JFKvsNixon

I agree about Hansi Flick, he's my number 1 choice. I don't think that we need to give up on our defence, I believe that the team just needs to be coached better so everyone knows their job. You can see other teams with inferior defenders than Chelseas defend a lot better than Chelsea.

I think the injury to Lavia has hit the team hard, or to be more exact, the mismanagement of his injury. I think that Chelsea could have rotated the midfield a bit more to keep it fresh with him as well as being able to provide more of a stable base when needed.

Yep. He has no excuse, he's had almost a season With no European football to set up and organise this team. Tonight Chelsea still lacked cohesion and were shambolic at times and relied upon moments of brilliance to win.

For me, this shows that the players have quality and desire; what they're lacking is organisation.

The days of Premier League teams fighting their way to victory ended a long time ago. A team of average players, playing a system that everyone understands will almost always beat a team of individuals. With other teams like Brighton, the players know exactly where their teammates are and what they're going to do. When you watch Chelsea it looks look their making it up as they're going along, which fills the team with uncertainty. This is evidenced by Chelsea's players consistently struggling to beat the press and break a low block in offence and press effectively as a team, and maintain a high line in defence. Looking back, all of Chelsea's best results are built upon moments of individual brilliance, not patterns of play. All these things are achieved on the training ground, which leaves the question, who does Chelsea actually do when they train?

As part of the conditions of the purchase, Clearlake are not allowed to sell Chelsea for age least 10 years.

A fraud? he's Man City's second highest Premier League goalscorer!!!!!!!

If Caicedo is so poor, why was Liverpool also willing to spend over £100 million on him? Personally I think the problem is that he's gone from an organised team, where he knew exactly what his teammates would be doing, into a disjointed one where they seem to be making things up as they go along.

The board don't have to pay Poch off, they could just continue to pay his wages and put him on gardening leave.

After Lampard's admission that most of the Abramovich team not only wanted to leave Chelsea, but wouldn't even put any effort into training, when Abramovich was forced out of Chelsea, I think it was obvious as to why the Tuchel struggled towards the end. I strongly believe that this season Tuchel would have had us challenging for a top four place.

Good god no. His time in Series A was tainted with one toxic attack after another. The video of him chasing the referee round the car park after losing the European final just sums him up. One of his final bust up with his players is also telling and should put the final nail into the "bring him back to the Bridge" coffin, after Roma had just lost 2-1 to ten men Milan, the Roma senior players were reported to have had "raised their voices" when calling on Mourinho to provide better tactical instructions to his struggling team. Does this all ring any bells?

Hansi Flick would be. good choice, his record with Bayern was outstanding. If Klopp gets his wish to become German Manager, then I'd also be happy be happy with Nagelsmann

Don't forget that Liverpool were also prepared to pay over £100 million for Caicedo. I think that the problem is that Caicedo is playing in a team has no cohesion whatsoever and rely upon individual moments of brilliance to win their matches. Things like playing through the press, organising your own press, organising a defence and breaking down a low block are mastered by doing the hard work on the training pitch. Personally, I’ll not blame the players. I'm more than happy to reserve judgement until I've seen how they perform in an organised team that knows what it wants to do,

So you're describing him as being a bit part that's not really good enough for us? 😂

Very true, it could be two separate transfers. Even though Duran would be an upgrade on Borja, would we ultimately be stuck with another bit part that's not really good enough for us?

That wouldn't work for FFP, whatever the Premier League's version of it is called.

Saudi national team?

I wonder is this what Potch was talking about, when he mentioned that a situation occurred before the game which led to his players being distracted, and his players did well to overcome it?

I was more than happy to ignore the criticisms of Potch on his appointment for the reasons that you gave. After all, apart from PSG, his body of work was excellent. Again the lack of team cohesion at the beginning of the season never bothered me too much, it's expectable that it would take a time to turn around last seasons mess. My issue is the lack of progress with the cohesion, I can't remember the last time I went into a Chelsea game confident and excited, because I just can't seem to see what the team are trying to do. It's no fun when the best you can expect is to watch Chelsea stumbling through games time and time again, even the teams of Hoddle, and Guillit played with a swagger and were enjoyable to watch.

Has anyone thought that maybe the hesitant and underwhelming performances from the players may be more due to the lack of clear instructions and guidance from the management? The criticism that came out from Potch's time at PSG was that he never ran any tactical drills. It's often said that a lot of teams rehearse patterns of play, on and off the ball, over and over again so each player knows where their teammates are in any given situation. We often see this when teams put us under severe pressure pressing us when we try to play out from the back. It looks like the Chelsea players are unsure of whet they are doing, and that they're making it up as they go along. It's also noticeable when you see Chelsea trying to break down a low block, with very little options open to the player on the ball apart from a safe pass backwards or sideways. I'm happy to cut the players some slack because the truth probably is that we have no idea how good these players are until we see them in cohesive team that's set up to take advantage of their strengths. Nothing would make me happier if Potch was to prove me wrong and turn Chelsea around, but the next few games against Fulham, Villa and Middlesbrough seem to be make or break time.

I can't help wonder if the lack of team coherence, when I comes to playing out from the back or even breaking down low block defences, has more to do with the quality of coaching rather than quality of players. We're very quick to write off the players, but problem could be the instructions that they're getting. A good manager makes the team greater than the sum of it's parts.

XG takes into account the difficulty of the chance, for example the XG of Jackson's miss would be higher than the XG of Broja's. So you can see that even though Palace had more shots, and more shots on target, our XG was almost 2 goals better which does accurately reflects how the game panned out. Even if you don't trust XG completely, and believe that as I suggested, instead of perfuming to our XG, we were only 10 points better off, then our season would be looking a whole lot different. That also doesn't take into account the negativity associated with not scoring chances, it makes all of the team hesitant and insecure, when defenders worry that one mistake will cost us the match.

Chelsea's XG would put them around 4th, so even a half decent striker would give us at least an extra 10 points this season. Our season, and people's opinion of Poch, would look a lot different with an extra 10 points. Personally, I'd give up on Broja and Jackson and play Palmer as a false 9, until we can get someone in. He seems to have all the positive attributes that Havertz had with none of his negatives, but more importantly he knowa how to hit the back of the net, and is confident enough to soak up a bad miss.

The players look like they've never played together before, and they have no idea what they should be doing and they're making up as they go along. It's easy to pile in on the players, but there is a massive lack of organisation with this team. I want to believe in Potch, but he has to give me something to believe in.

I really liked the intensity of Chelsea in the second half, with Cucurella and Mudryk committing themselves to the performance. Palmer was the best player on the pitch for me though, dare I say it, he looks like a younger Havertz? Would it be sacrilege to suggest that without Silva Chelsea could push up the pitch making it easier to press and maintain the intensity?