Chelsea Legend 11

I bet if you polled people and asked them if they'd rather the club try to play like Barcelona or Arsenal or even City at the risk of losing more and in turn not winning trophies, the majority would opt for the winning formula. I'll tell you what's better than sexy football, its sexy trophies! If we can continue playing the way we are now, we will win the real trophies not the fake ones like Arsenal and Barca (last year) won. Football is changing and if you think plowing forward and trying to smash a top 10 team in the world is the best situation for the team then I don't know what to say to you. I have no problem with how we're playing, trophies are sexy to me...

Its not the players, its the philosophy! We went into the game with a 5 pt lead and maintained that against our main rivals. Jose is not the kind of manager who is going to play one style of football! He plays to win and the reason why we have such a balanced squad is become we are adaptable and can play in any type of game!

What people fail to acknowledge is this is the side everyone expect will challenge for the title. The fact that we did enough to get a draw(perhaps more) bodes well for the season. Etihad is not an easy ground to go to to get anything, this could be the hardest game we have all year and we came away with a good point. Jose isn't stupid he knows what he's doing.

Whatever, City are champions. You guys make it sound like we're the only ones on the pitch. The bottom line is a draw is a good result and we played good enough to get that and possibly more. City were on the front foot all game and that wasn't gonna change after they were reduced to 10 men. We kept our game plan and almost got the result.

Okay the match! The onus was on Man City to get the right result, for that reason Jose clearly decided to sit back and wait for them to commit men forward before hitting them with pace on the counter. I thought it was a brilliant game plan and was very close to being executed to perfection. City had next to no chances to score and weren't as gun-ho going forward as they might have been had we left ourselves a little more open by committing more men to a high press. If you watched the game you would see Matic was the only guy who was pressing in the midfield (on Yaya and Silva) everyone else sat back and played zonally and took away the pockets of space City like to exploit. For those of you who think we played poor I'd have to question what your definition of poor is. Perhaps a better choice of words would be 'I didn't like the game plan of sitting back and trying to hit them on the counter' because we executed that to near perfection. Every time, particularly in the 1st half when we were poised to hit them with numbers on the counter, City committed what I would call a yellow card offense and were only penalized maybe twice. It was clear from the outset that they weren't gonna allow us to get out with pace and also that we weren't going to show impatience and try to break out with numbers. There were some instances when the first pass to initiate the counter wasn't very good or wayward and as a result we couldn't get out, that aspect of the game was below our standard but everything else was damn near perfect. I thought the refereeing was poor for both sides. There were more than a few instances where Mangala went right through Costa to get the ball and he wasn't once called for a foul let alone carded. Mike Dean clearly left himself open for criticism with 6 cards in the first half... The wrong precedence was set. Thought Matic was our MotM and that Mangala was the overall MotM. City weren't going to go down easily and for those of you complaining about how we sat back after going up 1-0 with City down to 10 men, what were you expecting to happen? They couldn't break us down with 11 and shouldn't have with 10. Had we come out and tried to score more to secure the victory it may have led to them coming down our end and scoring. Not to mention the fact that we were at the end of a tiring game and were in no shape to press since we were on the back foot for 70 mins. Had we tried to score you guys would've been whining about leaving ourselves open instead of defending the lead. Drogba was being prepared to come in for Costa BEFORE the City goal, he was to come in to help with the defending since his head is a magnet. He wasn't brought in to score the decisive goal and the suggestion of that is ludicrous. Going into the game anyone who wouldn't have taken a point and called that a good result needs to get their heads checked, however, seeing that we were so close to getting all three and the equalizer is our legend it does smart a bit. In the bigger scheme of things this is a great result so we can't be too disappointed.

Yet the cursing of a legend like Didier Drogba who is still wearing the colours is proper Chels... LOL you're just as bad as the people you criticize here.

That's KING Didier fucking Drogba to you, sister.

Yaya was ineffectual at Etihad when we won 1-0 largely because we played right around him... Matic can definitely deal with Yaya mainly because he is inconsistent. If Yaya plays to his full powers then no one can stop him.

Nah... I'll do a nice one about a team I know.

We weren't bad but I wouldn't say we were sound either. 4-3-3 is a system used to control the pace of the game and way too many times we saw Schalke running at our back 4(or 3 with Ivanovic bombing forward) with acres of space. That's the problem people see with this "defense" we're way too susceptible to getting played around in the middle of the pitch where in the past we controlled it. Its basically us looking to be on the front foot more and exposing ourselves at the back.

