lionsden

Who here would reject the idea of replacing him in the squad with one of our youth players (Musonda or Boga). It's a genuine question.

He's a better option than Cuadrado as things stand. At the moment it's Hazard-Willian-Moses-Traore-Cuadrado on the pecking order AFAIC. maybe swap out Moses for Traore.

He was really good. Made a few brilliant passes which admittedly caught me off guard.

Ok His all round play was surprisingly good last night. Her actually held up the ball, linked play really well and made some good runs which were mostly ignored. encouraging.

Out of curiosity, which young defender would people rather we buy, bearing in mind that Varane is probably not a realistic target.

Thibaut 'Chilavert' Courtois

Our performance from the 60th minute on shouldn't detract from the one before that. Pre season should be used not only to gain fitness but to try out/experiment with new implementations and ideas. So to park the bus in pre season against any team for that matter is pathetic. And if this will be our approach in virtually all the big games again next season, we will once again be found out in Europe. There should be an evolution and progress all round next season. that's the aim of any team with big ambition and relying on an outdated tactic of parking the bus is not evolution.

Atleast tiki taka was revolutionary and significantly harder to master and execute. The irony is that some people have labelled Pep one dimensional for his tiki taka philosophy but on the otherhand, Jose who only knows how to park the bus against big teams is the tactical genius.

There's only two conclusions that makes sense here.. Jose is either tactically limited/one dimensional or is doing this on purpose to continue with his narrative of result greater than performance "there's more than one way to play football" " football is about scoring one more goal than your opponent" yada yada. I think it's the former.

What is Jose doing to fix the problems of last season?

same shit, different season.

Begovic is sparring us from the ultimate embarrassment here. Him bouncing back after a nightmare debut is the only positive so far.

How so? What has changed since last season?We weren't good enough in Europe last season and we aren't good enough now so it's not an exaggeration at all. We need investment in a couple of quality players and a significant change of tactics and ideas in the big games.

We can't get out of our half. Psg are totally dominating us. This is embarrassing. If things doesn't change fast between now and next season, we will get embarrassed in Europe yet again.

Meh. Pre season is fake, the game you are watching right now is fake. wait till the new season kicks off when we start passing teams like Barca and Bayern into submission.

The players are so used to parking the bus now that when we try to or are forced to attack, we look clueless and have to rely on individual brilliance from Hazard.

SMH Mikel. If it was a youth player did that, Jose would be lambasting him publicly

And we are back. When we started brightly I was wondering where's the Chelsea I know in big matches i,e struggling to string more than 2 passes together and getting outplayed by the opposition.

The lineup shows how seriously both teams are taking this match. I just hope we don't pick up any silly injuries.Considering how dirty and physical PSG have played us in previous encounter, it's a possibility.

They are just discrediting them on purpose. It's nothing new. some fans find it hard to give credit or show any form of respect to a rival teams. One of our rival could sign 5 world class players to strengthen and fix the holes in their squad and some people will somehow find a way to discredit it.

His actions so far suggests otherwise.

As things stand EPL - 2nd or 3rd place FA cup- semi final Carling cup- winners UCL- Quarter finals.

Thinking about it. The negative impact of the Torres transfer is greater than just the transfer fee and result on the pitch. He essentially prevented us from getting prime Falcao when AVB joined from porto and was greatly responsible for Sturridge departure as we were determined to make the £50m investment work by all means. Not to mention we passed up Aguero for him.

man utd and Atletico are the winners of this summer's transfer market so far.

The small statured players are not suited to parking the bus, you need muscle and plenty of stamina for that On a serious note I think it boils down to trust and the obligation to fill the homegrown quota. It's inconclusive to say he favors size overall when we have players like Fabregas,Oscar and ramires in the first team. I feel he just has a distrust for youth players who aren't physically imposing in general and this can be traced back to all the youngsters he's ever really fully promoted to the first team or given moderate to proper opportunities to. Huth, Balotteli, Santon,Varane,Morata et al all have one thing in common, which is size. Even the somewhat smaller (5ft8) jese rodriguez is quite stocky with a great low centre of gravity He doesn't have this distrust for the more established players hence why we have some lightweights in the first team. It's just a mentality issue really. The less established they are, the more size matters.