TorontoChelsea

I did love Terry "stretching" in front of the West Ham fans (waving his ass at them).

Agreed. Most of the games, he just hasn't gotten opportunities, he had 3 or 4 very good chances to score. I think people sometimes are too hard on misses, even the best strikers probably only cover half their very good chances, but if you keep getting opportunities, you need to put one away.

What a performance by Hazard. He's quickly becoming as important to the team as Mata. Great performance overall, although West Ham played pretty decently actually. Carroll is a beast in the air and fantastic at holding the ball up but luckily his finishing is poor and West Ham have no one to play off him. Lampard, Azpilicueta, and Ramires were also all excellent and most of our performances were very good. We really should have scored 4 or 5. Our place in the top-4 is looking very good right now.

Great game, generally dominant performance and got the 3 points.

Damn Frank, should have scored that one. Beautiful pass by Oscar.

Wow, Hazard...

Chelsea have an 86% passing rate and 70% possession yet I'm still nervous. We need to put away one of these many chances.

Great block by Ramires.

200!!!!!

Carroll gets some stick (because his transfer rate was ridiculous) but he is amazing in the air 10.5 aerial duels won a game. Easily leads the Premier League.

I disagree. If we bought Cavani or Falcao, Lukaku would be a great #2 striker and a #2 striker can play a lot and get is crucial to a team winning. Even if the new striker were to start 40 games, that's still 20 starts and probably 30 sub appearances. It would mean we'd have to sell Ba and Torres though.

New stadiums IMO tend to make crowds even quieter for a couple of reasons. 1) Corporate seats/boxes means lots of people going to games as a business expense so plenty of quiet crowds and people who aren't supporters. 2) Generally more expensive tickets means a different type of atmosphere. (In theory, prices could come down, but in new stadiums with a successful team, it's more likely they'll go up.) That said, we do need a new stadium to compete long-term and if it's done right, it will be a massive help for Chelsea and allow more people to go to games.

I agree. The third striker will probably never play anyway but I'd be completely fine with Moses as an emergency striker. Lukaku has certainly earned his chance at Chelsea. In an ideal world, I'd prefer to see him as our #2 striker, starting about 25 games and subbing into another 25 behind a world-class striker but we're sort of in between as I see Ba more as a #2 striker as well and Torres as #3. The Torres signing has been so awful, I think pretty easily the worst in history not just for the insane money he cost and his incompetence, but because of the seemingly endless negative domino effect it has had. The only downside of bringing Lukaku back to me is that we have to fix our system so that strikers can succeed. Lukaku or anyone would not score many goals on this Chelsea team because we don't create chances for strikers. A new manager should be able to install a system that benefits our strikers more though.

Again. ManU and City play with 2 or 3 strikers in their starting XI. We play with 1. 4 strikers for 2 spots is fine. 3 strikers for 1 spot means the #3 striker will basically never play.

I agree with you about Fabergas/Iniesta/Xavi combo. All of them are fantastic players but in football you need more than just talent and I think Fabergas actually imbalances the squad. (Which I think is a similar problem that we're having but on a lower scale). It's one of the many problems of some teams having too much money. Fabergas is an elite player and would be running most teams in the world, but in Barcelona, he's probably best used as a squad player. I think Alba is incredible going forward but a little lightweight defensively. He's still be the defender I'd choose from them. Puyol at this point is a lot like Terry IMO. Still a very solid defender and a leader but he's really slow and if Barcelona weren't so dominant in controlling the ball, he'd be exposed by quick forwards. (He's also missed a lot of time over the past 3 years.)

I disagree. They had a great performance against Milan but...they were bad in the first leg and the second leg, they dominated for the first 20-30 minutes but still gave Milan plenty of chances on the counter. (And Milan is hardly a European powerhouse this year). I think Barcelona is as good as anyone in Europe, but they also are definitely not the team they were a few years ago. Some of it is a lack of a manager, but I also think it's more. They are predictable offensively and if you can shut down the centre of the pitch, you can limit them. Against us last season, yes, they were unlucky, but by the end of the second leg, despite being up by a man, they had run out of ideas. If you are an organized team like Madrid or Juventus or Bayern, I definitely see Barcelona as beatable. Their defenders are also vastly overrated. I don't think any of them are all that good but years of never conceding possession and not having to defend has people thinking they are world-class (and I think Valdes is not all that great either).

