Blue Armour

Caicedo doing all the heavy lifting

Not bad for 10 men.

Crowd is insufferable. And odd that Eddie is instructing them to simply sit back. Oh well.

If we're shopping in the latter category. Ekitke for me. With him and Estevao next season, there should be plenty of excitement in our play if nothing else.

We're top 10 in terms of overall revenue (10th if I'm not mistaken), but I see your point. The fact that we have fallen away so hard in all competitions in the past few years has made it worse. City, with even less matchday revenue (despite having the bigger stadium) trumps us on broadcasting and commercial revenue. Commercial revenue is one that is so frustrating. We have a consortium of investors and none of them are able to get Chelsea to draw more revenue than Spurs.

If the Liverpool game showed anything, we still need a dominant quality CB for next season. Van Dijk was winning headers in our box with little challenge today. Colwill and Chalobah played good, but there are levels to this.

Happy for Palmer, but credit to Sanchez as well in this game. 2nd game in a row with a solid performance and that's as much as you could want from a goalkeeper at this level. Caicedo, Lavia - enough said. Caicedo really deserving to getting mentioned in the Essien Kante Makelele category. Faultless at RB and slotted in well back into the CM role in the same game. And of course Madueke. Best attacker for large portions of the game.

Well done Palmer and Noni

Yeah. He needs to show more concentration. Think an elite manager would have ripped into him for this continued transgression.

Palmer still showing hesitation in shooting. Still low on confidence. Wish someone could give him motivation.

We should score a 2nd within the 1st half itself. In case Liverpool decide to wake up after the break.

Hate this modern trend of booing every single ex-player who now plays for a competitor. Salah was made to leave. And he generally is not exuberant when celebrating goals against us. DeBruyne on the other hand. He seems to always take a lot of pleasure in scoring and he definitely whined his way out of the club. If anyone should be booed, it's the latter.

Perfect start. Almost a 2nd one.

Another aspect that you can't replicate, even with in-depth knowledge of the tactics and formation, is personality. And personality is a big part of being a manager at the highest level. From the outside at least, Maresca doesn't seem to have much of it. Maybe that will improve over time, once he gets winning and adding to his CV. And this stage, he can't even get the best out of his star player., who is increasingly at risk of being labeled a one season wonder. And all Maresca seemingly does is keep hoping and pleading for Palmer to break his scoring duck. Comes across as weak and wanting.

Maresca himself expressing concerns over the pitch quality and injuries. The sane thing would be to not select Lavia, James, Neto or Gusto for this match. Same goes for Palmer and Jackson, because losing either of them will take us back to the dark ages. Would preserve Caicedo in cotton wool too.

Eghbali: We thought Chelsea [was] frankly an asset, a business that was not terribly well managed on the football side, sporting side or promotional side.

In his last game he said he was glad that Jackson broke his scoring drought. He then said he hopes Palmer does the same. Pretty wanting, considering he chopped the squad or at least allowed it to become overly reliant on these 2 players. Maybe he needs to have a couple of more elite players at his disposal. We certainly need at least one more elite player to join the back line. ATM, any chances of having clean sheets hinge on Sanchez being 100% on form.

Yeah, the current owners will prefer low-balling the player with low wages and putting them on long-term contracts, just like the Chicago Bulls did with Scottie Pippen.

The pitch is artificial., I heard? If so, just hoping for no injuries. Don't really care about the result.

This. We no longer have the opportunity to rotate and take Palmer away from the firing line. Even if we decided on a 3 man midfield with Lavia, Enzo & Caicedo (and I don't mind this because this would force Maresca to play James/Gusto in their natural RB position), we will end up sacrificing a lot of creativity in midfield.

He honestly shouldn't be starting under current form. But with Felix & Chukwuemeka moved out, and Nkunku in terrible form, we are beating a dead horse in Palmer. Worst thing for him to happen is to go down the Mount route.

Sanchez and Colwill have been faultless in this game. Wonderful

Madueke almost!

Palmer is playing at such a low tempo. Need to be more urgent and push at Everton for a 2nd goal.

Neto's pace is a thing to behold.