Belgiannutt

People are well aware of how good City are and how poor we are. Regardless of that you need to show some ambition and willingness to fight for 3 points or at the very least try and salvage a draw. We went down 1-0 at the start of the second half. With the set up we had we weren't creating anything yet Conte didn't even try to change things. He didn't even try to salvage a point until the 75 th minute. Half an hour !!! after we conceded the goal. It was just soo obvious that he wasn't interested in a point he just wanted to keep the score as low as possible.

"When you leave the pitch you have the impression that you’ve ran [a lot], but that you haven’t played a game of football. That’s a pity. We could have played on for three hours, and I [still] wouldn’t touch a ball. It went a bit better only at the end: in the last 10-15 minutes we had more possession. But we should have tried to do that all game. I don’t know [whether I can play as a lone striker]. When the manager plays me up front, I try to give everything. We haven’t played a good game. For me personally it’s difficult to play a good game, when you only touch the ball three times. I tried to jump [for long balls] but against Otamendi and Laporte it is not easy. It was difficult. Against Barcelona we had at least a few chances. In that game we could have scored. Today we didn’t create any. It was complicated. Certainly to find an answer to their pressing. Once we had the ball, we were immediately surrounded by three or four players. We have also wasted some simple passes. We haven’t played a good game. We are going to work hard to perform better next week.” https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/mar/05/eden-hazard-chelsea-antonio-conte-manchester-city-premier-league

We need to go after a manager that plays possession based football. We keep hiring pragmatic managers we then tell them to play a more expansive brand of football. It works for a while but eventually we start going through poor form and when that happens our pragmatic managers go pragmatic. They go defensive and it just ends up snowballing into one big shitshow.

Pedro was the worst player out there imo. Off the top of my head i remember 3 moments where Pedro overhit easy passes and we lost the ball. The most blatant one was when Hazard was running next to him a couple yards away from him and he overhit the pass. A 4 yard pass and he overhit it. Then there were also 2 moments where he could have hit through balls to Hazard yet overhit them aswell. Not trying to have a go at Pedro but those moments are branded in my mind because when you have the ball as little as we did you can't miss easy passes like that.

Just watched his post match press conference. He really doesn't give a shit anymore does he. "Pedro and Willian played a fantastic game" Really ? No player had a fantastic game. Especially Pedro who had an absolute shocker. Lost count of the amount of counters he fucked up by mishitting simple passes. The way we set up just pisses me off soo much. No attempt to win, no believe whatsoever that we could win just hoping we keep the score down to an "acceptable" amount.

Coward. Didn't even try to win. Just damage control for the entire game.

Disgraceful

Hitting longballs to our 5ft 7 false 9. FFS

@nglkante is missing today due to illness. #MCICHE

False 9 again.

You had one job @Jason. One job.

Again in what way was he more lively in the second half ? I really would like you to tell me. Between the start of the second half and the Pedro-Hazard sub what did Willian do ? I can only remember that one shot that went wide. What chances did he create ? Like i said Willian looked knackered to me and was starting to lose the ball a lot 5-10 minutes or so before the sub. So yes i would have taken Willian off. Although i would have also hauled Morata off at halftime and played Giroud. Hazard really wasn't as bad as you're making him out to be. Conte clearly settled for a draw. The problem with the substitution is that it unveiled the mindset that Conte had. Settling for a draw. That's what's pissing people off. We didn't go for the win, we settled. Only when we went behind did he decide to bring on more attacking players. Reactive, as always too late.

What are you talking about ? False 9 ? Just stick Giroud up top instead of Morata ? That would have been a more logical choice if Conte actually wanted to change our attack and actually go for the win. Also could you tell me what Willian did in the second half that gave you the impression he was gonna score or create ? Both Hazard and Willian faded in the second half. I remember Willian losing the ball several times 5-10 minutes prior to the Pedro-Hazard substitution. He looked knackered at that point imo.

What ?! Who came in for him matters. We don't have any world class players on the bench. Pedro doesn't come close to Hazard. If you don't have anyone better then you don't replace him. The decision to replace Hazard was a very shit one.

Don't give me any of that bullshit. Pedro-Hazard was a defensive sub and you fucking know it. 1-1 in a must win game with 20 minutes to go and he fucking settles for a draw. Morata was awful and Willian, in the last 20 minutes before the sub was clearly tired and losing balls left and right.

Unbelievable settling for a fucking draw.

Excalibur's got a point though about the overhyping. Defensively we were great but we really weren't good going forward. Not suprising considering we sacrificed some of our attacking strenght to get stronger defensively. The goal and the 2 shots against the post were all three long range shots. We didn't have any clear cut chances. People really need to snap out of this notion that the performance against Barcelona was great all around. 1-1 isn't a good result for us. They have the away goal. We have to score to go through. If we want to go through we're gonna have to attack them. To do that we're gonna need the freaking ball and an actual striker.

