Vegetable

Chasing people who were recently banned / are about to be banned from sports is interesting twist in our recruitment standards I have to say.

While I don't disagree, I also think we need to stop the FIFA2016-esque "let's sell 15 players and get 20 new ones" talk every window, unless we joking. People seem to struggle to understand that individual talent goes so far, but generally football is all about synergy and we need knowledgable footballing department to build this. Players, who are not the best in their category, but complement each other will probably give better output, than random fellas who did good on yt compilations. That's perhaps a reason why so many players shine before and after they play for Chelsea, but not quite while being here. A while ago we very smartly let all the senior players go and it bites us to this day. All that TB shopping madness was pretty good build of talent's pool, but I don't see how should their form Chelsea starting 11 and people at the same time call to get rid of pretty much every player who had been here more than two years and dump all the HG, because who cares for rules, we can always replace entire team when they get over 21 years of age. Even Real seem to have switched in recent years from buying all-star to keep their core and seek precisely for proven talent, who fit their philosophy, because the playstation approach just doesn't quite work anymore. There's so much more to building great team, than just buying "better mf/gk", just look at how City is managed in this manner. Tuchel was shat on for wanting players people on the internet doesn't like, but the difference is he had some idea on how and what for to use them, not just "get me some talented guys and we will see how to powertape them to the team", as it's a mid-table way of dealing with things. Meanwhile in the summer we will have like what, 5, 8 nominal AMF's? Bold and very thought-out move for a team, that doesn't really utilize AMF.

Actually, if we are talking about the involvement of money, the answer may be yes and that's a big part of our problem with him…

I guess he refers to one creative, dangerous pass being worth 100 properly executed random backpasses to the defender and it's hard to reflect this in stats.

IIRC Kante was more conservative dm before Sarri pushed him more forward. With age and running relentless taking his toll on him, making him sit deeper when needed doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Never been much impressed by Rice, but if we were supposed to start the second chapter of 120+ million saga, then just please no.

Still I'd be way more interested in seeing us play actual PL-level football first time in months, than busting a nut to whether we will interrupt Arsenal or not. Apparently there's some reason why they sit on double the points we have, so maybe it's better to stay silent sometimes.

Can Rice do what Kante can't though? It pretty much shows where the new regime is dragging us. Appointing Pochettino would be unthinkable 12 months ago, Poch declining Chelsea, having Notthingham and Bilbao as an alternatives is straight off laughable. BTW I don't get demonizing Tuchel since the takeover with "it wouldn't work long term anyway" bs. He seemed to vibe with us like never before. It wouldn't work because what, he had demands and wasn't into pretending we are Richmond FC? Because people calling for "beautiful football" like we were still living in jorga bonito 2000's had shut up a while ago already I guess.

Jorginho wouldn't be a matter if only things had worked out as planned. Not like people here rated him very much to put it lightly until he was gone and we were, in theory, improving quality, so better to let him go when there was someone interested, instead of making him sit in the parking lot as we can't fit players in the dressing room. Too bad it turns out not only we miss his imperfect input, but he was one of very, very few people exhibiting a bit of leadership and charisma here. There were multiple reports his departure didn't go down very well with the rest of players. Can't shake the feeling that club got carried away the same way with Giroud.

It looks like being in starting eleven is more of a punishment, than honour recently. We are trash mentally. Broken. No desire, no joy, no engagement. Everyone is on holiday mentally or in some very dark place. Not going to excuse Mendy, you save those shots 99% of time, but it's not the first time this team has zero confidence. If all you can think of is "I cannot fuck up for dear life", guess what happens in next 30 seconds 😂

Just a reminder in previous Lampard's stint Kepa needed a few good months of gametime before reaching even the Kepa level of confidence. Had we fielded Auba now, he may not impress as well. Watching this team in recent weeks, I wonder what happened to the "elite mental coach" we had supposedly appointed a while ago.

Not surprised with Mendy's blunder - this guy was taken out of tools shed after month of being frozen out, what do we expect?

It's becoming a parody of the parody.

Sad to see him going downhill here. People were criticizing this transfer as purely marketing one, but with he seems very intelligent fella with good work ethics, it would be good to have him on team, if only he had more decent output (because injuries thing, we all knew about).

