TorontoChelsea

The problem is that this whole thing is ridiculous. Mata was easily our best player in the past 2 years. Suddenly, a game or two into the season, Mata has to play game by game for a spot out of position in a style he's not suited for, something Oscar and Hazard don't have to do. They have bad games and they're right back in the starting XI in the same spots. I'm not worried about Mata's ability. Last year, he was was pretty awful for his first 6 games. 0 goals, 0 assists. He had 20 goals and 28 assists after that. He's been great for 2 years. If Chelsea were to give him a few games in a row, he'd be back to his dominant offensive self. (Although still a liability defensively) I am worried about and don't remotely understand the way he's being jerked around, especially when offensive creativity is the single thing we are missing the most. BTW, In Mata's 3 starts, he has started with 5 different central midfielders (Van Ginkel, Essien, Lampard, Mikel, RamiresX2), 5 different attacking midfielders (Willian, De Bruyne, Oscar, Schurrle, HazardX2) and 3 different strikers (Eto's, Torres, Ba). For a player that relies on reading plays developing and chemistry with other players, how is he supposed to do that when he never plays with the same players?

Azpilicueta, Bertrand, De Bruyne, and Van Ginkel are all young players who haven't played much. Chelsea have a big squad and have to work everyone in. We don't really need to get players like Baker who are years away from Chelsea, playing time.

I think Ivanovic and Azpilicueta is a perfect combo to have. Both offer different things and can play in different games depending on matchups but that means more than Aziplicueta playing just against League One sides. My biggest reservation about Mourinho coming back was that he'd manage his preferencial way (defensive solidity, counter-attack) rather than to the squad Chelsea have assembled (skilled, exciting, not all that good defensively) and so far, IMO, that seems to be the case. Hopefully, it's a matter of him getting familiar with the squad and playing it safe until then.

I find this pretty funny. I'm not Torres apologist, I personally think that the three strikers should be rotated based on matchups with Eto's getting the most time, but this gives Eto'o credit for neutral or negative play. Taking 9 shots in 2 league games is only a positive if they actually lead to goals. Taking lots of shots is not, of itself, a virtue. Same with spending time in the penalty area. It, in itself is not a positive, it depends what you're doing there and outside the box.. And all this is based on 2, 3 games anyway? You can't get remotely enough statistical date to prove anything based on that. Come on!!! Eto'o is probably our best bet at striker, but he'll need to do more than take lots of shots and spend time in action areas if he's to deserve regular playing time there.

I tend to agree with this. Mata simply doesn't have the attributes that Mourinho wants from a winger. If you want Mata on your team, you need to largely build an attack around him. This is true of a almost any top offensive player. To me, this whole thing seems disingenuous and a way to isolate Mata without seeming like the bad guy. Mourinho is not going to make him a better player. We've seen the best of Mata which is pretty fantastic and know what he can and can't do. Take any player and say "you have to play at a position and role you're clearly not suited for and compete with 4 other players for it" and what do you expect to happen? If Mourinho didn't like the way Chelsea played with Mata on the team, then why the hell is he still here? Mata as the centrepiece of your offense is incredibly valuable. Mata as a squad player, playing a system and position that doesn't fit him is not worth a fraction of what Chelsea could get for him. I would have been fine if Chelsea had sold him, that would have made sense to me, but this treatment is much worse.

Except you don't remember correctly. I don't have positional data in his season, but I can look at his 4 CL games and in every single one, he played on the left hand side as an attacking midfielder/winger. Not one single game in the centre. I doubt that was done only for the CL either. If you can find data that shows him playing central midfield that year, I'd love to see it. I do believe he played some central midfield the year before but 1) That was 3 years ago in the Belgian league. 2) His best play has come as an attacking midfielder. It's where he was productive for Bremen, it's where he plays for Belgium. It's where he's played for Chelsea. The reason he's at Chelsea is his play at attacking midfield, not what he did at central midfield on a few occasions a few years back. 3) He is an awful defensive player who had a passing percentage of under 80% last season. That simply does not translate into a good central midfield player. His best attributes are setting up scoring chances and crossing which would be wasted in the centre anyway. As I said, De Bruyne as a central midfielder is a fantasy by people who want to force a starting XI with the players they want in the lineup. .

