manpe

I think there was a hope that Kante would leave his injury worries behind him or that at least they wouldn't be as bad as they have been. Because whenever he was fit he transformed us, we were always better with him than without him and it's hard to move such an asset if there is even a glimmer of hope left. I understand Roman and co regarding Kante, but in hindsight it was the wrong call.

Lol, can't wait for the first time he storms off the pitch after being subbed or refuses to come on after not being selected to start. Also can't wait for his comments dissing Potter a la "of course I didn't know who that guy was". It would be massively beneficial to Potter's career here NOT to sign that has-been. But those Americans probably saw him breaking the shirt sales record and thought he would be a great tool to boost Chelsea's marketability.

Kepa's case shows he does play them on merit. Problem being there aren't many to choose from at the moment. However I do think he should give more chances to Zakaria, Pulisic (as a winger) and Broja. Starting Auba and Havertz at the moment is a waste of time, hopefully he realizes that soon enough.

I have always considered Sterling a slightly above average player at best. He benefited big time from City's system, who have always had a world class midfield that can actually pass a ball around with intent. Going against City in the past Sterling never scared me as an individual player, I was more concerned about the Silvas, KDBs and Agüeros of the team who could create something out of nothing... Sterling wasn't that kind of player, he was good at getting at the end of things with his pace, but not much else. At Chelsea, too much focus is put onto him to carry the team - he will not and to expect him to do so is setting him up for failure. He is not a Hazard type of player.

I have a bit of sympathy for Potter due to the massive injuries we have to key players, before those we weren't that bad. And you can't really instill your ideas and tactics to the team coming in mid-season without a proper pre-season. Unless we implode badly, I'm giving this season Potter a pass. I was against his appointment from the beginning, but what's done is done, so we have to now be patient and wait until he's given a fair chance.

Hardly a valid excuse. It's our home ground, has been for forever and so the team should be well adapted to that. If they're not it's their own fault.

Generational talent 😂 Lol that is such a bullshit reason. ALL televised professional athletes are overpaid.

The only consistent players we have are Silva and James. Kante too if you count him being consistently injured. But Mount, Kova, Jorginho and Chilwell are the definitions of inconsistency.

We have been a project (or in "transition", whatever you call it) since I don't know when, but many years have passed where the same things have been said. In that case our project management is horrible as we're only getting worse. Over the years there have been very few signs that we should be trusting or having faith in said "project". A project where we still sign past it old players as stop-gaps. The problem here is that we never went for a cover RWB in the summer. Azpi is not it if even fucking Pulisic or RLC plays ahead of him there. We totally neglected RWB in favour of spunking €65mill on Cucurella and €56mill on Sterling, who is now playing LWB despite Chilwell and Cucu being fit 😂. This situation was always going to happen because it is known that our WBs are prone to injury and one can't blame them for that, it is the most physically demanding position. Chilwell will also get injured during the season, mark my words... but at least there we have Cucurella to cover for him, an actual wing-back, so we won't miss him as much as we are missing Reece. You become a one-man team when you don't have adequate cover for that one man. Why the FUCK did we even loan Zakaria? Just goes to show how clueless Boehly and co. actually were during the summer. For example, it's been said by trustworthy journalists that Boehly had decided to get rid of Tuchel long before he actually did. THEN WHY THE FUCK WAIT UNTIL THE SEASON'S BEGUN AND TRANSFER WINDOW IS CLOSED?! Does he think it's easy for a new manager to just come in mid-season and start fucking shit up? Boehly, Eghbali and that bunch are fucking idiots. If they don't start keeping away from footballing matters soon then we are fucked. Because of corruption.

Yeah it was shown on MOTD. Ever so slightly, but it was over unfortunately.

A number of clubs would have probably wanted him. What has natural DMF to do with Kante? He's not one.

The perfect time would have been this summer imo. It was clear he's become injury prone and it was the last summer we could have got any money for him, now he'll leave for free.

What a shame. If he managed to stay fit he'd still be our best player by far and one of the best in the world. Sad to see such a great player and person be ruined by injuries, he doesn't deserve it. 😔

It's not as if Fofana hasn't played for us already, he's not that new. 80 and 40 million € center-backs sitting on the bench while two over the hill ones play, baffling. I can kinda see what he was trying to do, but it is NOT the way forward, especially in the Prem.

