BlueLyon

He was actualy decent all these years despite criticism and Luiz too, but this season both are beyond average. Cahill being the apparent leader with all this experience doesnt show it in the slighest this season. Luiz too, always average defender apart from last season, but he had grit and drive, always leading the team and he looks like he is somewhere else, not on the pitch these days. This is spreading like a desease, one player turns shit, slowly the whole team. It just shows we have no character in our players that would drag others up, instead they just sink down together.

No he is not. Drinkwater isnt reliable player. He is just a passer every game he gets. There is nothing where he contributes to the team. In a reliable player, you expect him to do the basics right, but Drinkwater like everyone else made several wrong passes, and if you look at his attempts on goal, they all ended in public. He isnt composed player which makes a player reliable. Neither he has any emotional connection to this team to give extra energy just for the team. Neither he has the character. Reliable players are usualy those who are past their best, not great in anything, but we talk about teams of Chelsea level and those players are still above average and have other qualities either leadership or character. Drinkwater is absolutely nothing of the mentioned and average for a top team, never mind good player. If he was reliable, you would fell confortable when he has the ball, that he will make right pass and if everyone else around him panics, he will keep cool. If he gets in scoring chance or atempts on goal, you expect him to be accurate. What of that is Drinkwater? Comparing someone with Bakayoko doesnt make them any better. Those two are same level, different qualities (or lack of) and Baka has at least potential. We urgently need someone in summer, but until then he is the one I would play ahead of Drinkwater. Neither contributes much to the team right now, but Baka might be in our plans for future, Drinks wont be.

Yeah I was saying we shouldnt just sell Diego and Matic despite people went on bandwagon they are apparently not good enough. Look where it got us. Baka is terrible indeed, but he still gives that presence like against United or even Atletico. Its not big example but its something. There is much more wrong than Bakayoko with this team. The defence was beyond ridiculous yesterday with that Deulofeu and Perreira goals and was suspect last week and before too. We are unlucky, we dont have confidence and no organisation. Bakayoko reminds me of Pedro under Mou when we were a mess and then when we got organised, Pedro looked entirely different player. Bakayoko needs organised environment, but right now we are chaos. There is soo much shit on Bakayoko, but the defence and attack havent been anyway better. We miss sitters, we shoot skyhigh, then in some games we cant even manage two passes in a row, not to mention the ridiculously static attack. Bakayoko is bad player, but not the only one. In that case everyone bar Kante, Eden, Christensen, Tibo and Azpi should be dropped immediately, they are no better than Bakayoko right now. Alonso scores some goals, but is shit everywhere else, Cesc samewise but makes a pass here and there, etc. You see where Im going, we have shit players everywhere but there some moments where they hide it in goals or assists, and escape harsh criticism, but in their core game, they are absolute shit. Baka, if he scored more goals, he wouldnt get as much blame for example, but its clear him and half of the squad is equaly terrible right now. But Bakayoko is young enough and IMO despite he indeed looks awful I would play him because there isnt anyone else. Drinkwater IMO isnt worse player, but he isnt better either. Literaly when he plays, it looks as if we have another body on the pitch just to be there. He does zero contribution to the team.

Hopefuly the board wont sack Conte, we have to get together against Barca and hope for miracle that might also insipre the team to end PL on high and secure top 4. With new coach we face disaster against Barca given there is so little time and then we could see same old crap in PL. You even realize how little options of quality coaches are there right now? Maybe in summer we could try Sarri, Allegri etc. but no one good is available right now. This shit reminds me of Costa situation, when there was NO SINGLE BETTER striker available BUT we still decided to ship him out and so did the fans just because they felt insulted by Diego and the neighbour grass is always greener, so why not sell Costa and do some Fifa and bring someone new just so that we bring someone new and then regret it later, realizing Costa was miles better striker than anything we have now. But if the board does what they are good at and sack Conte, I hope we get Sarri in the end. The story will repeat in two seasons with these lot of players and board ambitions, but hell we will atleast play some attacking football.

