TorontoChelsea

Except that highest winning percentage is based entirely on the fact that Spurs are a much better and higher spending club than they've been. Redknapp was fired for finishing 4th the year before AVB was hired. AVB finished 5th and currently 7th so he actually performed worse than Redknapp. He was sacked not only because of the humiliating defeats but also because they have been brutal almost all year. This is a team that has scored 15 goals in 16 games which is playing like Stoke except they're also poor on set pieces. They have the 6th worst goal differential in the Premier League. They are an absolutely clueless team and were lost under AVB. They had three humiliating defeats in 16 games. The AVB as a quality manager is baffling. It's based entirely on one excellent season with Porto who had an excellent season before AVB got there and an excellent season after. He had two excellent job opportunities in England with teams that spent money and could compete for trophies (or at least CL spot for Spurs). These are the types of opportunities most managers never get. AVB is not unlucky. He's extremely lucky. Most managers don't get jobs at teams they can succeed at. The vast majority of managers manage teams they will never win anything at. AVB has had two excellent chances and failed miserably and was deservedly fired from both jobs. It's amazing to me how many Chelsea fans still support this guy. He was a disaster for Chelsea and really only got the Spurs job because of this absurd "young genius" aura he has cultivated (and apparently people still buy into). .

We are having so much luck this year, more than I can ever remember at Chelsea.(Blown calls going for us, lucky bounces going our way, great draws, etc...) We now have a chance to go through to the quarterfinals of the CL without playing a single good team. We had a really easy group, played poorly but squeaked through. Then, the two most difficult teams that finished second in their group were both English sides so we couldn't play them. People will talk up Galatasaray but they are 6th in the Turkish league right now,m 14 points behind the leaders of a pretty mediocre league. You can't take any team lightly, but this is not a team we should be losing to.

I'm not bothered at all by that. One player in about 15 years and hundreds of youngsters that we let go that turned out to be any good. Who is the second best youngster we let go in that period? Jack Cork? Robert Huth? When you have so many people coming through, one or two will eventually turn out to be good. You can't keep everyone just because of that. I think we do have an issue beyond what we've already spoken of and that is we simply have too many young players. It is possible to work one maybe two players into roles on your team if you don't have too much depth, but we have a lot of depth already and still go out and buy as many young players as we can. Look at our attacking midfielders. We have too many on the team right now so that De Bruyne can't get playing time. On loan, we have Piazon, Moses, Marin, Kakuta, Atsu, and T. Hazard. What's the point? There is no room to work in a single player, even one who had success in the Bundesliga, why do we keep buying more young players? (I know the answer and I hate it. It's for profit. It's a horrible hole in the football system where rich clubs can afford to buy players and then sell them for more later.99% of clubs can't spent 7M on Piazon and loan him out because 7M pounds is a huge part of their budget and they need someone who can help them now. I really think football needs to institute rules on how many people you can loan out to prevent this sort of thing. It's good for Chelsea but bad for football.)

The problem I and a lot of people have is not that we signed him (although that as well), it's that Chelsea spent 30M pounds on him and why? We could easily have brought in veteran players for about 1/10th the price who would have been fine to rotate into the team. If we wanted experience, why spend so big on it and why get a player who actually has less big game experience than anyone currently on Chelsea? You can't have only youth, but you don't go and buy someone, clearly overspend on them, just because they aren't young. Why not go for say Jesus Navas who is 28, plays as an actual winger, is a better player than Willian, and cost half as much? That would be Chelsea filling a need for real width (which we still don't have). Chelsea right now have about 6 players who could play central attacking midfield. He's a talented player, it's easy to see that.. He actually fits well into Chelsea because unlike all our other midfielders, he seems to be OK not shooting but it was still a ridiculous buy and there is no way he will ever be worth 30M pounds or anything close to that and spending a massive fee for a rotation player when we have such glaring needs is baffling. We are a Mata injury away from Oscar starting. So what? Oscar is fine starting and if he got hurt, we could play Hazard there or Schurrle or De Bruyne. We are a Ramires injury away from doom. Hell, we are a Lampard injury away from big trouble. You want to see Essien and Mikel central midfield partnerships? Want to see what happens if Terry gets hurt? I don't. We have now spent, in the last 3 seasons something like 150M pounds on attacking midfielders.

