Superblue

I would usually agree but we were similarly depleted with a number of players missing, and two more coming off injured. I thought, alongside Ajax away, it was probably the most complete performance we've shown all season as we created a lot of chances, but also looked defensively solid particularly in the second half when you'd have expected Liverpool to kick on.

If we could pick him up for anywhere around the £20-25m mark it would appear to be another great piece of business and we would essentially have added two players who will immediately join as first choice and improve our starting XI for around £50-60m. It would still give seemingly a lot of budget still to play with to make moves in other key areas.

I agree, what I've seen from him he looks a very good keeper. If he see's his route blocked by De Gea and feels he's ready for the next step up he'll be in a reasonable position in the summer to attempt to force United's hand if we showed interest.

United over the next year or two have a similar problem on their hands to us when we had to make a decision on Cech and Courtois. The difference is Courtois had built up quite a reputation across the continent, whereas Dean Henderson has not yet. Add in the deal De Gea is on which makes it almost impossible for United to be able to move him on, and they could well end up making a big mistake. They may get away with loaning out Henderson again next season but will struggle beyond that. Will be interesting to see what they end up doing.

I wouldn't have had a problem with Sarri staying this season if he wanted to stay, but he knew how much more difficult it was going to be this season with the transfer ban. Take Hazard out of this side and the attacking threat and creative output drops like a dead weight. Add to that we had four long term injuries which were, or were becoming, important members of his team in Rudiger, Kante, RLC and CHO. The possession based, more cautious approach he implemented in the second half of last season I think would have been an even bigger struggle without a player like Hazard being able to create moments out of seemingly nothing. He was probably fully aware that in order for us to try to cover the loss of Hazard, we'd have to have more purpose in attack and likely open ourselves up more from a defensive perspective to do so, like Lampard has. It's the same issues Lampard is having now, just he's either too stubborn or inexperienced to change things and become more cautious. Having said that and knowing how poor we've been this season defensively, now Tammy's goals have dried up and we've suffered a couple of injuries our attack looks pretty toothless too at present despite a mentality to attack.

The lack of fight and personality in this squad is frightening.

This season, Alonso is essential for Lampard to keep playing because he offers a goal threat in a team lacking in them.

Yeah I like him. If the opportunity was there to flip Jorginho for a similar price then I think it would be smart business. Different profile of player, his ability to dribble and go past players centrally is more similar to Kovacic but he has a better end product at the top end of the pitch than Kova. He's also far more athletic than Jorginho and I think would suit the league well.

I think the Bayern game was a big mistake the way we set up. You're right a team of that ability were always going to exploit and hurt us. It seemed like having Giroud in the team and perhaps realising the qualities of Bayern, we tried playing more direct. It wasn't effective and leaving too many players caught out of position who were trying to commit to that. We didn't need to be overly cautious, but we should have tried dominating the ball more and picking our moments to up the tempo and commit players forward. If Lampard stays next season and gets a few players in it will be interesting to see how he evolves as a manager. I think at the start of the season he surveyed the squad at his disposal and realised if we weren't going to open up and take risks we'd struggle to score. We weren't a big scoring team in the league last season and Lampard didn't have four of the five highest goalscorers in the league last season available for this (Hazard, RLC, Higuain and Morata). The only other one in that top 5 was a 32 year old Pedro who himself hadn't scored a league goal since February in that season and whilst Lampard may have been able to make more use of him this season, he is starting to show his age and decline at this level.

I agree with what your saying, there has to be more than just a plan A and we do need to be able to withstand and soak up pressure at times in games. That's the most disappointing aspect of a number of these losses is we've dominated the game and then been unable to cope with not much more than a 5 or 10 minute period of pressure from the opposition. You mentioned Guardiola and Klopp but they both needed time to implement their styles and both were initially suspect at the back, with both spending a lot of money to rectify that. Apart from Tomori and James, the rest of our defence played under Mourinho and/or Conte, being used to playing deep leaving little space behind them and were also well protected in front of them. They're being found out massively now that we're trying to play expansive football. The other problem in our defence is there's no leader there. I love Azpi and the career he's given the club but he's not really a leader. None of our defence have ever needed to be the leader in the backline. They've all played alongside Terry, Cahill and to a lesser degree Luiz and so none have needed to do this previously. I was hoping Rudiger would become that player and he's still got time on his side to develop and be that player because he does have leadership-like traits about him. I'm not going to argue that defensively we're not good enough currently under Lampard and he has to take a lot of responsibility for that. But also until one of our defenders (preferably a centre back) is prepared to become the leader we need to marshal and organise that back four, we're going to keep struggling.

The problem is I don't envisage any style of play being immediately successful with our current group of players because it's such a contrasting mix. Most of our older, experienced players have been through the Conte era, and even the Mourinho era and either suit or have been coached into them the defensive, conservative style of football. Then we have the few players we've brought in the last 18 months and our academy players who suit a more progressive, attacking style. Based on the above, it makes sense to continue trying to build in a more progressive, attack minded nature rather than the defensive, pragmatic one where we'd almost be needing to rebuild again from scratch. The signing of Ziyech suggests we're not planning to waver from this currently either. Until we're able to build with 15-18 players, let alone a squad, that all suit and complement a particular style of play we're going to have problems. This is the point of being patient, we're less than 2 years into making a complete change of philosophy which is hard enough, let alone losing a world class goalkeeper and our best player/talisman whilst navigating a transfer ban. In reality we need another couple of summer transfer windows before we're likely to be anything capable of challenging at the top of the league.Until then, we need to show some progression.

