TorontoChelsea

Oh good, let's have 350 pages of this too.

Welcome!

Exactly. There is a difference between rotating players which you do every match, and resting players which you do when you have an easy game. Most clubs have around 15 regular players that they will rotate into the games on a regular basis. For us, That's Cech, Cole, Terry, Cahill, Luiz, Ivanovic,Mikel, Ramires, Lampard, Oscar, Hazard, Mata, Torres, and Sturridge with Moses and Bertrand close to that group as well. Other players can play their way into that group also. .

Not sure what our current style is. I don't think we have one yet. We are mostly just relying on individual skill to try to create goals. I just think possession is vastly overrated. Look at our match against Stoke, one of the worst road teams in the Premier League. We had the ball most of the time, had it in decent areas and created 1 good scoring all game which came off of a an incredible bit of individual skill. I care much more about creating and preventing opportunities to score.

The good thing about counter-attack is that you don't have to chase. You can sit back and wait. Besides, how many teams in the world can pass the ball like Barca? None.

I actually think Dortmund is the ideal football model to follow. Both financially where they manage to be successful in a tough league despite spending wisely and on the field where they play an attractive brand of football that is more realistic for teams to emulate than what Barcelona play. They play beautiful, quick counter-attacking game. They open up space beautifully for their attackers and are adept at passing short and long. Even in this game where Dortmund vastly outplayed City, City still had 64% of the possession. I find that style much more exciting than the infinite midfield passing of Barcelona. I think people obsess about possession too much anyway. Just my POV.

Thought it was a 50-50 call. Seen them given, seen them not given. Dortmund was unlucky as they had the run of play, but that's why you need to put away the chances you do get.

I think the economy has something to do with that to be honest. It's not cheap to go to games and people just have less money to spend than they used to.

You almost feel sorry for Joe Hart.

Play has opened up well. BD moving the ball very well. Couple of nice saves from Hart too.

Also, it makes it tougher for them in the league. We all saw how it was impossible for us to play our starters late in the season last season because of the CL and FA Cups. I'd love to see all the English teams get to the quarter-finals at least.

I actually hate how extra time is given. The first half is always 1 minute and if there's an injury, a red card, or a couple of goals, maybe you'll get 2 minutes. Second half is always 3 or 4 minutes except in rare occasions. I remember reading that the amount of time the ball is actually in play is about 60 minutes in a game. Either way, I actually think extra time should be generally longer than it is. Especially, when you've had 6 changes, 4 bookings, 2 goals, 3 minor injuries, and about 5 minutes of time wasting in a half and then you get 4 minutes of extra time. It's really just a convention that just makes no sense. I'd just rather see more actual football.

HA! I watched Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High when I was younger and Snake was on those as well. I actually knew someone who lived on De Grassi street in Toronto which the show is named after. I always heard the show had a wide audience, but it's still surprising. .

You need a great passer from central midfield for the 4-2-3-1. It's essential to the set-up. Chelsea are either going to move Oscar back to that position or are going to have to buy someone who fits that role long-term. Having a poor passer in that spot breaks up the offense as you can't link play between the defenders and the attacks properly. @Bluesmaster-thought the ref had a poor game throughout. Not biased in any way, just way too quick with his whistle. The game was pretty clean. If I think about the game, I think there were maybe 5-7 fouls by either team and then you look at the stats and see 27 total fouls which is just ridiculous.I think sometimes refs feel like they need to make a mark on the game when really, they're at their best when you don't even notice them.

That's an absurd comparison. Ya Ya Toure is a beast. He is also an excellent passer and a very smart offensive player. Ramires is not. (Ya Ya Toure created a chance once every 49 minutes last season. Ramires created one once every 124 minutes which is one of the worst rates among box to box midfielders in the Premier league.) He is also a terrible crosser. Ramires is excellent for a counter-attack system because his speed is incredible, but he is not a good player with the ball at his feet. Ramires has specific strengths. He's an aggressive tackler with a high success rate, he is a great dribbler, he can slot in at a number of positions, he's incredibly fast, and he has wonderful stamina but he also has severe drawbacks as a player . This is a good statistical analysis of last season. http://www.eplindex.com/14737/premier-league-team-year-1112-opta-stats-part-2-midfield.html

I watched the match and broke down every one of the opposition attacks. None of them were the fault of Lampard playing too far upfield and there is no way in hell he should be playing in Mikel's spot. Of the two midfielders, Ramires is the more defensive in the pivot and rightly played a deeper role (And HE, not Lampard, made two awful defensive mistakes which led to chances). As far as us benefiting more from Ramires attacks, I am very dubious about that. Ramires is definitely better defensively than Lampard but he is vastly inferior offensively.He is a much poorer passer, has worse vision, doesn't create opportunities, and is a worse finisher. It's not even remotely close. (And the statistics bear this out. Lampard was one of the most creative midfielders in the premier league last season and Ramires was one of the least). He does create space, but only if we have natural width and in this current set-up, Ramires' counter-attack offensive game is mostly wasted. RDM has been using Ramires in the centre to provide defensive solidity and speed in the middle of the park and it's worked. Ramires is not in there for his offensive game which is very limited.

