Mhsc

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...

I dunno man, you speak with a lot of confidence that he would get plenty of minutes but the fact is he's been shipped off on loan twice and got basically no game time in his PL loan. He is currently playing for a 13th placed Ligue 1 team. We are second in the Premier League man. It is very unlikely that Santos is ready to play a lot of minutes for a team at our level. It would only be out of complete desperation he would play in my opinion - Enzo, Lavia and Caicedo all out and maybe he gets considered, but even then I am not sure he would play - probably Enzo would look to Gusto, Cucurella and even KDH first.

That was the kind of argument we had for being pro Raheem Sterling too - this would be just as huge a mistake if not bigger. When you're washed you're washed. Happens to some of these England players pretty early it seems as they get fat pay cheques when they're super young on long term deals, and have often started playing a lot of football at a young age too. They just look totally out of love with the game, strolling around and focusing on their own stats over contributing to the team. Which in the end hurts their stats.

Um, not sure on that. We already serious jeopardised this kids career and now you want to recall him from loan to be a bit part player for us for the rest of this season too... Are we trying to permanently burn bridges with this guy? I can see the call making sense if Caicedo was injured too but feels a bit bizarre and frankly quite brutal to ruin this young man's season and further damage his career just to play in the Conference league with poss some PL minutes. If we recall someone just to have cover then Ugo would be the obvious choice as he would probably play more for us than he has for Southampton as he could play in Conference league.

Rashford is totally outside of our MO these days - old Chelsea yes, for sure, but never these days. He looks semi retired to me, just seeing out his playing years to maximise his income. Salary too high, age too high, and most importantly he'd be lucky to get a game in the Conference league for us.

Depressing but true. Spurs fans would absolutely love to lose today.

Noni was useless to be fair, one of the worst and most ineffective sub appearances I've seen in a while For me probably the most interesting thing would have been to see Felix but who knows how effective he would have been either. Tough opposition in tough conditions. It is what it is. Last year we would have lost a game like this 3-0.

Maybe you should see a therapist buddy

Personally I like that the Sean Dyche's of the world exist and still compete in PL. Keeps things interesting - just don't want too many of them. Worth remembering in the end, everyone has to face these teams home and away and if other teams do better than us against them then fair enough on them, we should have been better. What are they supposed to do, make it easy for us?