There we go again the fans turning their head against Conte in an instant. And then you moan about trust, faith and hope for longterm projects You realize that if we appointed someone for actualy long time with more transfer control it would probably take a whole bad season or two before it gets good and you cant live with Conte after a bad month. Irony. The season wasnt bad as some pointed out till january. Then the players started to miss absolute sitters and defenders ridiculous mistakes in defence. There is little Conte can do when you see Morata miss 10 clear chances and Cahill, Rudiger, Luiz, heck even Azpi leaving acress of space for opponents. Conte made some terrible terrible decisions yes, but the players are beyond patethic in the most simpliest footballing things like passing. Have you seen how shit our short passing was recent games? Championship players have better organisation and composure. Fucking Jaanmat showed more attacking skill and composure than our whole attacking line.

I know Bakayoko is terrible, but just who would Conte play instead? Tell me? Cesc? He is too slow for pivot, cant defend to save his life. Drinkwater? Lol dude is average at best. He can do simple pass, but there is absolutely nothing special about him, no potential that he can actualy improve and make something of importance during the match. He doesnt have the ability to make things happen. That bandwagon after his fluke long goal that he should be starting games was truly beyond ridiculous, he is no where near our quality. Bakayoko is awful too, but at least you can see a glimpse of something during the game like when he retrieves the ball brilliantly or goes for a run forward. I know he often fails and cant make the basics, but when it succeeds, it looks brilliant. At least there is potential that he can do something and probably he will improve in time, but perhaps not here. We were crying for more squad depth and then we were signing second tier players like Drinkwater or Zappa with everyone saying its great, its just good backup, when in fact they were not worth even that. Now we have the bench, but this bench is so shit and average that it makes no difference if we had no bench because Conte doesnt want to rotate, those players on bench are simply too bad. What we should do last summer was ditching some players not good enough like Matic, Alonso, Pedro and bring world class replacements WHILE keeping those three on bench. That would improve our first 11 AND bench would have quality options. But we bought average players and sold some good ones.

Conte looks so uncharacteristic this season. Back in juve,italy and even last season at cfc, he made some bold decisions, there was lot of passion, desire, character. Where is all that this season? It cant be just on Conte, he managed to keep Juve in motivated shape for few years. I believe that the players are the main problem here, same happened under Mou when they decided to stop playing and season later we win title with almost same squad. Perfect example is probably Willian who hinted at move if he doesnt play. Hell, he is simply not good enough to be playing in first 11, and he demands more play time or threatening he will leave? I can imagine the rest being the same bunch, but with difference that Eden, Tibo, Kante, Azpi, Christensen actualy deserve to play because they are good. On other hand, I dont understand Conte decision to keep playing Eden upfront (instead of Pedro or now Giroud) and Cahill when we have other defenders available.

Ohh great, just one week too late.

I have zero idea why Conte again played Eden as striker which clearly doesnt work instead of either Giroud or Pedro. And our so called transfers that were brought to add dimensions to our bench, we have Bakayoko in first 11 who I would drop immediately, but there is not single player that can effectively replace him in 3:4:3. Bakayoko. You need good options to rotate, our first 11 isnt great, but when we need to rotate, our bench players make absolutely disaster performances. We now CAN rotate, but we prefer not to because the board bought players that are too shit. 105 million on Drinkwater, Bakayoko and Zappacosta. Let that sink in. What a ridiculous mess the club is in right now.

This shit isnt just on players or Conte or board. Its on the whole lot. Players not giving shit, defending is amateur level, attack is nonexistent. Conte for keeping same shit players over and over and not changing formation. Again Hazard as forward in 3:4:3 thats clearly not working but we see same again. Cahill in defense no words. Board for terrible buys and sells and finaly for the policy of the club that replaces managers every summer expecting great results without any financial support. But to concede 7 goals against fucking watford and bournemouth, there is no excuse even with the limited budget we have. Conte, players and board all look clueless and even if we replace manager, get players to perform better and even win title next season, that wont be longterm, we will reverse to shit season later. AND I think Hazard is as good as gone, anyone that thinks we will recover from his sale is wrong, at current rate we will be next arsenal/liverpool for a while. People call shit on him and that we can replace him, but soon fans will see what we had and how shitier we will be without him. Much like with Costa, but even worse.

