Belgiannutt

It's both for me. The board haven't been buying the quality they should have but whether he gets the players he wants or not. Conte is the coach. It's his job to work with the players he has and find solutions. Feels like he's letting the problems he has with the board effect his decisions. He's not putting in the energy that he used to. Especially this last game he seemed disinterested for the large majority of it. Just feels like his problems witht the board have effected his commitment to the clubs success.

Imo the blames lies with Conte and the board. The board for buying average players and not going after proper quality player that can improve this team. Conte because he keeps playing the same way and the same players and then is suprised when we play the same shit week in week out. I get that this squad is average but constantly reassuring himself that he's doing the best he can isn't helpful at all. These are the players he has. Try something different. Tactically and/or personnel wise. Just try something because what he's doing now isn't working. I don't really blame the players. The few quality players we have simply can't carry this average side anymore. The average players, can't really blame them either. Sure it's frustrating watching Bakayoko gift the ball away. Watching Cahill play hide and seek with the attackers but it's not their fault they're playing for a club that's above their ability and constantly starting. The board bought them /extended their contract. Conte keeps playing them. You can't blame average players for being average. Can't blame poor players for being poor. They are what they are. We knew Moses wasn't good enough to be a starter at Stoke. We knew Alonso was slow as fuck. Again this is on the board and Conte.

Agreed, we've seen him be less energetic this season but last night has to be the most indifferent i've ever seen him. Just doesn't seem to care anymore. No point keeping him around if that's the case.

fucking hell...

He's barely used Batshuayi when we only had 2 strikers. I don't see that improving when we add another striker. It's pretty clear Conte doesn't really rate Batshuayi. It makes senses that the club would let Batshuayi go out on loan. Why would a club keep a player that the manager rarely plays ?

The thing is when you say decisive you pretty much just mean comparing goals and assists right ? I don't look at just goals and assists or even chances created, take ons, etc. I don't just look at the output of a player but take into account how much he puts in. Input vs output. How many times did he try to beat a player vs how many times did he beat a player. How many shots did he take vs how many goals did he score. That's where the wastefullness in possession comes in. How does a player use the ball. How efficient is he with it. There's only so much possession a team can have, only so many shots a team can sustain. How much possession a team has and how many shots they can supply matters to the attacking players. The less quality and the more defensive system the team plays the less possession they have and the less shots they can supply. That has an effect on how many shots an attacking player can take and how much possession he has to waste. If Hazard moves to a bigger club i do feel he'd benefit from it. You can't tell me that Hazard wouldn't have better numbers if he played in a more attacking system with more quality surrounding him with players like Suarez-Messi compared to what he has here with Morata-Pedro/Wilian/Bakayoko/Drinkwater being his support.

