robsblubot

well I for one were hoping RLC was going to play with a bit more freedom in midfield which means with Matic unsettled/injured means Mikel next to him. Ramires perhaps, if fit.

Finally watched the game and thought Oscar was decent. Certainly not good enough, but not as bad as I've been hearing. Yes, Willian had a better game, only because he was able to put some decent crosses in the box. He was also a bit inefficient in the final third, so what was said of Oscar applies to Willian as well. This Brazilian team is as bad as the one who crumbled to Germany. While people had fun dissing at D. Luiz brain-dead decision making, the stinker was really the midfield or the lack thereof - it always is. I've come to think that Luiz Gustavo is nowhere near good enough. Fernandinho is also not good enough as is Ramires. So, Brazil has no CM to speak of - nobody as good as Vidal for example. Too many players on the squad play in Brazil - a very different league in terms of pace and these players will always struggle in a more competitive game. They can't possibly field a goal keeper (and yet they did!) who play in second division in Brazil against the likes of Alexis and Vidal - they literally play at a different speed he's used to. There are so many things wrong with Brazil atm that it's difficult to think they will come back to top5 any time soon. Almost forgot: Daniel Alves was awful and Marcelo good with the ball at his feet but awful without it Marquinhos replaced injured D.Luiz while still 0x0 and had a pretty poor game IMO.

yeah because Mikel is such a fantastic player... Incidentally, last season, when we actually won the league, Mikel played the fewest number of minutes of his career at chelsea (about the same as his very first season). So much for Jose's love for him.

Clearly a defense line that will take us all the way back to CL glory... Our team is better than our current form, but I have be honest and say this it's not a top team regardless starters.

Nah I got your point before - was just pulling your leg.Btw, speak for yourself - English is my second language (Portuguese first), but I do understand the need to speak more formally in certain cases. Americans are very informal even at work, so I've learned to be that way too. Bak to forum etiquette, It's a difficult balance to strike though - you prob wouldn't want people to be too cautious on here.

'Full of it' ... really?! Sure you guys have bigger fish to fry?! Fair enough though - your rules. I honestly meant just a strong disagreement.

You answered your own question above. Every player is playing well below their norm - Ivas drop in form is smaller than other players but his form wasn't that great last season so it shows. However! Iva plays in a peripheral position which is by definition less important. It does not matter whether Iva gets targeted or not like someone said above - playing attacking fullbacks who are a defensive liability is hardly something new and teams cope just fine.

I wish he had replaced fabregas and ivanovic because I am confident that the results would have been the same or worse. Because the evidence says that one or two player tweaks doesn't make that much of a difference: like I said before Mikel played instead and alongside Matic and guess what the results were? Terry played and was left out without much of a difference really. We have our own preferences and dislikes, but if you don't see tha the problems go Beyond team selection, then imo you don't know why we are losing which partly explains the hate against Jose. Fans tend to believe in the quick short term fix: fix the confidence... Replace the manager... Sub this or that player... It's never that simple. We are in a deficit compared to almost all the other teams in the pl and cl. We are slower, weaker, and less sharp. That's what we have to fix first. Unfortunately it's s lot easier said than done.

Torrid game in their heavy loss to Arsenal United midfield was very slow and Mata adds to the problem. Mata is a difficult player to fit in team because he's too slow for the attacking positions and too weak and small for cm. not to mention pretty bad defensively. Of course playing Ashley young as LB of all places helped too.

Fair enough and yet another common routine, incidentally mostly from Belgium supporters, is to look for somewhat external factors to explain hazards poor form.Motivation and confidence are linked with fitness - hard to be confident if you lose every 50/50 ball...Hard NOT to gain confidence if you are stronger, faster, and win every dispute esp when you already possess the complementary technique like hazard does. Slumping after winning silverware is a very common tale - we are just taking it to a whole new level. Btw, "you are full of it" merely says that I completely disagree with what you just wrote no more no less. I am not representing the truth just my opinion.

Very hard evidence (the only one that matters) says my brain works just fine thank you. Well, even though you add a bit more flourishing to your posts, you are also sticking with another common routine around here: "either you agree with me or you are too dumb to understand my point." Perhaps we are merely disagreeing with each other; and I still think you are overanalyzing this. Why?! because Hazard's best asset is his dribbling, which is one of the least team-reliant skill in the game. What I see is that he's simply not beating his marker as well as before, nor is he clearing enough distance from his marker once he does. He's also going to the ground more often and more easily than before. So, in my personal opinion, this is down to fitness. Finally, I believe the overall poor fitness of the players is making a good (not great) team (not squad) look really bad at the moment.

