Jase

There was also the shootout against Eintracht Frankfurt and his penalty saving record isn't too shabby. The tricky thing with Kepa is there were also the shootouts against Man City (League Cup final) and Liverpool (UEFA Super Cup) where he failed to save penalties because of his flaky wrists, despite getting a hand on some of them. Mendy doesn't have a good record at saving penalties but so did Cech...until that night in Munich.

Timo Werner exclusive: My confidence was gone but I will never hide https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2021/05/27/timo-werner-exclusive-confidence-gone-will-never-hide/ Timo Werner paused momentarily as he thought about whether or not he will volunteer to take a penalty if Chelsea’s Champions League final against Manchester City goes to a shootout. “That’s a good and hard question, but in the end I think... yeah, I would,” said Werner. “Because maybe it’s worse that you don’t shoot and say, ‘ah no, I have fear’, and let your team-mates down. That’s worse than to take a penalty and to miss it in the end. Because you take the responsibility and you try.” Werner has scored three penalties in Chelsea’s run to the Champions League final, but missed the last spot-kick he took for the club in the FA Cup against Luton Town back in January. And given the nature of Werner’s first season at Chelsea, during which, by his own admission, he suffered a crisis of confidence in front of goal, it would be understandable if the German decided to stand aside in the event of a shootout. But that is not Werner and his reply underlined his determination to keep going, to keep putting himself in position, to never hide and his refusal to give up on his Chelsea career. As did his willingness to fulfil a request to undertake his first extended English interview at the end of what he described as “in terms of scoring, the worst season”. “When you don’t try, you will never come back to the feeling of how to score and your confidence will never come back,” said Werner. “I could say, ‘OK, I stay away from the goal and I stop trying to score. And then next year I maybe go to another club and I will try there from zero’. But that’s not my ambition, I want to be a very good striker at every team where I play so I want to be a good striker now at Chelsea. “That’s my ambition to say, ‘I want to score, I want to go there where the ball is dropping in front of the goal’. I never was like this, to say, ‘I’m scared now to score’. Of course, maybe, I was scared, but in the moment when I had the ball already on my feet to score. Then maybe this fear came because I was not self-confident enough.” Werner was not short of self-confidence when he signed for Chelsea for £47.5 million last June, following a season in which he had scored 28 Bundesliga goals for RB Leipzig. The early signs at Stamford Bridge were encouraging, as Werner netted eight goals in nine games after opening his Chelsea account against Tottenham Hotspur in the EFL Cup in September. But the 25 year-old can identify the exact moment things started to go wrong, as he returned from an international break with Germany and went 14 Premier League games without scoring. “I had these two or three games after the international break where I missed a lot of chances and that was in my head, and after this my confidence was gone,” said Werner. “It was like a period where in my head I was going crazy because I missed those chances. “Sometimes when you come to a new club, you know that everybody has big expectations for you and they want you to score the goals for the club. So maybe that was too much in my head, that I have to score every game, or be the man who scores all the goals.” Things got so bad for Werner that he revealed how a missed chance early in a game could write off an entire match for him, but he also believes that the Champions League semi-final second-leg victory over Real Madrid, in which he scored, proves that he is overcoming his problems. “I had one game, I can’t remember the exact game but it was in the middle of the season, where I missed a chance in the third minute. The game was gone for me,” said Werner. “Now, for example, Real Madrid in the semi-final, I scored a goal and because my shoulder was offside, they disallowed the goal. Two or three months ago, it would be in my head, ‘why, why, why’, and the game would be gone. Now, I play my game and 15 minutes later, I scored. “That’s the thing I learned and that’s the thing for the next season. Maybe I should put a tick next to this season and now the Champions League final is like a bonus game. So it’s something different and I’m glad that the season is over, that the things are gone now and next season I know where I have to improve and what I have to do to be better.” Coronavirus restrictions made it hard for Werner to try to relax and forget about his bad run in front of goal, and head coach Thomas Tuchel stopped him from staying behind to do extra finishing practice at the club’s training ground. “No he didn’t (let me do extra practice),” said Werner. “I had a lot of managers when it was not so easy to score say, ‘OK, come, we practice outside to give you a better feeling’. But also there is Thomas who says, ‘you scored your whole life. But it doesn’t come because you practice every day, it comes because you were calm, you had your head free and you know what you do because you have this instinct to score’. “It’s maybe the worst thing that you think too much, ‘OK, when I get the ball now, I want to hit it in the right corner’. No, when you get the ball, you shoot the ball and you know exactly where it goes. Maybe that’s the point he wanted to get through to me, that I don’t have to practice all the time to get the feeling back, that the instinct works. “I was not alone at home in lockdown because I live with my girlfriend, but it was just us two and, of course, then you think more about it. Because when you go out, for example, with your friends or some players in the evening and you eat something, it’s something different to sitting at home and taking Deliveroo in front of your TV, and then you think about it again because you have no other distractions or things to change it. Maybe it made it worse, but still it should not be an excuse.” Part of the difficulty of judging Werner’s first season at Chelsea is that it has not been a write-off. He became the first player since Eden Hazard to hit double figures for goals and assists in his first campaign for the club and Tuchel’s side are unquestionably more dangerous with him in it. But Werner does not dispute that he will ultimately be judged on goals and is honest enough to admit that, in that area, he has fallen short of what was hoped of him. “I think a lot of people’s expectations for me, outside the club but also inside the club, were very high because of my goalscoring record,” said Werner. “I also assisted many goals last year in my old club, but I think the main reason why they brought me here in the club is to score and maybe at the end 12 goals and six goals in the Premier League, that’s not good enough. “You have to say that I have 12 goals and 15 assists or something like that in every competition and 27 goal contributions, that’s not so bad in what’s maybe my unluckiest season, maybe my worst season I’ve had for many years. If I’m scoring next season, hopefully, maybe people will become happier with me.” Chelsea fans demonstrated their appreciation of Werner in the last home game of the season, for which 8,000 supporters were allowed into Stamford Bridge, by singing his name to the tune of Depeche Mode’s Just Can’t Get Enough. That support put an extra spring in his step and Werner is adamant that he will not look to leave Chelsea this summer, even though the club will attempt to sign a new striker. “I heard the fans singing a song for me and that gives me a lot of power and I think that’s what you miss in the times where you have difficult periods where you don’t score,” said Werner. “That helped me a lot and it really gave me a push in the game. I thought it was much easier to run, to go into duels, to keep the ball, to try to score. Of course, it gave me that little bit of power that maybe I had lost in the last few months.” Asked if he wants to stay at Chelsea, Werner replied: “Of course. In terms of scoring and missing chances, it was the worst season. But in the end I still have 27 goal contributions. I think I’m the first in our team for that, so it was not everything bad and I don’t think about leaving the club this year, for sure not. “And also for the next year because I think we have a very good team and I hope to come back to scoring and that I can do everything that’s expected of me.” Werner is careful not to say that winning the Champions League would make up for all his missed chances, but it would write his place into Chelsea history and offer a different perspective on his first season at the club. “That would be the best ending of the season, for me, to win this trophy,” said Werner. “I don’t care if I score at the weekend if we win. Yes, I help the team and if I score, I’m very, very happy. If not, then I try to give my best to make maybe an assist for another guy. But, at the end, we have one goal, to win this final, to win this trophy because it’s the biggest trophy in Europe and everybody wants it. “I don’t want to say the rest (of the season) would not mean anything anymore, but, yeah, at the end when you win this cup, I think no fan or no supporter would say, ‘ah, but this guy had a bad season’. No, at the end, they say, ‘we won the Champions League and this is a f****** great team’.”

