources have also learned that Palmer will be going for a new scan today [Wednesday] on his back to see if the cause is referred pain from his back causing his hamstrings to be tight.

Chelsea’s big-game mentality has deserted them – just look at their record against the top teams https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6207167/2025/03/17/Chelsea-arsenal-results-mentality/ It may not be what some of their fans want to hear but Chelsea’s problems run deeper than the tactics of head coach Enzo Maresca. When it comes to the big games, this squad have a serious belief issue. The underwhelming display in their 1-0 away defeat against Arsenal on Sunday was the latest chapter in a series of disappointing performances from Maresca’s side since late December. Even the four straight wins which preceded Sunday’s game, against Southampton, Leicester and Copenhagen (twice) were unconvincing. Maresca certainly has questions to answer about what is going on right now, and judging by the reception he got from some in the away end at the Emirates Stadium yesterday, they want to hear some better ones, even though Chelsea are fourth in the Premier League with nine games to go. Yet the sign of a very good team, one capable of not only qualifying for the Champions League via a top four/five finish but also competing to win Europe’s top club competition itself, is their record against fellow top sides. We are talking Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City (despite their downturn this season). Manchester United and Tottenham have to be included too, even though they are struggling in the table’s bottom half this season, because they also have intense rivalries with the league’s other big fish. When Chelsea were at their best during the Roman Abramovich era in the first two decades of this century, competing for and winning Premier League titles (five of them) on a regular basis, victories over that quintet were commonplace. Chelsea would go to places like Arsenal and most people in the crowd, let alone the 22 out on the pitch, would know what the result would probably be. And if it wasn’t an away victory, it would at least be a draw. But those days are a distant memory now and Chelsea’s record in these fixtures since the Todd Boehly-Clearlake consortium took over the club in May 2022 makes for bad reading. Reece James, third right, clashes with Arsenal’s Jurrien Timber (Julian Finney/Getty Images) If it wasn’t for Cole Palmer scoring the latest winner in Premier League history against Manchester United in the 101st minute back in April (Chelsea went into stoppage time 3-2 down that day), they would have no wins against United, Liverpool, Arsenal and City in all competitions over 26 matches. Even if you add Tottenham, who Chelsea have dominated results-wise for over 30 years, whether they were any good or not, it does not look a great deal better. To highlight how worrying this trend is, just look at the table below. TEAM PLAYED WON DRAWN LOST GOALS FOR GOALS AGAINST Manchester City 9 0 2 7 6 19 Arsenal 6 0 2 4 4 13 Liverpool 6 0 3 3 3 8 Manchester United 5 1 2 2 8 11 Tottenham 5 3 1 1 12 8 As it also shows, Chelsea have been outscored by every one of these teams during this period, apart from Spurs. This simply is not good enough. Also, if you just consider Premier League matches, they have only three wins in their last 20 away games against teams who have started the day above them in the table. Chelsea last bucked that trend against Bournemouth in September. To be fair, some of Chelsea’s struggles against these opponents began before the change of ownership. Chelsea last won at Arsenal in August 2021 — the same year they also had their most recent triumph over Liverpool at Anfield. They also beat City three times in 2021, at the Etihad in the Premier League, at Wembley in the FA Cup semi-final, and in Porto in the Champions League final. They have failed to beat City home or away since. There were some promising signs that the gap was narrowing under Mauricio Pochettino last season with the two draws against City and that dramatic success over United. Maresca can also point to the first half of this campaign, where Chelsea genuinely looked good in draws with Arsenal and United. After the 2-1 loss away to Liverpool in October, their coach Arne Slot conceded Chelsea were the only team his men had faced this season who had been “better than us” — well, until they faced Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League’s round of 16 this month, anyway. There is October’s 2-1 home win against Newcastle, while December saw a 3-0 triumph over Aston Villa, also as Stamford Bridge, and coming from two goals down to beat Spurs away, to offer some encouragement. And the hope is that Palmer, Nicolas Jackson and Noni Madueke will all be back after this 17-day break for international matches and the FA Cup quarter-finals. But overall, there is still something missing; that ability to face the toughest tests and come out on top. A mental block. The people now running Chelsea have deliberately chosen a transfer policy which focuses on signing youth and potential, and it means they now have the youngest team in the Premier League. But playing such a long-term strategy, waiting for players to develop into the finished article you’ve envisioned, is coming at a cost. Marc Cucurella cuts a frustrated figure at the Emirates Stadium (Julian Finney/Getty Images) Chelsea looked beaten from before the kick-off on their previous trip to the Emirates back in April, and lost 5-0. It felt the same on Sunday, especially in an opening half-hour when they did not have a single touch in the opposition penalty area and the home side dominated. To Chelsea’s credit, they managed to stem the Arsenal attacking tide but they still never looked like scoring. Now, they were without key attacking players, Palmer and Jackson in particular. Romeo Lavia, so impressive in that loss to Liverpool at Anfield, was a late substitute having just returned from two months out with his latest injury. But Chelsea in their pomp knew how to cope with such setbacks and get the result anyway. When asked by The Athletic if he thinks this is a problem he inherited and has to overcome, Maresca did appear to admit something is missing. He replied: “If the results say that… what I can say (is) between the first game against Arsenal (November’s 1-1 draw at the Bridge) and today’s game, to be honest, I don’t see a big difference between us and them. “This means we are… for me, since I arrived… I have the feeling we are on the right path and we are very close. We need just that step forward to compete in these kind of games. That step comes finishing in the top four, top five, Champions League spot.” Nobody can dispute that the August 2023 addition of Moises Caicedo from Brighton & Hove Albion has improved Chelsea’s midfield, but you can sense a bit of frustration over their struggle to make that final step. Speaking to Sky Sports afterwards, he said: “The team is good, the team is working hard to win the games. We want to show character, we want to play our best football and we want to win games like this.” The topic is relevant because, with just five points between themselves in fourth and Bournemouth in 10th, the race for Champions League qualification looks like going to the final day of the season. Chelsea’s nine remaining fixtures include meetings with Tottenham, Liverpool and United. To return to the Champions League next season, they simply have to add more numbers to the wins column in their biggest fixtures.

