TorontoChelsea

No way. Mata is not a striker. He's a good finisher but his best attribute is being able to create chances and dangerous opportunities for others. Making him the target man would generally highlight his weaknesses (he's short, he's not physical, he's not as effective in traffic) and minimize his strengths (getting into space behind the striker, being able to roam the field, setting up others.). Plus, I don't see the point. We have Ba, Torres, and Lukaku and will likely buy a striker more fitting for the team. People need to stop using Barcelona as an example of what can be done with a team because they are the exception rather than the rule so emulating them will never work.

We won despite some bad performances from some of our better players. Cahill had a fantastic game....Lampard just basically admitted they're working on a contract which is amazing!

BRANNNNNAAA!!!

Jesus...so close

6 offsides. Come on lads.

God, I hate those 45 yard free kicks. Try to play it into the box from there!!

No, Mikel doesn't get good game scores because he plays a simple game. Good game scores usually go to attacking players who are much more involved in things like key passes,shots on target and dribbling. Players like Mikel (or Cole) are underrepresented by gamescores because what they do well is not statistically recordable. That wasn't even one of his worst games? You mean the game where he scored two goals and won the game for us wasn't even one of his worst games? Really? What a shock. He had an awful game against City but everyone has bad games. You want to point to those bad games and say "that's the the real Frank Lampard" as opposed to his overall contribution which has been solid. Yes, you can pick him off the field when he has a bad game, but you can do that with everyone. Mata has been amazing, but he's also had games where he's run around like a headless chicken. So has Hazard. So has Ramires, so has Cole. Everyone has bad games, even an occasional terrible game. Stop pretending that it's the new normal for Lampard because it isn't.

He had the highest game score on our entire team before he scored. He was .leading us in tackles and interceptions and had an 85% passing rating. The idea that he one of the worst players is absurd and simply goes to the fact that you are continually looking for Lampard to have bad games. He makes a bad pass and you think "oh he's awful" and just ignore the good things he does. In fact, Lampard has our 4th best rating on the squad on whoscored over the course of the season despite playing a position that is less stat friendly than most. No, he isn't the player he was and he isn't an idea fit for a deep-lying midfielder, but he has still been one of Chelsea's better overall players this season.

His kicking is much worse than Cech's. Cech has a 57.1 passing percentage and Courtois a 46.8 one. That is with Cech attempting 18.4 passes a game as opposed to Courtois' 9.9. That's with Cech completing 5.5 long balls a game as opposed to 2.7. So, basically Cech attempts double the passes, double the long passes and has a significantly better passing rate. He also has a significantly better save percentage. The difference in goals against is based entirely on Athletico giving up so few shots. (In La Liga, Courtois has 35 games and 77 saves. Cech in the Premier League has 35 games and 116 saves. Cech literally faces 50% more shots that Courtois. That's Cech facing an extra shot on goal every single game. That's an enormous difference. How many goals do you think Cech would have conceded if Chelsea had allowed one shot less on goal per game?). Courtois has a bright future, but he simply isn't at Cech's level right now. People are way too in love with potential over reality.

Then, we sell him. He'll be great at Barcelona, but so would a lot of keepers. You can't let players on loan dictate what's best for the club just because he'll throw a hissy fit. If he's professional, he'll go where he's told. BTW, He didn't win keeper of the year, he allowed the fewest goals which is different. Victor Valdes has won that award a number of times, and he's not nearly good enough for Chelsea, and I've never really thought he was any good. Cech has been one of the top 2-3 keepers in the Premier League this season and to let him go because someone might be as good is simply ridiculous. What's best for Chelsea is for Courtois to learn the English game so when Chelsea need him, he won't have an adjustment period, he'll be ready to go.

