Belgiannutt

Tactics. Teams are pinning back our wingbacks while closely marking our midfielders. It's pretty much leaves us with No midfield, no wide outball, a front 3 that can barely get on the ball and a back three that has no passing options to play. We're slow and there's no movement because the players aren't getting the space they did last season. Especially our wingbacks. Last season they regularly had acres of space in front of them.

Only 2 ways i see us catching up 1/ is if Abramovich starts pumping money into the team again. We need to go on a spending spree like City and United have done over the years. 300-400 million, adding 4-6 quality players. Not potential, not good player genuine quality players who can come in and immediately give us a quality injection. 2/ is going down the same path Tottenham did. Putting the team full of youth players and hope they develop. It's risky though. There's no guarantee they'll reach their full potential and even if they do they could end up leaving us for other teams. Then there's the guarantee that if we do this we won't be winning anything for several years as it would take time for the youth players to develop. Right now we're slipping and getting dangerously close to Arsenal abnd Liverpool level.

He really needs to stop playing a back 5. It's just too easy to nullify. They press our midfield and pin our wingbacks back and we're stuck hitting long balls to our front 3. Just change it up.

I'd try and suprise Mourinho. 4-2-4. Alonso, Fabregas benched. If Herrera is manmarking Hazard switch Hazard and Pedro. Then tell Hazard to stay as close to the touchline and as high as he possibly can.

I don't think our short corners are that ineffective. Pedro scored from a short corner recently and i can remember several times where Fabregas and Hazard created good opportunities from short corners.

"I think for the game against Everton, it is impossible to recover for [Danny] Drinkwater. [Victor] Moses needs more time and so does [N'Golo] Kante. “But I think this could be a good opportunity to give a chance to the young player like Charly Musonda, also Kenedy, young players who I think deserve the chance. They are working very hard, they are improving and we can see the improvement against Everton which is a tough game. It is important for me, important for the club. We will do this.” No Drinkwater yet.

I honestly don't remember a lot of positive results in the 2015-2016 season. There were a number of games where the performance was good-ish and it looked like we were going to get a positive result only to concede late and leave with 1 or no points.

Genius.

If the players were trying to get Conte sacked then we would have lost the last 2 games. It's not power play that's going on. There's still fight in this team. We just have a small squad hit with injuries that has a lot of average players and the system no longer masks that.

Neymar only scored 4 goals(9 games) in the CL and 13 in la liga (30 games). Yet i'm sure he'll get a lot of votes. Goals are important but also don't underestimate the exposure players get when they play for Real or Barca. It's on a different level then us.

Yeah the back 5 system has been found out. Problem is that i don't think we have got the players to switch to a back four. I don't trust alonso in the left back position. He absolutely needs the cover of an extra CB. I also have my doubts about Luiz in a back four. I don't think the system is the problem. It's the lack of quality. The back 5 system did great last season as teams were struggling to deal with it. The system carried the average players in our team but not anymore. Teams have figured it out. Only answer is to add more quality.

Lucky to be ahead. Luiz , great goal but has no positional sense for the position. Just running all over the place. Not sure what Azpi was doing for the Kolarov goal. Honestly i don't get what we're trying to do. Why aren't we pressing them ? We're just allowing them to play their game at our home turf. Why ? Painful watching us try and play out from the back. Can't string along 3 passes before we have to hoof it. Poor performance again.

Skipper's comment was about more then just the Crystal Palace game. There's a lack of ambition from the club to really add quality and improve the squad. The last couple of years we've been content with just replacing the players we lost and not really pushing for more and better players. There are simply too many average players in the squad who need to perform at, or close to, a 100% of their capacity to not look out of place in this team. There's an over reliance on our key players. Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar, all three can play like shit and 9 out of 10 times their team will still dominate whoever they play. When Hazard plays poor the drop in our attack is worrying. I don't really get a "built around him" vibe more like a "let's see how far he can take us" vibe Yes and no. When it comes to rating a single performance then yes ofcourse there should be just 1 standard and there is. It's been acknowledged that Hazard Azpi and Luiz had poor games just as most of the team did. However past performances do matter. If a player plays like shit for 4 out of 4 games and the fifth game he plays like shit again people will be a lot less forgiving then a player that plays well for 4 out of 4 games and then the fifth has a shit one. People evaluate players based on a number of games and not just one. I didn't see a lack of effort from him. Things just didn't come off for him. He was simply poor. It happens.

True that Messi and Ronaldo are more clinical but how many shots you take will inevitably have an effect on how many goals you score. I agree with you about scoring more in la liga. I also agree that goals shouldn't matter as much as they do nowadays but unfortunately that's how punditry and the majority of footballfans think. Goals get you a lot more praise then good performances do. I think we talk about Eden needing to score more because we all know how good he really is and his 16 goals don't do justice to the abillity he has. I agree with that but even if he's in a good position if there's a lot of players in the path of him and the goal he usually won't shoot because there's a high chance of it getting blocked.

Understand what you mean but i think this has already been discussed here several times over the last few years. If he doesn't have clear angle at goal he doesn't take the shot. He simply doesn't take low percentage shots. I'm sure if he took more shots he'd score more . Last season Hazard shot 77 times , 36 appearances, 16 goals Ronaldo shot 162 times ,29 appearances , 25 goals Messi shot 165 times, 36 appearances , 34 goals If Hazard took twice the shots he's taken i'm sure he would be getting closer to 25 goals.

Problem is that for the large majority of these talents the step from youth ranks to Chelsea first team football is just too big. Loans are the only way we can help them get to the level but they ofcourse need to be willing and perform at those clubs. He needs to play one way or another but i highly doubt he would play at other top teams give his current level. He needs a mid table maybe sub top team in a lesser league to develop.

Maybe but those years are important though. They shaped De Bruyne to the player he is today. Musonda hasn't had those years. Best thing for him would be a loan. A long one, like several years to really gain some experience at senior level and develop his game. He really isn't to be frank. He did really well at youth level but just hasn't been able to push on at all and perform at senior level. I've seen him play at the age of 15-16 and i can't say he's improved since then. That's over 4 years. That's very worrying.

Who knew De Bruyne at 20 (2011)? At that age he had played 2 seasons (as a starter) for Genk and in 1 of them they were champions with him as a key player. Musonda as talented as he is hasn't really done anything at senior level apart from a season at Real Betis which after a promising few months fizzled out quite disappointingly.

I think he got told to go back on loan to get some game time.

Palace away Roma home Watford home Everton home Bournemouth away Might be back against Roma away on the 31 october. Back against United home on the 5th of november.