lionsden

As things stand, Is anyone here highly optimistic going into the new season? If so why.

Yet another absolutely awful performance against a big team. has he ever been substituted before when he's playing poorly? I don't think Jose has the balls to bench him. After multiple woeful set piece attempts, you would think he would leave it to someone else to take.

Why's fabregas still taking the freekicks. Terrible delivery one after another.

Hazard missing what should have been a sitter smh.

So much wrong with our performance so far. The midfield has been poor with cesc being the main culprit. Ramirez has been his useless headless chicken, Remy couldn't stay onside to save his life, hazard has been quiet and the teams overall play has has been lethargic and poor. William is aboitbthe only positive so far

Remy is pissing me off. How hard is it to stay onside

We sat deep at Anfield in the league cup when sterling did this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAhih3Z9imM

I'm dreading the battle between cahill vs the pace of Arsenal attack already. operation moonwalk in progress

Exactly. The only way I see him getting any meaningful game time regardless of his form is if palace find themselves in a desperate situation and have no choice but to play him like injury crisis or something. I can't remember a loan player that had toncontend with 4 or more competition for places and still managed to ammass decent gane time. I dont care what anyone says this was a dumb loan move from the start.

You are completely missing the point and looking at it from the wrong angle. For a striker to impress, they need genuine chances and run of games which he won't likely get at palace and even if he manages to score or impress in the extremely rare opportunity he will likely get, it won't be sufficient to help his status on the pecking order and pardew has no reason whatsoever to play him either.The purpose of loan in this scenario is to develop a player and that can only come from constant /regular playing time. Our focus and responsibility as the parent club should have been to find him a team where his chances of getting regular playing time which is crucial for his development is maximised rather than some unicorn "displace 4 permanent competition to prove your worth" egolistical challenge. Bottline is the club didn't have bamford's interest at heart with this loan.

A poorly thought out loan move rears its ugly head again. I'm willing to bet he will not start more than 4 games at best all season.

The way we are pushing for this transfer, I feel the club are already preparing for the inevitable retirement of JT and see both Him and Zouma as the future. So it's not far fetched to see the two young defenders as our starting CB in a year or two. What I will find unacceptable however is if we are pushing for this transfer for the wrong reason i,e to limit Zouma's playing time and chances which may force him out of the club eventually which is a legitimate concern for those against this transfer and it's understandable. I hope we are in it for the right reasons i,e the former and not the latter as the Frenchman has passed every test thrown at him so far in exceptional fashion.

The "Chelsea Youth project" is an illusion that doesn't exist.

His strength is very impressive even for his size.

Silva is the best pure no 10 now that Iniesta is on the wane. He and Hazard are not similar players but Silva is most definitely in the same class as him.We are talking about a player that's been in conversation of the best playmaker in Europe for the past 5 seasons atleast alongside Iniesta and Ozil. When he's in form, no one in world football runs the game/controls the tempo of the game like him (Xavi is semi retired and Iniesta isn't the same player anymore, so they don't count).

A confident midfielder that retains possession well under pressure will do us a world of good. If only we can clone veratti or modric.

Does anyone know if we were ever seriously interested in him at Lens before joining Madrid. Because it would be criminal not to have atleast shown genuine interest considering the level of promise he showed. Saying that though, He will probably be on his 4th loan right now anyway if we had signed him back then.

He was excellent for us in Europe, he's strong, pacy, young, somewhat proven in the EPL and homegrown. He's not a bad squad player to have. Better than wasting money on players with similar level of ability whose chances of turning into a definite success is just as low if not lower.

JT isn't getting any younger, he will be 35 in Dec, This is the ideal time to secure his longterm replacement and Cahill, many will argue is an average defender at best whose limitations are masked by Jose's tactics and the protection he receives from the midfield (same can be said for JT as well TBF as he's not the quickest nor the best at 1v1 situations against pacy players). Also I will argue that Cahill is one of the biggest reasons why we often struggle to build from the back and maintain posession sometimes against good teams because of his poor distribution and ability on the ball. John Stones is the ideal immediate Cahill replacement while Zouma could be groomed to replace JT longterm and the early signs look extremely encouraging.

The way £34m is seen as outrageous for a defender while £40m plus for an attacking player is the norm highlights how undervalued defenders are. Defenders are every bit as important as attacking players even more so when you consider that their mistakes are more obvious and costly and put under critical miscroscope which puts greater pressure on them and a good defensive display could often be the difference between 0 pt and 3 pt. Take Carvalho or JT for example (and obviously i'm not saying stones is on their level), If we had spent eye watering fee on them back then, the furore would have been unbearable but they were every bit as in strumental in our success over the decade. The same goes for goal keepers as well. So why is the contribution of a Willian or an Oscar more valuable to a team achieving success more than that of a JT? That's what the disparity between the transfer fee of Attacking players and defenders in general highlights or implies AFAIC.

@ Tomo and Adnane. This is the stats of the "big games" or games against the "traditional big teams" last season Result Posession Shot attempts Man city 1- 1 Chelsea 55% - 45% 13 - 3 Chelsea 1 - 1 man city 46% - 54% 2 - 9 PSG 1 - 1 Chelsea 55% - 45% 12 - 2 Chelsea 2 - 2 PSG 51% - 49% 10 - 9 Man utd 1 -1 Chelsea 53% - 47% 10- 4 Chelsea 1-0 Man utd 28% - 72% 2 - 10 Chelsea 2 - 0 Arsenal 51% - 49% 4 - 6 Arsenal 0-0 Chelsea 57%- 43% 13 - 5 Liverpool 1-2 Chelsea 55% - 45% 7 - 12 L'pool 1-1 Chelsea (COC)59% - 41% 15 - 1 Chelsea 1 - 0 L'pool (COC)57%- 43% 13- 14 Chelsea 1-1 Liverpool 49% - 51% 6 - 15 Out of all the twelve encounters, only four of them represented a good/decent performance (atleast stats wise) i.e the two games against Liverpool, at home against Arsenal and at home against PSG which is totally skewed because of Zlatan's early sending off and for anyone who saw that game, PSG still dominated and looked more threatening and the rest we were just totally dominated. Now you can say stats are misleading but there's a reason why our opponents almost always dominate the shot attempts and posession stats against us and that's because of our lack of ideas, creativity and desire to attack in the big games generally thanks to the manager's instructions. Apart from the passive approach, the overall quality of football we produce in vast majority of the ties against the big teams is poor and below the standard that this team is capable of giving the talents in the squad. For me the bigger issue isn't neccessarily the passive approach aka parking the bus but the poor football quality we often produce i,e inability to string more than 3 or more passes together sometimes without losing posession, too many misplaced passes, general lack of creativity and attempts at goal, Using a defender in midfield which results in lack of midfield control and so on. The parking the bus will be more tolerable if we actually play good counter attacking football in majority of these games.

Plus their big game result and performance under van Gaal has been superb. That's a factor that's often glossed over. With the squad they have now and with the team maturing, they should easily dispatch the smaller teams and you can expect them to continue their big game form against the big teams.

The more I read this thread, the more I'm convinced some people are mistaking Stones for Alex davey.

What makes these defenders you listed (with the exception of laporte) superior to stones? I follow these defenders as well and no aspect of their game really stands out from stones. is any of them superior at tackling? reading of the game? aerial prowess? Interception? Passing/playing it out from the back? higher ceiling?. the answer is no. Laporte is the only defender on that list who's on Stones level or better.

Since there are so many why did you only list 2. laporte is the only one on Stones level out of your two man list. explain how martinez is superior to Stones.