Not really with Bremen. He played as CM in a 4-3-3 but in reality, he played right behind the striker in a role which would be the #10 in our system and nothing like the central midfield of a 4-2-3-1. Maybe he played CM at Genk, but I don't think in his last year there, he did (I think he played mostly on the wing). The idea of moving De Bruyne to the pivot has always seemed like a fantasy than reality. De Bruyne's game is simply not suited for that position (bad defensively, too low percentage passer). His game is naturally suited for an attacking midfielder. @mediator. In the Real Madrid match, have a look at De Bruyne's average position. His average position was further forward than any player except Lukaku. (Even further than Torres' position when he came on.) That's not central midfield.

We got the 3 points which is what matters but another mediocre performance against a poor side with no fluidity at all. A win is a win, but at some point, we are going to have to put in good performances or we will keep losing too many of the games.

This is just about the most defensive-minded, conservative team possible. We should still win mind you.

I'd love to see us actually play really well for a stretch. The first half against Hull, we really looked good and since then, we've had almost no flow.

I don't really get it either. Yes, Mata is not in form, but it is absolutely impossible to gain form by playing out of position and only once every few games. Oscar is a more balanced player but you can see what we're missing from last season without Mata. We simply don't have near the same creativity that we have when Mata is going. Oscar is a more balanced player but is not near the creator that Mata is. I think you can get away with less creativity in the middle if we had real wingers who stretch the defense or someone like Rooney who is a very creative striker, but right now we have the same issue as last year where players just crowd the middle of the pitch so we are too easy to defend against. Oscar was fantastic against Hull and against Basel but apart from that has been pretty poor so I'm not sure where this "fantastic form" stuff comes from for him. He has 6 total chances created in the Premier League this season which is half of Hazard, the same as Ramires and one more than Lampard despite playing in the position that lends itself to creating the most. (Mata created 2.7 chances a game last season for example. Oscar is at 1.5) He's also gone down from 2.5 tackles a game to 0.8. Whoscored has him as our 8th best player so far and Squawka as our 7th. We've all seen what he's capable of, but he has to improve significantly offensively which is very possible given his age and natural skills.

There always has to be one team "in crises" it's ridiculous. We're only 3 points out of first, hardly some insurmountable difference. That said, I understand why we are the club picked as the "in crises" one right now. We haven't had a good game all season. We haven't won a game since we beat Villa. We have 4 goals in 4 games and we lost an incredibly easy CL game whereas City and United won theirs handily. We win a couple of games in a row, the media focus will shift to another team.

Last night, one of the biggest issues was nobody overlappping with Ivanovic on the right. He had acres of space but Willian pretty much never made runs to set up crosses. It's hard to blame him because that's not who he is, but it's what we need. (Someone who actually stays out wide!!)

The reason is because both are atrocious defensively. It's OK to have one player like that, but you have 2 and you are asking for trouble.

Schurrle or Willian will likely play on the left if Hazard is sitting (which he should). De Bruyne might get a chance on the right but I think it's more important to get Mata going (actually probably the single most important thing for Chelsea right now.) After the Willian signing,, De Bruyne moved down to become our #6 attacking midfielder. Maybe he can play his way into playing time, but it's hard to see him getting a lot of playing time with how crowded Chelsea's attack is (and with Mourinho liking to bring on 2 strikers late in the game).

Lampard was our second best player last night and has actually been one of our better players all season. He had 4 key passes last night and was instrumental in almost all of our dangerous play. He seems to be working very well with Oscar in the middle so far, interchanging positions and building a rapport (which can happen when you actually play a string of games in the same position Jose!). Yes, he needs to be rested more and becomes much less effective when he plays too much (like Cole), but Mourinho likes him for a reason. Not only is he still one of our biggest threats going forward, he also does a lot of simple things right. For example, last night Chelsea were dispossessed 11 times and had 19 turnovers. Lampard had 0 of them. (Which brings me to how overrated dribbling can be. There are times when it's incredible, but a lot of the time, a simple pass is better because trying to dribble a lot leads to a lot of turnovers.)

