TorontoChelsea

I don't get this. Meireles has been up and down since joining Chelsea but if RDM continues to want to play the 4-2-3-1, who can sub for Lampard? We need someone to be able to rotate into the starting XI and there is literally nobody else with that sort of experience on the roster. The squad seems so imbalanced. We have a huge number of attacking midfielders and really no central midfielders.

Certainly not the impression I got from watching him. He's a good tackler, and he had some really good games, but he also looked lost a number of times, he plays too deep, and his ball movement is nothing special. It's not that I think he's a bad player or anything, he's fine and maybe he could develop into something more, I just don't get the fuss,

Why does everyone love Romeu so much? He looked OK last season, but people are acting as if he's going to be Ya Ya Toure or something. I'm not even sure he's a Premiership caliber player yet.

Ramires is not a deep-lying midfielder and he's not really a defensive midfielder for this system either. He's essentially a 4-3-3, counter-attacking midfielder which means he doesn't really fit into the current system or the team Chelsea are trying to build.

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Last year, everyone was all over AVB for using the 4-3-3 which didn't really fit our team (among other things). You can't switch formations every time you have a bad game. There is a lot of training that goes into being in a specific formation and a lot of getting to know where players are supposed to be (and a lot more work needs to be done on that front) If anything, Chelsea are too loaded up with players who should be playing right behind the striker which is a position that doesn't exist in the standard 4-3-3. Do you really want Hazard wide right and Mata wide left? We are staying in the 4-2-3-1 for the foreseeable future. We can all posit our alternate formations, it's just not going to happen.

The real test is what happens when you're not winning and able to spend oodles of cash. Real fans will stick around no matter what. It's almost good to have a miserable season every once in a while just clear out the plastics. Almost.

He should start at some point, but I see no harm in him coming off the bench for a couple more games to give him more of a feel for the game. A start against QPR would be fine as well though. I'd love to see Sturridge get some minutes at striker at some point as well. If I have one criticism of RDM so far, it's that he tends to be too conservative for my tastes. That won us the CL so I can't really complain, but since I see this as somewhat of a rebuilding season, I'd rather he take the occasional risk, He might as the season goes on, I mean we still have 55-60 games to go after all.

Why stop there? We should drag him into the streets and draw and quarter him and then put his head on a spike outside the Tower of London. THAT would be an appropriate reaction.

I have no problem with someone criticizing Lampard or anyone for having a bad game when he does/they do, it's that the criticisms are A) way too over the top, it's not "Ivanovic is having a poor spell", it's "we need to replace Ivanovic. He's past it". way too focused on Lampard and Mikel no matter what. I watched the Super Cup. Our entire team played badly (with Luiz being the worst of the bunch). To come away from that match with "Lampard needs to be replaced" as the lesson is ridiculous and clearly coming from someone who was interested in seeing that to begin with. C) Way too focused on individual games and even plays.

This is nonsense. You don't criticize players because they are due criticism, you have a few players you don't like and you criticize them and only them. It's Lampard and Mikel (or whoever else you decide to blame) who are at the root of all evil and you will ignore everything else. Luiz was atrocious? Well, must have been Lampard and Mike's fault. Torres can't score? Lampard and Mikel aren't moving the ball well enough for him. People call this sort of POV plastic because it's not a real attempt to understand what's wrong at Chelsea, it's just trying to create this black and white dichotomy of good players/bad players whereby the bad players are the ones who have been around for a while and the good ones are the new, exciting players. Oscar had an awful game against Reading? His passing percentage is worst among midfielders on our team? Well, let's just ignore that. He should start! Your criticisms are not factual, they are not based on anything except confirmation bias.

I'll say it before we even play in it-The Club World Cup is unimportant. These are all meaningless exhibition games whose only purpose is to make some more money. I'd rather win, but I wouldn't care if we lost.

This is an awful test. I did a bunch of tests as part of psych classes and even for one job interview. This tests you solely on shape/colour recognition (and some logic) which is a very limited test. There's no place to enter age/level of education. There's no "next number in sequence", no logic, and no language usage components.

I like the way Courtois looks so far but I really don't worry much about keepers. There are more top keepers than there are top teams and they are not expensive to buy. Spurs just bought Lloris who is a young but established top keeper for 15M Euros.

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I'm not saying Luiz is at fault for all defensive problems by any stretch. He even plays very well at times and there's way too much good player/bad player stuff on here anyway ("good players" are not responsible for anything wrong and are responsible for everything that goes well and vice versa). However, if it were me and I got the sort of rumoured offer for Luiz (25-30M) I'd sell him in a second and go after a more conservative, elite CB. (Someone like Chiellini or Hummels) .but I am not in charge so it's not going to happen.