Doesn't matter. Will take our chances. Even if we can't get Haaland, it would give us time (between this summer and next summer) to see if there's any other striker that pops up.

Waiting for Haaland would be the better outcome given what he can give in the long term compared to someone like Lukaku.

Has anyone here listened to the podcast? What did Matt Law say regarding our transfer plan this summer?

Pizy is not wrong though. Obviously Roman will splash that extra bit of cash to get us over the line if needed but all our summer purchases in recent years have been offset by the sales. So unless we know for sure that we'll get a good return by selling the deadwoods and players like Abraham, Loftus-Cheek, Kepa etc, it's unlikely that we'll spend big this summer. After all, don't forget about Roman's plan about making sure we're self sustainable and not just rely on his money.

Yeah. According to the stats, the team that take the penalty first in a shootout win it 60% of the time.

According to something of a throwaway line on The Athletic, there are Premier League clubs interested in Hakimi but no mention of the name of those clubs.

Didn't realize it when I turned on to watch the shootout last night but just found out Fernandes let Villarreal to take the penalty first after winning the coin toss. 🤦‍♂️

Who says anything about watching the celebration if/when they win? I always just turn the shit off if we don't win a final!

Rulli should have definitely saved one long before that De Gea penalty. Can't remember whose penalty it was but he got a decent amount of contact with it. In any case, the difference between the two keepers is one is supposedly a world class keeper while the other isn't. I don't know what Rulli's penalty saving record is like but for someone of De Gea's stature, that's bad.

Weren't there rumors that Guardiola wanted Lukaku? Would City go for him now instead of Kane given that Lukaku would be cheaper?

LOL

Didn't look like saving one tonight either.

You could say the same for the other attackers as well really. Our last 4 goals have been scored by two different WBs, CB (OFF HIS THIGH!) and midfielder from the penalty spot.

Maybe I'll feel different once we get closer to the final or on Saturday but at the moment, I feel like the final is a free hit considering it was totally unexpected that we would get to this point this season.

It's one thing that we want to sell those players. It's another whether clubs are willing to buy them, especially when Marina won't be selling them on a cheap.

If we get Lukaku, surely we won't go after Sancho too? If Tuchel intends to stick with the back 3 next season, then getting Lukaku could cause a big problem when it comes to keeping everyone happy.

This is bonkers.