manpe

Oh well, I was calling for Sarri to do something different and surprise them. Not exactly what I had in mind, but we'll see soon enough.

Sarri going the Conte route of playing without a striker against them. Fear it won't work.

You know what I mean my sweet lady, Luiz can be replaced by Christensen or Ampadu, Alonso by Emerson, Azpi by Zappa (James when back from loan), RW we have Pedro and CHO. It's Sarri's business that he doesn't utilise those players as much, fact is we have some adequate squad depth in those positions. But at striker we have literally nobody we can take seriously, we can only choose between bad and worse/dumb and dumber. Giroud is okay for backup, Morata okay for kiddie playground games... who else? Nobody. Bats when back from loan? He's shit, not the answer. Tammy Abraham? If we want to sink deep into mid-table obscurity. Striker is our nr. 1 pressing issue in my not-so-humble opinion.

Hazard has a point, it must be tiring playing with statues and being the one man in a one-man team. All the other players are simply too dumb or below required quality to play the type of style that City do.

Please be a striker. We have every other position covered except striker, where we have only backup quality. Problem being there will probably be nobody of required quality available. Don't think we will buy anyone and it's maybe for the best, we need to sign the right ones, not random stopgaps.

He is still 100x the player Ivanovic was at that time, don't give me that bs. After leaving us, he still put up impressive performances for Atletico, Ivanovic never did for us, he only got worse. Filipe's few appearances for us also proved that without any doubt, but our manager was a man who rates Fellaini, nuff said.

How? Our defensive mids are not tall nor strong. Our only strong players are our CBs and Giroud if he's playing. But I agree, I thought we were past that archaic height and strength fetish and are moving towards modern football. Guess not, fear seems to be clouding Sarri's judgement at the moment considering his reluctance to play youth and persistance with shit players. This also explains why he has no qualms over playing Emerson in games outside EPL fixtures, EPL is surely more physical and demanding, but fuck me are you telling me our team is so weak in set-pieces that we still need to put out Alonso against teams we have 70% possession against, just to defend against a couple of corners/fks they might get? The few set-pieces we'd concede would be compensated by the advantages Emerson would bring in attack. When are we gonna get a manager who has a set of balls?

I'm also not a fan of some of his defeatist comments either, that he doesn't know how to defeat Pep and how it's impossible to win City over the course of a season. They may be light-hearted comments, but there is truth behind them and does a struggling unconfident squad need to hear their manager publicly preparing them for loss and kinda admitting he's clueless? I just find it a bit odd.

At 11:10 he talks about Alonso vs. Emerson and he brings out that we could have trouble in set-pieces without Alonso... So what do we think about that? How valid reason is it?

Why are some so certain he will start against City? I doubt he will considering he had a shocking game and was joint first to be pulled off the pitch together with Morata. Willian hasn't been untouchable, Sarri's used both a lot, so it's not as set in stone as Alonso or Luiz are. Think Pedro and Giroud will start, also because they played less and are prolly fresher. I would be really surprised if both Morata and Willian started after their shitshows.

I'm afraid of what City will do to our 4-3-3 if we persist with it, especially with Jorginho the deepest midfielder. We're going to concede shitloads of space in those areas for the Sterlings and Silvas to run into. Luiz.... please don't clown around this game. This really isn't the game for Alonso considering the pace City have, they run around like rabid rabbits. Alonso will be targeted so hard and with Kante playing on the other side, his help will be Luiz, Hazard and Kova/RLC...... Sarri needs to mix something up, surprise them, otherwise Pep will punish our predictability with ease. I would play this 4-2-3-1 exceptionally against City: Kepa Azpi - Rüdiger - AC - Emerson Jorginho - Kante Pedro - RLC - Hazard Giroud

Are the shock reports from Don Balon? If not, then of course I hope that Hazard stays and commits, but if he really wants to go, then that deal doesn't look bad. €100m + Kovacic and Asensio, who together add the total up to over €200m. That's a very decent return for a wantaway player entering his last year. We add two quality(hopefully) players and get another €100m to spend. That money would then need to go on a striker. Maybe in the end it would benefit the team more than having only Hazard? Let's say we get Kovacic, Asensio and Icardi, who we otherwise couldn't afford without Hazard money. I'd be down with that.