Kane should be banned for the dive, but obviously nothing will happen

Salah didnt give any reason to play back then but look at him now. I think its funny how people now blame Bats that he will never become good player just to defend Conte or club and even go to a point even if he succeeds it will be in a ''poor'' league where only one team is good. LOL. De Bruyne played there too and is now fucking excellent. Lets just be honest here, we are dogshit in developing and caresing players with trust and patience. Dogshit. Nearly every younger player performed better elsewhere and before you point out they played in inferior teams where nothing matters, take a look at Salah, KDB, Lukaku who are all now playing for big team. Lukaku is perhaps still not there, but has potential, while other two are doing fantastic job. I have to laugh at all of you (no disrespect though) when you lowplay Bats and will probably claim he is shit and useless for Chelsea, even if he bangs 15 goals now in Bundesliga. Fact is we cant develop such players, and indeed he didnt perform well for us, but thats not because he doesnt have potential, but again, because we are crap at developing. We throw them out on pitch, with live or die orders, and expect them to have iron mentality, we expect them to die on that pitch, yet the love isnt bothsided, because if they underperform, the fans will call for their heads imeddiately and the board along with coach will bench them, loan them and sell them first second. Conditions like that are ridiculous. Yes we pay them, but so does every other big club and thats no excuse to just expect them to be like robots now. If Christensen didnt succeed this season, even with all his potential, he would be on the way out by now. There is no faith and patience for our players, not one bit. But I can already expect same people who talk crap about Bats, if and when he becomes better, they will blame the board for selling him, while right now, they have no patience and faith in him themselves. Hypocrites. I would expect people to learn this simple shit by now. We play with one or max two consistent attackers for several years with rest of the squad full-on defensive. Our talented attackers dont succeed because our pragmatic tactics and worst possible environment. There have been many examples mentioned several times and very possibly Bats could be just another one to add to the list. But he is still our player. Instead of looking at positive side how well he started the career at BVB, nah lets call that league shit, lets say he is shity player and lets go on Giroud bangwagon pretending he will save the club. Reality is in two years, Giroud will leave us frustrated as expected while Bats will perform great for another (probably top PL club). People didnt like Eden in his bad season called for his head and to be sold, good call he only became the best player we have by big margin since. People didnt like Costa for his behaviour, celebrated his sale, good call, now we dont have quality striker and people want another one, because paying 70 for Morata didnt work as planned and Costa was actualy fuckin great striker. Lets just support the players we have when they are not doing well, shall we? Its easy to support them when they are in top form. Bats got new start and lets hope he doest well. Btw, this isnt only on you Jason, its several fans here who need to see the bigger picture in football, its not all black and white.

True...3:5:2 system is shit for me, but right now its only way to fit in Cesc who is along Eden only one who can create something. We desperately need to either go back to 4:3:3 or bring absolutely world class RW and wingbacks for 3:4:3 to work on regular basis. Its clear that we absolutely need two top top quality wingbacks. Alonso and Moses are allright, but we need best ones here. The system depends on them too much to be ignored. Emerson can be good but it will take time, hopefuly next season. Shame the board didnt get any quality winger like Bailey. He needs some adjustment time, it would be perfect to get him in january, so he would be ready for next season and maybe even add some flash uptop this season.

Wait as he becomes realy good striker and joins big team for big bucks, while we are stuck with Giroud. Oh and obviously leaves us for small money, because the board is incompetent to spot a talent

I will be happy if he is regular and important player by mid of the next season. Its often difficult for players to catch PL rhytm on its own, nevermind Emerson had injury AND played bad since the return.

