Blue Armour

Indeed. And its not the first time. You can just look at Danny Rose's comments at the start of the season, when he was commenting about our squad strength on display during the FA cup semi final last season

Kante and Drinkwater in midfield I guess..worth a shot. At this point anything is better than the Fabregas Bakayoko 2-man combo

I'm guessing its because its a world cup year coming up...

Looks like everyone is on edge after the past few weeks. But I agree we did play well in this one. This is just one of the matches where you can just take a look at the final stats to see how superior we were in this match. And no surprises as to why, considering who was the most dominant player in the attacking third. Most number of chances created by him in a single match in the past 2 seasons I think

A little bit of canvas art I created for our Belgian wizard

Thought Drinkwater is at least another 3 weeks away (despite being sighted in first team training)? Doubt he'll be part of this game

And on top of that, the fact he can speak English, French and Spanish and it looks like like he has all the tools to succeed in a captain's role

He has had poor games before in seasons past. But this is the first time I'm seeing him perform this way, 3 games in a row. Also he doesn't seem to be getting forward as much. Definitely not as much as he did in the first few games of the season. It could have been due to the high press employed by teams we played recently, but I'm more inclined to think that its due to fatigue.

Do we really to risk Morata against Roma at home? Just not sure atm.... Am thinking we should go for a false 9 with Hazard up front...but never know how these things pan out.

Please come back soon. Sincerely, Chelsea

Have to agree with many of the posts above.. Hazard has spent too much of time at Chelsea doing it all on his own.. Drogba had Lampard.. The moment Morata had to be subbed off, was really disappointing. Him and Eden have barely had 30 minutes together in the PL

Made Diego Simeone adapt his tactics twice during the game. Still came out on top.

Loved his role in the winning goal. Calmness to spread the ball out wide, before the assist came in from the right hand side.

The daily mail are really on some kind of crusade, aren't they? First the shock interview with Costa, and now this. Can't forget their investigation on Drogba's charity foundation either.

For now, I'll just take solace in the fact that ideally Bakayoko and Hazard wouldn've started The real downside for me is Luiz's red card

Kit looks really good in that shot

I think it honestly works both ways. Many Chelsea fans might no longer think he's important (not necessarily true, since I've seen plenty expressing their misgivings about the transfer on other sites)....but bloody hell, you see all the trumpeting that goes on in the papers, from pundits and journos, the only thing you keep hearing is how important Matic was.

I normally hate player comparison videos, but this is one of the better put-together ones:

He clearly has bad advisers, whoever they are. Things shouldn't have degraded to this point, even after that text message.

In my opinion, if anyone should be the captain of the team right now, it should be him. Not the most vocal or authoritative like JT, but on the pitch, easily the most level headed, mature and perhaps the most intelligent, more like Lampard, and leading by example. And I remember how many cup finals and other matches we've won with Lampard wearing the arm-band Add to that, its been almost 6 years since he has been with the club. Knows it from inside-out.

Hah... your avatar just about sums it up

Fair enough. Thanks for clarifying.

Do we really need to lock all the different player transfer topics? (Drinkwater, Llorente,etc.) I get that its deadline day and there are a bunch of overreacting cynics floating around, but this seems to be a bit of an overreaction in itself. Been on the forums for a while now, and don't really recall this happening before.

Honestly...it was really grating to see that headline. Koeman's little attempt at a mind game. Must be sweating thinking about their 5-0 defeat last season.