What’s happened to Chelsea? https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6207666/2025/03/17/newcastle-carabao-cup-win-saudi-owners/ Back in December, it seemed as if Enzo Maresca had done the implausible even before the halfway point in his debut season as their head coach and had made sense of the broiling chaos that is Chelsea. They looked like one of the only plausible challengers to Liverpool for the title, leaving champions City and their identity crisis in their wake and seeming even more convincing than Arsenal. Cole Palmer was tearing teams apart, Moises Caceido looked more like a £100million player should and Nicolas Jackson was scoring goals. That all feels like a long time ago now we’re in the middle of March. Chelsea’s season has been split into two extraordinary halves: the first saw them second in the table on 34 points, with just two defeats from 16 games. But since they drew with Everton just before Christmas, it has flipped entirely: in a table only of matches played after that point, they are 15th, below West Ham and Wolves, and perhaps most embarrassingly only above Manchester United on goal difference. They have won just four of their 13 outings since then, and look incapable of creating chances. The performance at Arsenal on Sunday was perhaps a nadir, admittedly without the injured duo of Palmer and Jackson, yet it was still pretty embarrassing that they had 68 per cent possession but only eight touches in the home penalty area. According to Opta, the 0.35 expected goals (xG) they generated was their lowest total yet under Maresca. Chelsea’s form has slumped since Christmas (Julian Finney/Getty Images) Perhaps this is just a bad run of form, exacerbated by injuries and fatigue. Or perhaps the first half of the season was the exception, that Maresca was overperforming with a poorly-constructed squad, and these last few months have been closer to Chelsea’s true selves. Either way, it’s a troubling echo of last season: Maresca’s Leicester City started the Championship campaign in similarly rampant form, going 12 points clear at the top of the division in February. However, the wheels came off after that, a run of six defeats in 10 meaning that, while they were promoted automatically with plenty of room to spare, the last third of the season was more of a struggle than it should have been. When Maresca then left for Chelsea, there wasn’t exactly wailing in the streets among elements of the Leicester support. If Chelsea finish this season in the top four or five, Maresca will have done his job. But they have not looked like a Champions League team for a long time.

