Blue Armour

Its pretty decent. I don't know if he's good enough to lead the line week in week out, but I would take a punt on him for sure. And I would hurry up, if so. Other clubs are lurking. Been a bit intrigued in him since last year when press started making comparisons to Drogba. Definitely not Didier, but I feel he could connect a lot better with our midfield players than Lukaku or Werner.

Do it.

Against Arsenal it was a 4-3-3 with Mount, Jorghino and Connor, so it was even worse. Nothing to shield our defense This time it was a back 5. That being said, I like our performance for the first 15 mins of the 2nd half when he went back to a 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 with RLC, Jorginho playing deeper and Connor moving further forward. Only issue is Mount being played out wide, which lessened his influence on the game. All this tampering with formations feels like Tuchel is deploying players in unnatural positions just to accommodate certain players and formations. I think he needs to do the hard thing and drop 1-2 of his first-eleven favorites and play the right personnel in the right formation,...whatever can get the team playing well enough with solidity again., even if it means upsetting those players.

I knew he had his shortcomings (you should see his stats about how often players can dribble past him, compared to other CBs in this league)....but at least have some common sense, being an experienced CB? 2nd yellow was totally avoidable. Still...don't want to throw him under the bus, because it's just his 3rd PL game. Silva has had his moments too after arriving, and he's adjusted well. Hopefully KK can do the same.

Everyones talking about Mendys awful mistake, but Koulibalys second yellow was even worse IMO. What the hell was he thinking? We were anyway 3 down. This isn't like the 1st leg of a CL game where another goal could make a difference. That too from an experienced CB. This is the sort of shit that we would bench Chalobah for, and even he hasn't done something dumb like that. Just hoping this is just him adjusting to the frenetic pace of the PL. Even Silva had his moments when he first came here.

I know its reactionary to look to sidelined players after horrible matches, but we're missing this guy big time. We play with a lot more assurance in CM when he's around.

So....is Fofana ready to start against his old club?

Funny how we're talking about lack of strikers, and Leeds have put 3 past us without any CF.

We're 3 down too..not sure what he was thinking by preventing his run. Senegal getting embarrassed in Leeds.

With all the negativity atm, I want to leave one nugget of positive advice for my fellow fans here. Yes, we're 5 point off Arsenal atm. But it's still game 3, and we surrendered a 5 point lead at the top of the table in Nov to the eventual champions. And the same Arsenal who were 9 points behind us last season after the 3rd game made up a lot of ground by the end. So, don't let Mendy, Koulibaly and Chelsea ruin your week.

Will we see Mendy demand a post match interview like De Gea did after the Brentford game?

This is why I refused to get excited after the Spurs game. This is just a recap from last season. Turn up against tough opposition and then wilt against lesser opponents next week. Tuchel also needs to cool his jets. He's on a suspended touch line ban. You have to be careful about when they'll pull the trigger.

Maybe true,... but I was just thinking of us loaning out players like Colwill, Gilmour and sidelining Broja whilst going for seniors like Auba. Anyway. We need at least one replacement for Werner/Lukaku. I suppose this is going to be it.

Spurs at least look horrible to watch. But not sure if that's saying much. During our title win under Conte we've also ground out lackluster 1-0 wins along the way, because of Costa's goal threat. This 1-0 win doesn't seem that different. Arsenal on the other hand seem to be playing well. They've also been given an easy run of fixtures to begin with (unlike last season). The only problem for them is that they will have tougher fixtures when we reach the congested parts of the season. Will be interesting to see how they cope.

Arsenal got rid of washed up players like Aubemayang and are integrating more of their youth players to play winning football. For some reason we are choosing to go the opposite direction with regards to players. Starting to reek of short-termism. Also, this isn't like how we once got Giroud from Arsenal. Giroud was signed as a pure squad option, namely to give us a target-man. His attitude was top notch and we benefitted from it.

Imagine Aubemayang arrives here and starts giving CFC exclusives to his former AFTV buddy Troopz

Have doubts about Fofana, but if getting him means avoiding Maguire., do it.

He's even worse off the ball IMo. A CB that lacks any sort of awareness of what's going on around him. Let's players slip past him to result in his fellow CBs being pulled out of position. That's not the sort of stuff you can coach. That being said, they don't call Daily mail the daily manc for nothing. Someone at Chelsea must have entertained the idea. Just hope other people at the club, with better judgement, dismiss it eventually.

Hope Barca hold onto their demands and we get priced out of a move. No need to spend silly money on Auba.

You say stop-gaps, but our so called stop gaps seem to demand a lot of playing time, disrupt our playing style and create a toxic dressing room. This is like Lukaku all over. We want chances to be finished while forgetting how those chances are made

A 30 yr old Aubameyang, I could see some sense in getting. But at 33 years of age, he's going to be far less effective in this league. He won't have the pressing energy of Werner/Havertz. And is he okay with being a squad option? Would be just better to ask for a loan move, instead of a full fledged transfer. Are we really going to stick with him past this season?

Yes, second fiddle. Fair enough, in 08-09 he won the lowest scoring golden boot competition and helped us out when Drogba was unavailable. But when we returned to trophy winning form in the next season, Anelka was pushed out into the right wing., so that Drogba could play in the center and take on goalscoring burden. I'm not dismissing Anelkas efforts. I'm just saying that he wasn't the main man because we had superior goal scoring players in the squad. He instead took on an unselfish role to help setup the teams attack. Aubameyang is coming here with the expectation of taking on most of our goal scoring burden.

Anelka worked for us because he was a very intelligent player. He also set his ego aside and played second fiddle to an in-form Drogba, especially in 09-10 when we won the league. No problems if Aubameyang is here just to fill the squad. But is Tuchel really bringing him here just to be an option on the bench?

No doubt a Tuchel decision. For better or worse, this is the effect of giving the coach full control of transfers. Personally not a fan of coaches trying to rejuvenate their former players. It didn't work with Benitez and Torres, nor with Saari and Higuain. And to add to that, theres a depressing list of washed up strikers we signed, including Pato and Falcao. Granted Aubameyang is not as extreme a case. But after seeing Lukaku fail at United, and then subsequently fail with us, you would think we would learn a thing or two., after noting Aubameyangs final season with Arsenal.