BlueLyon

Superstar bench comes to the rescue and Pep gets hailed as brilliant coach again

Sarri: hold my fag

Thank you wolves

Mourinho second coming didnt kill Chelsea at all. We brought Costa, Cesc and won title. Then Conte won another title with that squad and some additions. What followed is what killed Chelsea. Selling Costa without bringing quality striker. Selling Matic without bringing quality DM. Losing aging Terry without bringing or developing new top CB. Aging Willian, Pedro without bringing talented fresh blood. Not to mention fullbacks. The board fucked up the entire transition by keeping old wasted players, buying average players for big sums and buying absolutely shit players for even bigger sums. It all points to one, Marina. For every Kante or Hazard she or wheoever works on these deals has bought 300m of shite. United is in same boat. Spending on shit like Alexis, Fred etc.

I rather see Zouma properly defend against attackers and just hoof the ball away compared to the shit show Christensen puts, regardless of style we play. Ball playing CBs are the way to go and I prefer those. But Christensen is average defender at best and you always rate CBs based on their ability to defend first and then their ball abilities. The later separates their quality, but if the first is not good enough, no one will even consider them. If all we want is ball retention and f*ck defending, then why dont we just play Jorginho and Kovacic in CB pairing. If Christensen was De Ligt, I wouldnt even argue with you. But between Christensen and Zouma, we have more chance to retain clean sheet with the later. Thats the priority for the defence, regardless of the style. And Zouma isnt even that bad to make simple passes to Azpi or Luiz, but true he isnt anywhere great with long passes, althrough he also isnt as bad. I remember he was actualy surprisingly decent when he was still playing here. Christensen on the other hand doesnt contribute anywhere near as much as Luiz either. And he looks unreliably shaky when under pressure.

The problem with ball playing defenders is that they are picked for their ball playing ability over their defending ability which should be priority. De Ligt is ball playing CB, but he is great CB because he can actualy defend and command the back line. Terry was the same. We have Zouma who is good defender and average with the ball. And we have Christensen who is average defender and ok with the ball. But if we pick worse defender out of the two just because he can pass, then we are doomed. Our defence will never be strong enough. Obviously it would be ideal to have great defenders who can also pass, but we dont have those right now. And picking your CBs based on how good they are on the ball instead of how they defend, its stupid, regardless if the game evolved to this point. What good is their quality on the ball if they get shat on against every decent attacker?

DFB agreed to postpone Frankfurt-Mainz game in bid to help them prepare better for Chelsea fixture.

Good news: united is shite Bad news: chelsea is shite too

We are in absolute shit state right now. But as all things come around, sooner or later we will build this stadium and new team. New era will begin.

With our senior squad and hopefuly second season improvement under Sarri (otherwise whats the point?), we can at least hope for top 4 or anywhere near it. If we replace Willian, Pedro, Giroud, Luiz, Azpi etc with the likes of Dujon, Tammy, Tomori,...we will end up 18th or maybe even relegation. I dont want to downplay our youth potential, but if anyone believes we can survive PL by replacing most of senior players with youth, there is literaly zero chance. If these players had experience of playing in PL or first tier leagues abroad, then perhaps. But most are still green as hell. If anything we would completely ruin their development because I can assure you with all those kids we wont be having results and once that happens the media and fans will put massive pressure on them, at which point everything will collapse. This isnt Dutch league, nor german league where you can play bunch of kids and succeed. At best we can hope RLC, Odoi and maybe James to get their chance next season along with Pulisic and then in 2020/21 we add Tomori, Mount and Tammy if they perform well on loans. Ampadu as well. I dont have massive trust in AC, but lets say he too develops in good CB by that time. Edit: with Kovacic not staying, we would probably have to keep Mount as backup, but I doubt he would be anything more than that next season sadly. Essentialy giving us this lineup for the future Kepa James-Christensen/Zouma-Tomori-X Mount-Ampadu-RLC Pulisic-Tammy-Odoi But if you think that lineup cab cut it straight next season and remain in PL, you are dead wrong mate. Id love to see it, but it would be our doom. Maybe if we had two or three senior Terry material leaders, it might work, but we dont. If ban sticks, Id go with Azpi-Zouma-Rudiger-Emerson Kante-Jorginho-RLC Pulisic-Giroud-Odoi James to rotate with Azpi. This brings integration of 2/3 new players into first 11 which is maximum for successful transition. Many clubs have tried to replace their entire teams and failed to succeed. Just look at Fulham. They brought several talented players, but it didnt work.

But how did we fight well against City for 120min then? Maybe we are not ready to press for 90min, but there is zero excuse to be tired straight after halftime. And if you look the shape of our team, we looked very lively till we conceded 2nd. After that we just collapsed. Its impossible to be tired after 30min for these footballers. If anything its mental/tactical problem, not physical.

It was almost comical when we kept pumping high long balls towards Pedro. Because he will totaly get those ahead of 1,90m tall defenders.

Next year is absolute must to qualify for CL then. If we were 3 years without CL and top 4, no way we can convince top players to come here (its already hard) and that would mean couple average seasons until we rebuild (it took Liverpool quite some time, while United and Arsenal are still trying to find a way). Playing with many youngsters will be absolutely suicidal. Even the likes of Everton or Bournemoth produce maybe a player every couple seasons and they dont compete for top spots. It would be impossible for us to compete for top 4 and develop couple youngsters. Maybe Odoi (who is injured) along with RLC were our best bets to make them established quality players next season. James being the underdog for that. Playing more than that will certainly make us very weak. I would love for us to just go all out and develop generation for the future if we cant buy anyone, but this isnt fifa. We would end below 15th if we did that.

