Mhsc

How long does it take to make a decision on that? lol

Looked offside in real time but my stream is behind everyone elses... I assume it has been ruled out?

Wow Cole unlucky. Nkunku sub please. We need NJ.

Oh, I just clocked that Reece James is on the bench. Almost forgot about him. We have missed his set pieces...

In my opinion Colwill is the worst defender and biggest liability from our best XI - he for sure deserves to be in the XI, because of the low quality we have at CB right now, but he is the worst of that XI imo. Any normal top team would have him out on loan still - he's 21, and does not have high football IQ or defensive ability (tackling / positioning / decision making). Everything will be fixed with time - his ceiling is probably not THAT high given he clearly lacks football IQ but in his mid 20s I expect he will be a very decent PL CB because experience will paper over the cracks to a decent extent, and his ball playing ability will carry him (especially if he adds better decision making there too - he could become a menace). Question remains should we be bedding these guys in directly at Chelsea or not. The clubs view clearly is in the end it is better to do it and let them develop and bond with the rest of the squad. I can see the merits of that.

Interesting. The group has played a lot in short succession and looked leggy in last 2 games, so I can kind of see the point, as well as giving players a chance when others have not performed (while they can't complain not to play when we keep winning, it would be pretty legit for Nkunku, Felix, Noni etc to get grumpy if they don't get a game after 2 shit performances from the people they're trying to win spots from). Still quite risky though, because these guys don't play for a reason by and large. We'll see what happens. Only having Disasi in there genuinely concerns me.

Imagine it might be basically the same team as with Fulham but maybe Noni comes in and Sancho goes to bench?

But you said we dropped 12 points - which if we had got would have put us on 47 points, ahead of Liverpool and in 1st, and probably favourites for the title. And subsequently on about 100 points at the end of the season, if we were to continue getting the kind of points you think we should be getting. I just don't see it as realistic for us to be dominating the PL like that. It is not that easy imo. I don't think we are "dropping" points - we are not serious title contenders and have not done anything to have those kind of expectations around us - we are getting the results we deserve, for the most part. I think we are, if anything, slightly over performing the expectations for us this season.

Assuming Duran would be much more amenable to a "Chelsea special" (very long term deal on cheap base wages with the rest based on performance) then yeah I would take him over Isak or Osimhen, given we have NJ already. But who knows what these players are really up for.

Haven't really followed him at PSG but he doesn't really seem like the type we need. Would hope that is just the typical scenario of an agent throwing our name out there to get attention on a player... The club were looking at pretty traditional number 9s in summer (Samu, Duran, Osimhen, before that Sesko). I have always been against us spending big on Osimhen (mainly against long contract on huge wages for someone that might flop in PL). Duran for a probably big fee from Villa is more interesting to me TBH (even after he just stamped on someone) but probably not a popular opinion!

That was just a rough guestimation of where we would be by the end of the season if we had got all of those "dropped points" and continued that form. You recently said we had dropped 12 points, which would put us on 47 after 18 games, which if you extrapolate forward would be approximately 100 points by the end of the season. It does not seem realistic to me. Overall I am pretty impressed with the progress we've made and feel like our place in the table is pretty fair based on how we've performed, and don't really feel like we've "dropped" many points - although I'm not sure I even know what that term even means anymore.

But we are not a title winning team - we are in the Conference league... Your expectations seem quite detached from the reality of our squad and the time Maresca has had. You just expect us to get 100 pts a year..just because?

Don't really understand this - what makes us "deserve" to win these games? Just because we are Chelsea? The other teams got a result that was fair based on how they performed vs how we performed on the day. The score lines quite literally show that. From memory we were robbed vs Palace by the ref a bit but by and large we got what we deserved in all these games. We have to be better if we want to get better results. We have hardly been robbed all season tbh.

I wonder if we are returning for Osimhen in Jan? Club chase him window after window and I guess he is the only top striker likely to be available for a Jan move.

Well yeah... That is the premier league for you. Brighton in 10th, Spurs 11th, Man Utd 14th. All of the teams around them are very good too. This league is really, really hard.

It is not realistic to think we should be on 47 pts lol. It is the PL. Hardest football competition in the world. Everyone is struggling...because it is hard. We are relatively speaking struggling the 2nd least.

Some nasty stuff in this thread during the holiday season! What a sad state of affairs. Hopefully the mods/admins will do something, usually they've been good about such things to be fair to them.

Guiu for NJ? I don't buy that man - we'd be fuming. Guiu has had one good conference league game, lets not get ahead of ourselves about the kid. Maybe if you think he can do something out on the wing instead of Sancho or Neto, idk.

I think Maresca's stance has always been that you can't play Cole and Nkunku both at the same time as we would be way too open (unless one plays as a 9). Don't really disagree tbh. And don't really think Cole should get taken off.

Don't know why Maresca is getting so much stick tbh, don't think I would change the XI and actually when you look at the bench today (Noni not on it) who the fuck would you bring on really? Felix to do what? He's not really shown anything in PL. Nkunku for Jackson sub was probably his only major mistake.

Ah well, what a bummer for a boxing day game. Players looked like they had a bit too much Christmas turkey and wanted to go home at HT. We will now probably be down in 3rd where in all likelihood we will settle over time.

Has he ever taken a good one? Something I've noticed for a long time. Shocking to me he hasn't been permanently taken off of all set pieces.

Started with a poor kick by Enzo to be fair, followed up by a dreadful kick by Sanchez and then it was lights out

These games are a nice reminder that we are very much a work in progress... Sanchez is the only reason we are not losing tbh

Didn't really see a foul on Pedro tbh, if anything he was the one who committed a foul and got hurt doing it...