The hype is real over him. Hope he doesn't crumble under pressure, Chelsea is a different monster to anything he has managed so far, it has eaten born winners like Conte and Mourinho alive. Let's see...

The only reason I see why the owners wanted Ronaldo is for marketability, can't get much bigger than Ronaldo in selling shirts and plastering his photos everywhere. Tuchel obviously didn't care about that. Remains to be seen if Potter will be a yes-man.

Okay, so this guy hasn't won anything of note despite being a manager since 2008. The only achievement that people mention is that he got Brighton playing some nice football... just like Pochettino did with Sp*rs or Wenger with Arsenal (post-invincibles). Playing nice just for the sake of it means fuck all. Sceptical over this appointment, has mediocrity written all over it like with all English managers. Hope he proves me and all doubters wrong though. Good luck, Graham! You're gonna need it with those players.

That doesn't really hold up because Silva didn't play yesterday. We stuck with 3 atb even when going for the equalizer, probably because we were afraid to concede more, and even played Cucurella at LCB. Problem is that with 4 atb we don't look more like scoring, but we do seem more likely to concede. I don't know, it's a conundrum, the team isn't playing well in any system atm.

So we ended up getting a CB, ST and DMF on deadline day. Pleased with that.

Okay so that leaves us with only 2 natural wingers - Pulisic and Sterling - provided that Ziyech is also leaving. What's the plan then if we don't get Gordon? Surely someone has to come in.

Money My gooner mate says Auba needs several chances to score one, like 5 to 1. Basically he needs a team that creates a lot of chances for the striker, we don't. He also says that Auba is made for a team playing on the counter, not possession. Everything I've heard of him or seen of him is the opposite of what we need in terms of how we play (slow positional possession football). I also refuse to read too much into his La Liga record, they don't do defending there. I would be happy with him if he didn't get a 3 year contract and if his role would be an Eto'o or Drogba second stint - squad player and mentor for youngsters (not too sure about the mentoring part either because of his past with shit attitude).

Has Azpi ever played as CB in a back 4? Unfortunately most of our CBs are best suited to a back 3, will make it more difficult to transition away from it in the future. Have a feeling we might play Cucurella at LCB this game.

Feel some of the insults thrown at blahblah are uncalled for. Why is it necessary to call him a whiny bitch if he/she doesn't conform to the norm? I for one think he makes some good points. I'm all for giving TT this full season, but if there isn't any improvement after the money spent, and especially if we fail to make top 4, questions need to be asked. Too early for that at the moment though.

Neutralize our wing-backs and we have no answer. Whether we like it or not, they are our most important attacking players. Our front three's main job is to play the wing-backs through on the overlap. When teams successfully block this strategy, we revert to sideways passing in the final 3rd and eventually give it back to the backline as we have no answer once the wings are blocked. We look so shit in attack when that happens. RLC is a nice backup to have but shouldn't be starting when we have other options fit. Azpi and Trevoh were on the bench, WHY? They are natural center-backs, but Tuchel instead prefers to put Reece at CB and RLC at WB... square pegs in round holes and all that. Are Azpi and Trev really so shit that RLC blows them away? Azpi was good against Everton, then dropped against Sp*rs in favour of Reece to contain Son... but Leeds? FFS Leeds aren't Real Madrid or Tottenshits that you have to compromise attack for defence. There was one situation I remember where RLC was played in for a nice shooting or crossing chance, but he overplayed and squandered it. Reece would have blasted it first time! And knowing his shooting probably would have hit the target at the very least. That's a potential goal lost because we chose not to play players in their best positions. Reece is arguably our most important attacker, he should not be playing CB when it's not absolutely necessary imho.

I have a suggestion. What if we started posting transfer news/discussions into separate threads again for each player? Like it used to be back in the day. We have a whole "transfer talk" subforum dedicated to it, but it's not being used at all anymore and instead all transfer related posts are put into the Chelsea Transfers thread. As a result that thread is quite chaotic with transfer posts for all players and people squabbling with each other mashed into one place. It's especially tedious after not having checked the forum for a while and there are several pages to skim through, but most of the time I just want to see posts about certain players. I often end up going to The Shed End as they have separate threads for all players, which is more convenient to navigate through and information is more neatly organized.