Superblue

Everything he does on the ball is so calm and effortless and he looked very composed in front of goal. I think he'll add a clinical nature to our game this season which was distinctly lacking over large stretches last year.

Mount looked significantly better when Chilwell came on and he moved inside. He's doing a job at the moment with the absences we have and has been a bit of a whipping boy as a result but his main role will be to play centrally. Havertz can't play every game, and there may even be some situations where Lampard looks to use them both centrally. He'll be another big option this season.

Ah it was you that made that awful post the other day! Seriously I don't need to prove anything when you're making posts like that one.

Someone mentioned the other day when talking about Rice, that the Chilwell deal was likely only to make Mount happy because they're good friends. Probably the worst post I've ever seen on TC.

Playing Havertz in this game in my opinion was an absolute masterstroke. If Werner can get up and running with goals at the weekend or at the very least before the next international break we'll be in good stead with all the players coming back.

Great cross there from Chilwell. Not bad for someone only brought apparently by Lampard to make Mount happy.

Per the interview, it seems more so that he just wasn't interested in playing that style of football and preferred playing in a more technical league but over the last few years (I guess he means during his time at PSG) the league has become much more technical which appeals to him. The basic translation of this is Stoke got relegated.

That has to be the reason mate because Lampard only likes to sign and play English players.

Yes I'm sure the only reason we signed Chilwell was because Mount asked Lampard to sign him as it would make him happy. Nothing to do with him being England's first choice left back who's earned that by playing well for Leicester and then in an England shirt? Young, pacey, athletic, capable of getting up and down the flank, still room to grow and develop, homegrown,premier league experience and we managed to get him for around half the price of what was originally being quoted a few months ago? Easily one of the most pathetic posts I've ever seen on this forum in my time here.

Ah ok, even then though they could have different priorities. I'm pretty sure the Europa League will be prioritised over the League Cup. If the youth team end up playing in the league cup then a win over Leyton Orient is no guarantee.

Is it next week that Spurs would be due to play League Cup and Europa League in the same week? We could end up playing their reserves if that is the case.

We may have competed valiantly but it is worth noting we lost 5 out of 6 games against the other top 4 teams last season. Not aimed at you, but loads of people have moaned throughout last season about us being tactically naive and too attack minded. Lampard has tried something different today, and I think at this stage of the season it wasn't an horrendous thing to try. It may have been from one extreme to the other with regards to how defensive we were but I do think that the defensive structure of the team has been better the last two games even if the attacking play has been poor. I think the balance will come, hopefully we take some positive results over our next couple of games and build things up. Against Brighton we showed far more resilience than we did last season and I thought were very professional in the last 20 minutes when we went back ahead. That result I think is underrated. Brighton looked excellent today away at Newcastle and won comfortably. And even today down to 10 men, it would have been easy to cave in at 2-0 down early in the second half and lose by 4 or 5 but we showed a bit more fight than wasn't always apparent last year and on a different day would and should have been approaching the last 10-15 minutes with just the odd goal between us and well in the game. Hopefully the West Brom game is a little different and we see a bit more attacking authority in our game without it becoming a game of pinball.

I think that's the biggest mistake Lampard did today. This game needed Giroud as the focal point to bang it long too and hold the ball up, and Werner to then drift around off of him.

I think Havertz might be 100% in his career from the spot.

The problem is we'll never know because the plan never had the opportunity to play out. If it was still 0-0 going into the last 10-15 minutes and we could start to impose ourselves on them then it would have been deemed a Mourinho esque masterstroke. We lost at Anfield last season in the first half being far too bold and open trying to fight fire with them. With the players we had out today, and Werner and Havertz still adjusting, it would have been suicidal to use this approach. Our biggest problem continues to be huge individual mistakes. It could have cost us against Brighton and it definitely did today.

