TorontoChelsea

De Bruyne has played 4 games this season and has one good half against Hull. (Pre-season is worthless) He's been the worst player on the pitch in pretty much every other performance. It's hard to build momentum when you don't play regularly, but at this level, you have to learn how to make an impact and build your playing time. You can't come on and be useless every game and move up the depth chart. You don't rate Schurrle, but he's been better than De Bruyne in every aspect of the game. His passing is better, his workrate is better, his impact is greater, his defensive work is vastly better, his positioning is better, he fits Mourinho's system better. Who is De Bruyne supposed to start ahead of? He's #6 on our depth chart and that's where he deserves to be until he can play his way out of it. I like his potential, but his obsessed fans drive me crazy with how much they act like he should be handed opportunities just because, opportunities he hasn't earned.

Thought he was OK but that's just sort of who he is now. He's a decent player but doesn't really offer anything going forward and isn't really a defensive midfielder either. He's a perfect squad player as he's a capable fill-in at a number of positions which we will likely need when injuries inevitably strike.

What difference does it make? You have to play every team eventually anyway..if you have a lucky schedule early, you'll have an unlucky schedule at some point.

This. He made a great play to get the ball over to Torres but made the entire play much more complicated than it had to be. Hazard made a brilliant run to create the 3 on 1 and Oscar had the ball with Hazard and especially Torres in acres of space and should almost certainly have played it to Torres where he would have only needed to hit it in his general direction for the pass to work. The play ended up working, but he chose the more difficult play which needed Oscar to use his strength to dive and stretch to pass around the defender. He was terrible yesterday but has been one of our best players all season so a bad game doesn't matter at all. (But it does show how managers can give opportunities to players to let them produce. If that were Mata having that game, he'd have been taken off at around 55 minutes).

Had a very good game yesterday. Not only was his passing accurate, but his passing was accurate with 7 long balls and 4 crosses and led the team in touches. He wasn't just passing 5 yards to the side. He was completing difficult passes at a high volume. He also made a couple of very key defensive plays and was excellent in the dead ball situations. .

This is the kind of game that really needs a manager's intervention. Our players seem sort of out of it. Azpilicueta was terrible at the beginning of the half but played well towards the end. I'd keep things as is but if nothing changes within 15-20 minutes bring on Mata for Oscar who has been invisible.

We need to keep more possession!

Azpilicueta looks really uncomfortable at LB.

He has had a poor start in the league. He's only had 2 tackles in 4 games compared to 12 fouls committed. He's won 52% of his duels which compares poorly to Terry's 69% and Cahill 79%. He's been dribbled by the other team 5 times in 4 games. Cahill and Terry have been dribbled by a combined 4 times in 12 games. He's won a total of 3 headers. Cahill has won 18. Terry has won 31. That is an insane difference. Terry has 59 clearances, Cahill has 21 and Luiz has 11. Across the board, his numbers have stunk this year. Squwaka and whoscored both have Luiz as easily our worst defender in the league this season and our worst or second worst player overall along with Torres. And yes, numbers can be misleading but when they're that bad (Wilian has as many tackles as Luiz..., 3 won headers in 4 games for a 6 foot 2 central defender?? That's embarrassing ) there's really no argument. That said, we've seen enough of Luiz over the years to know that he is a very good defender (and he's been very good in the CL so far) and a poor few games isn't going to change that. People always tend to overreact to a bad stretch of games when you have a vastly more important sample size that says something else. He should probably sit next game but Chelsea is generally a better team when he's in the starting XI.

Flattering scoreline. We deserved to win but defensively we were really vulnerable and their keeper was terrible. Hazard was fantastic. Easy MOTM for me.

Wow. Gorgeous goal!

Is this a game of who can give away the points? Two awful plays for the goals.

Exactly. January market is for people with expiring contracts or spare pieces. Otherwise, you have to badly overpay.

I don't think Valdes has ever been a great keeper. He's been right for Barcelona because he can move the ball well, but on a team like Chelsea, he would have been only OK.

Also, quarterback is easily the most important and difficult position to find in the NFL while keeper is the least important and easiest to find in football. (I'm not saying it doesn't matter, but teams can win with poor keepers and great defences can make mediocre keepers look great.).

I'd take Chelsea in a second even if Canada were great. I am generally pretty anti-nationalist ("patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel") but more than that, club football is a constant. Every year, Chelsea will play 50-60 games with meaning. International teams will play a few game a year. It's not talked about much, but most international football is utter garbage. The top level club football is much better (which makes sense as players get to play with one another every week.)