I rate the players based on what I see from their games. Pulisic didnt show anything to be worth 40m, nevermind 60m. He isnt top level talent mate or better yet his performances havent proven that. He will likely get bullied in PL, he has a poor shot, something that will hurt our already shit finishing abilities and he has recently been injured alot. I certainly dont count on him turning the league around. He is nothing but a raw talent and needs alot of development, something unlikely to recieve here. I will however support him and gladly eat my words if he actualy delivers. But I wont just blindly believe he is going to be great for us because he cost 60m and media hyping him in the air.

If Eden leaves this summer, absolutely no one can blame him. He is miles ahead of everything we have.

Yeah but they play CL football and will likely do it next year while we miss for second time in a row. Small difference but a big one actualy. Results are not even the worst. But our performances, we have become a joke. Arsenal mentality, but cant even get the 4th.

Almost after a whole season, he made us worse in defence and less creative in attack. Nice one Sarri. Looking forward for next season without Hazard. Probably battling top 10 with Watford and Wolves.

Im gutted. You are forgetting this is Chelsea. He will recover around November, but by then the club will completely forget about him like they did with Zouma. Maybe a bit part here and there, but the manager will keep saying he isnt ready after such injury. Eventualy he will get a loan to get his fitness back and maybe return if he delivers. How much worse can this season get? The one thing I was looking forward was Odoi developing next season if Hazard realy leaves and the ban stands. Now its going be another wasted season with Pedro and Willian. Or Pulisic. We still have RLC and James hopefuly but this season is realy turning into absolute shit.

Get this man out of the club now. Strength of a kid. Completely useless in creating any sort of chances. Luiz long passing is miles better. Cant defend because everytime he tries to shield the ball, he just gets bullied. Anyone saw the two situations today? For the second goal, he just fucking stood there and watch how Barnes got to the ball and shot. Run you mong. Then in the second half he proceeds to present his amazing and smart, reliable passing again when he passes backwards straight to Wood who went 1v1 with Kepa but fortunely got brainfart in that moment. Third one has to be that atempt of a long pass to Higuain. Completely overpowered and inacurrate. Does that almost every match. How can anyone defend this dude when he is such a frickin liability? He wont flourish with better players because the league is simply too much for him.

If Sarri realy instructed Eden to stay wide, then he truly is completely clueless. How can anyone defend that man is beyond me.

Why you all complain about the players. Yes most were pretty bad, but lets not forget this were Sarri instructions. We created jackshit in entire second half thanks to his instructions. Burnley parked the bus for entire half and not once we looked like we can score. Everything went either through the packed middle or trying to cross but almost all were blocked by first man. Rinse and repeat. Fucking useless tactics and one dimensional approach. If you want to play attacking football, you need to be creative. And Sarri once again proved he isnt. Players were crap too as soon as burnley scored equalizer. As if our balls dropped and we suddenly lost our entire motivation in that moment. But it all starts with Sarri. Fucking joke. Cant take burnley at home in absolute must win. The way those cunts acted, they deserved to be battered, but our pussy squad let them draw. Zero chance we win EL with this kind of team and games. If Kante and Rudiger recover and if we miraculously score every single chance, then we might win, but thats about it. Surely we wont win all 3 PL games either. Its not the quality of the squad thats the worst though. Its the character. Bunch of players with no character and crap mentality. Opponent scores boohoo and we hide under the bed.

Christensen plays only because of his ball abilty. He is fucking bang average defender with strength of a 13 year old. Once he was bullied by opponent, he just laid there on the ground asking for foul instead of getting his ass back up and defend like any fucking defender does. These ball playing pussy defenders can all fuck off to Manchester City. Final time to bring back Zouma.

I expected we will concede 1st one because not a single player marked their players on the edge of the penalty area. If the ball deflects there, its open highway to our goal...and it did. Second one was marvellous marking by Christensen, followed up by brilliant tracking of THREE players; Jorginho, Emerson and Azpi just stood fuckin there instead of tracking the ball and Barnes who ended up alone. If anyone thinks replacing Luiz with world class CB would fix the problems...it wont. And just to top it off; Luiz is more creative than our entire midfield together. He is doing what Jorginho was supposed to.

I partly agree. Instead of AC, I would play Zouma. And regarding Tomori, he is definately not ready for our 11, while he would be wasted on bench. My choice would be Zouma-Rudiger, with AC and Luiz backups. Luiz can still provide some experience. Zouma replaces aging Cahill and Tomori is sent on PL loan. Next summer, Tomori replaces Luiz.

Since we have ban incoming, he should stay in back up role. Id play Zouma and Rudiger. I rate the two above Christensen who should be backup together with Luiz. As for the defending, I dont want to protect Luiz, he can be awful defender, but we are shit as a unit. Both fullbacks dont close the space, and our mid looks out of place in many games. Until we fix that, we might as well continue with Luiz, because even Van Dijk wouldnt be able to cover for 5 players that go missing when we defend. This season, Luiz had many brainfarts like usual, but also many fantastic games where he was key player. He isnt as useless or only problem at the back that many people think.