Hey give me some time I'm on an iPad mini I as in first... Runs like a dog

The latter - but you did ask.Yeah we simpletons have never heard of motivational managers even though Scolari was doing that same in the nineties - yes he was managing the team I support in Brazil and I was old enough to be cognizant of what he was doing. Gosh this is football not theoretical Physics or philosophy - yes there is some nuance in the game but the skillful pacey tall guy always wins.

what exactly from his post was ... on topic?! Either Eden is his most personal friend or he's full of it.

Rodgers is a good manager and a lot cheaper than Jose...

It may not be down to manager or style of play and more to lack of dedication from him or even physical limitations.Genetics determine the absolute limit... But it's up to him to reach it and sometimes the players don't want go pay the sometimes very high price of absolute dedication. That's what it takes to be Ronaldo and messi. Just to be clear, I am not talking exclusively about what he does on the pitch but also and especially off of it. @poster below No that's not a fact. That's your opinion. The facts are his quantitatively small contribution today and in the games before.

I am not a mourinho fan - never was. Just prefer a different style of football than the one all his sides play. Now, the idea that players are performing poorly because the manager is not doing something or is doing something wrong is a very convenient delusion fans usually have: the magic that as soon as the new manager arrives everything will be ok again. It is never true. Things sometimes improve very short term as the new manager shakes things up but later it's all about building the squad. Building the squad is my biggest problem with Jose. The extremely small squad with players who are either work in progress/unknowns or players who just don't add much coming off the bench, like Mikel. I hear people saying what if this or that player had started? Well unless you have a crystal ball we don't know. Mikel played alongside Matic and we lost. Mikel played instead of Matic and we lost all the same. So how can people be so sure the solution is lying on the bench or the roster? What if with the current crop of players we have they have to perform at a certain intensity and for one reason or another they have not been able to. We do lack quality and strength in depth. Esp technical quality with more natural players imo. Even then it's difficult to pinpoint Jose alone bc I don't known under what restrictions he's been under.

Terrible performance - difficult to watch really. 1st goal is down to the lack of a midfielder following the scorer. 2nd was down to Gary Cahill poor touch and losing the ball in a dangerous area - the enlglsh see terry not stoping the atracker, but that was a difficult challenge since we were not positioned to defend. 3rd goal giving the ball away cheaply and then a counter - not bego's fault by courtois might have kept us in the game. Not much else to say but that all players were pretty poor. At this point I am not sure they really want Jose to stay bc they are not running for him.

I honestly though that after the fiasco this thread would be left alone, that people around here would finally realize that it's no down to Ivanovic's poor performances, but I guess that would be asking too much.

I just hit me: has anyone counter the number of card our players have been getting? Do we get a lot of yellows per game because of hard tackles?! Players who want really bad but cannot find the opponent tend to come late and get yellowed... eventually earn a red. seems strange that the players are not as upset with the current form as they ought to be.

Fair enough - I think he's been utter shit on his own. To each his own. However! Being the highest pay does bring more responsibility on him - it's part of the package.

You make good points but not the price tag one. Esp when comparing with Porto. Porto goes buy a player in Brazil he cost X if Chelsea goes buy the same player it's 2*x.Reckon if the team were playing well baba would have already played more. But we don't know his state of mind or what he's been doing in training but we pretend to know all the same. Plus we all talk about Jose as if he made all the decisions alone which is not true. He has the last word but many coaches are watching these players and telling him what they think. Jose has even signed players based on reports alone from people who report to him. Now we also know Jose is indeed shy on rotation and the squad itself isn't built for rotation imo. Final point : finally watched Porto first goal and ivsnovic is hardly the only one to blame. Which brings me to my recurring point, replace him and little will change. The problem is always in the middle and our midfield was poor against Porto.

Have to disagree on this one.Different players come from vacation at completely different levels of fitness. Highly dependent on age, build, and what they did or did not do away from the monitoring of the club. Juan is the wrong player for the Epl - Moses is stronger than him and imo a better option for the Epl. Neither really great but Moses can bring more coming off the bench.

they are the best team right now, but once teams get their shit together spaces are going to go bye bye. Attacking sides do crash and burn in the CL too. All it takes is a poor showing and/or poor luck and you are out. That's single-elimination ...

excellent defensive fullback, but we cannot have too many of them otherwise the team balance would be off. One of the few players who came back from vacation in good shape - that's a professional right there.