TorontoChelsea

It' not about resting players, it's about rotating. OK, it's also about resting them. This is the first week of the season, players don't have the same stamina they have mid-season and asking them to play 3 games in 8 days or, in some cases 4 games in 10-12 days, is insane risks injury, Teams that win need to win games with their squad players to be good enough to win. If we can't beat Villa at home rotating players, we might as well give up the Premier League already because we'll have zero chance to win anything. Would a team of say, Cech, Azpilicueta, Ivanovic, Terry, Bertrand, Van Ginkel, Essien, Schurrle, Oscar, Hazard, and Lukaku find it so difficult to win? If that team isn't good enough to have a great chance at beating Villa, we're dead this year. This happened every game last year. Two common responses. Either "play Paizon, Ake, Feruz or some other player that is not nearly good enough" or "we can't take it lightly, we need to play our strongest lineup". teams need to be constantly rotating to fit with tactics and to lineup so that in the real big games (for example, ManU and definitely NOT Bayern) the best possible team is available and rested enough to be effective. Chelsea have depth and that depth allows Mourinho to rotate through different players to keep people rested. We didn't spend 18M pounds on Schurrle to run him out in Carling Cup ties. Essien wasn't brought back on the off-chance someone gets injured. Moses is going to have to get games at some point. Normal rotation of your squad does NOT equal taking a game lightly.

I'm predicting Man City to win and it's far from preposterous. You are giving an insane amount of weight to the experience of managers. Managers, even by the most generous figures, make up a relatively small difference and I don't think for a second that because Mourinho managed in a very different league years ago, he has some massive edge over Pelligrini. City has the most balanced and deepest squad so picking them makes sense. (Although I can definitely see us winning it as well.)

Jesus, how are people reading this as a defense of Torres? He's been very poor and we can do better BUT you can't have a team with Mata, Oscar, Hazard, Schurrle, De Bruyne, and Lampard and also have a striker scoring goals all the time. In order to be a top striker, you need to be shooting a lot. Suarez took 5.7 shots a game last season. Van Persie, 3.7. Torres took 1.9. Those extra shots aren't available on Chelsea. Who do you want to take the 2-4 extra shots a game off of? Our leading shooters were Mata and Lampard but they were also our best shooters and scorer. You want to take them off Hazard and Oscar? And that's without De Bruyne and Schurrle even taking any shots either. You don't add a 20 goal scorer to your team and think "hey, we're going to get another 20 goals" because you're not. Chelsea made a decision to load up on aggressive attacking midfielders. You can't have that team and also a team with a dominant striker, it just doesn't work. There are only so many goals to go around. Chelsea had a record breaking year 09-10 and they still only had 4 players score more than 5 goals and 4 players get more than 5 assists. The best striker for us IMO would be someone adept at holding the ball up and linking up well with our midfielders and is able to be an efficient scorer..

Chelsea's, as it is, set-up right now simply cannot have a dominant striker. That’s not to say that we can’t improve at the position. we certainly can, just that with our current squad and style, we can’t have a top-scoring striker. Robin Van Persie coming to Chelsea would certainly help enormously, but it would not result in an extra 30 or even 15 goals for Chelsea. If you look at Manchester City and Manchester United, the top shooters on both squads last season were strikers. United, in particular, played a possession game to key up their strikers. Van Persie had 141 shots, Rooney had 86 and nobody else even had 50. United were set up entirely to feed their strikers. Ashley Young led United with the most shots for a non-striker with 27. City was more equitable in their distribution but it was still favouring strikers. Tevez, Aguero, and Dzeko had many more shots than anyone. Chelsea distributes the shots much differently. Lampard led Chelsea with 80 shots. Mata had 70, Torres 68, Hazard 63, and Luiz 56. Now, the good news is that Lampard and Mata were our most accurate shooters so you want them taking the most shots, the bad news is that it leaves few extra shots for a new striker who wants to take more shots. Especially, when you add in the new players, De Bruyne and Schurle who both like to shoot. This is why I understand Chelsea’s pursuit of Rooney, of someone who can play off the ball and set up shots as well as take his own. It is also why someone like Falcao would never have worked at Chelsea like he did with Atletico Madrid. This brings me to my second point about usage. You want Mata, Hazard, Oscar, De Bruyne, Schurrle, and a new striker and so on to be dominant offensive forces? It’s not really possible. Teams, even top teams will have a few goal scorers and few assist guys. There aren't top teams with 5 guys with 15 goals and 5 guys with 10 assists. Even Barcelona, for all their ridiculous number of goals, only had 3 players with 10 goals and 3 with 10 assists. Real Madrid had the same. Fundamentally, you need to decide who you want to run your offence and who you want taking your shots and how you want your other players to compliment them. (This is what I liked about City’s purchases this year. They mostly bought players to compliment the excellent core they already had.) It will be interesting to see how that develops this year and who becomes or remains Chelsea’s maestros and scorers. Better Premier League teams will generally take around 14-18 shots a game. Chelsea, last season took 16.5 shots a game, which was 5th most in the league. Let’s say Chelsea get roughly the same number of shots a game this season. How are you distributing those shots? (Keep in mind that many of the shots will also come from defenders on corners and from free kicks) Schurrle and De Bruyne were the #1 and #8 shooters in the Bundesliga last season, averaging 6.3 shots a game. Those shots simply are not available at Chelsea even without adding a striker without severely reducing the number of shots taken by other players. (One thing is for sure. Luiz needs to shoot much much less. 2 goals on 56 shots means someone else should be shooting instead) Ultimately though, there is no easy answer and this might be Mourinho’s most difficult task. Having to juggle a group of talented players who all want the ball and combining the right group of players to bring out the most efficient and ruthless side. Click here to view article

I think City are the best team in the Premier League this season not because of one half either. They had the most talent last year but had some key injuries (Kompany, Silva, Toure missed time in Africa), some major distractions (Balotelli and Tevez) and then they added a lot of players of quality that fit what they needed.If they win, the credit will be given to the new manager, but I just think it's a matter of the most expensive and most talented team, winning.

