OneMoSalah

Well its both really. We need it to work because he’s clearly not going anywhere anytime soon (look at how long it took to shift Torres, Kepa now potentially and think about how long it may take with Werner come the summer if he doesn’t buck up his ideas) because 1) its still only been near half a season and 2) he cost £100m. Throw in on top we aren’t spunking another £100m on a CF anytime soon despite people living in a fantasy land thinking thats how football works. People need to wake up and accept there isn’t just an easy fix or it isn’t FIFA where we can just sell Lukaku 6 months or 1 year after buying him for £100m so there will have to be someway that he gets used and is used effectively. I don’t think it’s implausible that he cannot score goals in this team and that at the same time this team cannot be a good team. Theres too many good players here for it all to go to fuck because of one players limitations. And the managers far too good too for everything to seemingly go up in smoke because of one player and that limitations. Or barring that, then this group of players and manager is not what we all think it is (which is ludicrous to think).

The being good at pressing/bad at pressing thing is one of those things which you can kind of overlook because Pep has signed/coached players before who didn’t press and makes them buy into it and makes it work because its his philosophy. So has Klopp. So has Bielsa. Coaches who want their team to press set it up and coach it into the players, based on triggers. We don’t really play as a high pressing team either, obviously we press off the ball but we seen to do it more periods/phases of the game as well as sitting off and being compact and organised which is where a great deal of our success has come with under Tuchel. We did see it with Mount, Werner and Havertz last year but its not like we pressed a similarly to City or Liverpool do when they lose the ball everytime, we were probably closer to being a counter attacking team because it suited us more.

Chiesa would be a dream signing. I watched that Amazon thing for Juventus of the season under Pirlo and I didn’t actually realise how many important goals he scored for them that season. Everyone just talked about Ronaldo bailing Pirlo out but Chiesa got a lot of key goals. Obviously his talent is huge and his ability already is huge. I think he’s likely to remain in Italy with Juventus though unfortunately, even if they are struggling financially and under investigation, I would imagine he would remain if all was okay.

Personally, still think there has to be a way for him to play in our team successfully and contribute. Its not as if he is Rickie Lambert or Grant Holt or some other Z list PL striker. I still think that the alternative relying on goal shy and largely inconsistent players like Kai, Werner and Ziyech to deliver goals consistently is risky considering but as has been mentioned it is also risky shoehorning Lukaku for the sakes of it. There are no doubts that Mount, Havertz and Werner in our front 3/Mount as a 10 and those 2 as split strikers last season was effective as well as in general play bringing better chance creation than with a fixed CF like Giroud/Tammy for instance but they don’t score enough. Thats the issue. Thats always going to be the issue, particularly Werner - I mean we are basically 6 months into Werner’s second season and for me he looks even worse than he did for the majority of last season (didn’t think it was even possible). I’ve seen no improvement, in fact more of a regression, even his famed “movement” and “running off the ball”…. he’s doing nothing. Lukaku’s Chelsea career isn’t over by any stretches which you’d think trenching through some of the pages here, just right now it looks more like an inadequate buy than anything else.

Would hardly say those 3 are overrated as they are all good players who have had varied levels of success in their careers but would say so far that Lacroix seems to get a lot of chat on here, as if hes the next best/biggest CB, when he looks pretty ordinary/average. He has not been overly convincing when I have watched any Wolfsburg games this season. I know they were good last season and maybe he was but from what I’ve seen, the 4 or 5 games, he doesn’t strike me as any better than most other CBs at these sort of teams. I think with him being a left footed CB, which there really aren’t many of, people are getting overly excited. Also unsurprisingly, we did linked in the summer loosely and then all of a sudden he was then the best thing since sliced bread…

Keep seeing everyone ranting and raving about Lacroix but in like the last 8 games he has had like 2 red cards and given away 3 penalties or something ridiculous. Is he really that good? From what I have seen he just looks incredibly reckless.

Not going to lie saying someone at 21, with 100 club games for us is “more than ready” to be club captain is a bit far fetched. For now anyway. I mean let the guys go at their own rate, Reece and Mason are top players clearly but they can still get better and don’t need to be potentially talked up or compared to the next Terry and Lampard captain/vice captain thing when 1) we already have say 3/4 top players who are exceptional leaders in their own way in Azpi, Jorginho, Silva and Kante and 2) they’ve still got much more to achieved in their careers over a long term period, it wasn't long ago prior to Tuchel coming in where people were concerned by both of these guys performances. They need to show and earn the right to be considered over the long term, I don’t think many do it as a young player in just over 2 seasons (although Mason did wear the armband under Frank). Only that guys opinion but I am not surprised, obviously Reece coming into the best form of his career so far was always going to incur some over the top comments/opinions.

Erling Haaland apparently on MNF…

You talk as if we will be playing a back 4 sometime soon….

I don’t think we will sign another LWB, it will probably end up being us recalling Maatsen. If Alonso were to ask to leave, then maybe, but he wont. He knows he will have a big role between now and the end of the season with Ben likely to require surgery. There will be more pressing concerns in January if we are to do some business anyway, particularly if Rudi and Andreas’ renewals don’t happen soon enough, a CB will undoubtedly be looked at either with the aim of getting it done in January for the present or for having everything in place for moving at the end of the season (thats without mentioning Thiago Silva and the fact he will be 38 in September also).