Wait, wasn't like 96% of this board absolutely crazy about best footballer ever we absolutely had to get Raphinia like 2 transfer windows ago? 😂

Build is one thing (Mendy on the other hand is slow to go down due to his size, so we have too small and too big at hand lol), Kepa mitigating his weird hand-swing is another, but he constantly gets caught with wrong footing, as he seems to hesitate if he should stay on line or rush forward, doing neither in effect and obviously, conceding.

Toney, Onana… Maybe call Mutu as well.

Of course knowing how unlucky things like to turn out, the stop of rumor may be worrying, but on the other hand, maybe someone at the club finally got ahold of everything leaking out left and right AND announcing Poch (or whoever) now would further undermine Frank and general morale, so they may rightfully let him work and leave immediate future to immediate future.

I was trying to escape the military analogy, no incident that it's traditionally most abusive line of work/service in most countries. Fortunately times are changing towards understanding such shit is not only unacceptable, but actually punishable by law in many cases. We are dealing with adult people, professionals who signed a certain contract. Maybe I'm weird, but I'd much rather respect a leader, who can inspire people and consider someone, who resorts to "putting people in their place" by making them run laps, as they can't do any better in 21 century laughable and incompetent. I'm sure there is very precise rulebook and precise fines for not obeying it. Surely there is a lot of people, who fancy "the old ways", but think about it in very practical way - training a soldier is expensive. Footballer perhaps even more. As a taxpayer, wouldn't you rather prefer the military-you to master some tactical or combat skills during the limited time of expensive training, than running laps, being yelled at by some abusive idiot, who is upset he cannot control the group he is for some unclear reason in control of? And I say not resorting to kindergarten level abuse in high-budget, professional environment has absolutely nothing to do with indifference to what happens in society. It's not like people stopped using physical violence towards their children and suddenly the society went apeshit.

Hence the "avoid" in my post, as we had actually avoided it today. Still I feel we rather belong to the other side of table.

I'd love to and I tend to, when the situation is adequate. I feel like change of Roman's approach to TB approach was sorta transition from glass half empty to glass half full and here's how it backfired. I was laughing last week, when we were supposedly "trashing Arsenal and ending their championship chances", now I'm fine we did what we should, but not much more, not after that season. Everyone at the club needs to get their shit together and get to work, time for glass half full will come, hopefully soon. And who is not letting you enjoy what you want to enjoy? You are a football fan, celebrate how you like, but don't force me to get the same level of enthusiasm at the same time, man.

I obviously enjoy but know some decorum. Yeah, we finally did the bare freaking minimum that is expected from club of Chelsea level. Do a high-five and get to work. If this win is a reason for team to get all delighted with themselves and pop a champagne, we are in very dark place. I'd actually feel weird celebrating a goal this month, given we are literally trying to avoid relegation battle.

I'm not really enjoying that all we can enjoy is scraping the win against Bornemouth to secure the place outside relegation zone. Actually, it makes me sad, so there is that. Not even mentioning half of twitter crowd was suddenly all content with Potter and players every time we managed to scrape a point after weeks of suffering this season, so I feel in position to take piss 😂

Don't want to sound like stereotype Gen Z, but I totally agree with the player. Someone is unprofessional? Not my business, talk to them or fine them as per club regulations. I'm a top footballer, provide me adequate, top level training or fuck off, I'm not running laps for sake of it because someone mistaken the way to vent their issues on PE lesson where they belong and got to Cobham somehow. We are not in kindergarten. Time is money on this level, if other teams are moving the edge of world-class sports development and we are running laps, no wonder we are shit.

O wow, incredible. Hope Frank will be appointed for next season and will deliver the vision. Also, we must buyout Felix at all cost, easily worth 150 million.

I hope everyone will notice we have quite a few Goalkeepers on the team and don't really need another 5 of Brighton reserves or Championship randoms for sake of it before it's too late. We will be destroyed financially next window thanks to idiotic shopping spree AND in case of smallest FFP violation I'm sure the authorities will blissfully ban us from everything, everywhere forever, so no, we don't need Onana who was banned on doping grounds for a year, neither we need Leeds GK, seriously.