I am someone who is against overreacting to single results but we're now what, 5, 6 games into the season and we have looked poor in all of them. I am struggling to think why a team with so many attacking weapons is so feeble going forward. (Really, only Oscar, Lampard, and Ivanovic have been somewhat consistently dangerous offensively I think Cole clearly needs a break. He has bad ankles and can't play twice a week, every week. Van Ginkel was really poor not that at is says anything about his future. It's just one bad game. (And it has the positive of stopping people thinking that he was an elite player rather than a project) We saw the good and the bad of Luiz again. His excellent pass to Lampard helped set up the goal but he was once again completely out of position a number of times. Also, not sure what planet Hazard was on during the game. Tried to dribble 6 players at once, not tracking back at all, diving multiple times. Awful. This is the second straight game where I found Mourinho's subs baffling. Mikel for Van Ginkel made sense. MVG was poor and on a yellow. But Ba for Lampard? Lampard was one of our only offensive weapons and it completely once again imbalanced the team. If Mourinho thought Lampard should come off, why not De Bruyne who is a much more natural fit? (Also the second game where I thought Eto'o should have come off and didn't) It's incredibly frustrating. Willian was OK but he strikes me as another one of the same. An attacking midfielder who likes to drift into the middle. We have five of those already! Our lack of width and poor spacing and poor movement in the attacking midfield was a massive issue last year and doesn't seem to have changed. There is obviously a problem with either Mourinho getting his message to sink in or players not being able to execute it. Things will get better. We have too much talent for them not to, but this is just awful right now.

Also, first Champions League game, first start, etc...Even if that weren't the case, you can't overreact to a poor or great game or two and you can't judge a players' quality for a fair bit longer than that..

Oscar loves Europe!

I have no problem with Ivanovic being out starter. He's a very good player. The issue here for me is that Azpilicueta showed that he deserves to get game time at least and this is our 6th game of any meaning and Azpilicueta hasn't started a single one. A CB will get hurt/suspended at some point which will give Azpilicueta minutes so he will definitely play, but it's curious.

That makes no sense. Makalele was as good a defensive midfielder as there's been. Are you saying that we should only accept defensive midfielders as good as Makalele which is basically nobody? Are you saying that because we can't find someone as good as Makalele, we need to play without a defensive midfielder? That's the equivalent of saying that since we don't have a central defender as good Carvalho and Terry were, we should abandon having central defenders.

Hope we'll start to see some more rotation to rest some players. I'd like to see Azpilicueta and MVG and maybe Bertrand in the starting XI. This is a game we should win no matter what (no excuses if we don't) and we have to get players playing time.

I've never said I didn't like Luiz, he is out best central defender when he's not being an idiot. You just massively overrate the value of his offensive skills. (as do many other people. Luiz is our worst finisher and worst percentage long-ball passer) and underrate players who don't make mistakes. Yes, not all teams use a pure defensive midfielder but many many still do. Anyway, Javi Martinez and Busquets are both defensive midfielders in a fairly classic sense. (Busquets has 4 goals in 150 games with maybe the best offensive teams ever) Many top Premier League teams still play with a defensive midfielder as well.(Garcia, Sandro, Lucas, Barry, etc..) Regardless of the exact sort of player, pretty much every team needs the same sort of player, that is players who move the ball well, who don't shoot much, who don't try too many fancy things, who play simple, error-free football. You can't fill your squad with players who want to shoot and wander out of position. You need what they call in basketball a "glue guy" a guy who holds your team together without putting up impressive stats or trying to do too much. Teams don't have 11 guys trying to create. You have 4 or 5 . You don't have 11 guys trying to score, you have 4 or 5 (except on set pieces).

That "many" people don't appreciate.

It simply comes down to what you expect/want out of a defensive midfielder. Citing goal and assist totals from a true defensive midfielder is ridiculous because that's not their job at all. According to you, Makalele was useless because he contributed almost nothing offensively. Same with "being creative". Teams don't have 11 creative players. You don't need your defensive midfielder to be creative. It's just not his job. Mikel is certainly not an elite player but he's a very decent defensive midfielder and he does his job (staying in his lanes, tackling, not turning the ball over) very well unfortunately for him, Mikel does things that people don't appreciate. To me, he is a more valuable offensive player than Luiz whose sum contributions are a massive negative to the team. Yes, he can score a couple of goals, but if it takes 60 shots to get them, it hurts the team. Yes, he can make a great pass, but if it takes 5 turnovers to get it, it hurts the team. There is incredible value in keeping possession as there is in covering for defenders who are out of position. You could also see against Everton, the way Mikel covered for players all over the pitch when Cole and Luiz especially were out of position. I can appreciate wanting to upgrade, but the hatred of Mikel is so completely insane and hard to understand.