It's not like the Hart situation at all because Hart sucked for a long time and deserved to be dropped long before (maybe even last season). He made mistake after mistake and bad ones in big games. Cech made one bad mistake. Schwarzer didn't make any errors but he also didn't make a single save that a small child couldn't have made. This isn't like a striker scoring because that still takes doing something active rather than just sitting around while your players attack. Cech is a better keeper and his poor form has been massively exaggerated.

Lampard had a 95% passing rate last night. He shot too much in the first half but overall was fine. Like you, I am sick of people attacking him when he's ordinary when everyone else is also ordinary. Like you, I also don't get the love for Willian's game yesterday. He played very well for a while but then was really poor for a long while too and gave the ball away really carelessly a number of times. Our attacking midfield has gotten away with getting almost no blame for a couple years no matter what happens. When they don't track back, the central midfield gets the blame for being overrun. When they don't create, strikers get the blame, when they don't move properly, the central midfield and RB/LB get the blame, etc...and yesterday was a perfect example for me. They were absolutely ordinary. Their spacing was poor, their movement was atrocious (there was one moment later in the game when Luiz had the ball at the centre line as looking to go forward for about 10 seconds and there was just nothing so he turned and passed to Terry which summed it up.) and they didn't really create very many chances against what was a very poor side.Yes, Ba missed a great chance, but how many times did we get the ball into him in dangerous areas? Once? Twice? Ba had 2 shots all game. Against a team like that, he should have been getting 5 or 6 good chances. And you can't blame the central midfield because our attacking midfielders had the ball constantly. It wasn't a case of not getting the ball to them. It was a case of them having the same attack plan which was to try to dribble the ball past the entire defence.

Disappointing performance against a really poor side. We're set up as a counter-attack team and especially without Mata, we're just always going to have difficulty breaking down teams who don't open themselves up to attack. The movement from the attackers was just awful Didn't think anyone had a particularly great match. (Willian was great for a while but then started making a bunch sloppy plays), so voted for Terry who has had a great year but rarely gets any MOTM votes. If we played the same group as last year, I doubt we get through and certainly not first. Very lucky to have such a poor group but we are through which is great. No more Europa League nonsense this year.

This Bucharest team is just terrible. Their starting XI is bad but they're also resting their best players because this game is meaningless for them. Would love to see us kill this off early and rest some key players.

And beyond that, places aren't up for grabs as much as people think. Moses played really well in pre-season but was never going to play a big role with Chelsea and it was blindingly obvious. Chelsea had a bunch of more talented players at the position and Moses was poor over a full season last year, De Bruyne played well but was never going to play ahead of Mata and Oscar. If there is a position that is truly up for grabs, something can change, but in reality that is extremely rare on top clubs because you know everybody who is going to start's abilities. You have game-tape, you have scouts, you have statistics. One or two games in the middle of the season are impossible to evaluate players on. Looking good for 2 exhibition games is completely meaningless when you have so much more important data, video, etc...to go on from games that actually matter. .