Dario Essugo: Chelsea’s new defensive security blanket – with errors to iron out https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6209977/2025/03/17/dario-essugo-Chelsea-analysis/ For those wondering what to expect from Dario Essugo at Chelsea, here are the words he chose to describe his game at the start of his season-long loan at Las Palmas last summer. “I know I can contribute a more physical game to the team, with a lot of contact,” he said at his unveiling press conference on arrival in Gran Canaria from Portuguese giants Sporting CP, as reported by Las Palmas’s official website. “I like to steal the ball and move forward. I can provide defensive security; that’s what I want, to help achieve the team’s goals.” On the surface, that description makes Essugo exactly the type of midfielder that many Chelsea supporters have been crying out for this season, either to partner Moises Caicedo against more physically intense Premier League opposition or to relieve part of his huge minutes burden. Having only celebrated his 20th birthday last week, he also fits the player profile that Clearlake Capital have chosen to channel the bulk of their vast recruitment investment towards over the last two years. But that makes his arrival less likely to satisfy supporters who believe Enzo Maresca’s squad is being held back by a lack of high-level experience. Essugo has at least been involved in the senior professional game for three years, ever since becoming Sporting’s youngest-ever debutant at 16 years and six days when he came on as a late substitute in a 1-0 league win over Vitoria de Guimaraes on March 20, 2021. His elevation to the first team came before he had made a single appearance for the club’s junior, under-23 or B teams, and the significance of the moment brought him to tears at the final whistle. Sporting’s coach at the time, Ruben Amorim, was impressed by the quality Essugo brought to first-team training in the days leading up to the match and encouraged him to express himself during his cameo. “I told him: ‘Joao Mario, who has a yellow card, is going to come off’,” Amorim explained afterwards, as reported by MAGG. “I need someone to help (Joao) Palhinha. When you have the ball, you have more freedom than Palhinha.’” That advice could be applied to the way Essugo, a tenacious defensive midfielder with some playmaking skill, has tried to take onto the pitch ever since. But most of his opportunities to grow in the senior game have come away from Sporting, where he was behind the likes of Palhinha, Joao Mario, Matheus Nunes, Manuel Ugarte, Hidemasa Morita and Morten Hjulmand in the midfield units that helped Amorim surpass Porto and Benfica to win two Primeira Liga titles. Essugo winning the ball back against Betis (Fran Santiago/Getty Images) Essugo managed just 10 league appearances for Sporting before embarking on his first loan spell with Portuguese minnows Chaves in August 2024. There he got his first taste of being a regular starter in a team that finished bottom of the Primeira Liga while his parent club finished first, meaning he ended the season with the rare achievement of simultaneously adding a relegation and a league title to his career resume. He may end up repeating the feat this season; Sporting are well positioned to be Portuguese champions again while Las Palmas are on course to drop out of La Liga. Essugo’s contribution has highlighted both his quality and his flaws. Only five La Liga midfielders to have played 900 or more minutes average more than Essugo’s 1.9 interceptions per 90 minutes, and there have been signs of real on-ball polish despite the team’s relatively direct style. He uses his body well to shield the ball and win duels, and his willingness to receive passes on the turn and beat a man should lend itself well to the demands of Enzo Maresca’s system at Chelsea. His off-ball movement is improving. But there have also been plenty of errors — most memorably against Real Valladolid last month, when Essugo’s loose pass presented the ball to Anuar Tuhami and prompted Las Palmas team-mate Scott McKenna to cynically bring the midfielder down, resulting in a straight red card. Essugo himself has been sent off twice in his last four appearances for Las Palmas. In the second half of a 1-1 draw with Osasuna in January he responded to receiving a second yellow card in the 72nd minute by sarcastically clapping referee Jesus Gil Manzano, which earned him a further two-match suspension. His most recent outing against Real Betis earlier this month was also cut short by a second yellow card in the 61st minute for a slip and rash tackle on Isco. Indiscipline is not an unusual issue for a midfielder with Essugo’s particular brief, and his 1.8 fouls per 90 minutes for Las Palmas this season are comparable with Caicedo (2.0 fouls per 90) and Enzo Fernandez (1.8 fouls per 90) at Chelsea. Maresca’s first task with his new midfield signing may simply be to curb the 20-year-old’s worst impulses without the ball. One of Essugo’s best impulses with the ball occurred in the semi-final of the European Under-17 Championship in 2022. Essugo celebrating his goal against France (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images) Portugal were eliminated by eventual winners France on penalties but made it to the shootout because Essugo opted to go for goal from 40 yards, connecting with such purity and velocity into the top corner that team-mates put their hands on their heads in disbelief. Goalscoring will never be his primary occupation but striking a ball like that is a nice option to have. Chelsea’s plan is for Essugo to provide cover for Caicedo next season. He is certainly more seasoned for the position than Mathis Amougou, who was signed for £12.5million ($16.2m) in January on the strength of 18 senior league appearances for Saint-Etienne and is expected to be a Strasbourg loanee in 2025-26. There are signs in his physicality and technique that Essugo may prove well suited to the Premier League — but as is so often the case with Chelsea, it is a bet on potential.