I loved his proactive style, always taking on players instead of just passing sideways like we have seen from Musonda or Rlc in the past. He looks quick and has drive and motivation to go at players. He has long long long way to go, but I like his style. I saw him in youth, but PL is something else and I think he did well. Now with Musonda off, he will also get more chances and hopefuly he takes them.

Can someone explain to me what is the board/Conte vision here? They complain we dont have depth. We need depth so we can rely on other players and rest first choices. BUT, correct me if Im wrong, Conte still plays same players week in week out. Why? Because we dont have reliable players on the bench FFS. The whole point of having depth is so we can rotate and keep the quality on similar level, but now we actualy do have the depth, those players are absolutely shite. I cant believe our board is buying the depth just so we can have players on bench. But these players are terrible, no wonder Conte keeps playing starters over and over. Because when we play our "depth", we play incredibly shit. Drinkwater, Bakayoko, Cahill, Zappacosta,...they are all here to add good bench options when we need to rotate, but they are terrible players. No wonder Conte doesnt want to rotate. And now we added Barkley, Emerson and Giroud to the mix, I dont have any good feeling about either to be honest. Barkley doesnt fit the formation, Giroud is Giroud and Emerson had awful injury, who knows when will he bit fit physicaly and mentaly to start for us and become important member. We should be signing grade A players, who would bench the likes of Alonso, Bakayoko, Pedro; instead we are buying lesser! players for bench and still play underperforming players. We splashed shitload of cash for absolutely average players. When we needed to score today, or in any other game this season, you can see how useless our players are. They cant do shit, cant dribble, cant pass, cant keep possesion, cant press, cant put pressure to score the goal...apart from two or three players who do their job. Then you have our might depth on bench, with zero quality again. City has better bench than we have starting 11 for fuck sake, yet the board doesnt change anything. Even if we are out of league and have slim chances in CL, we still need to finish strong in PL and we need to reinforce team anyway for next season. We should be in for world class striker, winger or wingback this january and yet the board did jackshit. There should be huge changes in summer, but there probably wont be. The day Barkley, Emerson or Giroud perform brilliantly I will eat my words, but until then we can easily say this was another underpeforming window and we bought bunch of average or injured players again. And people are actualy happy with Giroud haha. Its nice to joke he will score the winner against Barcelona, but then comes the harsh reality. We fell so far. If Eden leaves in summer, we are fucked.

Good on paper yeah. We have heard that story before. We get average player and pick all the positives, disregard the negatives and pretend he will save the season. Fact is he wasnt good enough to lead Arsenal. Simple. We needed a striker that can provide damn competition for Morata and decently replace him when he doesnt play. Giroud is nothing like that. You know we will play average when Giroud will play in 1st eleven, we dont have to kid ourselves. He is good player to come from bench and replace Morata for final 20min, there he is better than Bats probably. But hell Bats actualy had quite respective amount of goals from bench. The problem was when he was starting the games. He just wasnt good enough. But guess what, neither is Giroud. Its a cheap gap fill that will show many flaws, no improvement and we will be soon on look for another striker. With the season looking poor we should either keep Bats and look for quality striker in summer, or get quality striker this january. But we went for something in the middle, another average striker in the squad, 20m gone and we havent improved 1st 11 anyhow. Im not always pessimist, but fans have to stop making signings like Drinkwater, Giroud quality. These are average at best and literaly only for the bench, or when we dont have first options available. But honestly right now, we should be buying players who are good enough to push for 1st eleven. Our team has so many average players its ridiculous. I know we need more depth, but filling bench with more average players wont make us strong again. We have to finish top 3 and it looks like the team desperately needs more quality in attack. We did absolutely nothing again to improve it. There is Bailey, there is Mahrez who are available for certain price. We wont be getting them for cheap or anyone else of their quality. But its clear we need those kind of quality players now.

seriously though, we desperately needed some fresh strength this window and we bought no one that can give us imediate impact. Well done. Im glad Hudson got chance, hopefuly to see more of him. Looked quite good.

