Jase

Because it's selective? Because it doesn't tell the whole story? This is like when people were using the 18-game unbeaten run earlier run this season to defend Lampard and as a reason to not sack him. Plus, it's not as if Jorginho just joined us last summer and has been our lucky charm. He's been here for 2.5 years and we have lost games with him starting. Would we have not lost had he started against say Man City or Leicester? He might not be directly responsible for the goals conceded etc had he started but he would still be part of a team that lost. What happens when we eventually lose games with him starting under Tuchel? Then what? What stat are people gonna use then? If people want to defend Jorginho, by all means, go ahead but using the stat of us being unbeaten in his last 18 starts isn't convincing at all.

I know Matt Law tends to be reliable but not sure how much I believe him in this one. He suddenly just mentioned this and I don't seem to recall any stories of us wanting him last year, not even on The Athletic. It was all Man United back then.

If we want to sign Haaland, we're gonna need a lot of factors to fall in our favor, even more than last summer when we had a free run at players.

AC Milan can buy him but ultimately, it comes down to what Tomori wants. He can still reject their offer, assuming they use the option to buy him.

People are really clutching at straws when this specific stat is used to defend a player. So, you're saying that Jorginho could have been THE player to save Lampard's job? 🤨 He's been at the club for 2 1/2 years and the fact that we're still having arguments over his use says a lot.

Am just putting it out there. Will leave it to you on however you want to twist it with your Mount agenda. 😛

cc @NikkiCFC 👀

Just seen Leicester's lineup in their Europa League game. Seems like Brendan Rodgers is taking the competition seriously.

But let's not pretend as if Arsenal weren't already falling down the pecking order under Wenger. He regularly got them into the Champions League but they don't make any impact at all, constantly crashing out in the last 16. Winning the FA Cup is always nice but no one is gonna be satisfied with just winning FA Cups if the team aren't doing anything in the other competitions. It's Arsenal, not Newcastle. Because of what happened in the latter years of Wenger's regime, Arsenal have basically found themselves in a position where (a) sane, top quality players will not join them and (b) no sane, top clubs will buy any of their players except maybe Partey and at a push, Aubameyang and Lacazette. Couple those with an owner who is reluctant to spend big money on players, although strangely (to put it kindly) committing to big money contracts on old players, you end up with a club that have to scrape the barrels for players. If Arsenal want to seemingly take the long road, pursue a road that doesn't seem to be leading to anywhere and with a newbie in charge, then I'd say let them have their "fun" with it.

Feels the like the media are just linking us to every German player out there because our manager is now German...so lazy! 🙄

For the record, I wasn't making excuses for Arteta and I could care less about whether he's out of his depth or not. The point is, Arsenal's expectations are at their lowest in ages. They seem content with taking the long road back to the top and content with being an "experimental playground" for Arteta. Not sure if anyone would be batting an eyelid if they finish outside the Top 4 or even the Top 6 this season.

How is Rooney not doing it right by starting in the Championship? How is Rooney even failing? He's won 5 of his 7 games since being appointed permanent manager of Derby. That's a decent start and it's way too early to even judge him. And managing in the Championship is probably similar to, if not tougher than, managing in the Scottish Premier League. The Championship is way more hectic than the Scottish Premier League given how many teams are trying to get promoted, although Gerrard might have more pressure considering he's managing one of the big two there. Is Arteta really failing at Arsenal considering their recent standards? It's kinda par for the course since they are trying to rebuild after years of falling off from the best and their peak years. Different case with Lampard at Chelsea and Pirlo at Juventus where the expectations are higher, there are better players and there's more spending power.

City more desperate for CL success? Why do you think Juventus went all out to sign Ronaldo from Real Madrid? They bought him literally to help them get over the line in the Champions League, a competition they haven't won since 1996 despite reaching 5 finals between then and now. They are bloody desperate to win it considering they are already so successful domestically. Am sure they can survive not winning the Serie A for a season or two. Sarri played nice football at Napoli but never won anything with them. Gattuso came in after Ancelotti and won the Coppa Italia. So, go figure. The stats may suggest Lampard did worse than Sarri but on the flip side, had Sarri stayed, am not sure he would have been able to successfully integrate the youth players into the first team as Lampard did, especially after a season where he largely relied on Hazard to do the business. I guess one could say that we and Juventus made a dumb decision to hire Sarri in the first place. Given the type of our squad and Juventus' - both excelling in pragmatic football - it was never going to work with Sarri's style of play and even more so when he's super rigid in his ways. Both teams would have to likely rebuild the entire squad just to fit his way, which would obviously be more costly and take longer than just sacking one person. Most of the players Sarri had at Napoli were already there and he just bought a few notable players over the 3 seasons to complement with the rest of the squad. So in some ways, the pieces already fell into place for him at Napoli. Plus some managers are better when managing a second-tier side than when managing a top tier side. Less pressure and all that.

Thanks!

Where did he say it? Not seeing on his Twitter account.