Neymar wouldn't be able to do what he does at PSG or did at Barcelona. Here you can't lose the ball as many times as he does. In the 16/17 CL season he was in the top 5 most wasteful performances 3 times. http://www.givemesport.com/1034576-neymar-recorded-an-embarrassing-champions-league-statistic-against-juventus Lost possession 46 times, 41 times, 38 times. That's a lot. Even this season comparing Hazard and Neymar. Hazard: in the PL: dispossessed 1.8, Unsuccesful touches 1.5 in the CL : dispossessed 1.5 Unsuccesful touches 2.8 Neymar: in Ligue 1: dispossessed 3.1, Unsuccesful touches 3.3 in the CL : dispossessed 3 Unsuccesful touches 5.8 Neymar loses the ball nearly double as much as Hazard does and Neymar plays in a weaker league. If Neymar came here he wouldn't have that luxury. He wouldn't have as many opportunities to try things as he does at PSG or Barca and that would certainly effect his output. Here Hazard simply doesn't have the luxury of losing the ball 46 times in a game. I don't believe i said we were an extremely poor team but you have to admit that for a topteam we sure have a lot of average and defensive players in our squad. Alonso, Moses, Cahill, Bakayoko, Drinkwater, Zappa, Rudiger. All average players. Willian wouldn't be a starter for a top club. Fabregas and Pedro were considered surplus to requirements and sold by Barcelona and both are past their best. . Neither of them would be starting for a top team nowadays. Morata was a super sub for Real but is struggling to be the main guy here.(jury's still out on him.) Our only real quality players are Courtois, Azpi, Christensen, Kante and Hazard. 1 gk, 2 cb's, 1 dm and 1 am/ss. 1 attacking player, 4 defensive ones. Fabregas wouldn't be starting ahead of Veratti or Rabiot. Morata wouldn't start ahead of Cavani. The only players who have a chance of playing in that PSG team are the 5 players i mentioned above. No it's not lame, the quality of your team mates matters. How attacking or how defensive your team plays matters. There's a reason PSG bought Neymar AND Mbappe. "Brought them up a level" There's no doubt that their attack has been improved with the additions of Neymar and Mbappe but they've won the league 4 times in the last 5 without them. They were already a quality side before them. "He can play poor and still score 2 goals" that's kinda ties in with what i was saying in the beginning of my post .The luxury Neymar has that Hazard doesn't. Neymar can/could play like shit for PSG/Barca and his team would still be able to get him into good positions and still dominate the opposition. If Hazard has a poor game our attack is pretty much a dead stick and the chances of us dominating opponents, let alone actually creating dangerous chances for him to score are extremely unlikely. If Hazard isn't heavily involved in our attack then our attack just goes nowhere most of the time. There's a massive burden on Hazard to create openings and chances . He never had a Messi/Mbappe to share the burden. Ofcourse Hazard has done it for us before but it's a lot more difficult to do when you don't have another quality partner to share the burden. Teams know Hazard is our focal point. A lot of times they'll put multiple players on him and we don't have a Messi/ Mbappe to exploit that or force that level of attention unto themselves. I agree he should be scoring more. While i agree that part of that is because of himself and his reluctance to shoot at times, i also think what i said above about not having a quality partner,being marked by multiple players, us playing with a lot of average and defensive players, playing in a defensive system plays a part in him not being able to reach the 20 goal mark here. Also how many times do we actually push for more goals when we're up by a goal. How many times has Hazard been subbed 10-20 minutes before time for a more defensive approach to defend a 1-2 goal lead. I honestly don't like Hazard in the false 9 role it makes it more difficult to get him on the ball and i don't think a false 9 goes with the way Conte likes to play. Srry for the long post.

No it's not. What are you talking about. PSG were already above us before they bought Neymar and Mbappe. Again, PSG beat us with 10 men. Pretty poor ? They still beat Barcelona 4-0 in the first leg. You didn't answer my question if you swap our team with Barca/PSG do you think he would have performed the way he did knowing we would have set up in a completely different way and had a lot less quality to support him ? I honestly don't care about the ballon d'or. More of a popularity contest nowaydays anyway. What platform a player gets matters. The quality of the supporting cast and the way a team sets up matters. Edit: Hazard scored 20 goals and had 16 assists at the age of 21 in his final season for Lille and he didn't have a Veratti, Cavani or Mbappe quality players to play with. Again, Hazard doesn't have the same quality teammates to work with and we are also one of the most pragmatic top teams in europe. You can't tell me it isn't easier to play for a team that has an attacking team philosophy and has several players capable of being creative and/or taking players on.

Swap our team with Barca/PSG do you think Neymar would have been able to perform the way he did ? Both PSG/Barca dominated their opponent those games. From the start they set out to dominate. We simply don't do that. The moment we face a half decent team we sit deep crawl into our shell and hope Hazard can pick up the ball in our own half and beat 4-5 players. The platform Hazard has here just isn't comparable at all to what Neymar ,and other players he gets compared to, have. We even got dominated by a 10 man PSG side. Just look at the last game. 3 cb's, 2 dm's, 2 wingbacks that can't beat 1 player or cross a proper ball in. That's the level of support he has here at Chelsea.

Not to mention he was key in our last 2 PL titles.

