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After reaching the Champions League semi-final last season, Chelsea will be hopeful to going a step or two further this time around. But long before that, they will be hopeful of kicking off the blue campaign to conquer Europe in emphatic style when they host familiar European opponents, Schalke, at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday, September 17th, at 19:45 UK time. “No Champions League draw is an easy one” goes the saying, but Jose Mourinho will certainly be pretty content by Chelsea’s group stage draw this season. He will especially be delighted by the low number of miles the team will have to fly. But aside from the short flying times, we have also managed to avoid the “bigger” teams such as Dortmund, Juventus, PSG…etc. And to add to the Blues’ kind European fortunes, the first match against Schalke, our biggest threat in the group, could not have come at a better for the men from West London. Chelsea have had a quite explosive start to the season which put them at the top of the PL table. They remain the only team in the league with a 100% win record, scoring 15 goals in the opening 4 matches. New signings, Diego Costa and Cesc Fabregas, in particular have impressed (and broken records along the way). On the other hand, three matches into the season, the German side are already in mini-crisis. Despite drawing with Bayern Munich, away losses against Hannover and Monchengladbach leaves manager, Jen Keller, under a fair bit of pressure. To be fair to Keller, Schalke have been missing 7 players, including some key men, in their slow start to the season. A very similar situation to the one they were in when they played Chelsea in the Champions’ League group stages last season. Head to head Schalke are a pretty familiar side for Chelsea and Jose Mourinho. The two sides have been drawn in the same Champions league group on three occasions in recent years. After 2007, the two teams most recently met in last season’s group stages where Chelsea managed to run out 3-0 winners both home and away. In fact, in the 4 previous meetings between the two sides, the German side has only ever managed to avoid defeat once in a 0-0 draw at Schalke’s Veltins Arena back in November 2007. If history is anything to go by, Schalke are in for a tough night at the bridge. But history aside, do the Germans have a leg to stand on based on their current state and form? Opposition Analysis As eluded to above, Schalke’s form has been far from impressive at the start of this season. They have only managed a single point in the Bundes Liga so far and currently sit in 16th, a relegation play off place. Surprisingly, their only point so far was earned against champions, Bayern Munich. But further inspection into their weaknesses this season, explains that occurrence. In their own half, Schalke are usually very organized defensively. They defend very well with two banks of four and leave little space and passing options. Their problem however, lies in their defensive transition. On Saturday, I watched Schalke getting well beaten by Gladbach 4-1. They dominated possession, but every time they lost the ball, they were in trouble. The midfielders too slow to transition into defense. Their incredibly high line is questionable, to say the least. The two CBs were very rarely on the same line. And they were not helped by the fact that both fullbacks push very high up the pitch with every attack. In offense, Schalke try execute everything with a lot of pace. Their passing is quick and sharp, and they rely on runs from Sydney Sam, Boateng, and the now fit Draxler, down the wing or diagonally. Their chance conversion is rather poor, though. At the weekend they struggled quite a lot to create much with little space to run into in the final third. Against Bayern, however, they always defended deep and relied on the counter attack. They managed to prevent Guardiola’s side from creating much, and their pace players took full advantage of the space behind Bayern’s defense. And I expect that that is how they will attempt to play against us, instead of trying to dominate the ball. This means that the match will be tougher than what you’d expect at first glance, especially if you consider the key players that will be back for Schalke tomorrow. Team news Jen Keller will be delighted to welcome back all of Julian Draxler, Max Meyer and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar for the match, while all of Jefferson Farfan, Sead Kolasinac, Benedikt Höwedes, Leon Goretzka, Jan Kirchhoff and Fabian Giefer remain unavailable. Joel Matip faces a late fitness test. If he is not passed fit, Schalke will have a real problem at CB. They’re already having to play 19 year old Ayhan there. On the other hand, Chelsea have a full squad available. Even Didier Drogba who missed the match against Swansea with a foot injury, is expected to be ready for this one. Though, chances are, even if fit, he likely won’t make the Chelsea bench. Facts and stats -Schalke have never managed to score against Chelsea in 4 previous meetings. They conceded 8 goals. - Schalke's only win in England in the CL came against Arsenal in the 2012-13 group stages. - This will be Chelsea's 12th consecutive participation in the Champions League. They were the winners the last time the final were to take place in Germany. - Schalke are playing in the CL for the 7th time in their history. Their best result was reaching the semifinals in 2010/11 - Chelsea have kept 7 clean sheets in their last 11 champions league matches. - Schalke have only won 1 of their last 6 CL matches (D1 L4). - Diego Costa who has scored 7 goals in his first 4 matches with Chelsea, has 8 goals in his 9 career Cl appearances. - Didier Drogba is the top scoring African in the CL. He's also Chelsea's highest scoring player in the competition. Match Odds (from Sky Bet): Chelsea win - 30/100 Draw - 4/1 Schalke win - 9/1 Match Coverage: Depending on where you are from, you can watch the match in the following channels: United Kingdom: Sky Sport United States: Fox Soccer Middle East: BeIN Sports For additional regions, you can check out the TV schedule for the match here. There should be many match streams that can be found online if your local sports channels are not broadcasting the game. Or, if you happen to be busy and cannot catch the game live, follow TalkChelsea on Twitter as it would provide live match commentary on the action. Click here to view the article

It's always the swear words that you learn first. But I love how you can tell the level of severity of each even though you don't know their actual meaning!

How many Arabic swear words have you learned so far?

Did not expect them to be that high! But stats can be deceptive. Trust me, there are sometime when Pirlo just goes: "Fuck it. Let them have this attack, I'll give a shit in the next one!"