De Bruyne didn't have one bad match. It's what I was saying. He had three matches where he was arguably our worst player. It's hard to shine not playing regularly, but when you're that bad 3 games in a row, the coach is going to notice.Yes, I agree players need rhythm to succeed which is why I've been saying even before pre-season that you CAN have too much depth. (despite the constant "you can never have too much depth" refrain from people that want to see us buy everybody) I am a big believer in playing guys for a while to see what they can do, even through mistakes If we hadn't have signed Willian, things would be different but as it is, only Hazard and Oscar have been allowed to get into a rhythm of any sort. Mata finally started three games in a row and those have been mostly at right midfield in a system that doesn't suite him with responsibilities that hamper the best part of his game. Willian and Schurrle have both not played for long stretches. This is not a De Bruyne problem.The problem is that we have too many attacking midfielders and strikers so that none of them (except Hazard and Oscar) will likely ever get into a rhythm. . And yes, pre-season is meaningless except for fitness, getting money, and supporters' hopes that whoever is doing well in meaningless games is suddenly going to get playing time.Mourinho had his starting XI set before pre-season and nothing short of an injury would have changed that. It's the same with every single team. Results don't matter. Performances don't matter. it's about getting into game shape.

People are getting it wrong about why KDB isn't playing. It's not because of one poor game, it's because of a lot of poor play but it's mostly because he simply doesn't fit into Mourinho's style. Neither does Mata, but Mata is one of the elite offensive players in the world, one of the best players in the Premier League for 2 years in a row. Both Mata and De Bruyne just don't fit Mourinho's defensive work-rate, raw speed, work inside a tight system, style of play. I don't think we should have signed Willian but when we did, it as always going too be difficult for De Bruyne to get time. Willian and Schurrle fit the Chelsea system much more. Hazard and Oscar have played regularly and the Schurrle, Willian, and Mata have been rotated into the other 1 position. Those players aren't getting any regular playing time, never mind De Bruyne. And no, Kevin hasn't done himself any favours starting with not practicing hard. He had one great half against Hull and since then, he's been bad every time he's played. He had 3 starts after his Hull game. Against ManU, Arsenal in the League Cup (let's not pretend this was a full Arsenal side) and Swindon. He was either the worst or one of the worst player on the pitch in all three games. He did absolutely nothing. No goals, no assists, 1 tackle, 4 fouls, roughly 79% passing, 5 turnovers., was generally a pylon defensively Rated worst or second worst among our starters for all 3 games on whoscored. He's had more players dribble by him this season than he's made tackles. and interceptions combined. Why does he deserve to get a run of games? De Bruyne has had 4 starts. Schurrle and Mata have only had 9 starts. Willian has had 6. De Bruyne's competition has played better than he has, has had a better attitude than he has, has more experience than he has. You going to sit Hazard or Schurrle or Oscar or Mata just because you want De Bruyne to get a run of games? This isn't a situation like with Lukaku where the players in front of him are all suspect or middling, or a case with Courtois where there is only one aging player ahead of him, this is a case of having a whole bunch of young, quality options who fit the system better ahead of him. @Stingray-Pre-season doesn't matter at all!!! I wish people would just stop bringing it up. It's entirely about fitness. Nothing else matters at all. Literally, on a scale of 1-10, your pre-season performance on a team like Chelsea is a 1. And yes, it's OK for Mata or Hazard to be rusty. Mata is a back to back Chelsea player of the year winner, made the PFA team of the year last year. Hazard also made PFA team of the year after winning player of the year in France in back to back seasons. Both players have proven their quality so when they struggle, it's not the same as when a player who has never played in the league struggles. Are you really suggesting that De Bruyne should get the same slack as Mata and Hazard? It's absurd. Of course teams treat proven players with a longer leash. Anything else would be idiocy.

haha. I wish people wouldn't quote random twitter crap where it's just some idiot fantasizing about nonsense. The price of any loan is never going to be 10M-30M pounds. Barkley looks like a good young attacking midfielder but we have chosen our attacking midfielders, don't need anymore and really we have too many as is. You can't buy everyone you think is going to be great.

I don't think we need a 6th attacking midfield spot at all because we have 3 strikers who get rotated into those positions as well. Mourinho likes bringing on a second striker as a sub when behind instead of another attacking midfielder. I see the front 4 as more interchangeable than most teams and we have 9 players for 4 spots. 8 is more than enough. Right now, it's not only our #6 attacking midfielder who is having trouble getting regular game time, it's our #3, 4, 5, and 6 attacking midfielders. Even if De Bruyne goes in January, there's still a battle for playing time.