I agree with most of what you're saying here. You can't assign the same principles to a lamb to that of a lion... Completely agree there. We are trying to be more proactive in attack, as a result we are more open defensively. No more blame game though, the reason Oscar, Hazard and Willian had no tackles is because most of Schalke's attack went through the middle of the pitch where, if you ask me we were tactically poor once again. Ramires, Fab and Matic just didn't boss the game. They weren't terrible but we didn't get a lot of turnovers and lost the ball at crucial times with acres of space between our "holding mids" and our defenders. Its a byproduct of pressing forward and trying to be proactive so I'm not too worried. Once Cahill learns not to back off a striker inside the 18 yard box we'll be fine. Carefree... We're still one of the most balanced teams in Europe capable of playing in a variety of games.

I would only say that after the last two games. Every other game he's been awesome.

Thought he looked decent in the chances he had to make a play. Agree with the notion that his ascendancy should put pressure on Cahill, with Brana more than capable of playing CB.

But why does the truth bother you? Its clear that those things are true while its also clear that he is a world class performer.

A draw wasn't terrible. Every in the group has a point now. It means we can't wrap up the group in 4 but we still can top it. Wasn't mad Drogba started just thought we made too many changes overall.

He wasn't bad but definitely not brilliant. And its in these games where he needs to make his biggest mark... I like him a lot more at full speed than I do when he's lethargic and slow in the build up.

They played the game at a typical CL pace, slow and careful. It ended up being the undoing because when we couldn't get the decisive goal we had no rhythm to pick it up when needed. This was all too reminiscent of last year all and all.

You may be the only one. Cesc didn't make one interception today, not one if you go by the stats.. He had three tackles and one was for his goal where it looked every bit like a foul. He works hard in press but like I said in another thread he rarely puts in a tackle when he arrives to the ball. Its one thing to press and quite another to press and win the ball. As far as defensive positioning he was all over the place but I would expect that since I think he's got a free role to roam. I think you saw aspects of his game that you wanted to see, he wasn't horrible but his defensive contribution wasn't near a glowing as you would have us believe.

Was waiting for this all year! The blame game at its best! "its Mourinho's fault" "Its Drogba!" "Cahill was terrible" "Cesc can't track men" Said it before the match, when people haven't played a lot of football they lack the understanding and also the razor sharp quality to finish(such was the case for Drogba). Its not the end of the World, Schalke played well and did just enough to grab a point. Never really liked changing 4 people out of a winning formation, 1-2 is usually enough for a new team. Luis came in and did well, he did a lot of things that had he not would've put us in trouble. Drogba wasn't awful, just not clinical. There were chances he should've taken... His touch looked just slightly off, a couple inches here and there and its a different story. Willian was busying himself all over the pitch enjoyed watching him for most of the match. Ramires didn't do much. All in all it was the chances we had that we didn't take that has burned us. Drogba, Hazard, Remy, Fab all had glorious chances and missed pretty badly. This is exactly what we saw last year and its reared its ugly head again... I'm not even gonna comment on all the people who were saying prematch we're gonna batter them and that their poor form in the season will only be further exposed here. There are never any easy games in the Champions League and today is just another example of that, every team in the competition have their own ambitions and passion to win. When you're an overwhelming underdog you may be more turned on than the team that everyone is picking to win the tournament. We switched off a bit (and made too many changes) and we were shown once again why this is a tough competition. How ironic it was to see so many straightforward passes go wayward from Eden Hazard today. Many would kill Ramires for that very same thing.

Can only hope you're right yet again! Excited to see what we look like though, Drogba leading the line excites me!

Drogba needs to give us at least 60.

Well there you have it! Jose makes 4 changes... Hope it doesn't hurt us.

He was so ineffectual even when he did get near. I mean its one thing to press and quite another to press and win the ball back... If you're gonna be that reckless at least put in a tackle! That's why I love Ramires! He is a one man wrecking crew when fit and playing up to speed.

Agreed. When I said 'not really pressing the ball' I mean't he wasn't getting close enough to it(credit some of that to how well Swansea played one touch passes out from the back) Pressing is mostly a team thing anyways... The thing I didn't like about Oscar's press is he didn't identify where on the pitch to apply the pressure on the ball. Swansea had no trouble playing out from the back and there were times in the first half we couldn't get near them. Hopefully just a blip... I'm almost convinced 4-3-3 with be the formation we play in big matches though, Gary Neville called it so perfectly, if you give Yaya, Silva and even Nasri the types of pockets we gave Swansea we'd get battered.

Ya so far... Remember when we started the season with a run of 6-0, 6-0, 2-0, 3-1, 4-0?