Sideshow Luiz

Maybe we can get Casillas, Vidic, and Rooney in as well.

Will always have a soft spot for him, but we can't turn down that kind of money for a squad player. Should get a hero's applause if he comes back to the Bridge.

They need to update that copy of Football Manager '07 in the board room.

That's not attacking football though. That's possession football, and it's not exactly the same thing. Attacking football is kind of hard to define, but you know it when you see it. http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/jan/06/the-question-what-is-attacking-football-jonathan-wilson

I'd rank them in terms of my excitement as: 1. Pochettino/Sampaoli 3. Simeone 4. Deschamps That means Deschamps is nailed on

Don't forget about the part where we kept changing managers in the hopes of getting Torres firing. To be fair to Falcao, he would be making the same either way, since we are only paying 50% of his wages.

He thrives in a midfield diamond where he can play box to box. Unfortunately, his play is limited when we ask him to do 1 particular job. not good enough defensively to be a pure holding midfielder. Passing not good enough to be a deep play maker. Though, I'll always admire him for being able to do whatever job we ask. We had him at RM for a while. That goal against Barca was after we went down a man. He made that run from RB.

Don't forget this one:

Drives me crazy most of the time. But, then I always remember this: I always wondered how he could be so clumsy sometimes, but produce THAT touch. Get's a free pass from me every time because of it.

I really don't mind this deal, especially as it's a try before you buy type of thing. Still, another player that would do better in a 433 than what we play. If feel if we had anyone but Remy yesterday, it would have been at least 2-0, maybe 3

Hazard was teeing them up at the end. No one wanted to put the finishing touch on it.

Hazard had been teeing them up and no one wants it

Reminiscent of PSG last year

Hopefully that's Hazard and not Iazzard.

Maybe the players think that winning 1-0 is the easiest thing to do in football.

He's not hurt when we need a striker?

I knew this would happen as soon as I started getting excited about Sampaoli.

Yeah. This would be the time to get/trust some youth. It's hard for big clubs who are challenging for trophies on all fronts to play the kids. It's a lot of pressure to not drop points. This season is a lost cause. Developing youth is a luxury that mid-table teams have.

I have faith that Matic will come good again. I don't actually think he's been that terrible this year. Just no where close the beastly 1.5 years prior.

It's all about the capacity. Stamford Bridge = 42K The teams we want to compete with in Europe are 60+. 80 and 100K respectively for Madrid and Barcelona. Even in England: Old Trafford = 75K Emirates = 60K Etihad = 60K It's hard to compete with teams whose gate revenues are 50% higher than ours.

Yeah, everyone can see it. Even Madrid look at our squad and wonder what we're trying to build. Like I said, I hope that the silver lining in this season is that we become a little more patient in the next few years and try to build an identity without worrying about instant results. Galactico-lite was a nice run, but it doesn't work when you're trying to build a new stadium and the money faucet slows down. We've been re-tooling for years. The CL win put off something that should have been done after that season.

I agree. I think 433 suits our midfield and wingers the best. Move Cesc a little further forward without being a pure no.10. I'd switch out Ramires for Oscar as I think Oscar plays well when he has a little space in front of him, not as a no.10 or second striker. Maybe I'm wrong, but we don't have a lot to lose this season. Would it kill us to give it a shot?

It's from the top down. Barca lose Xavi and they just bring in Rakitic and keep on ticking. Sure, he's a little different, you don't just find a new Xavi, but Rakitic fits what they want. They have a club ethos and a board that gets signings based on that idea. They hire a new manager based on that as well. Our board just seem to have an old copy of FIFA (2008 I think, based on our targets) lying around and build a team like that. Of course it helps to bring in WC players, but we're not doing that. If you want to be frugal, you have to get players that fit your squad and can do well within your structure. Look at Liverpool over the past few years. Absolute mess. Another squad with a mish mash of players. Now, they have a £30M striker that was very good at Villa, but doesn't work with what Klopp wants to do. You need to have some sort of stability and if you keep changing managers, that stability has to come from the board. I'm hoping that there is a silver lining to this awful season. Maybe the next manager won't be expected to win the league and we can start to build a squad that has an identity that we can continue.

That's kind of the issue, isn't it? Ramires works well in a midfield diamond where he can go box to box and has others to do more technical work or be a purely holding midfielder. He was part of Ancelotti's diamond. We have a defence that needs to sit deep because it has no pace, good fit for playing on the counter like Jose likes. We have wingers who like to play with the ball at their feet and be very slow around the box, no one besides Willian seems to want to track back too much. Would be nice for Blue Barca as Roman is constantly being reported as wanting. It's kind of all over the place.

True Chelsea legend. Sad day.