Jase

I don't think it's necessarily that black and white, in the sense that you have to choose one playing style and play that only. We gotta be a bit flexible and be able to do both if we want to succeed in the long run. Yes, we should have a predominant style of play - e.g. attacking football - but we must also know how to play conservatively/how to be pragmatic (and I don't mean we should take it to the extreme like Mourinho does) and when to do it, whenever necessary. If we only know one way of playing, we'll eventually become predictable and can be easy to stop. Even Guardiola and Klopp aren't 100% all about attacking football, they also know when to rein in a little by making small tactical tweaks etc when the game requires it. The most disappointing thing for me with our current side is the lack of pragmatism, the inability to be defensively organized (we don't look well coached defensively at all), the inability to withstand pressure when needed to. Ask this team to sit back and defend for even just 5 minutes and chances are we will very likely concede, which is silly when you consider half of the current side have played at least under a conservative manager like Conte previously (e.g. Azpi, Christensen, Rudiger, Alonso, Emerson, Kante, Giroud, Willian, Pedro, Barkley). Right now, we only know how to attack, attack, attack at 200 miles per hour. It's great when it works, when we are able to dominate possession and pin the opposition back but when it doesn't, we turn the game into a basketball game [e.g. Valencia away, (to some extent) Bayern at home], which is a recipe for disaster given we aren't coached on how to defend properly.

Seeing a lot of Juventus followers aren't happy with Sarriball this season...

Tony Cascarino on Lampard... https://www.football.london/chelsea-fc/news/frank-lampard-chelsea-bayern-munich-17819828

Atletico have been kind in taking away our deadwood strikers in the past but I don't think they're idiots enough to take 25 million + Kepa for Oblak.

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Pardon me if I expect the vice captain to be a little more control of himself in the big moments. Agree to disagree. And no one seems to question why we are so easy to score against. No one seems to bother why we, as a team, have not made life difficult for opponents to score against us (even if you take the individual fuck ups along the way). Lampard always seems to gloss over that by talking about our attacking problems instead and even when he does talk about the goals conceded, he'll just casually put them down to individual mistakes, like they're not important. He's not always wrong about that but the collective defending leaves a lot to be desired a lot of the time. The pressing is some times all over the place, the defensive lines aren't compact, it's easy for opponents to play through us etc. For instance and I said this in the Bayern match thread, Kante & Hazard aside, our starting XI last night wasn't much different to the starting XI that played Barcelona in the R16 1st leg 2 years ago but the defensive organization was night and day. XI vs Barca at SB Courtois - Rudiger/Christensen/Azpi - Alonso/Kante/Fabregas/Moses - Hazard/Willian/Pedro vs XI vs Bayern at SB Caballero - Rudiger/Christensen/Azpi - Alonso/Jorginho/Kovacic/James - Barkley/Mount/Giroud

Still doesn't mean it's okay to not criticize players when they pick up a yellow in such stupid fashion.

He got booked for dissent, which is stupid considering the injury problems we've had. He even had to be held back by Azpi! Obviously there are much bigger problems from yesterday's game but it's little things like that that just explains the individual problems in the team.

Welp, this has been a strange day and not even half of the day has passed yet...

Vintage Henrique right there.

He is the vice captain, a supposedly leader in the dressing room but went all Verratti and got a stupid yellow card that will keep him out of the second leg.

Think I now understand why CHOULO, Alex etc all decided to quit as mods/admins...

3 league goals since Nov 9. 6 goals in last 23 games. Neither make great reading, TBF. He works hard and puts himself about, I'll give him that but I just don't think he has the quality if we want to achieve big things. Maybe he'll get there one day but at the moment, he's not really shown enough that he's THE striker for us to trust for the next 6-7 years etc.

6 goals in his last 23 games, I believe. Had chances to score tonight but bottled the opportunities to attack balls coming into the penalty area.

TBF, I managed to swap a 30-year-old Jorginho + 70 million for a 24-year-old Frenkie de Jong on FM...

Not saying Mount shouldn't do both sides of the game but it seems like the creative aspect of his game is suffering because of the tactical side of things.

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I wonder if Lampard is restricting him by turning him into a tactical player. Mount just becomes totally braindead in the final third.

We have injury problems, we don't have the players to play an attacking game and yet we set up trying to take Bayern head on...a little pragmatism wouldn't have hurt.

What makes you so sure that Sancho and Werner won't fall foul to our "injury curse" if they come here? Regarding Abraham, never mind his recent injury problems (barely missed any games last season with Villa), I just don't think he's good enough for us if we want to get to where we want to.

Our CL knockout stage record since winning our last knockout tie on Apr 8, 2014 (3-3 away goals vs PSG) SF (2013/14) D 0-0 Atletico L 1-3 Atletico R16 (2014/15) D 1-1 PSG D 2-2 PSG R16 (2015/16) L 1-2 PSG L 1-2 PSG R16 (2017/18) D 1-1 Barca L 0-3 Barca R16 (2019/20) L 0-3 Bayern 4th straight R16 exit beckons. Morphing into Arsenal...