manpe

What has he done wrong in the eyes of the guys slagging him off here? Chelsea have offered him several contracts to stay, managers have regularly selected him in match day squads for the past.. 9 years is it? Or are you putting him in the same bracket as Bogarde?

Lighten up people, it's Sunderland at home, we might actually win. We are due our solitary W this month, this might be it. Watford will be more difficult and United away nearly impossible despite their injury woes, so we must grab all three here to keep the spectacular run of one win a month going. Prediction: 1-0 Chels, scorer O.G. Somewhere in parallel universe where I am the manager, this is the team going to be put out: Courtois Azpi - Zouma - Cahill - Baba Cheeks - Mikel - Ramires Willian - Remy - Kenedy

If Jose remains the big question is can we trust him with rebuilding the squad though? I mean look at us now and look at the players we have let go. Those transfer moves don't seem like of someone who knows what he's doing, but in Jose's defence a big chunk of blame can be put on the board because I'm quite sure Jose never wanted such a thin squad. I'm certain he would absolutely LOVE to have viable options to replace some of the underperformers, but our squad is very thin and lacking quality options. However, when he did have a larger squad with better options, his handling of those players was simply abysmal, so the blame is still shared here. I still have blind hope that Mourinho can come good and become our undisputed boss who drives us forward, develops proper playing style and promotes youth, but I just can't see it happening anymore

So I can't voice my disagreement? What is the forum for then?

So you are saying Mourinho completely slammed the players to protect them? Did you watch the post-match interview? He said players betrayed him to protect them from the media? Newspapers are writing about him because it gets more clicks, always have and always will. There have been plenty of stories about how shit the players have been too, you just choose to neglect them and think that everything Jose says is some kind of brilliant mind game. Your fascination with him is becoming embarrassing. This season has proved that Mourinho isn't all that, in fact it's clear as day he has very little control left now and he's speaking out of emotions, not some calculated masterplan to uplift the players.

You just have to look at Remy to get an idea why players are falling out with Mourinho. Last season he said it was his mistake he didn't play Remy more when he deserved, this season it's even worse. Losing trust in the manager. He is used only when chasing a game, if lucky. Why should he give a damn anymore?

Tbf not many teams have gone to Leicester and picked up points. It was always going to be a long shot for us. What bums me the most is that we have sunk to a level where we basically have stopped hoping for anything, performances like that don't encourage much faith anymore - it's mid December! Improvement has been marginal, not sufficient. Also, when you have inconsistent players like Oscar, Fabregas, Ramires and Matic playing in key positions, you will get inconsistent team performances. Our midfield is flat out useless no matter how you combine the personnel. We need a leader there! We have no damn leaders above the defensive line and it shows. Everybody is acting on wrong instincts, there is no one in there to tell them what the fuck they should or should not be doing. Mourinho can only do so much when not involved in the game himself. He insinuated that by saying the players are not doing in games what they are doing in training. This is depressing, I think it's beyond repair if those players and Mourinho continue together, neither is responding to each other. And they just won the title together, the bond should be there.. but it is not for reasons unexplainable. Bold decisions need to be made at the top, the minions below are destroying the club.

Called it

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.