First, terrible move. Even if he plays alot he will have to prove it all again when he comes back because scottish league is miles below PL. Secondly, Willian is injured and we ship another decent winger away with already thin squad? Surely by all standards we should buy someone like Baily now but we obviously wont. Third, why did he delete all connections with Chelsea? Wasnt his dream to play here, or was that just big bullshit and he will pull De Bruyne eventualy...?

IMO the board just doesnt have the clue and business idea. We go around looking for players without actual clear plan who to target. Today its this guy, tomorrow someone else, next week someone else. We look at the numbers all the time, making limits and then it all becomes one clusterfuck of a mess. Lack of determination, ambition, you name it. Info leaking in public, negotiations taking ages and in the end we still dont end up with right target, but some last minute panic buy that comes expensive like first choice but isnt half as quality.

Wait till the board values him too pricey and forks another 40m for Drinkwater 2.0.

Well if he recovers and hopefuly he does, he probably wont be playing for Chelsea for weeks or maybe months. Before he will play he will need to get fit and adopt to PL, I doubt Conte would just throw him in matches. This is more like early summer signing and he will show his qualities (or lack of) next season. We needed new LB and while price is realy good, we bought someone who we probably wont be able to use for quite a while, leaving us to just good old Alonso

He would have to be either exceptional in creating and ball control ala Iniesta style or deadly efficient like Lamps to succeed in 3:4:3 with his pace. But IMO he isnt either. He is a bit of everything, which can turn out to be good in midfield, but due to his lack of pace means he wont suceed in 3:4:3. He will gain some speed once he fully settles fitness wise, but I dont see him as someone who adds dynamic to our attack. When Willian is on form, its absolute joy to watch him with Eden. Thats because they are both quick and dynamic, can run through channels and beat defenders. Barkley is way too slow for that. We already have slow paced team, cant afford to drop quick Willian or Pedro for Barkley in 3:4:3. Its not realy just pace though, but more movement and quick turns. I thought Wilshere looked good against us, very mobile and dynamic player. Barkley looked quite slow and rusty, again partly due to injury recovery but also he is that kind of player. His only place IMO is in 3:5:2 or 4:3:3: as creative midfielder. And 3:5:2 is awful formation IMO because we only play with Morata and Eden upfront, everyone else is just defending. Barkley can be good player, but IMO doesnt suit this team at all unless we go back to 4 at the back.

Lol I think people as always overexaggerate, we will bounce back, but honestly everyone can see we have been doing quite poor over past few transfer windows. Yes we won title last year, but the shape of our team right now is quite bad. We paid around 200m this season and there is very little improvement. Bakayoko, Morata and others will have to step up big big time if you ask me. Plus if we lose Hazard I honestly believe we are done for two seasons at least. Even with all the money we would get, board is simply not capable of bringing top quality players. Be it lack of money or simply shit scouting/poor attraction, we sold Matic, bought Baka and Drinkwater for 80m. Says pretty much all. And since Oscar sale for 70m, we still didnt manage to bring quality attacking midfielder/winger to the squad. As for others, City is clearly doing big steps, we are lucky United has Mou still but they will have more and more quality. Liverpool just lost Coutinho, but held their own against City and IMO while they are not yet title material, especialy under Klopp, they have best balanced squad in years. They are all making small steps forward, we go backwards. We play boring/proactive football for ages now, with some sparks of realy great runs between, but generaly still very proactive against top teams. However difference was we came on top in the end against 80% of epl opponents. If there was cup game or decisive match against Spuds, Arsenal, even City, we just won the game in the end usualy. Now our football isnt ANY better, could say we play worse than last season, but now we dont even win the likes of Arsenal. Its clear we lost that edge that made us a team in past years known for playing defensive, but we could kill them if they gave us some space. Take Eden out of this team and we are dead in attack. Our transfers have been awful recently, and while we havent spend half as city, we could have got some better players in our team by now.