@NikkiCFC I can't remember where you said "what will happen to Werner if we buy Haaland" but here's what Tuchel said about Werner's role/position after Monday's game... https://www.football.london/Chelsea-fc/news/thomas-tuchel-ziyech-pulisic-werner-19855534 "We know he likes to drift out a little bit to the wing, between the full-back and centre-back," Tuchel told Sky Sports. "So we try to bring him into these positions he likes to play next to a guy who is a reference in the middle like Tammy and Oli. "We wanted to escape the pressure in the half positions today so we played Mason on the right and Marcos (Alonso) more inside to keep Timo stay in a high position and use his speed. It worked well in the first half, the second half lacked precision." "I do think he can also play as another striker, maybe sometimes as a number nine if he is clever enough with his speed and his runs. But his favourite position and his biggest strengths are maybe if he can drift out a little to the left side." As said before, IF we do get Haaland (HA!), it'll be a bigger question for Abraham. Playing with 2 strikers - 2 different ones - isn't new for us considering we played with Drogba and Anelka in the same XI all those years ago and Werner himself has often played with another striker (e.g. Poulsen, Abraham, Giroud) in his career so far.

Despite that, Bayern still pretty much monopolized the league. I mean, they have won 9 of the last 11 Bundesliga seasons, even when they some times gave others a headstart. The 2 times that they didn't win were of course Klopp's Dortmund but otherwise, no one else came close. And there's no point in the other sides having quality coaches when their team have less resources than Bayern and see their best players poached by Bayern along the way. When Guardiola leaves City, I very, very much doubt they will just continue to dominate the league, not when there are far better teams in the Premier League to challenge them than the ones in the Bundesliga.

But the difference is Man City don't monopolize the Premier League like Bayern do in the Bundesliga or Barcelona do to some extent in La Liga. Let's not forget that Man City were beatable under Mancini and Pellegrini.

Not sure if it can be predicted. Some may take awhile to get back on track. Some maybe longer. For example, when the football restarted in June last season, Pulisic immediately found his form from the get-go after his injury and sustained it till the end of the season. But based on how he's doing this season, that feels like a purple patch because he's been back long enough to stop being a ghost in the team.

But when you made that post, it wasn't about creativity. You simply started comparing the numbers and breaking them down. And you look at Mount differently now? You have been making this very same point about him ever since the start of last season. You used PSG as an example because Pochettino played Kean, Mbappe and Icardi against Barcelona - one of the worse Barcelona ever let's not forget - but then, he also had a strong looking midfield behind them to balance things out, a bit like with Liverpool. Can the same, say, be said about us with our midfield of Jorginho and Kovacic? As decent as they can be on the ball, we all know they are hopeless without it and when it comes to defensive action. And on the flip side, you also had Griezmann, Messi and Dembele as the front 3 for Barcelona and look what happened. We can talk about creativity, attacking numbers and all that till the cows come home but Mount and Ziyech each bring something different to the table. If Tuchel is really all about attacking players, he could have so easily just played Ziyech - or even Pulisic - and played them into form instead of Mount. Take Werner as an example. While he has looked better recently under Tuchel, it didn't fully click for him immediately but Tuchel stuck with him - partly also because what he brings to the table tactically - and look what has happened. And also, worth noting that Ziyech wasn't signed by Tuchel. You gotta wonder if he fancies him much, especially with some rumors going around about Ziyech wanting to leave in the summer. This is probably me reading too much into it but Tuchel's recent comments about Ziyech also seem less enamoured compared to what he said about the others.

Anthony Taylor is the referee for this. 🤣

Too many pundits and journalists are stealing a living, TBH. Very, very few out there that are actually good and done their homework before analyzing things. As you pointed out, there are paid idiots who take pot shots at Tuchel as though he was the one who decided to sack Lampard. There are paid idiots who think that there's been no difference Tuchel's Chelsea and Lampard's Chelsea apart from upturn in results or that Tuchel is keeping everyone happy. There are paid idiots who still think there was nothing with us under Lampard - not the tactics, playing style etc - apart from the results that went south in the December-January period. There are paid idiots who were giving and probably still make excuses for Lampard after 18 months in the job but want to now judge Tuchel after being in the job for only about 3 weeks. There are paid idiots who blame Lampard's sacking on other people and not judge the job that Lampard was actually doing. It was so crazy how many excuses were made for Lampard by the English media. So much forgiving was afforded to him compared to our previous managers. There are paid idiots who judge Lampard based on sentimental reasons and nothing about his coaching credentials. No one mentioned that Lampard got his dream job and no one but himself fucked it up. There are paid idiots who think the likes of Pulisic deserve to start without having a clue. If they have been watching us, they should know Pulisic and some others have done zilch to deserve a start right now. Given we have so many options right now, some will get left out in matches and the stupid is thing, if Tuchel drops someone else for Pulisic, then these paid idiots would be questioning why isn't Tuchel playing that player!

Obviously racking up assists from set pieces doesn't mean that player is creative. However, we used to complain we don't score enough from set pieces because we had people like Willian taking them and failing to beat the first man. Now we are scoring a few more set pieces because we have a better taker in Mount and people are trying to devalue it. We can't have it both ways here. Also, is stats just everything to you in football? On paper, sure, Havertz and Ziyech would get into the team ahead of Mount because of their talent and quality at the moment and whatever numbers they have posted so far but will their inclusion ensure that the team would still be balanced, that they can function properly? It's not always possible to just slap all the talented players into the same XI. This isn't Football Manager or FIFA. Moreover, while Mount may not be blessed with the talent of Havertz or Ziyech right now but that doesn't mean he can't improve and get better in his own right. I mean, who on earth thought Lampard would turn out to be the player that we all saw when he was only 22 years old? Lampard wasn't the most talented players around, he was born with natural talent like some other players but through hard work and dedication, he became one of the best in the world. Would have been interesting to see the fans' reaction on social media had it been big back then. Mount seems like someone with the right mindset and dedication to improve himself and as long as he stays on the right track, there's no reason why he can't be great. Not every great player out there is born with talent.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/56075846