manpe

My prediction on what Jose will put out. Courtois Ivanovic - Zouma - Terry - Azpi Ramires - Matic Willian - Oscar - Hazard Costa I.e. the same team that produced the best football against Porto. Mou tends to stick with a winning clean sheet team and with Fabregas dropped (hopefully), it might work.

Last year was PSG's revenge for the year before (Demba Baaa!!). We're even now and starting on clean slate, there is nothing to avenge.

Bus parking type opponent again. Boring.

Main thing is we avoid PSG. Juventus and Roma aren't doing too well in the league, they'd be second-tier of teams I'd prefer to avoid after PSG. All the rest would be the best we can get, especially Gent.

You can keep an eye on reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/footballhighlights They usually upload full games and highlights very fast.

It's okay to have a dream or two about Jessica Alba or whoever fits that fold at nights

Dreaming is unhealthy. Constantly thinking and fantasizing about something that cannot be obtained or achieved breeds desperation and delusion ending in depression. Do not dream, it can eventually kill you.

I think one of the reasons is that Chelsea are always under pressure. Usually to win something or to qualify somewhere. Now we are under pressure to climb the table. Managers simply don't trust youth under pressure and that goes especially to Mourinho. The games where they do play are against weaklings with less pressure than normal, and even then the minutes are very limited and instead deadwood with no future are preferred. I am wondering how do they expect them to develop pressure tolerance when they are protected to the point they don't play meaningful games at all? Sure RLC has time on his side, but if the past is anything to go by, then age 19 will rise to 21 soon enough and players in his position will have expected to be playing more prominent roles in the team by then, rather than just sad minutes in cock cup or games where there is nothing to win or lose.

Grinch stole the christmas, all I am stealing are false hopes.

We all know that's not gonna happen.

Interesting, I haven't seen that. But I also thought that we looked more fluid. I know Porto gave us space because they had to chase the game, but it wasn't the first time we've been given space and even then we looked clueless, getting pinned back and not finding openings to go forward. This time it was different, we looked threatening on the break every single time and with better final touches/finishing, we could have scored 4 at least. That was encouraging, but there have been false flags before, so until proven otherwise, I won't make anything of this. However, this was undoubtedly our best display this season. During the last month or so there have been quite a few of those games where everybody's been saying they were our best performances so far, this means we ARE improving and that is only positive, but now we need to iron out the inconsistencies.

Talking about Ivanovic, I thought his crossing was better than usual. They were actually somewhat dangerous.

Damn he looks so slim, his legs are like toothpicks. Was he always like that?

Oh my... I can already imagine in my mind how bad our collective offensive cohesion will look like. How Costa starts after his tantrums and pathetic displays I don't know. Remy must be playing dead in trainings or something. Oscar's only function will be running and harassing opponents. Ivanovic will put in loads of unaddressed crosses, Costa will camp outside the box, Hazard will be forced to try and dribble past several players... etc. Predictable. Hats off if they make me eat my words and actually produce something unexpected. Optimistically I will say 0-0 draw, but fuck that and let's go for the win!

All the shit that's been going on let's just forget it for 90 minutes and give it a real go today! Chelsea thrive under pressure, always have as far as I can remember. It brings the best out of us, I hope it does so too today. It's never boring supporting Chelsea. COME OOOOOOOON :blue scalf: :blue scalf: :blue scalf: :blue scalf:

I quoted the part from where I started laughing hard, the exact moment being midway through "Kalou" And I almost took you seriously

Sorry man, but I don't agree with you at all. Let's reverse it, you think tactics that swept the league last season all of a sudden don't work anymore? We hardly swept the league, we were close to crumbling in the 2nd half of last season. We got found out, but kept on going on motivation and inertia from the first half. Now there is no motivation and we have been found out even worse than before. The tactics clearly aren't working anymore, and the changes he has tried haven't been working either. Look at the games this season, analyze them, we're creating tons of chances - those chances are created based on Mourinho's tactics - but we're missing sitters, amaterus would score those, now tell me honestly, is it Mourinho's fault? Just lol. "We're creating tons of chances" - I don't even feel the need to reply in depth to that. Everybody who has been watching us knows that the clear-cut chances we have created are free-kicks around the box. All the stuff about Fabregas and Ivanovic, they are not that bad, people just jump on the bandwagon and dig up meaningless statistics to rubbish our own players. Have you been watching us this season? Honest question. Because those players have been the stand-out dogshit performers except for the odd OK game here and there. You need to start upping your expectations, because if you don't, then bottom half of the table is exactly where you think we should be.

It's very simplistic to blame player power for a clusterfuck like this. You think after a title-winning season the players instantly decided enough is enough, let's riot against Jose fucking Mourinho out of all people, we don't want to win anything anymore until this guy is here? I don't think so, they have their own careers to think about. You have been an avid defender of Mourinho for a long time now, time to open your eyes. Jose shares equal blame with the players and the board, it's clear as day. The team I would play: Courtois Azpi - Zouma - Cahill(JT if fit) - Baba Cheeks - Matic Hazard - Willian - Kenedy Remy

Cheap attempt at emulating Essien against Arsenal. It was almost as bad as that John O'Shea shot that went out for a throw-in (EDIT: Scratch that, just rewatched the video, nothing comes close to O'Shea's shot going closer to his own goal). Another big sigh from the crowd I remember was when Fabregas played a non-pass in the box for a goalkick. Zero cohesion.

This season is making last season's title feel worthless tbh. If we lose to Porto I will go from 'undecided' to the 'yes' camp and will stick to it until it happens.

Jose is a short term manager, I have to start accepting this. The fact he's persisting with a visibly declining mercenary (Fabregas) in the hope he might produce a few assists to help us short term instead of giving all this time to a player who the club has invested the most faith in since Terry, shows that he has no deep care for the future. So he prefers a declining Fabregas who could have some short term benefits if he happens to hit form, to an up and coming academy boy itching to show as a fan to the fans what he can do. I can imagine how much further he would be in his development already if he'd played instead of Cesc or Oscar this season.

Why was he so orange today? From all the tangerines he's been eating?

Wow, that was bad. Still as many points gained as there are games played (15), AND IT'S ALREADY DECEMBER! Heads have to start rolling, responsibility has to be taken and that includes the likes of Fabregas, Oscar, Ivanovic, Matic, Costa and Mourinho mainly.

Essien

In that team I would only change Robben for Essien, just to provide more power in midfield. And one thing I especially liked about him was that he always played with a smile on his face.