Blue Armour

Shame there's no one to give him a pass in dangerous area

Has got very few touches - but DDF has shown some decent skill to keep the ball despite pressure. Better than some of the others at least

YESS!! DDF

I wonder whose fault this is - all our midfielders are petrified of playing the through ball, and just opt for endless side passes. Its been there from the Tuchel era.

Am worried Kovacic won't hang around. There was talk about him being upset with Tuchel's departure.

On contrary, I feel this result is almost beyond doubt. I would say bring him on at half time. Bring on any subs at half-time and just play 45 mins.

Only reason I'm watching this game is because DDF is on the subs list. I want to see what he can do.

At the same time - I like how quick our VAR check was, and theirs took an eternity. Is anyone surprised with majority of the referees coming from the north.

Skriniar seems like an obvious target, but the fact that we haven't seriously been linked with him makes me think that the club has some ironclad reason not to go for him.

Finally seeing some spunk from Potter. It's probably always been there, but it's good to present it. Hope he can channel some of that into his team.

Don't see how that should be our problem. It's between Molde and the other club. Even if they come crawling back to us, Fofana is not going to get affected.

That was an interesting one though. Drogba and Joe Cole had insane pulling power over Hazard. Sometimes a highly reputed player being at the club can make all the difference. Vialli attracted players like Hasselbaink. Wish we had at least one superstar attacker in our ranks. That would have made a tremendous difference., in signing midfielders and strikers who would want to play alongside.

Yeah, - even though I'm pleased with how we performed in this match given all the chaos with injuries and behind the scenes, this City game is not a good metric for our future performances. We've seen Chelsea teams raise their game in big fixtures plenty of times in the past 3 seasons, only to fall flat in the next game. Plus, very few teams in the league actually play like City., who give us a lot of space on the counter.

If there's still a positive in all this - If those are his exact words (and not just a result of translation), he's speaking in the present tense and says that Chelsea still wants him, and has not backed away. And he hasn't said that they won't deal with us again. So the door is still open, I guess.

Probably some of them decided they'll become 'fit' only after James, Chillwell and Kante become available again. On the plus side, Potter will be forced to play our youth more often.

No doubt about that. I'm just saying the no.9 is like the icing on the cake. Shame, as it used to belong to some of our greatest players, Osgood, Hasslebaink, et al.

Looking forward to the match. Don't care about the result, but would be good to see what our youth can do. Hopefully DDF will have a part to play.

Why do we even keep giving these guys the no.9 shirt. It's as if we want them to fail.

Maybe we did not offer said amount to Benfica. The point of contention here is that we told the player, Enzo, and his entourage that we would trigger the clause. Maybe something got lost in translation, but it apparently turned the players head., according to their club president. And there is some evidence here, given that Enzo basically failed to show up for training for few days. Having a poor relationship with another club is one thing (and definitely not good), but screwing a top player doesn't send a good message when trying to convince other superstars. Anyway, damage if any, is already done. Time to move on.

Agreed. I saw the replay, and I was just thinking what it would be if we had a quality midfielder to play in front of Kovacic and Zakaria. Today it was Havertz playing behind Aubemayang. Havertz is either incapable (or has not been instructed to play a direct pass through the middle), and Aubameyang is just washed up. No pace or interest. Cucurella is looking such a waste. Doesn't offer anything defensively, and I would gladly take Alonso over him for offensive ability. Not even going to talk about the injuries. I've accepted that we will lose 1-2 Chelsea players to injury every other week. Negatives out of the way, I was pleased with that first half performance. Shame that not even one of our attempts could sneak in., and rescued at least a draw.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but he has been a known proponent of Chelsea going for Rice EDIT: note how he also mentions Potter's interest in Rice, and simultaneously questions Enzo's ability at a domestic level. Anyway, agree to disagree. This stuff is not going to affect any transfer for Enzo.

I agree with Matt Law about the need for calm over chaos, but jeez, he's complaining about us potentially overpaying for Enzo, and not making a move for Rice. Come on.

“As much as we want to win — and I don’t want to sound like it’s acceptable to lose, it’s not — but unfortunately part of the game is dropping points, is not succeeding, you’ve got to suffer and get better. “When I think back to how I got to this point, a lot of the things are the setbacks and the moments of struggle. So it’s not thinking of [winning this game potentially] as a kickstart, we focus on the next match, try to improve and try to get better.” -Graham Potter; source: Football.London Getting some real Conte season 2 "we must suffer" vibes here.

-delete wrong topic-