manpe

Baka isn't fit, he's playing through a minor injury.

Why not? He's not on loan.

I'm not liking the negativity coming out from our camp. Other top teams are in the same situation as us, of course our squad is smaller, but complaining about the schedule doesn't bring anything good imo.

I agree. We just have to hope the guys up top work their magic It will be solid at the back with basically 3 destroyers, but I can already see how incoherent and sloppy in attack with nobody to intelligently and technically link up with the forward line. Perfect for grinding out results when needed, but there is no evolution in that team since forever. Basically same old song, put all your eggs in one basket and hope for the best.

We have Cesc in midfield ATM and we haven't seen much creative in our last few games. We just need solidity right now You might be right and it might be the team we will be using in big games in the near future, but it will be painful to watch.

No creativity in that team. It could work however if we had better wing-backs.

Yup, this is what I would play if we ever did 4 at the back again. It's puzzling we haven't really addressed the LB situation since Cole left... we've had Filipe Luis, Bertrand, Baba, Alonso but somehow a right/centre-back is still our best LB.

Morata is Costa's replacement. Llorente would have been Michy's.

We were never good against pressing, not under Mourinho or anybody else. It has more to do with lack of quality than the coach.

Fucking finally a Chelsea game on TV over here! Bye bye shitty streams.

No. Don't interrupt his progress.

Yeah, but we were losing anyway, we had nothing to lose except goal difference which means shit at this point. Need to be more adventurous when losing. Also severely lacking a target man with Morata's absence, had no option to play long balls in the dying minutes which is essential in such situations, meaning we wasted too much time finding space to move the ball to the box. Missing out on Llorente stings, but I think we should have moved Luiz to ST to win long balls... we didn't, have no idea why.

I feel we need to have more tactical flexibility in terms of being able to play with 4 defenders when needed. When we are chasing a game we lack numbers up front with this formation, throwing in another attacker and taking a defender off should help us against mid-table teams and relegation fodder.

Why isn't Rüdiger or Christensen starting? We'd be more comfortable on the ball. We need to attack with much more conviction, but it's obvious we are several levels below our usual without Kante and Morata... key players.

Well that's boring.

for what?

Not important if we look at replacements. Baka replaced Nemanja's spot and Drinks Nate's, simple as that. Comparing player profiles is a different thing, but if you asked, then I wouldn't compare Baka to any of them.. different from Matic, different from Chalobah. If I had to, I would place Baka closer to Matic though. Nate played too little for the first team to form any substantial opinion and Drinksy hasn't kicked a ball for us yet, what he did at Leicester is not important to me at this point, I need to see him in our system first.

Your post is true, there are a lot of kneejerkers around here who have no common sense or ability to analyse and answer the "whys" in a rational way.. the same ones who romanticize the likes of Kalou in hindsight, while he was the worst player in the world when he was still here. But that last bit isn't true, Bakayoko is Matic's replacement (starting XI), Drinks is Chalobah's (bench).

Our medical dept. can pull miracles, why not this time also.

Seems he's taken it down since.

This fucking sucks. Not only have we lost our best striker for a long time, but Morata was doing so well, now he will come back having lost 2 months of adaptation and goals. Time for Bats to step up, REALLY step up...

Spot on. This post should be quoted every time we lose a game and get tons of overreactions. We have looked good this season and played well, then we get one bad result after the conditions are firmly stacked against us and all of a sudden we are piss poor and Conte is clueless. I predict that as we get a chunk of tough games aside in early season, we'll be cruising later and heaping tons of pressure on Manchester who will lose form eventually like they always do. I think we have what it takes to make a genuine push to retain the title.

Easier start means tougher mid and late season, it all balances out throughout the whole season.

He revealed it a long time ago, why rehash old news?

You know, I just wanted to come here and praise Michy for his attitude. He gets some stick from us, but what has impressed me is that in his first season he barely played, got humiliated several times with a few secondcameos, couldn't even get a game when Costa wasn't fit. Any other player would have sulked and left or gone on loan, but he stuck to it and is reaping his rewards. Getting plenty of game time now, scoring goals, always having a positive attitude. There are obvious footballing reasons why he is a substitute, but besides that I really like how he didn't jump ship at first opportunity.