TorontoChelsea

We were playing poorly and he was fighting with Roman all the time.

The Grant appointment was baffling, but I don't think people remember how things were under Mourinho at the end. They were very messy and we were playing really badly despite being one of the best clubs in the world. Of our last 11 league games under Mourinho, we won only 3 of them (and they were 1 goal wins against Birmingham, Reading, and Portsmouth) and that's not to mention drawing Rosenborg at home and being knocked out by LIverpool in the CL. It was still surprising at the time, but that was before we really knew Roman and in retrospect, it was much less surprising. I can't imagine any manager having that sort of awful run an not getting fired under Roman. Supporters always give too much credit and blame to managers. We won under Mourinho because we had an insanely talented team. You give Mourinho this current team and he doesn't win with it whereas Avram Grant did extremely well with that very talented team we had (66.7% winning percentage). I don't blame Rafa or RDM for us not winning this season. There is no magic tactical formula that a manager can pull out of his hat and make players play brilliantly.

Because no matter what formation we put out, we have problems. 4-3-3 means that Mata and Hazard become de-emphasized by playing the wings. The narrow 4-3-3 sort that is suggested in the first post means that we have 4 players in the attack in middle of the pitch and our width has to come from our fullbacks which will mean that we would get slaughtered on the wings as they have no protection. People want to believe that changing a formation or having one player instead of another in the starting XI will magically save our season. It's the definition of theoretical management whereby your choices which will never be implemented will always result in us winning while the managers' choices when we lose are always the problem. The reality is that we simply are not good enough or deep enough to win this year and little tweaks of the lineup won't magically fix that..

It's not a criticism of you, but of other people saying that (in a response to you). I didn't vote for MOTM either.

People who are saying "whoever voted for player X should be banned or are idiots" or something similar need to look in the mirror because everyone on our team was poor. People want to find the person to blame and are using as an excuse to blame the players they want gone/want to make a point about. The truth is that it was a very poor team effort and not one player played well.

But they're not right now. Hazard has one great 4 game stretch to start the season but other than that, he tends to disappear for games. Oscar has been overall disappointing so far. His positioning is good and he has excellent awareness, but 14 league games 0 goals, 1 assist from an attacking midfielder is just not good. Mata leads us in goals and assists in the league despite sitting out some games earlier. I'll take the bird in hand over potential every time.

I wouldn't say that at all. He's still our best player and while I don't think he's good enough for that role, he's an excellent player.

Our attackers actually had a lot of space today. Moses especially was wide open a few times as was Torres. Getting your striker behind the defence three times in a game is excellent. We had 14 shots today. Our lack of scoring made it seem like our offense was worse than it was, but we had a lot of very very good chances including 4 shots from in close any of which could/should have been a goal (Cahill off the line, Torres saved on the pass from Lampard, Moses great save, Torres trying to jump over ball, misses. Accidentally knocks it off his toe towards keeper). Not to mention, there were a number of places where we had the ball in good space on the wings and couldn't cross at all. We have had problems with disjointed attack, but today was not really one of them. It was just ineffective. Also, agree with you on the overreaction to the loss. We are Champions of Europe, we won what is easily the best and most difficult club tournament in the world and losing one match in Japan doesn't change that.

Maybe, but I'm not convinced. I see that whenever any team plays a physical style, Mata has trouble. You can mark him out of games. It's not just a matter of people not seeing his movement, his own movement becomes terrible. His passing goes off. His decision making becomes suspect. When Chelsea went defensive under RDM, he became almost useless (3 goals in 19 games). He was our worst player in the latter stages of the Champions League. Don't get me wrong, he's our best player and still a terrific offensive player, one of the best in the Premier League, I just don't think he's a good enough player to be the best player on an elite team. Anyway, I didn't mean for my post to be a diatribe against Mata. I'm very happy he's with us and if we had a couple more players like him, we'd be a lot better off. My main point is that the reason we don't win is because our best players aren't good enough (and after Mata, we don't have anyone even near that level). You look at a team like United. Massive holes in the midfield and at the back but Rooney and Van Persie are elite talents who can't really be contained so they do are doing well (and they have a few other very good players).

