Blue Armour

Just a little confession. I understand the points made by many such as Styles and lionsden about how we are sacrificing many qualities, such as our style of play and youth integration in exhange for sentimentality, and most of the points they and others make are perfectly valid. We are not seeing any semblance of a footballing philosophy or too many young players breaking into the first team, but to me and I mean this strictly from a personal perspsective, qualities such as those are secondary when it comes to Chelsea. Yes, given a choice, I would love for us to play the football with slick passing and plenty of possession as opposed to counter attack, as well as integrate the team with real potential such as De Bryune or RLC, but there are somethings that go beyond that. Soul. I don't come from England, and am not born a Chelsea fan, but I've become a fan by watching the best that Chelsea had to offer, from the quality of Zola, the exploits of Drogba, Lampard and Terry, the double with Carlo (who can forget the 103 goal season?), RDM and his CL win, the list goes on..its these memories that make me keep coming back for more. If I just wanted to support a team or a club that had all the footballing qualities that almost eveyone desires from a team, then there are many other clubs that check those boxes. Yes, in the end, football is a results business and sentimentality cannot come in the way for too long, and it won't in this case either. However Mourinho is a part of the history and those memories that I talked about earlier, and I'm hesitant to let it go on a whim.

Well, I trust Cech , Drogba , Lampard , Cole, Ballack to turn things around no matter who the manager is, even if its an interim. Can you say the same about Oscar and Baba?

Make arguments if you want, but please don't try to pass pseudo stuff as fact. The only clubs where he has been 3 years at least are Chelsea and Madrid. And no, they did not implode during that time. Our matches have been mostly embarrassing this time around, but this so-called '3rd season syndrome' is one of the many things used to blow the situation ridiculously out of proportion.

^ True that On a side, I'm just glad Mourinho gave the media the silent treatment. I'm not trying to find excuses for Mourinho or the players, but the way the media works in this country is that they like to aggravate a problem to generate more problems... Why else would they come up with crap headlines like "Hazard hasn't scored in the last x games..." I mean he's a winger ffs,..and then they proceed to try and widen the rift between manager and player(s).

I guess there was still a lesson left for Drogba to teach him last season...

We nearly reached their quality last season, but this season they went on to spend another ~ 80 million to improve theirs, while we did nothing for ours.

Good to hear that there are no complaints about his defending in this game. I sincerely hope this was a test run for the weekend game.

The papers are oddly in overdrive considering Mourinho never spoke a word to them after the match. Coincidence?

Should have kept his head today, especially when the players were losing theirs. Aside from that, can't criticize him or the players. Unlike the Southampton match, they at least kept fighting till the last minute. Without Ramires miscuing his shot, we could have even had one of the most memorable comebacks in recent history. Next three games are most likely going to decide the outcome of Chelsea's season, and Mourinho's future with the club.

That is indeed one way of looking at it,..but the end result was that he left United with a lackluster squad and recommended Moyes to take charge. They ended up way outside the champions league spots. Thankfully for United, they had the revenue to repair the damage

Even Manchester United fans acknowledge that with disappointment..but hey ho, when you have to paint a one-sided picture you shouldn't look the other way.

We sold KDB, Mata and Lukaku , the likes of players who didn't want to stay and play second fiddle unlike the likes of Nasri at City. It was either KDB or Oscar, and while you could argue we let the better player go, you cannot group him with Lukaku and Mata. Lukaku was aiming for the no.1 striker role, a role which he could not be afforded without being thoroughly tested. Neither did he show the same potential as KDB. Mata is quality but he's a finished product at 27 years and not budding potential, judging from the way you grouped him together with KDB and Lukaku. And when you mention our current future, I see you have conveniently left out Courtois, Matic and Azpilicueta who were very much part of the core of the team last season. You don't need more than 4-5 players to realistically form a spine to a good team. We managed quite well with Drogba, Cech, Lampard and Terry over the years. All we needed was to surround them with quality and not necessarily budding potential to be called the 'future of Chelsea.'

Basically, at that time Drogba, Lampard and Terry were the old to-be-discarded toys, while AVB was the shiny new one. Now its Mourinho in the former role, and the current squad in the latter.

Exactly. With Baba only starting his first PL game, Hazard in bad form, and team morale in tatters starting both on the same flank would have been suicide. Only other option would have been Zouma on the right and Cesar on the left, which he might have still done if Cahill was fit.

No real surprise at all. I said in an earlier post that the only reason Mourinho kept using Azpilicueta on the left and not anyone else, was because of Hazard. Tbh, today I was expecting him to continue with Cesar on the left and keep Zouma on the right, but he opted to go for having 2 natural full-backs and was even willing to drop Hazard as well. I'm pretty sure he has no plans of playing BOTH Baba and Hazard on the left flank, and tbh we would get crushed on that wing right now. Baba is only settling in, and Hazard is not in the best form.

Exactly, I find it more likely for Zouma to displace Ivanovic than Baba and for good reason. I think many people overlook the fact that the main reason Azpilicueta is preferred on the left hand side, is because of Hazard. You need someone who can provide the defensive cover that Cesar provides, so that Hazard has a free reign. Plus he has a superior understanding with Hazard, compared to our other full backs.

Either that or it could be just the international break.

You missed my point about the squad being unseasoned as well. RDM had Drogba, Terry, Lampard and Cech. Hell, you even saw Terry spouting managerial instructions from behind RDM's back in one match. RDM didn't turn around the situation on his own. He had help from the players and their experience in cup competitions. A lot.

I think the article is stating more along the lines that player power is the risk you run from sacking the manager. Of course there is no player power in this squad. Yet. This squad is relatively young, and has essentially been through only one managerial sacking and that was RDM. Whether the players are intentionally under performing or not, no one can deny that they were hardly even doing the basics, especially in the last 20 mins against Southampton. They just collapsed like twigs on the pitch. It would set a bad precedence if the immediate response to that kind of performance is give the manager the boot.

A manager with no experience and an unseasoned squad in turmoil., that would be a ridiculously bad combination.

Sorry, but no way would the players' responsibility be down to just 6%. Neither Jose nor the board are going onto the pitch and playing like crap.

I know you were probably just joking, but we still had Drogba, Lampard, Cech and other stalwarts in the dressing room back then. And even then they failed to make top 4. Interim would most likely mean endgame for this squad.

I think its been quite clear the only real thing Chelsea is trying to achieve is results in terms of trophies, and expanding the fan-base. Which I think is fair for a club still trying to establish its stamp the way clubs like Barca and Bayern already have. Integrating youth and having a better style of play are secondary objectives. Some of the long-time supporters of the club may not think along these lines, but this is what football is these days. A business. You could argue that another manager could have come in 2013 and integrated the entire youth pool we had available then including DeBruyne and Lukaku, but it would have taken him a very long time to achieve immediate results. You may disagree, but it would have been a long time before we saw Chelsea's fifth league title if we had gone down that route.

Best not remind anyone that the same Arsenal failed to create squat a few weeks ago at the bridge. Or failed horribly in their first two games of the CL. Nope, we should just keep painting a one-sided picture as always

What is one supposed to say about Peace's post though? He says stability is established by the club having an identity in terms of playing style and then he goes on to use Barcelona as an example. In my opinion, the two worst examples to use in football are Barcelona and Alex Ferguson, because there's nothing like them.