Agree, end of the day we're all Chelsea fans and all want the best for this club, everyone just has different ways of expressing it! If people didn't have differing opinions then there would be no need for a forum.

2 title wins under Mourinho and Conte in recent years have papered over cracks that have been there really since the core of the old guard got moved on over 2012 - 2013. The mess of the summer 2017 window and the who's who of poor buys compounded everything. I don't agree that Europa is our level because we walked it last season but our level currently is about what Arsenal's was 10 years ago, i.e. top 4 and get out the Champions League group. That step up in quality once the knockout rounds came along was always too much for Arsenal and it's too much for us at present. We either work our way back up from that, or we head down the same path of Arsenal who have continued to regress further. It's going to take a lot of time and patience to work back to the top, both in the boardroom and in the stands. The young players in our squad need a couple of seasons to truly assess their levels of development and how far they can go (you only have to look tonight to Gnabry who 4 years ago couldn't get in the West Brom team that it's too early to make a definitive assessment on 20, 21 year old players) and as you pointed out, we need more than a summer window to address everything. A strong summer window however will make a big difference, we're not suddenly going to be challenging for the Champions League, but we can make some strong progress. The key over the next couple of seasons will be to get into the Champions League spots with the additional revenue and added attraction for higher level talent. We've been far too inconsistent with this in recent seasons and that needs to be that starting point from which to build from.

Completely understand why Giroud wasn't used earlier in the season when we were on that run of winning games. The way we were playing with a lot of pace playing centrally through teams it made sense to have a more mobile striker who could run in behind and also press much harder and higher up the pitch. Tammy was on fire at the time and whilst Batsman was far from perfect he did come off the bench a couple of times and bagged a nice goal. Giroud didn't really suit what Lampard was trying to implement. Where Lampard has made a mistake however is not utilising Giroud and his different strengths over the last couple of months when our form has been indifferent. Being forced out wide much more against compact, defensive teams has meant we've crossed the ball in more regularly and Giroud's hold up play could have been more beneficial at times when trying to force through the centre of a compact team. Tammy's hold up and general play has improved since the start of the season but it's still nowhere near as good as what Giroud can do. I think he provides a genuine plan B for Lampard. Perhaps though he might have 'checked out' and Lampard on the flip side had already written him off as both would have expected him to leave in January. Whatever has happened he's still here though, and this is all better late than never. Hopefully he's usurped Bats in the pecking order in Lampard's eyes and can provide a very different alternative and very real competition to Tammy for the rest of the season to reach our objectives.

Agreed, we had the best years of his career. He isn't going to get any better. Might hit some purple patches of form and his career will probably last longer playing in Spain than it would in the Premier League. The key now is to replace Hazard properly in the summer. Ziyech has the potential to be a great buy, and Pulisic and CHO have great potential to be big players in the long term for us but we do need that game changer, the last couple of months have proven that. Doesn't necessarily need to be a wide player either, a talisman striker could be just as good if not better, with the number of attacking midfielders we already have within the squad.

Told you not to worry, always seemed nothing but a formality the way the two clubs announced things the other week.

Whether he does or not, I think he would have regretted it far more if he hadn't have tried his hand with the move to Madrid.

Yeah earlier in the season we were scoring early goals in a lot of games, and it opens teams up to try and play which benefits him. Recently, especially at home, when struggling to break teams down it hasn't happened nearly enough.

I thought he played pretty well against United when he came on too, certainly better than he has in recent weeks.

Perhaps, although in recent weeks he hasn't always been starting games. I think what he does off the ball for the team is better than any of the other attackers we have but he's been pretty disappointing recently on the ball. Last two games though he's started looking like the player he was in the early weeks of the season. Need a couple more to play themselves back into form and a couple coming back from injury and try to build some momentum.

Mason Mount looks someone who has really benefited from the break we had.

Very good first half performance. Delighted for Giroud to take his opportunity. Still look vulnerable and nervous at the back though. Think we're going to need at least a second goal to win this match.

Possibly. It's hardly like Caballero has done much of note to make the shirt his own. I'd be surprised if Kepa doesn't win his place back at some stage, but I'd be equally surprised if he's still number one next season.

Think this is true. There's no big football teams around here. Villa is probably the closest and that's an hour away. When I started school in the early 90's I was the only Chelsea fan in my year, and I can't even remember there being any other Chelsea fans in the whole school. Most were jumping on the United glory train around this time, and the rest from what I can remember were Liverpool or Arsenal fans. Not many could understand why I was supporting a team scratching around the bottom half of the league. The 94 cup final didn't help much either!

Christensen has been a very dubious decision to start in recent weeks, but he does seem better suited to a back three so hopefully will bring the best out in him. This clearly isn't just a move to shock Kepa into knuckling down, it appears Lampard has lost complete faith in him. I can't say I blame him with how poor he's been, particularly in the last couple of months, however Caballero is equally as poor, if not worse. Pleased to see Giroud getting a game but we have to play to his strengths. Barkley and Mount have to play close to him and get on the end of knock downs and the wing backs need to be crossing the ball for him to attack. Hopefully at worst we see him backing up Tammy moving forward instead of Batshuayi. Desperately need a spark. A couple of players playing themselves into form, somebody scoring in 4 or 5 games in a row, just something! Hopefully today and the magnitude of the match will do just that.