Actually it's 1 in 4 games that he's been played as a false 9 this season. 9 times in 36 games. Also you can't seriously be comparing how Barcelona play a false 9 with how we play it.

Wait a minute... Hazard prefers playing in his actual position rather then playing out of position ? Well i'm shocked to my very core. Who would have thought ? Pretty sure he was talking about using him as a striker as an emergency not when we've got 2 strikers on the bench. I hope we play with a striker at Nou Camp. 1-1 is a bad result for us. We need to score and in the false 9 sytem we didn't create any clear cut chances. Willian scored and hit the post twice from 3 long range strikes. Apart from that i can only remember the freekick from Alonso and two shots from Hazard (left foot shot and a volley). We need to score to go through and honestly i don't think we're gonna be able to keep a clean sheet at Nou Camp so we're gonna have to score twice. I don't see us doing that with a false 9 system.

I don't think Hazard will be able to replicate that performance simply because i don't think the team in general will be able to replicate the performance they had against Atletico. We had 50 % of the ball in both Atletico games. There's no way we're gonna have that much possession against Barcelona. 30-40 % is more likely. That means less of the ball for Hazard and he'll probably have to go deeper to get it. I hope it's not the case but i'm expecting a team performance more similar to the one we had against Man City tbh. Pushed back into our own final third for most of the game. Getting pressed like crazy forcing us to hit rushed long balls. With Hazard and Giroud/Morata feeding off of scraps up top.

Courtois Moses Azpi Christensen Rudiger Alonso Drinkwater Kante Hazard Giroud or Morata ? Fabregas/Pedro/Willian ? 3-4-3 or a 3-5-2 ? Will probably be a 3-5-2 with Fabregas. Personally i'd prefer Giroud to start. Seems more in form. Just scored, played well and considering Barcelona are gonna press us like crazy it wouldn't hurt to have his aerial abillity and strenght up top. Besides that Morata just didn't look that great in the 20 and 30 minutes he got in the last 2 games. Big part of how we do against Barcelona is gonna depend on what we do with the ball. If we're just gonna keep gifting the ball back to them then i can't see us coming away with a result.

Different type of players, different roles in their team and one plays in a more attacking system then the other. Salah tries to get on the end of an attack by staying high and wide and then either cutting in with the ball or making a run in behind. Hazard is different he drops deep a lot more. He gets involved a lot more in the actual building of an attack. Part of that is the type of player he is. Part of that is also the lack of creativity in our team. "he should be scoring 25+ goals" Mate our strikers don't even get that many goals how the fuck you want Hazard to get to that amount here ? "it's not like our tactics have really restrained him because he's been one of the best players in the league for all but one season since he's been here." I disagree. How can it not be restraining him when we play with so many defensive players, so many average players in such a pragmatic system ? The fact that he's been one of the best players in the league playing in such conditions is testament to his quality imo. It's embarrassing for the club imo. We could have built something great here with Hazard, adding several other quality players instead we decided to waste it and to simply get the bare minimum of quality necessary to challenge.

Only this season has he actually been eying Real Madrid imo. The season before it was usually a neutral response to his future that caused people to be upset. Our lack of ambition has been noticeable for a while now. Just poving the point that players choose their own career moves with little regard for fans. Lampard could have gone too any club but chose City because they paid the most. He knew it would hurt Chelsea fans but he did it any way. Same with Cech. He could have gone to any club yet he chose to go to Arsenal because he wanted to stay in London. He knew it would hurt Chelsea fans but he did it anyway. Both chose their own self interest over the fans. Why wouldn't Hazard be allowed to do the same ?

Bit extreme. A stepping stone, he's been here for 6 years. Don't think you can say he used us as a stepping stone. I don't really blame him for wanting out tbh. Our ambition isn't what it used too be in the beginning of the Roman Abramovich era. We now seem content with a top four finish and looking at our spending compared to that of City and United winning another PL title seems very unlikely.(the way the situation currently is). Fans are fickle as hell. Hazard was booed by fans in the 2015-2016 season and more then half the board on here wanted him out and was insulting him on these boards. The people who supported him in his bad times are a minority and pretty sure that most of them would understand why he'd leave. Players shouldn't base their career decisions on what the fans think. Players are "usable things" the moment they aren't of any use any more fans move on to the next. Also Lampard went to City. Cech went to Arsenal. 2 club legends that had been here for 10 years+ and had an emotional connection with the fans yet both pretty much went "fuck the fans i'll choose what's best for me."