Pretty significant moment at 0-0 don't you think? The biggest problem Lampard has is no matter the tactics, style, philosophy we have a group of defenders who have made individual mistakes regularly. There were two huge mistakes today (Christensen & Kepa) which have changed and cost us the game. One of the best defensive tacticians (certainly of this era) Mourinho has struggled like crazy getting a tune out of Spurs but look at their defence too - Dier. Ben Davies. Aurier. Lloris is hugely overrated too. The personnel is not helping but Lampard has made a couple of additions to our defence and a new keeper which will hopefully help sort some of these problems out.

I would agree but if we play usually with a midfield two, I think Kovacic and Kante gives a good balance moving forward. Obviously if we look at a midfield 3 then this becomes more of an issue. The long term aim must be to move Jorginho on for a more defensive minded midfielder (Rice, Partey, Zakaria for example) but I think this will be a struggle now this season and we've already got so many new faces in. The biggest problem this season will be if Kante struggles like last year. If he stays fit I think we'll be better in that midfield area, but if he struggles with injuries we look thin for a more defensive presence in there.

He will benefit exponentially being around Thiago Silva this season in my opinion. Zouma for me has done enough to still be in this squad (and probably first choice currently next to Silva). The player that should be moved on is either Rudiger or Christensen. If we're looking at a loan this summer and not a sale, I would loan Christensen abroad. If he shines abroad he could likely be sold for a high price next summer. Rudiger I think wouldn't be too bad next to Thiago Silva, he was fine next to David Luiz but seems to need a more senior presence alongside him (which is disappointing).

I've no problem with the tactics in the first half. How many times have people on this forum complained that we are far too open and no consideration on defending last season. You only have to look at the Anfield game last season when we were 3 goals down within an hour. We contained pretty well, and the extra protection with a 3 man midfield was a good decision. I think the only mistake was probably not starting with Giroud who would have been a better focal point and target to hit with this tactic. I feel if we could stay well in the game with 15-20 minutes to go, I think Lampard would have then opened up a bit more. Ironically we created a couple of chances late on like this with just 10 men. The issue is that the tactic looks horrific now because we played really defensively in the first half and then were always going to struggle with 10 in the second half. So statistically it looks like we've taken an absolute battering throughout the game. I think there was an element of maturity about how we did set up today and ultimately we've had go against us a red card, a goalkeeping mistake and a missed penalty. Also this idea that the defence hasn't been considered this summer is nonsensical. We've brought a new left back, centre back and goalkeeper, it's just back luck that none are available to play yet.

I don't think Aguero has made much effort either.

Reguillon to Spurs is apparently around £32m. If that is the case, I think the Chilwell deal at around £45m starts looking like a pretty good deal (English tax considered). There was talk initially that Chilwell looked like being about 4 times more expensive than a Reguillon deal.

Until he passed away earlier this year my granddad lived in Germany for 30 years. He coached Jonah Barrington, the squash world champion in the 60's/70's and Germany then poached him to coach their Olympic badminton squad and he decided to never come back. As a kid we'd go to Germany regularly to see him and part of me wanted to do German as a result but I just couldn't get to grips with learning a new language. My sister can speak broken German and my brother is more useless than I am. Having said that my granddad couldn't speak much German himself and I can't ever remember seeing him speak any. Typically English, expecting people to understand him despite being in their country!

It doesn't happen very often. The main ones I can think of in the last few years would be Jorginho, Diego Costa and Hazard.

I think the bottom part is key to helping him settle in quickly and help lead and mentor players. Mendy, Zouma, Azpilicueta and Kante all speak French. Rudiger, Kovacic and Jorginho Italian. The only player I think nearby him that won't be able to converse with him fluently is James but as you said I'd be amazed if he doesn't know or pick up the basics very quickly.

Fair play mate. It's something I've never had interest in doing but I have lot of respect for people that learn a new language. Being able to drop German after 2 years was a godsend for me and scraping a low C in French in my GCSE's felt like I'd just committed a robbery!