Adnane

Get your point, totally agree.

Lazy to mount a clip of his best passes this second time around, but yeah, he used to over hit them earlier with us, right now he seems to have progressed even more in that aspect, all his forward passes are generally neat. He hits them strong, between the line on players feet so it breaks oponnent pressure, we just need to have technically gifted players to control those balls well.

His passing is excellent for any position.

Cesc can only dream of Andrea's ball protection and technique, crucial skills for that particular "Pirlo" role in Conte's initial 3-5-2. I do think we're 20 times better without Cesc in the team, at least the actual Cesc, he has always been slow and sloppy, add 10 years of intense football to that and he's just past it, still has the casual brilliant pass in him but that's about it, can't compromise my team 85 minutes out of 90 just to afford that occasional moment.

Fair tos say he's been Premier League POTY so far ?

http://www.redcafe.net/threads/referees-and-mourinho.423174/ The flashbacks this thread is giving me are scary...

I think the challenge was to play a back 3 ( 5 ) and keep the team clicking on the offensive end, unpredictable and direct. We have the perfect profiles in Luiz, Alonso, Moses, Kanté and the real Matic. Genuinely believe that these 4-5 players have been the key to the success of the system thus far.

WOW

How convenient of you quoting this post 3 weeks later when all his weaknesses have been (re)visited due to a poor, awful performance at Arsenal. He was also bad at Leicester, couple goals saved his performance. If we want Chelsea to reach the levels it is supposed to be in, the maximum role players like Cesc should have in this team is a super sub, at best, and that's what he's been brilliant at in the first couple of weeks : coming up when have complete control of the ball against tired legs and finding spaces in between.

On the other hand he might have been there effectively for a bunch of players, maybe not Hart, but he sure was there for someone. Not a former Torino or Fiorentina player/manager ( far from that as he is a Juventus legend ), plus ain't the biggest game in italian football, and certainly not a game you'd book a flight/day for. So yeah I like to think he was there for someone.

5 games against non-top 6 teams : 13/15 points, 3 of which were away games. If we can keep this rate against the lesser side top 4 should be attainable, just up our level against the big ones and we might have a great domestic season.

Look at the below : Those pictures were taken respectively the : 1- May 2015 - Title celebrations 2- August 2015 - Season opener against Swansea 3- Winter 2015 - Game against Dynamo 4- Yesterday's game against Zorya in the Europa League. One can argue that these pictures were taken in different circumstances and events ( one of which is celebrating a title ), that his haircut might always have an impact on his overall look, still I can't help but think that he has looked really, really depressive and grumpy in the last 12 months or so, we talked about his father's health issues, it might have a part, but he is in a really bad mental state, and no wonder it has a lot to do with the way his team is playing and the confidence they're gaining. Yesterday he slamed his assistants in front of the cameras of the whole world, now that's their job and they should do it properly, media sometimes overreacts to his deeds, but he really isn't helping himself.. I really buried his ghost a while ago and I can't be happier that he's nowhere near this football club anymore, but for the sake of the good times we had together, he has to get back to the old lively funny José we used to know.

Has to cover all day long for Ivanovic's defensive imprecisions, take the ball out of a fucking mouse hole to get it back and forward to the opponent's half by himself every time because his right back has combination technique of a 10 year old, yet, still the first name on the stick list post-match. He's a brilliant winger, just needs to be played left, or next to a full-back who can actually combine and does his shit defensively. And if you even have doubts about his footballing qualities, at least appreciate him for all the fucks he gave and the efforts he kept during all last season, when every fucker around him was playing at non-league level.

Azpi-Luiz-JT-Alonso Oscar-Chalobah-Kante Willian-Costa-Hazard No excuses, simple decisions.

I'm not calling for him to leave just yet ( if we keep being shit for 2-3 years because of the same mistakes I might ) as it's much more complicated than that given the rest of our board. But things up there need to be shaken up, whether it's a change of personnel or strategy, we need to MOVE FORWARD, I feel we haven't done that since 2012, it has been 4 years and a half, many players came and left, I still can't sense consistency or a clear direction towards success, I don't want glamourous football, nor at least one trophy per season, just a clear path emphasizing our progress as a team, even Liverpool today looks to have that, we don't, and I can't help but think that 2014-2015 was just a one-off thanks to some exceptional individuals ( mainly Hazard ), in the remaining seasons we were ranked 6th, 4th, 3rd &10th respectively. If we fuck it up this season again, regardless of the manager and players performance, the strategy needs to change and we need to focus on enhancing the first team.

Incredible So you have been asking for Cesc to start all season long, once he does it and benches Oscar you criticize him for doing so ? Had he benched Fabregas and lost, you would have said the exact opposite. I highly question all of his decisions lately, but let's not be hypocrites and see things as they are : Cesc is never a 90 minutes player for Chelsea and shouldn't be, at least not until we sort all our defensive issues.

Doesn't create a lot, not excellent defensively, but gives us balance, our problems are really faar from him ( or Oscar for that matter ). He's just an easy scapegoat when people don't have anyone else to blame.

So, still our scapegoat ? The hate he and Matic are getting is incredible.

Sorry, nobody will convince me that Ivanovic is a better defender than Alonso at the moment. With Alonso and Azpi on the wings, we wouldn't give away the ball so easily under pressure.

Seriously, what do we expect under pressure when we have players with such low technical ability on the back ?

How hard is to see that we are a better team with Alonso and Oscar on the side ? How hard is it to see that tje likes of Ivanovic and Cahill should stay away as far as possible from the XI ? I'm all for giving him time because the players still can't play fully his way ( mainly on the pressing as you can see from his in-game shouts ), but some of his decisions for the moment are terrible, absolutely terrible. Start by getting Oscar and Alonso in at half time, nobody's gonna convince me that it could be worse than this.

Which is ?

The whole of last season, playing at Ballon d'Or levels.

Litterally can't remember one single time he was on the pitch for us without playing his heart out for the club. Deserved Dave, now give him the vice-captaincy ffs.

We got ourselves a game !