That's nothing. Compare him to Pirlo who is much less dynamic and weaker defensively, yet Juve can still afford to give him cover and freedom for what he offers in attack.

I'm with you that Matic was overrated last season. A surprising number of people were even calling him the best DM in the world. But despite the fact that new role and partners may have well affected his performances, that does not change the fact that he individually has started the season badly. He's making individual mistakes, both on and off the ball, that have nothing to do with his teammates and that he was not doing last season. He's still by far our best option, though, and (hopefully) he will grow into the season and new role and improve.

Just call me the tactical hipster Seriously though, I don't imagine we'll be playing in the same manner against the likes of City. Even against Everton we made changes. Though those still look like they need a bit more work...

Simply because some of the mistakes he's done have absolutely nothing to do with all that. Again I'll use Everton's second goal as example because I have the images for that, but he's made that mistake type on a number of occasions already this season: Choosing to make the run that Matic did in the image above rather than cover the area where Naismith (who he was originally tracking) is in and in which McGeady eventually runs into, has absolutely nothing to do with tactics or anyone. It's just a poor decision. If he has a "pressing instinct" then the run should have been towards the ball where he would have been able to fill the gap and stop the goal, not away from it. I can forgive mistakes from being too aggressive in pressing, but more often so far this season, the mistakes from Matic has been that he has been too eager to cover and hence being too late to press. Again, I'm sounding too harsh on Matic, but that's only because we're analyzing his mistakes alone. On a lot of occasions his pressing has been excellent, but it's the mistakes we remember. But I get what you are trying to say. We don't have the CBs to compliment our style of pressing. Neither JT nor Cahill are able to push up and cover any gaps that appear and play 1vs1 (Azpi for CB? ). Now THAT, for me, is an issue much more likely to persist in the future than pressing mistakes from Cesc and Matic. I genuinely believe it is something that we can solve, or at least improve, on the training ground. I guess time will tell.

Why not the other way around? In terms of individual mistakes, Matic has made more defensive mistakes than Fabregas. Completely disagree. Matic has made quite a lot of individual mistakes in his pressing that were just really poor judgement on his part and have absolutely nothing to do with anyone he's playing with. Check my analysis of the first two goals we conceded against Everton: http://forum.talkchelsea.net/topic/18782-analyzing-the-3-goals-conceded-at-goodison/ On Saturday again, in the first 25 minutes, on two occasions he made very weird pressing decisions very similar to his mistake in Everton's second goal. I'm not trying to single Matic out as others made a lot of mistakes in pressing as well, I'm just saying that mistakes like that have absolutely nothing to do with who you're playing along side, it's just poor judgement. Certainly didn't work against Everton. Unless you mean they need both Ramires and Oscar next to them like against Swansea. In which case, I'd say that I don't think that would work against any side that doesn't insist on playing from the back like Swansea, or in any game that we need proper width in attack in. Way too early to come to any such conclusions. The new roles for the central midfielders still need some work to build chemistry and a lot of practice before we scrap them off as a failure, imo.

Way too early to pass that judgement. If you're going to judge on the opening 4 matches, then Matis is weak defensively as well. No idea why we need to pick Cesc out in the first 25 minutes against Swansea when Matic and Schurrle made more defensive mistakes.

Pressing is a team action. When someone makes a mistake, everyone else looks lost and out of position. And from what I saw, in the first 25 minutes, everyone in the first bank of four (Cesc, Matic, Schurrle and Hazard) made mistakes in pressing, leaving the Swansea midfielders with time and space and our players in trouble.

You can't look at the table and say they are going to be an easy match. Yes, they've only got a point so far, but that point was actually against Bayern Munich who they outplayed on the day, despite the absences. Against Gladbach, they dominated the ball but their crappy high line got found out time and time again, but they won't play that ridiculously high line against us at the bridge. They'll probably play much more reserved like they did against Bayern. Point is, they have good players with a lot of European experience, so expect them to raise their game against us like they did against Bayern. Plus, all of Draxler, Max Meyer, and Huntelaar could be back for this match so their offence would look completely different.

Not for long by the looks of it...

Inter put 7 past Sassulo, 9 goals between Milan and Parma. Wtf is going on in the Serie A?!

No way are we really having this discussion in the Costa thread! Back on topic, please.

Newcastle? What about Pardew's 50-year deal?

Well that was a completely ridiculous match! I'm not even upset that I watched it and Marco didn't make his debut off the bench!

I think that complete depends on the opposition and the tactics we are using. On any account, we currently have a very small a very very small sampling pool to judge from. And I also think that the mistakes in pressing in midfield have been individual rather than collective and both combinations of central midfielders have made mistakes. There is still time to work on the issues. No need to panic, just yet, imo.

Just a modern fullback supporting the attack. And even that depends on the opposition and who is playing in front of him. If Schurrle is playing RW, then Iva goes forward less because Andre stays wide. That all changes according to the game. The point is, I don't like to make those small distinctions because formations aren't rigid in practice. Calling for us to "switch" to 4-3-3 is not that at all; you're calling for a personnel change, namely Ramires for Oscar. That doesn't change the formation because Oscar is already playing a central midfielder role, even if it does give the team something a bit different.

June 2016 according to WAGNH: http://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/2013/9/4/4659496/chelsea-player-wage-database

Well, hopefully some other mid-table team in Spain is impressed and willing to pay.

The whole thing is terrible I had to write it in under 10 minutes while watching the Schalke match.

Who the fuck designed these?! And how the hell did they get them to agree to wear them! :lol:

Huh? The team's formation is the formation they use when they have the ball. That has always been the case. We defend in a 4-4-2, always have. And even then, it is sometimes Oscar next to Costa and other times it Cesc (and even rarely, Matic).