Jase

Alonso, James out injured. Pulisic also? Lamptey on the bench.

Brighton & Hove Albion 1-1 Chelsea PRE/POST-MATCH DISCUSSION, LIVE CHAT AND ANALYSIS 2019/20 Premier League Match 21 1st January, Wednesday 2020 Amex Stadium 12:30 Kick Off (UK time)

I mean, where do we even begin with this?

Frank Lampard at pains not to rouse David Luiz’s lust for Chelsea revenge Odds on Luiz scoring...?

The best preparation for this game is to not have any expectation whatsoever. Just enjoy the ride...

Seeing random reports on Twitter saying that Roman has been granted his visa to the UK again...

Pellegrini gone...

Thank god for the win at Spurs...

For a few days at least, because we will play first in midweek.

You could apply it the other way round as well.

Good to know you can tell what will happen in the future.

While I do understand your sentiment, if we're going by that logic, then I guess we won't win any more games this season? If you want some sort of positive/hope, our away form has been better overall than our home form this season.

I do wonder what the perception of Lampard would be had our form been the other way round - start the season poorly but then see improvement in form and results (e.g. the 7-game winning run)...

I'll be shocked if Lampard drops his favorite son, Willian. He (and Abraham) is gonna be flogged to death over this Christmas-New Year period.

Okay, I just did a check on the 7-game winning run and the Jorginho-Kovacic-Mount trio was played only twice, in the last two wins of that run - 1-0 at Ajax and 4-2 at Burnley. In fact, if we take it a little further, that midfield combination only started 4 times when we had the run of 9 wins in 11 games - the last of which came in the debacle/crazy/great 4-4 game against Ajax. W 7-1 Grimsby - Gilmour/Barkley/Pedro W 2-0 Brighton - Jorginho/Barkley/Mount W 2-1 Lille - Jorginho/Kante [back 3 was used] W 4-1 Southampton - Jorginho/Kante/Mount W 1-0 Newcastle - Jorginho/Barkley/Mount [Barkley was subbed off with injury for Kovacic before HT] W 1-0 Ajax - Jorginho/Kovacic/Mount W 4-2 Burnley - Jorginho/Kovacic/Mount L 1-2 Man United - Jorginho/Kovacic/Gilmour W 2-1 Watford - Jorginho/Kovacic/Mount D 4-4 Ajax - Jorginho/Kovacic/Mount W 2-0 Palace - Kovacic/Kante/Mount So, is breaking up the Jorginho/Kovacic/Mount trio really the issue here? It's highly debatable, because we have experienced this trend before - start the season well and then things go off the rails around November-December. I don't necessarily disagree that Kante looks something of a misfit at times in the style of football we're trying to implement but the bigger issue here is a lot of the players have suffered a dip in form at the same (wrong) time. And if the results above are anything to go by, it seems our poor run of form started when Mount (and arguably Jorginho as well) went off the boil because he's the one constant in the run above.

But he has been nowhere near consistent as he was under Conte or at Leicester. He looks great at times and bang average at others. He had one of his worst games against Southampton.

The tricky thing is Jorginho and Kovacic can't play every game together - the former's form seems to have dipped around the last international break - and there's no other replacement for them in the squad. So, Kante was always gonna be used. Also, the poor run of form also seems to coincided with Mount going off the boil.

One season wonder...

@Tomo, so do you think we will pull another rabbit out of the hat for this one?

WE ARE FUCKED!

By the way, we will drop to 5th if Spurs beat Norwich on Saturday...

Man City need to buy a whole defence at this rate. Guardiola clearly doesn't fancy Otamendi and Stones. Mendy hasn't done well at all. Walker is so-so. God knows about Cancelo at this point. And oh, it is rather depressing to think that we could be ahead of Leicester and Man City if we hadn't fucked up against West Ham, Southampton, Everton and Bournemouth!