TorontoChelsea

Something interesting-We built up from the back today. Cech usually has a passing rate of about 55% because he hoofs the ball upfield but today it was 92%. Probably due to the way Nordsjaelland play, but maybe something to watch for.

Scoreline flatters us a little, but we did deserve the 3 points. Good result and some real positives. Biggest negative for me was Moses who was awful. Not sure why he and Mata were on their off sides.

Juve and Shakhter draw. Great result for us there.

Luiz scores from a free kick!

And it's so simple. Why doesn't RDM just say "don't do those long balls". It's basically like kicking the ball out of bounds.

He was dreadful. If he had had a good game, I think we would have scored about four goals by now.

We've played well, could have had a couple more goals. Moses' vision has been poor in this game, needs to see plays developing better and for the love of god Luiz, stop hitting long balls up the field. They never work!

It's hard to judge from RDM's lineups what's actually going to happen. When we have played with Oscar, Mata, and Hazard in the front three, we've generally actually played more defensively because Oscar drops deep. We're off to a great start so am not going to question RDM at all and it seems a perfectly reasonable lineup to me anyhow. (Good rotation while keeping strong side.)

Welcome! (great year for the Falcons so far...)

One of my best friends is a die-hard White Sox fan and he's just pissed. I'm a Tigers' fan so I'm not. If you've ever watched a White Sox broadcast, you'll enjoy this. http://deadspin.com/5946320/science-proves-that-hawk-harrelson-is-more-biased-than-every-other-al-broadcaster-combined?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews. Oh and Steven Fletcher is a good striker. (I actually think being Scottish works against him in terms of perceived value. It's odd. British players are overrated and underrated at the same time. )

Bingo....I follow baseball and it is easily the best sport for statistical analysis because every single thing can be broken down because players have individual outcomes. Because of this, the sport is filled with a tremendous number of useful statistics that managers use to their advantage all the time. In team sports, it's a lot more difficult because you can't isolate individual plays the same way If player A takes a shot from point X in the box and scores and player B takes a shot from point X in the box and doesn't score, it doesn't mean that player B is worse. The cross into the box for player B could have been awful and the cross to player A perfect. Maybe the two keepers are Casillas and Taibi, etc... There are useful stats of course, but there is no substitute for watching the game. But as SeB points out, even these wackier stats can still have value if they are overwhelming or just as a tool to "confirm a feeling".

You're right. I was looking at expected goals. Anyway, it has something to do with efficiency...or scoring goals...or at least football. I'm pretty sure of that.

It's simple...RDM is the man to take us forward until we have a poor result in which case he should be fired immediately until we win again when he should be given an extension until he plays players I don't him to play when he should be fired, etc...

It's how many more goals they scored than you would expect them to score based on where they took their shots...or something like that....so Fletcher scored 4.1 more goals than would have been expected from the positions he was in when he shot. It seems to me a very difficult stat to believe in simply because every situation is different, but I think that's it.

And he shouldn't be the one launching those 40 yard passes up the pitch either. He does those long balls forward about 2 or 3 times a game and I think pretty much every single one just turns the ball over to the opposition. On Saturday, he had one particularly awful one that he just lobbed up in the general area of Torres. He's a very good defender but when he tries to be the attacker, well, that's just not his game and it's detrimental to the club, That first free quick Luiz took, I hate when anybody takes those directly on goal. Straight on goal from like 45 yards out. You're not going to score,you're not going to get a corner, if the goalie doesn't handle it cleanly, the attackers are still too far away and the keeper can just pounce on it, you're unlikely to get a deflection. I don't know why people ever go for goal on those.

We don't know. We just have to wait and see. We were looking pretty good this time last year as well so I'm not going to go crazy but we're off to a great start even if we definitely have a some work to do.

As others have said, goal was not Mikel's fault in the least. Some goals are obviously one player's fault (like Cech's mess-up against Redding) but a lot of goals are because a couple of players made minor mistakes and this was one of them. A little too much space here and a little too much space there and presto, goal. Mikel and Ramires did make a complete mess of the play leading up to the Giroud miss though but it was a miss. Still, Mikel played well as he usually does.

Not fact. You reading into something. Check out the positioning of Chelsea against Arsenal. We had six players within about 10 feet of the centre-circle. It was obviously RDM's tactic to crowd the centre to force Arsenal up the wings. Arsenal played up the wings, not because Oscar was on Arteta, but because we simply had too many players there and they had more players than us on the wings. If you'll notice, when Oscar went off in the 73rd minute, Arsenal's attack didn't change at all. It wasn't any better when Mata was marking Arteta. They still came up the wings because that's where we gave them space. And why do you think that I would say he had a bad game against Juve? He didn't. He was great and he was great against Stoke as well. He was poor against Arsenal. Not all of us are pro and anti certain players no matter what. I don't watch games for confirmation bias like about 3/4 of people on here seem to.

I strongly disagree. Arteta was not in the game yesterday because Arsenal attacked via the wings. Their two players who had the most touches were Gibbs and Jenkinson. As they outnumbered us there, it was natural for them to attack us on the sides. Arsenal players had no problems moving around Oscar and even when he was subbed off, there was no change at all in Arteta's performance (where he was being marked, I assume by Mata). Oscar had a poor game. Again, nothing wrong with that, all players have poor games from time to time, but this is the sort of match where if it were Kalou or any player that's been at Chelsea for more than 2 years, the same people praising Oscar for his work rate would be saying "he loses the ball the time. he makes stupid fouls, work rate isn't important if you can't contribute offensively, he's useless, we need to buy this or that player."

45-55? Hmm...we won the FA Cup and the Champions League last year which means we played almost as many games as there can be and no outfield player started (which is really what you're saying, you want those players to start not to just play) more than 47 matches and that was Mata and it was too many and he wasn't able to play in any league games late in the year because he had to be rested. Now, it didn't matter because we weren't going to win the league anyway, but I don't want to risk a player being unable to play or being sup-par down the stretch in the league or in the CL semi-finals because you're scared of playing anybody but your favoured starting XI against a Norwegian team who doesn't have a single player that would make Chelsea's bench. Second of all, you need to rotate players in anyway. Teams don't have 11 starters and everyone else on the bench except in meaningless games. No team plays like that. Teams, even top teams, will have 15 players who play regularly. You have to keep players you want to be able to use in game form. Third of all, it's not as if a different starting XI would make us worse. Does replacing say Oscar, Torres, Mikel, and Luiz with Moses, Sturridge, Romeu, and Cahill make us a worse team? Not really. I'm not talking about playing Piazon or Turnbull and playing a League cup sort of lineup but if you aren't going to rotate at all, it's going to kill you later in the season,

You do realize that we have about another 55 games to go. Mata was exhausted late in the season last year and he hadn't even hit 50 games. You have to sit your starters for about 10-20 matches and if you can think of 10-20 better matches than this one to rotate some players in, I'm all ears. I'm not saying to treat it as a League Cup fixture, but there definitely needs to be some rotation.

What is this? Thoughtful analysis based on watching what actually happened in the match? That has no place here!

I'm not. He'd be perfect as a relatively cheap backup striker and he's a big target man so he offers something different. He's had 2 starts in the league for Arsenal away to Liverpool and Stoke and people are acting as if he's been bad for 5 years or something. There is such so much overreaction to tiny sample sizes.

Wow...off the post.

Sometimes, I love being a neutral. Fantastic game and I don't care about the result. If this were Chelsea, I'd be tearing my hair out.