Fully agree. Whilst Kepa isnt Turnbull, with the AFCON eventually coming up, I’ve no doubts its too soon to swap Mendy out for Kepa. Obviously come to that hurdle when its in front of us but wouldn’t be in crisis mode yet. Plus Jorginho again basically shafted a GK with a dodgy back pass without fully looking/being aware (although not as near bad as the one he did to Kepa v Arsenal last season) didn’t help for the penalty. No GK wants that back pass. Not sure what to make of the third goal. He will bounce back, undoubtedly, as he has been consistent in like 95% of the games he’s played this season so far. Or his Chelsea career to make it more accurate.

Because City won’t play as shit as we did v Watford, said that in the post match after we played Watford. Anyway very bad result. We will be third by end of City game. United and/both Burnley games results with points dropped are huge… yet reacting after Burnley game being a draw was a “huge overreaction”….. least we have some space between us West Ham though.

One thing we cannot do now is drop points this month as we go up against Liverpool, Man City and Spurs in January. It may be tough but having those 3 games one week after each other is going to be difficult so keeping winning all our games to then is going to have to be paramount. Or taking as close to maximum points as possible from the next 6 games.

City wont play as bad as us, thats a given… I think we all know that they wont lose the ball as often as we did tonight. If we played better with the ball tonight, Watford would never of been as encouraged and never ended up played as well as they did against us.

Thank fuck thats done. Saul-RLC should never start as a pair again. Also questions have to be asked of some of the players mentality and desire tonight because we were second best for the best part of that game really. Shocking performance. But 3 points instead of 1. So back to first.

Another ball given away by RLC…. fucking hell - keep the ball

How many attacks has Havertz ruined because he never takes the ball with him, it is frightening at times he does some good/amazing things then some of the basics he makes a dogs dinner of. Like that play there excellent, minutes before when he has the ball played into him in a promising position to run at Watford his touch puts it behind him and he loses it…

What a finish. Get in. Maybe don’t deserve it but quality move all round. Mason assist also 😍

Yep Saul got dragged but could easily of dragged RLC at HT also. He's been pish all game. Lukaku coming on now though, hopefully for Alonso and put Puli at LWB. Or for Dave hmm nvm

Our big money attacking players just don’t contribute enough consistently. Liverpool and City’s do. The likes of Werner, Ziyech, Havertz, Pulisic… you could argue based on the last 1.5 seasons we should be looking to bin at least 2 of them in the summer and get some better quality in. Lukaku maybe is limited as a player but he’s guaranteed to score goals. Why Tuchel hasn’t picked him today is beyond me, after poor decisions to not take him on earlier v United.

Aye this performance has me very anxious and disappointed. If we drop points here, the City and Liverpool results stay the same then we will be third and have dropped a huge 6 points in 3 games which we should of 100% won v Burnley, United and Watford… Yet people thought being concerned about the Burnley result was an overreaction, if we don’t pull the finger out and this finishes a draw, thats 6 big points in which we should definitely not have dropped in our last 5 games where as City and Liverpool have picked up more points (City 12, Liverpool 10). Really we have squandered/are squandering a chance to cement a big lead at the top.

That has always been an issue. Whilst he has improved significantly with Tuchel (more tactically and how he fits in to the team), today he still had that tendency to be safe or take a second or two too long which maybe isn’t as big a problem in the smaller games as individual quality is more likely to bail a team out vs smaller teams compared to bigger teams. All in all though, would be wrong to say he has not done well this season but felt today if Kovacic was fit Ruben would of been on the bench. Kovacic is just that bit slicker and more progressive with the ball.

Exactly. Pulisic and Rom didn’t get enough time to make a huge impact although Puli did more in that time than Ziyech, Werner and Alonso all did in an attacking sense. Rom’s always going to be rusty, having been out for so long and again, there were no real clear moments where he could do anything of note in and around the box. There was more than enough quality in the first 2 thirds of the pitch but again, the final third, frustrating.

I mean were you expecting him to really change the game? In 10 minutes? After being out since Malmo and not playing any competitive game time since then? And even then, did he even get any opportunities? How many times did he touch the ball in the box? Not much. The issue isn’t that he played 10 minutes and did nothing, its that he didn’t come on sooner where he could of got a better feel for the game when it was less frantic and we had a bit more control and our decision making was a bit more measured.

The flow of the game was disrupted yes but thats what happens when you and the opposition make a combined 6 subs in a 30 odd minute period as well as how the game was going. It was getting more frantic. It simply didn’t just turn because of Lukaku, it turned because we were on edge, they were frustrating us, they scored from Jorginho’s mistake, Mendy’s made a mistake later on, the frantic need for an equaliser and trying to force it too hard.. United making more recoveries in MF second half, trying to get their ball carriers like Sancho and Lingard into the spaces we were leaving…. all these things altered the flow of the game. Not one guy playing 10 minutes.