CHOULO19

You're assuming they beat Bournemouth?!

That was proper match. Fair play to Derby who I thought got their game-plan spot on and played rather well apart from a couple of mistakes. But we managed the game excellently and always looked fairly comfortable. Through to the semis and 6 days until the next match

I really hope so. Otherwise there could be some broken or fractured cheek bones.

Well, there must be something hard inside to protect the skull. Plastic?

I think the worry in such situations is that he would swallow his tongue which is incredibly dangerous.

That did NOT look good. Anyone know what actually is in Petr's head gear? Is there some sort of metal or something? Really hope it's not as serious as it looked.

He's improving. Obviously something that the coaching staff is working on with him in training. At his age, he can still learn a lot.

Worth it

Hazard had two days off last week and was allowed to travel with his family when he was rested for Sporting and he'll have another two days off tomorrow and Thursday with the rest of the team since our next match is Monday. I think we can afford to play him tonight without risking exhaustion.

Yeah, Zouma will indeed start and the others are not exactly 'fringe' players as they are hardly below the level of the usual starters.

But they lost that season to blackburn. And that was in 1995, it's a completely different ball game today. Youth players don't have just the established English players to compete with but some of the best players in the world. It's also a much more business/result sport and top teams are expected to win every match even though the league itself ten times more difficult. This is especially evident in the EPL where literally any team can beat any other team. Barcelona or Real Madrid can afford to start 1-2 youngsters against any bottom half team and still win comfortably without getting out of first gear.Same with Bayern against almost any team in the Bundes Liga. In the EPL you can't afford not to play your best team against anyone because there are no easy matches. The club will not rely on unproven youngsters. It's as simple as that. Apart from Zouma and to a lesser degree Ake, none of the youth players are part of the first team or really part of our season despite all the debuts. Those are meant first as a publicity stunt but also as a motivation for young players to keep working hard to impress, get a loan, impress there and hopefully get a place back here. Being a footballer at a top European team like Chelsea is not something that gets handed to you for some vaguely moral reason. Same goes for the players we buy in the market. Chelsea is no longer just a football club, it's a global brand and essentially a corporation, and corporations will always attempt to maximize short-term gains.

Yet to be proven wrong though, isn't it?

What a smart and mature response! Are you trying to show off to the other kids? Are trying to be the leader of the fifth graders?

But apparently his knee was pretty badly bruised after the match. Neil Barnett asked him(Filipe) about it after the match he said it's swelled and badly bruised and said that it should be fine in a few days.

Reporters too busy asking about the "quadruple", Lionel Messi and Roy Keane's book to get to that...

Has there been no news on whether or not Luis is fit for tonight?

That's my mental image of you. Every time I read one of your posts, especially this season when we are winning almost all games, I imagine you booing the TV every time we score...No offence, but I think you're trying too hard to be the "realistic" guy that you now sound deludedly pessimistic.

Serious question: Do you, each time we score a goal boo and shout at your TV: "Why bother? We're going to lose this match and won't win anything this season anyway!"?

I swear I thought he retired ages ago. Absolutely brilliant in his prime but turned shit in the end.

They've moved to diving, now...

That sort of 'journalism' makes me sick. Contrary to what the title suggests, this absolutely nothing to do with the dive as Jose said right after the match that Cahill will not travel because he played against Sporting. He even defended him and said that he doesn't "believe that that big honest guy would dive".

I don't expect the whole XI to play all of them. Jose said after the Sporting match that no one will play more than 5 of the remaining 6 matches till new year. In reality I expect one or two to play all of them. I fully expect to see a couple of changes from one game to the next, but not we got 6 days till the next match.

The harm obviously is risking getting knocked out of the league cup when we have a good chance of winning it. It's a risk gain analysis and here the risk of exhausting the players is rather low consider the circumstances I already stated and the gain is high because I do believe we will need our first XI to ensure going through. Derby are at home, in front of their fans, for their biggest match of the season in a cup game where anything can happen. They will look to sit deep and frustrate us and hit on the counter. It's not that our bench is not better than the Derby team it's the way that the game will likely pan out that we will likely need the likes of Hazard and Fabregas and Matic...etc. to break them down. This game should be treated the same as an away game at Burnley or Leicester or Hull in the EPL.

Wow! There are a lot of people who seriously need more interesting stuff to happen in their everyday life... cue someone quoting this and replying "you want some?!"