I think there are some things you can read into this match, but not many. Hull are a bad side and we're at home so they gave us a lot of room and we passed it around at will. (Also, impossible to compare it to ManU and Liverpool who played more difficult opponents) Anyway, I generally like this sort of analysis (with screen shots to illustrate) but I would say it's better if you limit the number of visuals to 3-5 key ones which makes it much easier to read without scrolling so much but keep these up.

So you think Ramires is going to start 65 games? He's going to rotate plenty. This is a perfect game to sit him. A relatively easy fixture, the second of 3 within 8 days.

You think City would have sold him to us for 10M? Not a chance.

One thing I like about Oscar in the #10 is the increase in fluidity in the centre of the pitch for us. Both Lampard and Ramires like to go forward and both are pretty efficient when doing so. (Van Ginkel also likes to get forward). With Mata in the #10, this leaves a big defensive gap, but Oscar is good at providing defensive cover and the player movement (attack from all angles) really should help open teams up. Of course, it's one game against a terrible opposition, but I can see that working against better sides.

They updated this. Overall, they had him 29//37 complete passes which was 78% which is quite poor.

Thought he had a fantastic 10-15 minutes but was otherwise invisible. He's also really going to have to offer more defensively if he wants to keep starting. Not sure where MOTM talk comes from (whoscored had him as our 10th best player)

Lampard and Oscar were our best two players but a very convincing and easy win and the 2-0 scoreline flattered Hull.

Beautiful goal!

What message? That pre-season doesn't matter? It doesn't. You players have to earn their playing time by playing well in games that matter. They do that, they'll play more and more. It's funny, because the same thing happens every single year. People on message boards overreact to good or bad pre-seasons and the manager completely ignores what they did in pre-season and pencills in basically the same lineup (with injuries) he would have had they never played at all in pre-season. Those games don't matter except for fitness!

Exactly. i think the ManU game will see something close to our best starting XI but right now we don't have a best starting XI and it certainly can't be based on a few meaningless pre-season games. Anyway, we'll have a lot of rotation because we have so much depth. I can't believe people are complaining already.

Probably only 2 or 3 players Maximum will start both games this week so I don't think people should read too much into this starting XI. There is going to be very heavy rotation this year anyway.

Ref in Arsenal-Villa game seemed out of his depth. It started early with calling stupid fouls on every play and never stopped. He got a lot of calls wrong and badly wrong at that. That said, I don't get Arsenal, they've had needs for a while and have money and seem to refuse to buy anyone. They needed to sell a lot of their excess garbage (Gervinho, Chamakh, etc..) but they didn't replace them with anyone at all?

Odd to me that with Rooney out, Moyes doesn't go with Kagawa in his natural position there. Welbeck has speed but isn't the player Kagawa is. Valencia, Giggs, and Welbeck is a weak attacking midfielder 3 for ManU.

Very good 1-0 game.

Good to have real football back.

Excited. I always love a new season and this is a very exciting one. Not only do Chelsea have a good chance at winning the Premier League, but I think the quality of the league overall is as good as ever so I am hoping for a lot of very good games.

Better to play it safe in the first week in a couple of games we should win anyhow, than risk a serious injury which could knock a key player out for months.

Interesting start to the season as we have 2 of our 5 or so easiest league games in the first week followed by two very difficult ones. I expect two very different starting XIs to start the season.

Personally, I tend to enjoy it when supporters of other clubs come on the board as long as they are respectful. It tends to give a broader debate. I also can't stand the infantile name-calling. "Manure" makes the poster seem about 6 years old and is no different from those idiots who use "Chelsea" and think they're being clever. They are our rivals but to not acknowledge their history and talent is to show you don't respect football. Other teams have talent. Other teams have success. Other teams can be fun to watch. Admitting this doesn't make you a traitor, it makes you a fan of football. I don't like a world where being a supporter means you must loathe every other team. I support Chelsea. I want Chelsea to win. I don't give a flying fuck about other squads. (In fact, the positive Real Madrid and Man City threads bother me. You shouldn't support Chelsea and another big European club!)

Most teams we'd play, we'd beat them with any of our starting XI because our quality is so much better than most teams, but this starting XI is incredibly vulnerable defensively to any side that can attack at all. We have 4 attackers-the best defensively of the group is Hazard who is poor. Add to that, we have no natural defensive midfielders starting and you have an imbalanced starting XI.You need players who are going to do the glory-free dirty work in the squad, not just attacking options. A lot of our problems in the last couple of years that have been attributed to the pivot have actually been because our attackers have been so awful at tracking back, our midfield has been isolated and outnumbered. This starting group of forwards would be even worse than that. You can't just attack, you need to also be mindful of defending and that means players who are aware defensively like Essien, Mikel, and Oscar getting into the starting XI.