TorontoChelsea

I say yes. Our wins away at Spurs, Everton, and Arsenal were very very helpful. Everton have a very difficult remaining schedule having to play away to ManU, Livepool, Spurs, and Chelsea and home to City. That's five really tough games in their last 14. We play Spurs and Everton at home which is good although the way we're playing recently, it's easy to imagine losing any game. However, once we get Moses, Mikel, and Luiz back, we'll have more quality and maybe more importantly, be able to rotate our squad/be able to bring real options off the bench.

Ba played on the wing with Newcastle so he can. The problem I have with that is that what if we were 0-0 or down 1-0 in the 60th minute (or, for Rafa, the 80th). Who do we bring on for extra offense? It's like the reverse of the problem we had today where we started with Bertrand on the wing so couldn't really get more defensive. And yeah, I think it was zonal marking except it looked like they'd all had one two minute practice to learn it. What complete mess.

Yes, but could he win at Chelsea?

To be replaced (with a nod to The Simpsons) with an inanimate carbon rod who will lead us to an amazing Premier League comeback! "In rod we trust".

I hated the starting XI because I hate Bertrand on the wing, but the team was almost as good as could have been (I would have preferred Benayoun/Marin for Bertrand and Ba is better than Torres but 9 of your best available 11 players is hardly fielding a weak lineup). I prefer Ba to Torres generally, but Torres was excellent he created about three or four very good chances, his movement was very good, and he worked hard. He was responsible for the first goal. Ba and Torres are going to rotate and I'd rather Torres play against weaker sides...and Ba is, I assume, going to start against Newcastle which we need him for. Also, switching formations is not a simple thing. Most teams don't do it during games. Players don't know where they are supposed to be, they don't know their responsibilities, their lanes, their outlets. I can criticize Benitez for doing defender for defender when we are behind and we have attacking players available. (Bringing on Ba on the 82nd minute against Brentford WAS inexcusable IMO.) but we had a defensive formation already. Although I do have to question the marking on that last play...was it Rafa's zonal marking? I watched it again...just awful, so awful, it's almost impossible to comprehend. We had FIVE players in the middle of the box...who do we put on Le Fondre? Nobody! In fact, on the far side of the net, after our wall of Chelsea players, we have Benayoun and Azpilicueta marking four Reading players. The ball falls to the first of the Reading players and Benayoun and Azpilicueta close, he heads it on and there are THREE unmarked Reading players. In fact, even if Le Fondre forces a save, there are two unmarked Reading players now on the right side and still three on the left so a rebound is probably a goal as well. Players make mistakes, sometimes bad ones. It happens under every manager and to almost every player at some point, but that is one of the worst pieces of team defending I have ever seen from Chelsea and Rafa does need to take some blame for that. So many questions: 1-Why was the opposition's biggest goal threat not being marked at all? 2- Why where the closest players to him not someone like Cahill and Ivanovic but rather Azpilicueta and Benayoun? 3-Who was supposed to be marking which player because I have no idea even watching the clip repeatedly. 4-What the fuck??? .

Yes, because SAF has that option. He made three subs and only one of them was defensive which he could do because Jones is very capable of playing midfield. ManU starts with an incredibly attacking formation so going slightly more defensive is easy. What option did Chelsea have to go more defensive? We started with five defenders in the starting XI.. It was already a very defensive lineup. And it's not like Reading were coming on and Rafa didn't react. Reading had zero decent scoring chances until the 87th minute. We were dominating them. We looked much much more likely to score a third than they did to score at all. I want Rafa gone as much as the next guy, but I get annoyed at the knee-jerk blame stuff. We had 67% of possession, we outshot them 15-5. Did Rafa tell Oscar to keep missing the net? Did he say to his defenders "just stand in a bunch together and don't mark anyone?" At some point, the players have to take responsibility. I don't care who is on the pitch. You don't let a 2-0 lead against Reading with 8 minutes to go. Criticizing substitutions is easy because your alternate reality of substitutions will never exist so will forever be theoretically perfect. I am fine with criticizing Benitez for our lack of organization and even our lack of passion, but the players' have to take most of the blame for our poor performances. (the board gets a lot of it too. The inability to ensure that we have any depth has been disastrous.)

We already had Bertrand on the other wing. Were we going to play with 6 defenders up 2-0 against Reading in the 85th minute? What other option was there? Marin? Benayoun is much better defensively than Marin. He's better defensively than Mata for that matter. Often, replacing like for like is a good tactic as it gets in fresh legs. Also, they could have scored a third goal to put the game out of reach. The Ba substitution also made sense as it wasted a little time and brought on a player who could maybe run with the ball and hold it up. You look at ManU today, up 2-1 with only one substitution to go, what did SAF do? He brought on Nani for Kagawa. Good teams that are leading might bring on a more defensively-minded midfielder for an attacking one or a defender who is less adventurous, but mostly the subs are about getting fresh legs on. The one quibble I would have is not bringing on Terry but...Terry hasn't looked himself yet and is still finding form after a long-term injury so even that is somewhat understandable.