Courtois is our only loaned player who I'd feel comfortable starting the season with as a starter...A few points to many different ones made on this thread. 1) Cech is still better for Chelsea than Courtois at this point. We saw how it took De Gea some time to get into the Premier League groove. 2) Thibaut is an very good young keeper playing on an incredibly defensive team. (Only Barcelona allowed fewer shots than Athletico). That isn't saying that Courtois isn't a great young keeper, but that playing on a team that defensive can give people the wrong impression about where someone is at because we tend to only look at stats like clean sheets and goals allowed per game. For example, Courtois has a .651 save percentage which is actually not very good. League average is Spain is .689. Cech has a .772 one which is fantastic. 3) We wouldn't get much money for Cech. Keeper is different than other positions. Unless the player is young and extremely talented, there is a fairly low ceiling. Lloris was considered one of the better keepers in the game and was what, 25 years old, and he cost 10M Euros. A similar sort of player as a striker, would have cost 50.Julio Cesar is the starting keeper for Brazil. Was the starter in Milan. He's still a quality keeper. He went on a free. Maybe someone would pay 5-8M pounds for Cech, and maybe one of the new money teams would spend more, but it won't be some great windfall or anything. 4) The problem with having both Cech and Courtois on the team is threefold-1) You have to pay starting keeper wages to two players. 2) Neither keeper would be happy not playing regularly 3) Backup keeper is a great place to get homegrown players. (Least problematic, but still.) Ideally for me, I'd want to see Courtois in England next season with a bottom-5 side. I don't care if he concedes a lot of goals (which he would on a relegation type of side) I just want him to get used to the difference in the English game for a year or two and see lots of action. A keeper will learn more facing 20 shots a game than 10. Then, after every year, we can re-visit where we are. If Cech starts to decline, we can bring Courtois back. If not, we can keep loaning him out.

City underpferformed this year because of a baffling transfer strategy and mostly because of injuries. If they upgrade on the Milner/Rodwell/Berry sort of player and add another striker, they'll be in very good shape no matter who their coach is. They will get an easier CL draw next year (couldn't get tougher than Dortmund and Madrid in their group). They, along with Chelsea and ManU will be the favourites next season.

Limp first half and some questionable calls but we came out on top. Lampard was immense. he actually had our highest game score even before he scored.He also had 3 tackle, 2 interceptions, 3 clearances, and a blocked shot. We're in the CL now which is the most important thing. Hopefully, we'll be back to where we belong, challenging for the Premier League and the CL, starting next season.

Uh oh...looks like a hamstring pull

Super Frankie indeed...

FRANK!!!!

Torres was probably our best player. (1 assist, 3 key passes, 7 tackles, made some good runs) These things are getting silly because Hazard just wins (and easily )whenever there isn't one obvious candidate... There were a lot of good candidates. Oscar played very well also and apart from the first goal, I thought Cahill and Azpi were excellent. Also, I am hardly Rafa's biggest supporter, but being an armchair general substitutions is ridiculous. I didn't like them myself (would have preferred to see Luiz or Ramires off with 15-20 minutes to go) but they have access to tons more information than we do. (Maybe one player stops running after 80 minutes, maybe another player becomes much less effective after the 75th minute, etc...) Every manager will make subs that seem weird especially when a team has a weak bench like ours (in relative terms) is. Your magical substitutions will always remain perfect because they will never be tried but the odds are that they wouldn't have made a difference at all.

Jesus...

Gorgeous goal...good game we've got here!

Damn...we've been dominating them and Adabayor has been useless.

Definitely would have gone wide without the deflection. The goal barely squeaked into the corner of the net after taking a noticeable deflection off of Jones. The right call technically but it doesn't really matter. We got the goal, we won, and we deserved the win.

We need to score while we are dominating!

Oh Ba...

We definitely need a better player to replace Marin, but that has very little to do with why we've struggled. Marin is our #8 option in the attacking midfield (Behind both Benayoun and Ramires as well). Moses was actually part of the problem this season. He was quite poor in the Premier League and really didn't do much well. (Whoscored rates him as our second worst regular after Bertrand but attacking midfield is a vastly superior statistical position than LB so even that might be generous) I'm not exactly going to give up on him, I think he'll be a decent squad player for us, but he needs to improve to have a future at Chelsea. Moses and Oscar played 50 games in the Premier League as attacking midfielders and had a combined 4 goals. You don't not win because of the end of your bench, you don't win because the players who play regularly aren't good enough. As for Mata, Oscar, and Hazard playing too often? That's simply the fault of our managers. Mata, for example, has started 10 games in domestic cups, he started both games against Nordsjalland, he's played in 7 Europa League games, etc...There's absolutely no need to be playing our top players in games like that. If ManU can play Buttner and Wooten (etc..) we can play Marin. Our managers have been under so much pressure to win trophies, that we've sacrificed points in the league chasing secondary prizes. Some of our players being overplayed is simply a result of managers not being willing to rest them in any tournament.

I agree we should probably not give him another shot, but blaming Marin (and like players) for us not winning is silly IMO. Teams don't not win because their 6th attacking midfielder isn't any good. Our problem has been that our starting XI and top squad players aren't good enough. (No striker, no real deep-lying midfielder for example)