The Willian signing never made any sense, period and it's fundamentally what's wrong with football. It's one thing when teams go out and sign a player they need to fill a hole on their team. It's another to build up and buy a lot of talent at a position and then say "hey, I like this player too" and then spend double what the average Premier League team spends a year on a player you don't need. He's a talented player, but we spent 30M pounds to go from KDB to WIllian. People always overrate how much depth you actually need. It's something I pointed out in pre-season. Teams simply never use 6 attacking midfielders regularly. When your manager likes to bring on a second striker as a sub, it means you won't even use five regularly. We have 9 players for 4 positions (and that's without Ramires who has played at AM a few times as well). KDB is last in the pecking order of those 9 players. He simply isn't going to play. @Spyker- "Proving" yourself in pre-season is like proving yourself on playstation. It's utterly meaningless. Marko Marin wa sour best player in pre-season last season. It doesn't mean a thing. Yet, every damn season, people go crazy over pre-season performances and every damn season they mean nothing .

Lukaku will come back next year and be one of our top 2 strikers. However, people need to understand that statistics from other teams don't translate to Chelsea. Strikers do not have success at Chelsea. Ba scored 13 goals in 20 games with Newcastle last season.He's scored 3 in 21 for Chelsea. Chelsea are set-up so that our attacking midfielders score. Our attacking midfielders have 15 goals in the Premier League. Everton's have 5. You can't just look at Lukaku and say "he's scored 8 goals with Everton so he'd score 8 with Chelsea." He most certainly wouldn't because the systems are completely different and Chelsea's system is much worse for strikers.. You can't buy all these midfielders that love to shoot and also think your striker is going to score lots of goals. When Drogba was scoring a lot, only Lampard was also scoring a lot for Chelsea. Those 2 were taking the bulk of the chances for Chelsea. There were a few other players who could score but did so effectively when opportunities came for them, The team was filled with guys like Makaleke, Essien, Ballack, Geremi, J. Cole, Kalou etc...who were not big goal scorers but who did the build-up play that allowed Drogba to get scoring chances. This Chelsea team is completely different. We have a lot of players who want to shoot and have the talent to. (Incidentally, one of our biggest problems again. You really need to have defined roles on teams with a common goal. Chelsea have 6 attacking midfielders who all want to be "the man" and feel they deserve it.)