Refuse to vote for MOTM. In the first half had some good candidates (Luiz would have been it for me) but the second half, we were awful. Our attackers had many chances to get into space and score but did nothing. Moses was terrible, Torres was wasteful, but Mata and Hazard were also mostly useless. Rafa's substitutions were too late, but I am not going to blame managers for what is clearly a fundamentally imbalanced and squad, lacking in talent. This is the board being obsessed over individual players and ignoring massive holes in the roster and in the squad balance in order to spend insane amounts of money on the players they want. I think most people have it in reverse. We tend to look at weak spots and want to improve those (which we do need to do) and look at those as the reason why we don't perform well. For me, the biggest problem Chelsea have is that our best players aren't good enough. Mata is our best player but I've seen him completely taken out of way too many games on the offensive end and he never offers much on the defensive end. How far will you go as a team with Mata as your best player? And after that...who is our second best player? I don't even want to think about that. I have no idea how we can spend so much money year after year and still have such a weak squad.

Luiz-tale of his split personality this game. Fantastic first half. MOTM. Second half, out of position, stupid fouls, and back to those pointless long passes. Going into this tournament, didn't care too much about it, but looking at Corinthians and how dirty and uninteresting they play, I really wanted to beat them.

That was inevitable.

Moses needs to come off. Awful game.

What is that yellow thing the referee pulled out from his pocket?

I don't understand the desire to change the pivot. We are dominating possession and controlling the midfield. Yes, Ramires was awful for about the first 20 minutes but settled down after that. Lampard had two gorgeous passes to Torres that put him in behind the defence. Our problems have been (aside from the Cahill screw-up) up front. Moses and Torres have gotten into great positions and not scored, neither Hazard or Mata are doing much. We have space, we just aren't doing enough with it.

We're actually playing pretty well. We're winning position and possession We're getting the ball to our forwards in plenty of space but they just aren't doing anything with it and aside from one horrible back-heel from Cahill, Corinthian's chances have been mostly long shots. Hazard got the dangerous free kick but aside from that, our forward four really have been pretty non-existent. They just need to connect better and we'll win.

Ref, you got to start giving some yellows. They're killing us out there.

You've mentioned this before but we never used this double pivot last season. (Maybe we did for a game or two) We mostly played 4-2-3-1 with Lampard and Mikel in the pivot and Ramires on the right of attack.

Wow Ramires is having an awful first 15 minutes. Calm down mate!

He heard you...what a pass to Torres!

Yeah. I wonder why no Mikel when he's going to get plenty of rest coming up. Maybe Rafa wants to have a look at Lamps/Ramires in the pivot as a possibility for league games.

Extremely unlikely but even if we did, probably not. Roman wants Guardiola and failing that some other long-term manager. Don't see Rafa being manager next season unless we play excellent football the rest of the year AND Roman is turned down by a few different managers.

Almost nil. I don't think Roman sees Benitez as a long-term manager (hence the short-term contract). We aren't going to win the CL or the league this year which would force Roman to re-consider Benitez and then wait to fire him after his first bad spell the next year. Roman will bring in a manager he wants in the summer.

I hope not. We're pretty far north so it's dark a lot in winter. @dionsa- Absolutely...mostly Americans though. You can tell people we ride to work with huskies pulling our sleds and lots of them would believe you.

The weirdest one about Australians is Fosters... an Australian beer that Australians never drink but everyone thinks they do. Many stereotypes have a grain of truth, many don't. There's a difference between a stereotype-say, thinking Canadians like hockey which we mostly do and just idiocy like thinking Canadians live in igloos (when a good 10% of us don't!) Stereotypes don't bother me. Idiocy does.