Blue Armour

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.

Haha love Thierry Henry's post-match comment about the Chels: "Lion will always be a lion"

Diego Costa leaves door open for sensational Chelsea return if Antonio Conte guarantees him a fair chance Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2017/08/18/diego-costa-leaves-door-open-for-sensational-chelsea-return-if-antonio-conte-guarantees-him-a-fair-chance-6861945/#ixzz4qAHVVJAU Claims that he wouldn't be against a return as long as he's not left to rot in the reserves. With all the weirdness this season, I wouldn't be surprised if we haven't yet seen the last of him on the team sheet of the main squad.

Yeah was a tricky one for me too..then I remembered Joe Cole had an excellent 2008 right before his knee injury and figured it would have to be him.

9/10

Chelsea news: Eden Hazard and Tiemoue Bakayoko play in 8-0 win over QPR at Cobham http://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/842618/Chelsea-news-Eden-Hazard-Tiemoue-Bakayoko-QPR-training-match " Hazard scored one of the goals on his comeback after returning from an ankle injury picked up in the summer. Charly Musonda twice and continues to impress for the Chelsea academy."

Oh there are articles for that too (like on ESPN blogs)..saying that even if we were to win against the odds, it would be simply papering over the cracks. Lets face it, there is nothing Chelsea can do right in the eyes of the media at the moment. Despite Morata's debut goal, they will continue to write about how we screwed up this transfer window by missing out on Lukaku. We signed Bakayoko, but they will keep talking about how we let go off Matic without any replacement. Completely blind. So blind that they even mix up pictures of Bakayoko and Rudiger on a regular basis in their articles.

Playmaker Didier: https://twitter.com/BoysInBluePods/status/895987359493304321 Also: https://twitter.com/didierdrogba/status/896463540428656640

The plan usually is to make up for any lack of creativity in midfield with Hazard's ability. Similar to how we used to make up for it with Drogba's presence.

Why do these boys play so differently when with us? Just tactics or just become so much more nervous when playing for the Blues 11? Barring McEachran/Kakuta, haven't seen any of the academy products play to their best when slotted into the starting 11 in recent years.. Christensen is not an out and out academy product but I hope he will be the one to finally seize the opportunity he's going to get.

That was the initial expectation. However the general consensus in the media is that he's back in light training around a month earlier than expected. 3 months was the worst case according to them, because it was not known at the time whether Eden is a quick healer or not.