Blue Armour

Wtf is up with Casemiro. They should have started him and used him to try and disrupt Haalands game in the middle of the park. He's the only good CDM they have.

What a shot from Antony

Yeah, the title is a stretch with City having the quality on display. But would be surprised if Arsenal finish outside top 4.

Haaland is one of those strikers who you can't stop once he's in the final third. He's just too physical to deal with. You can only hope to disrupt his rhythm further up the pitch, near the middle of the park, and even then that's difficult, because City have some excellent runners off the ball. He can easily release pressure by freeing them up and laying off the ball to them. Attempting that will also require some strong CDM play from someone like a Makelele or prime Kante.

I know Mount is going through a rough patch, and I agree he needs to be rotated with someone else, but we should still have more faith in our own players., and that they can improve. He's not even 24 FFS. In the CL final we played, we had both Mount and Foden on the pitch and we know who delivered.

Hope Potter selects the right midfield combo for this game. Must win.

Exactly. We are not even a third of the way through in terms of the season, and we're already building a narrative. Fair enough they have been impressive so far, and seem to have made brilliant moves in the transfer window. But unless they're in a title race by December, I'm not going to think much of it. Ole also finished second and was in a 'title race' the season prior to last, and we know how that went.

To be fair Arteta was allowed the luxury of poor finishes in the league in back to back seasons, including failing to even make the conference league last season. Majority of the Arsenal fans were calling for his head.

Hard to be optimistic these days... But I think this Potter Chelsea is really on an upward trajectory. And no, this isn't me saying this just because we got 3 points. Even when we were failing to make the most of final third chances, we were really easy on the eye. He needs to sort out the central midfield though. Jorginho is looking more slow and ponderous with each game. We're too soft in the middle. And I take back my reactionary comment against Fofana. He really grew into the game after the first Palace goal.

Would start Chalobah over both Fofana and Koulibaly. Not saying much, considering how terrible those two have been.

Fofana masterclass. Both him and Koulibaly looking like duds.

I'm telling you..someone needs to break the hex on strikers at the Bridge. It's a Chelsea thing.

Yes, these are the kind of players we should be signing.

Have a feeling this guy is going to end up with egg on his face. Not the first European manager we've faced to come out with comments like this.

Doesn't suit the narrative of the mainstream UK media.

Agreed. If upper tier sources like Matt Law have to reverse their stance regarding confirmations, you have to wonder why they were misinformed in the first place. Club should be a little more discreet, and not say something is nailed on until it is.

I guess you're both calling out my post. I clearly mentioned that I don't think he's ever going to stop being a good player. I'm only referring to his current unstoppable run where he seems to break every single PL goal scoring record, and the fact that it looks too easy for him at the moment. Nowhere did I say he is invisible or useless. And yes, he is much better than anyone we have. A point so obvious, that it doesn't even need to be made.

Arteta took more than 2 whole seasons to reach the level they are at now. For most of that time, they were playing boring football. Arteta also renewed Aubameyangs contract only to fall out with him and dump him later Real shame that we never gave our manager the same amount of time and chances to rectify things. Hopefully Potter doesn't run into the same problem.

. City has no problem, I agree. I'm referring to Haaland specifically

While Haaland is no doubt a monster, and everyone his raving about how he is going to break PL records, every striker will eventually be found out in the PL. I'm not saying he is going to become useless all of sudden. Far from it. But at this point in time, no back line in the PL has been able to come up with a strategy to deal with him. Salah in his record breaking season was considered unstoppable, but he has been found out in the past couple of years IMO. Teams are able to put him off his game and restrict him from getting into great scoring positions. The hot-streak that Haaland is on will eventually be broken. When it happens, it will be interesting to see how he adapts his play to still make himself useful for his team.

Finally. Would be interesting to see what he can contribute when he starts., and he deserved to start especially given that Aubameyang hasn't been fully fit. Hope he calms his nerves (unlike Gallagher) and plays without pressure.

Interesting read (thanks for the share),- the article raises more alarm bells for me., with regards to Koulibaly. Apart from his ability on the ball, there's not been much to shout about, especially when it comes to his defending. The article highlights even more mistakes than what I've noticed from watching the games. Maybe Potter could somehow get more from him, but at the same time he needs to get the team winning again from the very next game and I'm not sure I'd I would risk starting Koulibaly in order to do that. I would either bring him back for a lower tier cup game or only after we hit a strong run of form (hopefully).

We dumped a lot of money on a bunch of disaster signings. Lukaku was the worst, but I'm also looking at the money paid for Havertz. What did the scouts see in a player like him to warrant that kind of fee? More than 2 years here and he hasn't found his step. Unless covid fucked him like Vesper said, but I don't think he has issues with stamina. Anyway. The less said about Havertz the better. Him and Mount have been beyond disappointing so far. Every season we would like to see how much they've improved from the previous season, but this year they're both acting like a couple of primadonnas that have achieved everything in football and have decided to take a break. I was really hoping our youth players would step it up a notch again this season, but they seem to have gone backwards., in the direction of countless flops like Delle Ali and the rest. Looks like we need to go hunting again for another Hazard or Drogba. No idea where we will find one though.

None of our attackers have that level of quality. Overall we're a stronger team. But we have no strong individuals to lift us up on a regular basis.

Looking at Sons goal against Leicester shows how a shit team can be made to look good with at least one or two world class attackers. We haven't had one of those since Hazard left. Based on the amount of money we paid for Havertz, I guess he was supposed to be the next big thing for us. Shame that it hasn't panned out that way and you have to wonder why we dumped so much money on a player if you're unsure about his quality.