A number of small thoughts and one longer one 1) Taking off Schurrle was fine. He ran around like a maniac and hasn't played much recently so his match fitness wasn't likely to be there for 90 minutes and besides... 2) Schurrle was my MOTM, but he did give the ball away a ridiculous 9 times. including 6 turnovers. Our entire rest of the team had 7. 3) Dribbling, by itself, is the most overrated aspect of football IMO. Sometimes, it allows you to create space for a shot or a pass and sometimes it's just a more complicated alternative to passing. Dribbling allows you to do more things but it isn't in itself a great play. Hazard had 13 dribbles but didn't have a particularly good game at all. 4) I don't know why Mata doesn't get played centrally at all. He was poor as was most of our team. I really don't see him fitting under Mourinho. I think it's a style-thing. You can talk about how he can now maintain possession in traffic or how he's stronger, but it's clear that he's been made into a much less effective player in this system. He's been turned from one of the elite offensive players in the world into a completely replaceable player. 5) I also don't know why Mourinho feels he can't rotate the defence at all. After the game mid-week, why not bring Cole back in which gives the team options to take other people out of the lineup? Longer thought- 1)Still, the same problem. We have a bunch of players and not a team. A group of players that don't seem to fit together because they play different styles. We have players that like to dribble and then cross but a system where the striker drops back into the middle rather than attacks the net. We have counter-attack players next to possession players. Different sorts of players can work together, but they have to be complimentary and many of ours aren't. Even when we win, it's rarely because we play well as a team. It's because one or two players play brilliantly and we win. There is just so little cohesion and it's been years since we had any. Part of that is the constant train of new managers who all have their own ideas and part of it is the continued buying of expensive players when something doesn't work. Look at Arsenal's defence and back 4. if that were Chelsea, when they struggled mightily, we'd have gone out and spent tends of millions trying to find the answer. They now have the best defensive record in the Premier League because often, just playing the same group of players together for a while improves a team. It's not always "hey, we lost, so let's go spend 50M pounds on this player and 30M pounds on that one." Fans love that and you do need to buy improvements to keep up, but familiarity of players with one another also helps. Having 3 strikers and 6 attacking midfielders ( 9 players) for 4 spots is simply way too much depth. Yes, there will always be buying and selling and Chelsea need to do that, but the sort of thing we did by spending 30M on Willian was absolutely ridiculous. I think we have to pick a system (which under Mourinho will be defence-first counterattack) and then just start selling the players off that don't fit even if they are great players. I think Mata and Luiz were our best attacker and defender last season but I don't see either as fits for Mourinho's system. Sell them and KDB who also doesn't fit and spend that money on a better central defender (or two) than Cahill and a distributing central midfielder who fit the system Mourinho wants to play. At some point, you just have to develop something specifically rather than trying to mesh all your players together. For the rest of the year? Grind it out and see what works I suppose. It's a down year at the top of the Premier League so we can still make a play for it despite our many problems.

Their fans still boo Aaron Ramsey because he had the gall to get his leg broke by Shawcross. Great bunch.

I'd settle for one.

Wow. What a goal!!!

Mata once again on the wing despite no Oscar. Seems like Mourinho just doesn't want him in the middle of the pitch.

He had a great start to the season but yes, he's been off and on since. Still, he's plenty good enough to be able to rotate into the CB position when needed. I actually think we have the perfect depth and flexibility at the back now. IMO, we should be rotating 6 players for 4 positions (Cole at LB, Ivanovic at RB and CB, Azpilicueta at RB and LB and Terry, Luiz, and Cahill at CB.) Enough game time to keep everyone happy and enough depth to keep players rested.

I agree Terry could use a rest but if Luiz is unfit, we can move Ivanovic into CB where he is certainly capable of playing and go with Azpilicueta and Cole. We still have enough depth to give everyone breathers when needed.

Absolutely. Chelsea were not vulnerable defensively. We conceded 3 goals on 3 shots on target and all were on ping-ponging balls off of set pieces. How is Lampard to blame for that? Other than that, we were solid defensively and Lampard was fine defensively. I find it amusing when people can't even admit a player's quality when he has such an obviously great game.

I feel like Willian had a very odd game. He looked great on the break and some really nice plays and played really well for long stretches, but he made some really weird choices I don't know if I've ever seen a player hold on to the ball so much in a long time. Every time he got the ball, he'd start running with it (sometimes in weird directions) it or stand still with it for a few seconds. He needs to learn to move it quicker sometimes. That said, still very early in his career at Chelsea and he does show a lot of skill. It was nice to see that when we did move to a 4-3-3 at the end, we actually played with the proper players for it (1 defensive midfielder, 2 central midfielders, 2 wingers, and 1 striker).

Fantastic performance from Lampard who now has 4 goals and 3 assists in 11 starts. He worked brilliantly interchanging with our attackers, Hazard in particular, and had a number of beautiful passes to set up chances. That pass to Torres was sublime but Fernando Torresed it. Of course, playing well won't stop the idiots with their incessant "Lampard is useless and Mourinho is only playing him because they are best friends" or whatever idiocy they spout..Lampard has had an up and down year but has overall been decent. He's not the ideal player to start in the centre but he is still a useful player for us and is unappreciated by too many people.