Disheartening to say the least. I actually don't blame Rafa's substitutions for this one. We were up 2-0 in the 87th minute. Reading didn't have a single scoring chance. Torres was excellent. Bringing on Back isn't a magic potion. Mata took a knock and he needs rest when he can get it so the Benayoun sub made sense. I did think he was going to bring on Terry after Cahill got clobbered though. I can, however, find fault with the tactics. Chelsea looked so disorganized and flat for much of the game. How were three Reading players free on the second goal. Turnbull is not good enough. Benayoun is a starter on a mid-table side sort of player but showed more in attack in a few minutes than Bertrand ever has. Oscar... should have scored 2 or 3 goals. He just can't find the net in the Premier League and it cost us big time

Can this season get worse?

Oh fuck!

That was a nice shot by Ramires.

Oscar could have a hat-trick.

Every time Turnbull has to do something, I get nervous.

Oh Oscar...great ball by Lampard and great run by Oscar, but he had time and options. He could have knocked it down to himself or passed it over to Torres. Torres is having his best game in months.

And a beautiful ball by Torres as well.

Mata!

More upset at Bertrand being in the starting XI than Torres. We know Ba and Torres will alternate and Reading is the kind of game I want Torres to be playing so Ba can play in the games that are more difficult. Bertrand has always been useless on the wing. I'd rather see Marin or Benayoun there. Also, Lampard and Ramires have been played to death. It's ridiculous. Something like 6 starts in 18 days? Maybe try Oscar there for a game just to give them a breather.

Are you being serious? You're actually using "they were tired when Rafa came" as an excuse for him?As opposed to now? Lampard and Ramires play 90 minutes every game, even in the cups. Mata and Hazard are over-used. RDM and Rafa actually have very similar rotations with the only real difference being Moses versus Oscar.

'Arry has bought Crouch twice already and he's managed him four different times.

Not much better? We're considerably worse under Rafa. Our best games (away wins over Arsenal and especially Spurs) were under RDM and our worst games (QPR, West Ham, Brentford, Swansea) were almost all under Rafa. Under RDM we were complaining about losing to Juventus not struggling to draw with Brentford. Based on results, RDM should not have been fired. It's obvious Roman didn't want him as manager, but why he didn't let him stay until the end of the year is beyond me. This would have done a few things. 1) We wouldn't have had Rafa. 2) It would have shown supporters that RDM got at least some time to show what he could do. Had RDM had the sorts of results Benitez is having, and got the entire year to do them, supporters would have understood his being dismissed. 3) It would show other managers that our owner is capable of a modicum of patience. What's done is done and I don't really see any purpose in firing Rafa now either. Just make sure he isn't back next year. (99.9% sure he won't be).

Can't blame him. In fact, a young player who goes somewhere he knows he won't play because he gets a nice contract, it isn't really what you want to see. You want your players to want to play. .

I wish him well in Milan. He's an incredible talent and has been through a lot in his life. I think he got this "me against the world" attitude which is understandable, but he needs to get past it. As for City, I see Cavani as a better fit (but still not perfect) for them as he's a more flexible player. Aguero, Ballotelli, and Tevez all play fairly regularly as a second striker/attacking midfielder. Only Dzeko plays exclusively as the #9. They could also decide to sign another attacking midfielder instead. I cn actually see someone like Jovetic making a lot of sense for them.

Don't really care. It's the problem with backup keepers in general. If they are any good, they'll want to play instead of riding the bench and you don't really want to spend money on someone who will play 5 fairly unimportant games a year. At the same time, you never know when you'll need him to play a big role. It's hard for any player to stay on their game and virtually impossible to improve, if they never play. If it's 3M for Butland, it's a fine buy, but don't understand why Butland would want to go to Chelsea.

You're being harsh. Jack isn't that bad of a name.

One or two good games? Whatever. You just don't see his quality. I think it was the early in the second half of the Arsenal game when Lampard was having a fantastic game, excellent on long balls, tackling well, etc...you posted "Lampard has been easily one of our worst players" and it's not the first time I've seen you do that either.(and not just with Lampard either. With any player you don't rate which is basically everyone except Ramires and Luiz who you will claim are having great games no matter what.). ...off the top of my head, Lampard had great games against Villa, Stoke, Leeds, Everton, Norwich, and Nordsjalland and has been good in a few more, poor in a few more, and bad in a few more.