Pizy

We've had more money to spend than ever and still refused to buy from the top bracket. Otherwise we'd have Lukaku, VVD, Pogba etc in our side instead of our rivals. The money is there, we just choose not to spend it. I have zero faith that we'd us the Hazard money on a player or two that are close to him in quality. I can see it now: we sell Hazard and target Zaha and some other up and coming kid with potential to replace him.

We'll see this summer. They sold Coutinho for 100m+ and bought VVD for 75m. If we do the same with Hazard there's little chance we'd do the same with that money. Knowing our board we'd replace one 150m player with a load of 20m players and call it even.

While some of the blame definitely has to be placed on the players, the vast majority lies with the board/owner. When you win titles you're supposed to build upon that success and add quality and depth to maintain the momentum. In each of our last two title wins the club has either become complacent or penny pinched. Last title win we essentially signed no one and combined with Mourinho's toxic personality it was disastrous. This past summer we tried to prevent that from happening but have an absolutely clueless transfer strategy and bought loads of mediocre players. Years of selling great players (Salah, KDB, Matic, Lukaku) and signing average ones has finally and mercilessly caught up with us. When the Manchester clubs are signing superstars or top quality talent whilst we buy Bakayoko, Drinkwater, Zappacosta, Barkley etc what do we expect? Even Liverpool are in another spending bracket than us now. Fucking Liverpool! Must be demoralizing as a player or manager who just won the title last season watching other teams improve massively and totally eclipse you. All 4 sides above us improved significantly. The champions took a step back.

What's going to suck even more than watching him leave is watching him go to a club that is loaded with other top quality players on his level and dominating. I have a feeling that we'll be seeing a lot of people saying "this is the real Hazard" once he's at a club like Real Madrid. We're going to see what we could've had ourselves if we showed any ambition at all as a club and surrounded him with quality rather than mediocrity. I don't see how we can replace him. It certainly won't be with just one player. Add to that its a World Cup summer so any player who does well will be out of reach for our cheap ass board.

And the boom/bust cycle begins again soon. Another complete overhaul and rebuild necessary only a season after winning the title. Sad to see. Hopefully we don't fade into mediocrity like Arsenal have and like Liverpool did until recently. We need a massive and hugely expensive injection of quality this summer or we'll be left even further behind. All 4 sides above us have a clear identity, style, and set way of playing. That's the difference. Only City have a squad that's miles better than us. There's no way we should be finishing behind Spuds and Liverpool. You could forgive the two Manchester sides due to their ridiculous spending.

That's our season done, Conte gone, and Hazard gone.

Worst possible goal you can concede. Literal school boy defending. Embarrassing.

Moses is just a disaster waiting to happen defensively just like Cahill. It's his total lack of awareness. Clueless.

Both wingbacks got into great position after great position going forward but failed to deliver all but one time for the goal. Alonso in particular found himself in acres of space and couldn't do much with it.

I think I counted about 3-4 times that Eriksen picked the ball up in space in that sort of area. Nobody around him. Our players have to realize that without Kane out there, Spuds' biggest threat is Eriksen shooting from distance. Cannot allow him those sorts of chances because he's so accurate.

Momentum killed. Out of fucking nothing. Now watch Harry Kane come on later and score the winner.

Yeahhhhh. This might get pretty ugly in midfield. They have a couple of tanks in there whilst we have Cesc.

Don't get why people don't want Tuchel. Especially looking at the alternatives. He was wanted by Bayern and PSG but isn't good enough for us?

Great. Watch Kante or one of our most important players get injured when we'll need them most.

Wait, why the long break before this one?

Man, if we had another midfielder who was on Kante's level we'd be a completely different team. For every one nice thing Baka does, he does 5 bad ones. Struggles at even the simplest actions like passing and controlling the ball. Kante meanwhile was fucking awesome. If we still had Matic in this team we'd be comfortably in 2nd and coasting to a CL spot.

Thank fuck he seems very humble and happy to be here. Seems like the last player who would kick up a fuss or flirt with leaving.

So will Conte be put out of his (very obvious) misery after this game or will he see out the season? He's looked out of it and just going through the motions for a while now.

Expect Barca to be much more aggressive and forceful from the start here. Especially with Dembele. They'll be eager to try to put us away as soon as they can because they know our history with comebacks. Biggest worry is of course our midfield. Kante and Cesc will have to play perfect games as well as our 3 CB's.

Morata looks utterly devoid of confidence. Both he and Baka need the end of the season to come ASAP so they can get their heads straight.

How unlucky has Giroud been today!?

This should be about 5-0. We better not live to regret all these misses.

No matter how utterly shite a team is (and Palace are very shit) if you press us we struggle so much. Not enough players with good touch to receive the ball under pressure.

Zaha hat trick incoming... 😅

ThIs has basically been an attacking training session for Zappacosta. Allowed to do whatever he wants.