Blue Armour

Finally! About time we made something out of the dozen or so corners

Stupid goalkeeping. No reason to flap his arms around Holjund when he had James coming back for cover Holjund had no angle to shoot from.

Sanchez...

Cucu for Gusto it is

Lol spoke too soon 😄

While I would like to see Cucurella slot into the LB position and let James bomb forward at RB, I doubt we'll see that happen. More likely Maresca will try to preserve James fitness and sub him off later in the game. Good thing is we won't necessarily have to bring in a Disasi to play as full back. Game is finely balanced. Doesn't feel like it will take too much extra for either side to score. Chelsea should remain switched on in the final 3rd. The through balls played through the center have been decent.

To me the glaring exposure from this game was Palmer and his positioning by constantly playing through the middle. Screw the goalkeeper. This isn't a title challenging season anyway. Other teams are going to watch what happened today, and could adopt similar tactics to what Liverpool did and man mark him out of the game. Maresca can hopefully come up with a better solution for this. Bringing on players like Nkunku and shoving him out wide for sake of the Cole Palmer show isn't helping.

As much as I think Sanchez can be a goof at times, and even if I think James is one of the few truly WC players we have., that 2nd goal was largely down to James trying to be too clever with the offside trap, and also Curtis Jones bad (but ultimately the right) first touch. Think Sanchez was expecting him to take the shot first time, but got confounded by Curtis Jones' first touch of the ball.

Yeah, he can't have him stay in the center all game and expect it to always work. The real experienced players like Hazard and Rooney would drag their man-markers out of position by going wide, and stretch their defense.

Fine margins. Always going to be frustrating with a young side that is good, but not quite there yet. Anyway, difficult fixture behind us. Time to make the most of the rest.

Veiga should have scored there. Damn.

More like because Palmer has been playing in the center (and mostly ineffective because of the man marking) all game. Should have move Palmer to the wing and let Nkunku play behind Jackson

I don't get why Palmer is never instructed to go out into the wing instead of Nkuku playing there. We had Hazard go to the wing if he was drawing too much attention playing through the middle. Palmer is not having as much influence as he would have liked this game. Why not try something different for a spell

You can't take the clumsy out of Badiashile. Or Sanchez for that matter

Nkunku on for Madueke. Nice..

He's coming on now.

He's leaving it late to bring him on again. I don't think we need Maduekes defensive work when we're behind this late in the game

Need a second figure to make Pool worry. To take attention away from Palmer Bring Nkunku on.

Clown got a card in the end.

Nasty behavior from Nunez

Hope we don't wait too long to bring Nkunku on.

Not surprised with Lavia and James only recovering recently

Badiashille warming up

Back again!

Best effort from Palmer so far. Lovely ball from James to Madueke