Pizy

Heartbreaking to concede at that moment, but fair result in the end considering the chances they had early. Hugely encouraging performance, though. Were it not for an unbelievable, world class strike we'd have kept a clean sheet against arguably the best attack in Europe. That was literally the only possible spot Sturridge could've put that to score. We won the midfield battle (Kante, Jorginho, and Kova were all excellent) we were very solid at the back, and both Hazard and Willian were great. That last pice that separates us from the top 2 is that world class forward. Giroud, bless him, works his ass off but just can't score the 25-30 per season we need. What a fucking coach Sarri is, though!

Come on, Chelsea, please PLEEEEEEEEASE win this!

Arse, Spuds, and City all win. Feels like Arse should be a mile behind us but I think they're only 1 point back.

Yeah, Luiz is the biggest worry in this game. That front 3 is terrible to deal with for even quick, mobile CB's. Good as David is on the ball given time, getting caught out of position and having to scramble to recover will be suicidal against this team. We basically need to play our best in every area of the pitch to beat Liverpool here. In my opinion the scariest side to go against in the league at the moment.

Huge performance needed from Willian today. Disappointed Pedro couldn't make it in time.

Win this and we can probably eliminate the need to worry about United as a top 4 rival. I figured they'd be our biggest threat to a CL place this season but if we can go 9 points ahead of them already I can't see us letting that slip. I haven't wanted to win a match this badly in a loooong time.

My guess is that Klopp will have one of Keita, Wijnaldum, or Milner pressing and man-marking Jorginho all game long in order to disrupt our entire way of playing. Hopefully he can cope. They'll also have their fullbacks and midfielders doubling up on Hazard of course. We have to also be prepared for their usual blitz in the first 15 minutes.

So the 3 questions seem to be whether Rüdiger & Pedro are fit and whether Kovacic or Barkley will be preferred from the start. Man, imagine how massive 3 points would be for the fans and the players' morale. The players will probably start to believe they really can win the league this season.

If Kova goes back to RM, Ramsey on a free wouldn't be a bad option.

Glad with the rotation. Honestly think thisll be a poor game from a quality standpoint with so many changes for both sides. Lots of players who have no chemistry or cohesion from playing regularly together. Meh, I'll prob just follow the game via Twitter and skip watching it. League Cup just doesn't do anything for me in these early rounds.

I agree we should heavily rotate. I'll actually be pissed off if we see a very strong side. Especially if Jorginho and Kante play. We need them as fresh as possible for the weekend. I couldn't care less about the League Cup.

Don't know why people are having a go at Jorginho. He was one of the only players who looked like making anything happen. All of the attacking players were poor.

Easily our worst attacking performance of the season. No coincidence that it coincided with possibly the worst match of Hazard's career at Chelsea. He was abysmal today and made the wrong decision nearly every time he got it. Was imperative that we picked up 3 points ahead of playing Liverpool. Now we go into that one possibly without our best CB if Rüdiger has a serious injury. They'll rip us apart. This game also showed us why any talk of a title challenge is premature. Huge difference between ourselves and City/Liverpool in the final third. They each have lots of players who can score and cause havok. We have 1 basically, and when he plays poorly we struggle mightily.

So many sloppy, lazy passes man...

We also see today why Pedro is preferred as a starter to Willian. He's a big reason why we look slow in the final third. He only ever gets the ball when he's standing still. Pedro is constantly running through the lines and down the flanks and receives the ball while he's in stride. Willian just grinds our moves to a halt.

Similarly to last week, we look great in possession and are controlling the midfield. But we are playing far too slowly and that plays right into their hands. They can easily keep everything in front of them. You saw Sarri yelling at them to speed things up. We also look super vulnerable down both flanks because we're pushed so high up the pitch. We need to start pressing high and quickening our passing up because the longer this goes scoreless the more West Ham will feel they can pip us on the counter.

No Arnautovic! Nice! Antonio is still a dangerous player but isn't likely to pull a worldy out of his hat from nowhere like Arnautovic can. They have Declan Rice who is naturally a CB and Mark Noble who is about 40 years old and woeful in their CM. If we can't control and dominate this midfield it'll be a joke.

So Wet Spam get a nice leisurely week to rest up and prepare while we went to fucking Greece and had our flight delayed. Basically 1 day to properly prepare. Really glad that Hazard and Kova didn't play yesterday and that Jorginho and Alonso came off early. At least most of our biggest weapons will be well rested.

Can't believe I'm saying this after how shockingly terrible West Ham were their opening few games.....but I'm actually a little worried about this one. Each of their front 3 are very dangerous and are usually the exact sort of attackers our defense struggles against. With only a couple of days between PAOK and this one that's also a concern. Thankfully, West Ham are absolutely nowhere near as good as we are in midfield. If we play like we have done in that area of the pitch we should win this one. Won't be the walk in the park it looked as though it might be a couple of weeks ago.

You can see that there's a talent in Morata because he is constantly getting into good scoring positions. But he repeatedly shits himself when that final touch of quality is needed. Very, very Torres-like. And this is against arguably the weakest opposition we'll face this season.

Jorginho and Alonso are the two players I'm worried about getting burnt out. The two players who Sarri appears to think are irreplaceable. Less worried about Kante, Rüdiger, and Azpi starting this one because they're machines. Still thought we would heavily rotate here.

I'm glad that Hazard hasn't travelled. I really, really hope that Sarri doesn't waste Jorginho here either. He's so important to the team and in a new league with so many matches we can't afford to burn him out. No way should he be necessary against PAOK.

Pretty much been the ideal start to the season for Kepa. Other than maybe one of the Arse goals he got a hand to, he hasn't really been forced into much action. He's been able to quietly settle in.

Like the commentator said earlier, PSG look so unprepared for this sort of match because their domestic league is so weak. They stroll through all of their league matches with teams sitting off them and letting them dominate. They aren't used to sides punching them in the mouth like this.

We were totally comfortable in the second half and utterly dominated possession. Every time Cardiff would get the ball we'd win it back almost immedietly. But despite all our possession we were sort of playing at walking pace. Guess we can put that down to the international break. We didn't really press high or rip them apart like we could have had we upped the tempo, but I suppose we didn't need to. My only real concern is David Luiz going forward against better teams. He's been iffy in almost all of our games.