And never take on opponents 1-on-1 because he doesn't have the pace to swoosh past them and whip in a sharp cross from the byline (Emerson frequently attempts to do that). It is one of the most dangerous moves a team can do, difficult to defend against. Arsenal did it against us and we were lucky not to concede more. Rashford did it yesterday against Arsenal and Martial got a scrappy goal because it is difficult to defend against. City do it all the time. With Alonso it's either a pass back to whoever is closest, or a bad high cross when the opposing FB hasn't closed him down quickly enough. Azpi also doesn't have this burst of pace in his arsenal to go past players and put in dangerous crosses. This seriously handicaps our attack on both sides, like yesterday, when we kept passing from one side to the other without any penetration. The moment Azpi or Alonso got the ball, you knew it was going back to the middle, from where it was going back to the wing and back to the middle and so on...

Get him. It's his first season, he hasn't fully adapted yet, so a few pumps along the road are normal. Especially when the whole team itself is not too sure what to do on the pitch. He's a great option to have either way.

A transition doesn't depend on the manager as much as it depends on the people behind the curtains. You just have to have a manager who fits the ambitions of where they want the transition to end up at. Sarri does fit the bill of playing quick pass'n'move ( ) football, but now he needs to be fully backed.

It's akin to our ex-prime minister saying before elections that he'd take us to top 5 richest countries in Europe It's still a meme here.

I have to say I chuckled at this, because it is true. We have been saying we're in transition at least since 2010, but we have never got anywhere because there has never been any true vision to where we should transition! We bought young attacking talents only to bring in Mourinho, then Conte... Before them Benitez, RDM, AVB - all play very different styles from each other. We then stacked up players for their tactics, and now we bring in the polar opposite manager with what seems minimal support in the market. Sarri is not blameless. I blamed Mourinho for running a struggling Ivanovic to the ground when there were clearly better alternatives available (FILIPE LUIS !!!!!!!!!). The same with Alonso now, we have an alternative who is worth a shot, being frozen out of the team completely. Alonso was okay for 5 at the back, but in a 4 it's becoming clearer and clearer that he just doesn't cut it. If one of our academy products put in a performance like Alonso has done lately, he'd be proclaimed "not ready for EPL" and be shipped on loan. Reputation and price tag plays an unbelievable role in Chelsea's player selection, double standards every-fucking-where.

Alonso's modus operandi: Get burnt by pace, fail to recover, hack the legs from behind with no intent on the ball and concede a foul. Several times. This shit infuriated me yesterday, so fucking slow. You could see he himself was frustrated... Sarri, do him and the whole team a favour and let him sit out some games.

Take a hike you fraud

I on the other hand don't see how it CAN work out. He is not a player for teams who want to play quick possession football. I have seen enough of him to know that even if he does generally improve dramatically, his characteristics and playing style anyway aren't suitable for a team that wants to play on the front foot. A player so technically lacking at that age will never improve to required levels.

No word on there about Pogba except for that goofy picture. And tbh, I understand where Mou is coming from in regards to him, he is a childish overrated wanker. His performance against Soton was diabolical and it wasn't the first time. We'd be ripping him apart if he played here and his name was Bakayoko.

It's never denial or affirmation, it's a standard reply straight from the PR textbook. Managers always say that, reporting this is just a waste of digital space. It's the same as players saying they have a contract with their current club (no shit sherlock!) and "you never know in football", another line you just know has been drilled into them to make their replies as boring as possible.

World football's governing body say they want to end the "commercial exploitation" of the loan system Rich words coming from an organization corrupt from head to toe.

@Mana ^ We are now truly in transition. If you expected an easy ride and that we'd be blowing away established teams like United, Spurs and Pool, then you were wrong. No, not comparable to Arsenal's transition, as they already had the players fit for this style, style which in its core is the same as Wenger's. They were always going to get better, Wenger was so clueless, Emery is making them play to their full potential. We got Sarri in to shift us from ultra-defensive counter-attacking side to his possession based quick attacking style, but handed him square pegs to fit into round holes. It is a process that needs time and several transfer windows to take us up some levels. Why are you always so negative? One loss to a strong team that finished 7pts above us last season, and it's December. I expected WAY worse considering this is our biggest transition in Roman era. It is a work in progress, not the end result.