Hilarious indeed. Haven 't laughed this hard since Mourinho got sacked.

I don't wanna be too negative as we badly needed this win but it's really worrying how many chances we gave away against such an average side. The 2 penalty shouts, 2 good saves from Caballero, header against the post and several other moments where a better team would have punished us.

nvm better vids above this post

Victory baby !!!! and all it took was 210 minutes, 2 red cards and penalties.

un fucking believable.

Lmao under pressure against a championship side. I just can't.

This. We just never follow through on our pressing. We always leave our opponent with easy passes backwards. The rare times we press it always seems like the purpose isn't to take the ball or force them to hoof the ball forward but just to chase them out of our half. Once our opponents are in their own half Conte stops yelling "go go go" and we just take up defensive positions again.

Hazard and Fabregas were playing poor but they really are our only 2 creative sources in the squad. Considering it was 0-0 i thought it was silly to sub both of them out. They're both capable of creating chances out of nothing. Atleast 1 if not both should have stayed on in my opinion. Anything less then a win against Leicester at home was unacceptable. Alonso and Moses don't really offer much going forward. Besides that there's also the fact that most opponents pin our wingbacks back. So by the time they get up the pitch it's already too late. And our midfielders either dont have the quality to be efficient in the final third (Bakayoko, Drinkwater, Kante) or lack the legs to make the proper runs (Fabregas). In order for the 3-5-2 to work it really needs more versatile midfielders and better wingbacks going forward.

It was a bit more then awws i'd say. Also they did boo Fabregas and Hazard when they came off. Tbh i don't know what Tony Gale said as i was watching it on a Belgian channel. Just thought it started a bit early and i just don't think it helps. It's not like players need confirmation when they play a poor pass or lose the ball.

Tbf our home support is pretty shit. Our away support is great. Win lose they always sing and always support the team. You rarely hear moans or groans from them. Even when we're winning our home support is mostly quiet. I thought the moans and groans also started really early. Like from minute 10 they were already moaning and groaning about everything.

I just don't get why we're so deep and so defensive. This isn't fucking Barcelona we're playing against. It's freaken Leicester.

Hazard is giving us the same he gave the season before. People just expect more goals because he plays as a "striker". It doesn't work like that though. The role he has now offers him some advantages but he has 1 less attacking player to combine with. 1 less player for the opposition to worry about. If Hazard picks up the ball he only has Morata in front of him. A lot of times the only option he has is to pass it back or pass it sideways to 1 of our wingbacks. All the attacking emphasis is on Morata and Hazard. It just takes way too long for support to get there and by the time it does the opponents have gotten back aswell. Pedro and Willian scored 9 and 8 goals in the league last season. They shared that 3rd spot. That's 17 goals. We've switched them out for an extra midfielder. Bakayoko has 2 goals, Drinkwater, Kante, Fabregas all have 1.

We lack quality and have too many defensive players in the lineup. This makes us very predictable and easy to stop. Replace Fabregas with a creative midfielder that actually has the legs to play in midfield. Add a goalscorer to the lineup. Don't care if it's a striker,a 10, a winger or a CM.

Be injured for over half the freakin season ? Like seriously he's already struggling to stay fit in La Liga a less physically demanding league then the PL. What do you think's gonna happen when he has to play midweek games and regularly get the sh*t kicked out of him ?

Can't believe people actually think Hazard is waiting for Courtois to sign a new contract. They were both clearly joking. I highly doubt Hazard is signing any contract until the summer. Not unless he's 100 % sure Real isn't coming for him in the summer. On the whole loyalty talk. Sorry but i always find it funny when supporters get on their high horse when talking about player loyalty. How many wanted Hazard gone in the 2015-2016 season. How many were spouting insults at Hazard that season. He was even booed at one stage of the season. This was a player that had been key in getting us the title the year before. So where was the loyalty there ? Easy to talk about player loyalty. Simple fact is supporters and clubs aren't any better. We all look after our own self-interest. If a players isn't of value anymore to a club or supporters they'll discard him like that.