Tino Livramento locks up Mohamed Salah https://scoutedftbl.com/tino-livramento-salah-newcastle-liverpool-stats/?ref=monday-night-scouted-newsletter SCOUTED Stats Before we take a look at Europe's Big Five Leagues, I wanted to start with Tino Livramento. Not only did he win every single duel he contested in the EFL Cup Final, he reduced Mohamed Salah to 0 shots attempted and 0 key passes. This was the first time in Salah’s 392 appearances for Liverpool that he had played an entire match and finished it with a blank for both metrics. It was the 13th time Salah has made an appearance for the club and failed to register a shot and only the fifth time he has played 90 minutes and not let fly. Stathead only covers Key Passes for the Premier League and UEFA Champions League - I did some manual checking to confirm the first stat - but, for context, Salah has only failed to blank for both metrics in four out of 361 Liverpool matches across those two competitions. The only one he played 30+ minutes in was the recent away win against PSG. In March 2025, two 2002-born full-backs proved that Salah is not invincible. Give Nuno Mendes and Tino Livramento their flowers.

Clearances The number of clearances made each season has dramatically reduced in the past 20 years, but within our eight-season timeline, the record is not completely unattainable. In fact, Murillo's 2024/25 tally has already broken this 'all-time' list. If the Brazilian averages 8+ a game for the final nine matches, he would overtake both Kurt Zouma and Nathan Aké.

Key Passes No U23 player has ever broken triple figures on the Stathead database. ...but Cole Palmer is leading the race to become the first.

Shot-Creating Actions We have seven U23 players in triple figures this season.

10 U23 players have reached double figures in league goals this season but it extremely unlikely any of them will join the 30+ club. Only a small handful have a decent shot at 20+.

Bradley Barcola and Cole Palmer are the only U23 players with 20 league G/A so far this season.

no more football for me today done going out for shopping and dinner with wifey

dire boring shit

worst offensive league performance in years

Reece in MF is a BAD idea cannot take much more of Maresca even Tuchel had a go at him

fuck off Sancho and Nkunku wutlesss

the bench has zero firepower teen Tyrique is the only offensive player and he has not scored for us J. Acheampong M. Bettinelli T. Chalobah K. Dewsbury-Hall T. George M. Gusto F. Jørgensen R. Lavia T. Adarabioyo