Cech is still a fantastic keeper. He was one of the best keepers in the world last season. Yes, he makes mistakes but all keepers do and Cech doesn't make many. I understand the reasons for wanting to move on to Courtois, but it's not because Cech's form has slipped.

I second that. He doesn't get enough recognition.

@Barbara both whoscored and squawka give Cole 4 interceptions. Anyway, my problem with the idea of "starting attacks" remains. To me, it is like an uncontested rebound in basketball. If one player doesn't do it another one will. If Luiz isn't there, it's not like we'd have fewer attacks, they'd just be spread out differently. If Cahill is in instead, it's not like he's going to just kick the ball out of play. He's also going to move it forward. He just likes to run it up a little less so he'd have fewer "attacks started" and everyone else would have more but the end effect for the team in this measurement (starting attacks) would be the same. Luiz likes to carry the ball across the midfield line but that's neither a positive nor a negative. It's just the way he plays. Almost everything he does positively or negatively is already quantified in stats. (Pass percentage, accurate long balls, interceptions, clearances, etc..) With all analytics, you have to to ask yourself what you are analyzing and the benefit of the statistic and here I literally see no benefit to measuring this beyond perhaps curiosity and certainly would never use this as a way to judge who had a positive or negative impact.

You're using an outlier and acting as if that is the norm. Most teams have no trouble finding replacements. Not to mention, as English Freak does, that this was 15 years ago. My other point is this. In those 6 years after Schmeichel, ManU won 3 Premier League titles. So while they struggled to replace Schmeichel, they were still the best team in England over that period. That's hardly struggling. You can win in football with a less than elite goalie.

I think people care way too much about this. Courtois looks like an excellent young keeper, but keepers are easily the easiest and cheapest position to find. It's not as if we sold Courtois, we'd have nobody, we'd just go out and buy another quality keeper. For me, I'd keep him unless some time offered 25M pounds or more then you just have to sell and we can stick with Cech for another year or two and then buy some in-form keeper for a lot less money. If we do bring back Courtois, we should sell Cech, but I'd be surprised if we got more than 5M or him. I don't think people realize how cheap keepers are. Neuer was 15M pounds and the third most expensive keeper in history., That was 2011. Lloris was 10-15M Euros last season. Both were young and considered world class keepers at the time.

Defenders will always "start" more attacks because the opposition turns the ball over more in the offensive zone than they do in midfield. Starting at attack is a fairly loose and unquantifiable term for me anyway. If Terry passes 5 yards to Lampard who then passes to Oscar who feeds Mata who scored, Terry started the attack, but a 5-yard uncontested pass is not a particularly good play. It's a play that any player should make 100% of the time. This system gives way too much credit for what is an extremely basic play. Also, what's a positive play and how much are positive plays worth? Ashley Cole had 4 interceptions which is great. How do 4 interceptions, 1 tackle, 87% pass rate, and 1/1 in crosses only add up to only 3 positive plays? Hazard and Willian didn't have a lot of positive plays but they scored goal and a goal is worth a lot of positive points. How does Eto'o who had 7 touches and no defensive contribution get a higher score than Hazard who was 15/15 for passing and scored the game-winning goal? Also, the pivot was very good. 89% passing, 9/10 on long balls, 5 tackles, 3 interceptions, 4 key passes, was fouled 3 times, had 2 dribbles, and combined to turn the ball over twice. Again, there is just way too much emphasis being put on who is doing the transition to attack.

Who was the someone else? Chelsea had no depth at all to make changes last year. I'm not defending Benitez, I don't think he did much of a job at Chelsea, just that very often what is considered managerial genius or ineptitude is simply a matter of bench depth and quality and I always find it funny when managers of big spending/massive depth teams get so much credit for changes that no other manager could make. The players Mourinho brought on as subs cost much more than the entire Norwich team. They were the right subs and it worked out well and another manager could have done worse, but there are only a few teams that have that kind of luxury and over the last couple of years, our managers have been severely hamstrung by a total lack of depth so you can't compare at all. If Rafa or RDM had Hazard and Willian on the bench, does anyone really think he would have brought on Marin? That's just being ridiculous.

I agree, but to be fair, Rafa didn't have the options Jose has. Hazard and Willian off the bench is not the same as Marin and Benayoun.