I don't know. I think Bayern is maybe the best team in Europe right now. They've conceded 10 goals in 25 matches. Barcelona have actually been in relatively pretty poor form recently. Barcelona is a great team, but they're not unbeatable, they are quite vulnerable defensively, and they certainly aren't vastly better than a number of other teams still alive in the CL.

That reaction is ridiculous IMO. There were only 7 possible opponents and 3 of them (Barca, Madrid, and Bayern) would be extremely difficult and 2 more (Dortmund and Juventus) would be very hard as well. Malaga and Galatasaray were the easy draws but they only had a 28.6% chance of getting one of those teams. It's not like there were 7 possible draws and 6 of them were against mediocre teams and they got Barcelona. Arsenal, ManU, and Milan got unlucky in the draw last stage because there were a lot of mediocre teams still around but this is the CL quarter-finals, it should be difficult.

One other issue I forgot to mention is the need for a system change. (from a new manager with his own ideas). We talk about getting new strikers in which we will and we need but the system we play now makes it almost impossible for a striker to succeed. This is the third straight season where we aren't likely to have a striker top 11 or so goals. That's not just Torres. It's Anelka, Drogba, and Ba. Sure, some of this is Torres' awfulness, but some of it is that we play a system where strikers aren't able to succeed. I think for the long-term success of a club, it's important that this changes.

Pivot is an issue but not our only one. To my mind, we have three major issues. One, is the pivot. We lack a deep-lying midfielder, someone who can distribute from the centre of the pitch and also contribute enough defensively to make a difference. We also lack width up front. I like Moses, but I think it's more likely he plays a squad role (which is still very important) than a regular starting XI player in the future. Probably too early to tell, but it's my gut feeling. Hazard, Mata, Oscar, and De Bruyne all like to play/are best suited for attacking central midfield. How can we accommodate four players into what should be two spots (the third should really go to a natural winger). Maybe De Bruyne or Oscar could be made into a central midfielder which would help us in two spots but it's not a given that either would succeed. Our third major problem is a lack of an elite central defender. We've had such great defenders for so long-Terry, Carvalho, Desailly, and Leboeuf dominated our central defence for about 15 years and now we need someone younger than Terry to step up and be that next defensive force or we likely need to buy someone who can be.

Anyone can beat anyone, but we'd be heavily favoured. We are the fifth ranked team in UEFA's coefficient. Kazan is 42nd. I don't think they have a single player who would play regularly for Chelsea. Rondon was a servicable striker in Spain and M'Vila is an overrated headcase. I'm not saying we're going to win, but this is not Spurs or Lazio or even Benfica in terms of talent.

Bayern-Juve looks like the best game. Hard to see Dortmund, Barcelona, and Madrid not getting through.

One of the easiest draws we could get. They are the sixth place team in a crappy league. They had one big win at Athletico but a season's worth of mediocrity is more indicative of their ability than one game. An easy win at home (especially without conceding) would allow Chelsea to rest some players on the way leg and maybe not even subject them to the travel.

Lots of people outside England can go to regular games if you live on continental Europe. Anyway, the expectations of supporters at games is absurd. It's fine to have that screaming at the top of your lungs all the time feeling when you're 15 years old but when you're married with a couple of kids and working 45 hours a week, worried about making ends meet,tired all the time etc...you might like to go to a game with your son, you might like to go to a game with mates as a nice night out. The super-pumped screaming fan all the time stage slows down a lot as real life comes in and you only can get that excited for massive matches. That's why you will always have great atmosphere against Arsenal or Spurs or ManU or in the CL knockout stage, but won't all the time. It's the same with everyone. It's not some massive problem. It's normal.

Well, that makes a massive difference. Ryanair and Easyjet are amazing for cheap European flights. Wish something like that existed for longer ones.