I would have said Bluesmaster too, but he's all corporate now. Tough for me, a bunch of posters I quite like so I'll just throw out a few names: Joker10, SeB, Zolayes, DYC, ..(On another note, is there a way we can easily see who the past winners are? Wouldn't want to vote for someone who has got it recently).

I agree that he doesn't deserve an automatic starting spot anymore, but I don't think many people do. As far as one-touch football, Lampard can play that just fine (his pass to Mata was a gorgeous example of that as was his pass to Ramires against Barca) but I don't think you can have long-term success playing just that type of football in England anyway. It's just too easy to defend. That has actually been our biggest problem this season-the reliance on individual moments of brilliance for our goals rather than building up play into an attack. You can pass the ball around all you want, but you have to be able to break down the defence. You need to be able to switch the attack over, to have an aerial game, to be versatile to win. As far as Lampard not having any legs. He covered more distance than any other Chelsea player against Juventus and again last night. He doesn't have great speed, but the deep-lying midfielder doesn't really need to be fast. And yes, there are definitely people on here who are seriously slating Lampard. In fact, I'd say after Mikel, he's probably the most hated player on here. I'm not saying he should be starting every game, he definitely shouldn't be and I trust RDM to keep using our squad well, but if people can't acknowledge when he plays well, something is wrong.

This is what's called confirmation bias. Lampard was probably our best player in the first half. Not only was his assist brilliant, but he frequently opened up play with excellent passing (including a couple of incredible passes to Moses on the left). He wasn't as instrumental to the team in the second half, but overall, he ran more than any other Chelsea player, passed well, timed his runs well, interplayed well with the attackers, drew a couple of fouls, and was solid defensively. The "moving the ball too slowly" stuff was just nonsense as well today. He moved the ball well all game. The issue with our ball movement came from not having a deep midfielder who was able to link up the play and then from Moses making a lot of poor decisions in attack The desire to see Lampard have bad games has reached an insane level. I swear, there are only like 10-15 people on here who actually seem to watch the games.

His defensive positioning was never his strong point but it's been poor this season. Part of that is that because we are playing such a tight formation, we rely on our fullbacks to give us width in the attack and Brana has been a big part of a number of our goals but yes, this is something we need to sort out at some point. (Hopefully by getting more width up front).

I agree that playing without a true DM would be risky against better clubs, but it wasn't remotely the problem tonight. Our (limited) defensive problem was due mostly to us not pressing them when they were in possession. They were then able to bring the ball up unmolested. The chances we gave up: 1-Shot from about 20 yards out. Cole horrible pass and then Ramires horrible tackle. Shot went sailing over net. 2-Moses was slow on closing his man who was able to get a pass in to someone Cole was marking who made a nice cross to Nordstrand but Cahill got there first 3-A shot hit off Lampard's head and deflected out. Moses was a little late in closing but the shot was about 30 yards out and low and an easy save for Cech. 4-Ramires was badly beaten by his man who took a shot from outside the box that went wide 5-Ivanovic let his man get behind the D (also, poor communication so they didn't know) and he hit a free header over the bar. 6-Ivanovic was out of position and his man got way too central and then Luiz probably should have marked him closer and he took a great shot that hit the bar and then rebound came to one of their players and hit Cole with the shot. Of those, #2 wasn't even a shot and #3 was an easy save and even #1 would have taken a ridiculous shot to have scored. We're talking about really conceding 3 good chances. Ramires made two awful defensive plays, but they were his usual kind made by chasing the ball instead of playing the man and getting beaten because of it. His positioning was fine, he just made two bad decisions. Ivanovic had bad positioning on two plays. Mikel does allow us to pass the ball up the field better as he drops deeper and then hands it off to a more attacking player, but I think people have got insanely obsessed with the double pivot and look at that area as the cause of all of our problems even when it is fine. Again, this isn't a combination I'd use very often, you need someone who is excellent defensively and very conservative in the DM spot.

Mata has a lot of good free kicks. Every single one I've seen Luiz take before this one has been poor, most of them awful.. This one was fantastic though. Unstoppable.

Thought Ramires was pretty bad in the first half and excellent in the second. He is solid defensively, but he has a problem where he chases the ball instead of positioning himself against the player. This leads to risky tackles where if he misses, the player is able to get by him and create an odd-man rush. (As happened against Arsenal where he made an awful attempted tackle on AOC which led to the Giroud chance.) Of course, when he gets those right, he can break into attack with incredible speed.

There was still a lot of passing that went up to the build-up of Mata's goal, then it took a lucky bounce. The other two goals were both great three-man plays. Also, we created more chances to score this game than I think we have in the previous 4 or 5 combined. Not too surprising based on the competition, but still nice to see. The lack of creating chances has been my biggest worry so far this season. I still think if Hazard starts instead of Moses, we score at least 3 more goals. It wasn't just his misplays, there were also a few times when Torres or Oscar had great incredible runs and were basically unmarked and in on goal if Moses had passed but he just put his head down and ran. I'm not going to overreact because everyone has bad games, but that was one of the worst performances I've seen from a Chelsea player this year.

Another positive-three of our goals were actually built up by team play which is something we've been missing. Our goals have mostly been one piece of brilliance for a goal or one brilliant pass for a goal.