CHOULO19

I don't get you people, when we play open attacking football you all say we are naive, and when we play safe football we are more boring than wigan. There's no pleasing the chelsea fans..

Mata..not enough behind the ball. We are wasting priceless chances. Really Lampard?? Really?

DD! good effort...unlucky.

28 mins and the only shot in the match came from over 30 meters out. Can this get any less interesting?

Ouch! Luiz down..that's gotta hurt!

This has 0-0 draw written all over it.

Come on chelsea. Let's get the win.

He is like Luiz but without the terribly wrong decisions. I don't remember we ever showed interest in him, but I'm not sure about the impossibility of signing him. He is not that highly rated at Milan. I think they would sell him for the right price.

What matches have you been watching? Lampard is our best scorer (7 goals) and creator (4 assists) so far this season. In my opinion he has been our most valuable and consistent (apart from Mata maybe) player.

I agree, we should try Mikel in a more attacking role. He did have an extremely impressive assist record before we converted him to CDM, maybe he'd turn out to be the creative midfielder we've all been whining about not having.

I am either a genius or a very deluded and arrogant man for thinking so , but I believe I know the only defender that would solve our defensive problems. He is perfect for the defensive high-line we are playing because he is one of the fastest defenders in the world and has great passing skills. Who is this super man, you ask? Our savior in my opinion is milan's Thiago Silva.

I think the problem is that he tried to cross the ball to Lamps in the middle and ended up clearing it to the sideline. I think he should've done like the first goal: attempt to shoot it so it would turn out to be an inch-perfect pass!

Well manu do have young and nani and valecia, and city have....well I don't have time to count them all! Point is, hopefully he'll realize that he'll have much less competition for a starting spot at chelsea than the other two.

Great job as always. A few side notes if I may: 1-For me, Cech has to take the blame for the first goal. The pass to Mikel was by no means a feasible option because he was surrounded by 5 liverpool players from all directions, his options were: 1) Protect the ball and turn, which proved very costly. 2) A first time pass to luiz which is not as easy as it looks due to the nature of the pass Petr provided, and if he didn't get it right Suarez and Maxi are there to take advantage. 3) A back pass to Cech that would put him in pressure which means it is absolutely meaningless from Petr to pass to Mikel in my opinion. He should have passed to Luiz. I love big Pete but have admit he was at fault there. 2- The reason why Cech seemed determined to taking short goal kicks is that he is told so by the manager and for a very good reason as well. The heart of our new attacking system is that the center-halves are spread very wide and high up the field to allow the fullbacks to compress the defense of the opponents, which means if a stray long goal kick lands on the feet of an opposition player, our defense has no chance of closing down quick enough...and we are clusterfucked! 3- Concerning the role of Mikel, though I do agree he did his role beautifully in the Ancelotti system, I felt, especially after the liverpool game, that he is unable to do the requirements of his position in the new system. Offensively, though he is making the short side passes that I think he is required to do, I don't think he is/can do them at a higher speed with the same accuracy, it seemed whenever he tired to raise the tempo, his passes would go astray. Defensively...where do I begin? It's not about what he's doing but rather what he's not. And the not list in this case include most importantly tackling and interceptions in the middle which I think are vital to AVB's system. He is failing to cover for defenders when they are out of position. (example: when Luiz is going forwad) I apologize if my post was too long. Keep up the good work mate.

He has great, great ability but fails to consistently show it. To put that in perspective, on his day, he is as good as Arjen Roben! When he first came to the club, he was labeled by the fans as the a new and better Nedved (which if you've seen Nedved play and see what he means to the Juve fans, really is saying something). His problem is consistency, which to me probably is psychological. If AVB signs him and somehow woks that problem out, he'd be our best signing in a long time. Plus, we could probably get him for a low price since he is having problems with Conti and is rumored to no longer be wanted at the club: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story/_/id/986870/juventus-don%27t-want-milos-krasic-anymore---agent?cc=4716 I definitely think he's worth a chance.

I agree that a win is important, but a loss is disastrous. Against Liverpool and Arsenal we really went for the win when the games were level, but that backfired in both matches and we lost both from the counter. So maybe if the game is level at the closing stages we are better off playing it safe.

I think you really underestimate the German side my friend. They are in great form, Ballack is scoring...a lot, and if I'm really honest, I think their midfield is better than ours. Plus, like all german teams, they are extremely organized and hard to break down defensively, so if we concede first, we are very likely to lose the match. I think this is the worst game for us to start a comeback.

Although I agree that we haven't been nearly as clinical as we ought to be, my point was that something that does not affect our overall performance in a match (such as Reina making a save) should not affect the way we view this performance. Bottom line is: Yes we lost 4 games, but we were not out-played in any of them. With slightly better luck we could've won 2 or 3 of them and be in 2nd place and everybody would just be saying how sexy AVB's squat is!

I think what we are missing most is a descent CDM. It's not about the mistakes that Mikel does, it's about what he doesn't do: tackles and interceptions in the middle which are vital to the system we are playing. Sure this system needs a bit of fixing and tweaking, but until we get a good CDM (or play romeu there ) we will continue to suffer. People, let's not forget that we are attempting in this season to completely alter the way we play, including our defending, style of passing, attacking system.....we can't expect it to work straight away.

Thank you. It's amazing how the result influences how fans view the performance of the team. I mean if Reina hadn't made that save, or if Malouda had finished better at the back post we would've won the game and AVB would've been celebrated as a tactical mastermind for bringing on Sturridge and changing the formation from 4-3-3 to 4-2-3-1.

He is as much over as Frank Lampard, our best player and scorer this season, is. He is just being used as the scrape goat for our defensive failure because he simply does not have the pace to chase attackers when they break our high-line defense, not now, not even when he was 25. But our problem with the high-line, in my opinion, lies in the midfield and not the defense. The only way a defensive line this high could work is if we don't lose possession in open play, so practically only barcelona could do it. It's not a matter of personnel but rather system. I'm confident that AVB will soon find a compromise between how we used to defend and how defended (or attempted) to defend this season.

I wouldn't exactly call this new. We've tried signing youngsters(Sidwell, Di Santo, Glen Johnson, Kakuta, Sinclair...etc) before, it just was never very effective for us. I think the reason is first youngsters are always like a 1 to 10 chance, second is that at a club of the size of Chelsea a new signing is always expected to have instant impact on the team.

Problem is, in my opinion, the best football we played all season is when we played our old system in the second half against Liverpool (yes we lost, but we created chances to score at least 3 or 4 goals and kept liverpool from having more than two shots). If I'm honest I think we would've scored in the last 10 mins if Torres and Meireles. I have confidence in AVB but I'm not sure that this new system is going to work at Chelsea unless it is modified.

That truly was a great team. But we have to admit that the league was so much easier back then mainly because there wasn't this much money in the game. I think our current team has more quality, but our old squad compares better to the teams that were in the league in 2003 than the current compares to the teams that are now in the league. (does that make any sense? )

FFS Suarez should be playing in the swimming Olympics, he can win the diving competition blind folded!