I agree that that's what Chelsea want, I just think its misguided. I think Luiz would be a fantastic player with Barcelona where defenders can get forward more. In England, he's always going to be inconsistent.

I didn't point to individuals for the cause of the loss, but Luiz was more responsible than anyone. Blaming the midfield because Luiz couldn't make basic tackles and vacated his spot is ridiculous. Brazil have employed fullbacks who make forward runs, but when was the last time a Premier League team had success with those sort of players? You need a solid back line to win in England. Anyway, the problem isn't the running forward, it's picking horrible times to do it. Cahill is a very attacking CB, Terry was always able to get forward, you just have to pick your moments. You can't just run forward because you want to. Also, Luiz should simply not be regularly trying to pick out long passes. Luiz is just not good at it. (Just as he's not good at free kicks but takes them anyway).

What's oddest to me is how he didn't learn from his mistakes at Chelsea. You are much better off if you get your transfers done early. AVB waited with us and then we ended up having to buy Meireles on the last day. With Spurs, AVB again waited until the end and made significant changes.

Very disappointed in Luiz's start. He was playing much better under RDM last season and I was hoping it was going to continue into this year. There is a lot made of Luiz's propensity to be out of position but I think an equal problem is his wayward passing. Through the first 3 games of the Premier League, Cahill has completed 94% of his passes, Terry, 92.86%, and Luiz 82.42%. It's symptomatic of Luiz's seeming inability to simplify his game.

I agree that he's not a good fit for the style Chelsea want to move to, but neither is Terry and he's still our best CB. The change to the new system was never going to be overnight. We are not going to suddenly start playing quick, passing football this year. It's a project and Lampard will need to be replaced long-term, but long-term does not mean after a couple of mediocre games.

It did work!!!! Chelsea won the FA Cup with Lampard and Mikel in the double pivot. They won the CL with Lampard and Mikel in the double pivot. They have 6 points from the 2 games they started this season with the two of them in the double pivot but it can't possibly work!!! Why? Because they looked poor in an exhibition game where the entire team played poorly. It's incredible. Lampard was one of the better midfielders in the Premier League last season but one or two mediocre games this year and guess what, he's done. It's not that it's plastic (which it is), it's just stupid to put so much faith into such a small sample size. Meireles has one good game and people forgot all about last year (Next bad game he has, people will forget about this good game). I'm not supporting Lampard because he is the greatest player to ever play for Chelsea, I am supporting Lampard, because he was one of our best players last season and I don't write off players entirely because of a couple of bad games..Also, I don't blame Lampard for every single play that goes wrong the way many do on here.

Nobody plays with two outright defensive midfielders. It's way too defensive a system and means you can't move the ball to your forwards well enough to generate an attack either. Lampard really shouldn't be covering for our defenders all that much. We are not playing a 4-3-3 with our backs bombing down the wings where our defensive midfielder need to cover the gaps. Our width should be coming from the attacking 3 midfielders meaning that Lampard should be 6th line of defence. Again, we need to work on positioning. Our defenders (especially Luiz and Ivanovic) need to be more disciplined in this new system. Look at the discussion we're having. Luiz had a shocker of a game (Even the goal where Ramires made a mess of it, look at the replay, where exactly is Luiz? Lampard is back before him.) ..no matter what, the blame wheel always comes back to Lampard. If we don't score, it's his fault. If we give up goals, it's his fault. If we play well, it has nothing to do with him. People need scapegoats and unfortunately, this year it's going to be the greatest player in Chelsea history that serves the role.

I don't think Lampard should be playing every game, but I think the problem is way way overstated. A few points 1) Lampard's overall positioning in games is exactly where it should be. He makes runs but the deep lying midfielder is supposed to make some runs. He probably make a couple too many a game but his position is not primarily a defensive position. His average position is a few feet in front and to the left of Mikel which is where it should be. 2) He could be more disciplined, but he's still our best bet in the position. Meireles was poor all last season. 3) He played very well in that exact position last season. The midfield 2 was never a problem under RDM last season. Looking mediocre in an exhibition game doesn't negate 20-something positive games. 4) There is a domino effect here. Because Mata and Hazard both like playing up the middle, Mata is actually dropping way back to close to Lampard's position to get the ball. Lampard then staying in the same position as Mata is pointless which leads him to making runs. If you look at the positioning of our midfielders in the Wigan and Reading games, our midfield was bunched up the middle. Spacing and defining roles is our biggest early issue. 5) We're 3-0 in the league. Hardly time to make wholesale changes anyway.

Exactly...I mean, Meireles was absolutely mediocre all of last year while Lampard played very well, but clearly the one game where Meireles played well matters more than anything else!