TorontoChelsea

You're kidding me. We beat a Championship side that was resting all it's players and you're trying to draw massive conclusions from it. You can't. You can't even draw many serious conclusions from a handful of games against normal opponents.

Why do you say that? He plays #10 with Brazil, not in the central midfield. I've never seen him play central midfield so have no idea what he does there. Anyway, we don't play with a midfield 3. We play 4-2-3-1 so the unless we change formations, the choices are for him to either play somewhere in the attacking 3 or as the deep-lying midfielder. I prefer him in the attacking 3 as I think it's a better use of his skills.

Maybe, but I think you take away a lot of his best skills if you put him there. He certainly has the ability to play in central midfield, but he's not going to get into shooting areas often or be able to directly set-up attacks from central midfield.

1) Lampard did not act like a massive twat. It's nice that you buy into the anti-Chelsea media though. 2) Saying Lampard is not creative is just stupid. He was statistically the 7th most creative player in the entire Premier league last season. I don't ignore Lampard's defensive duties at all. He has them. What you and other have consistently ignored is that a lot of the pressure on the midfield often comes from the attacking players not properly doing their jobs. People look at the Juventus game and say "the central midfield was overrun" but it was overrun because it was outnumbered all the time. You just want to pin all the blame on Lampard (and maybe Mikel) and it's ridiculous. The issues have been mentioned again and again because even before the pre-season people decided that the double-pivot was the problem (because we didn't buy anyone new to play there and don't have a 21-year old in the spot) and they watched the games to confirm that. It isn't perfect at all, but it isn't nearly the big problem people want to pretend it is. People like you just turn to the same "double-pivot" problem that doesn't exist every time. We don't score? Well, it's because Lampard doesn't move the ball quickly enough. We do score? Nothing to do with Lampard of course. We concede a goal? The double-pivot is at fault? We don't concede a goal? Nothing to do with the double-pivot. See how easy it is?

First of all, he was upset at being dropped by AVB, but so what? What do you want? Him to say "oh yes, I'm happy to be benched"? You want your players to be upset when they don't play. And second of all, he deserved to play. Lampard was one of our best players overall last season and he was being dropped for players who were much worse than he was. AVB was not fired because of Lampard, he was fired because Chelsea were losing. If Chelsea win, any coach can do what they want. Second of all, you are flatly wrong. You simply cannot have a regista without creativity. It is the most important feature of the position. The entire set-up will not work otherwise. Discipline is important at every position but pretending that Lampard is some completely undisciplined player who attacks all the time and doesn't track back is just not true. In fact, our discipline in the attacking midfield (and Ivanovic so far this season) is much worse. You can look at this average position in the game and it is exactly where it should be. People just have this idea that his positioning is terrible and then look for his runs to criticize them. look at our goal versus Stoke. http://www.carefreec...pl-h-12-13.html Notice Lampard perfectly positioned defensively, then rushes up to join the play, is perfectly positioned to switch the play over and does so and Chelsea score. Nobody gave any credit to Lampard for that but that's exactly what his job is. Lampard is just getting ridiculous levels of criticism that are just not true. As I said, he's not the ideal player for the regista position, but he is easily the best choice on the squad for it. RDM plays him there because he is aware of that not because he's scared of him.

None of the players you mentioned are good fits for the regista portion of the double pivot. The attributes most needed by that position are: passing, vision, and creativity, the other players just don't work there. They are all defensive players with limited creativity. Lampard is simply our best choice for the creative midfield spot right now even though he's not ideal for that position himself. The idea that we are playing a formation solely to please Lampard or that RDM is only playing Lampard because he's afraid is absurd.

Nice win but as we were playing against what was essentially a league one side (they played fewer of their regulars than we did), it was to be expected. Happy we move on as every round means more games for some of our players who don't get to play very often. Now, on to the first huge test of the season in Arsenal. Really looking forward to that match.

The vast vast vast majority of players don't go to teams because of loyalty. If City had offered Hazard more money and guaranteed playing time, he would have gone there. It doesn't bother me in the least. That's the way every job in the world works. I think supporters have these expectations that players are like them, but they aren't. They want to make the most money and play in the best situation possible.

I don't think it would work like that. I assume they would have regions for the groups. Like Group A would be played in Britain, Group B in Spain, Group C in Germany, Group D in Turkey etc...so if you wanted to watch your country, you could safely go see the first round in one location. Then, you'd have the quarter-finals in maybe two different locations (close to where those groups were based, say the groups that were based in England and Spain would have their quarterfinals in France), the semi-finals and the finals in the "host country". I think it would be more expensive to see all the games, but less expensive for those fans who wanted to go to one or two games (since no matter what, there would always be games near you.) The travel would not be extensive as the only time it would be needed is in between rounds where there is a few days break anyway (no different than playing at home on Saturday and flying to the continent for a CL game mid-week,.) The biggest benefit to me is that countries that would have no shot of ever hosting a tournament could still host games which would be a huge deal. (Countries like Latvia, Cyprus, Estonia, etc...) Also, the games would actually be cheaper to put on overall and save a lot of money for host countries. Poland had to build four new stadiums for the Euros, which, was a massive waste of money. Poland and Ukraine spent a total of $40 billion, most of it being public money. Countries that don't have the infrastructure to host and entire tournament don't have to spend $40 Billion for stadiums and infrastructure they really only need for a few weeks, once They can use their existing national stadium or at most build one stadium. I'm not saying that I'm for it, but there are some benefits. I'd rather this than the added teams to the tournament (which is already happening unfortunately.) .

Absolutely. People love to write about Lampard's decline as if he was a great player five years ago or something. Last season plenty of fans ripped on Lampard when he had a few bad games but... OPTA stats had him as the 7th most creative player in the Premier league and the 19th most valuable overall. EA Sports PPI had Lampard as the 21st best player in the Premier League (and third most valuable on Chelsea.) So, last season, Lampard was still one of the best players in the Premier League, integral to of our success in both the attack and in defending, captained us to the CL victory, switched positions without complaint, and because of a few mediocre matches after missing the summer due to injury, people are writing him off. No, he's not ideal for the double pivot, but he very likely has a lot left to give to Chelsea.

I have many of the same feelings about Torres as you. I never like judging a player after only a handful of games. Every player has good streaks and bad streaks so it's possible those games were just one of those. I supported him through the his first awful half a season with us without reservation. Early last season, I still supported him fully, as he was still having the occasional moment of brilliance (first half ManU). Even as the season progressed, I kept thinking he was bound to come good, but was already starting to get annoyed at the absurd lengths his defenders would go to justify his incompetence. By January when his play had reached historic awfulness, I just gave up.

Interesting possible change to the Euros. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/sep/24/wembley-euro-2020-uefa-final The continent is not really that large, so I can really see this. Not sure how I feel about it.

Wouldn't want Mourinho back. He was the right coach for a specific time and team. For the team Roman wants to build, he's not really a good fit. Mourinho loves defensive discipline and explosive counter-attacks. That is simply not the team we are building.

Yeah, but this is not a thread about favourite players, it's a thread about best, and you picked a player who has played 35 league games of varying quality. If you made a real list of top-Blues of all time, he wouldn't make the top-100 at this point.

Yeah, but you know it doesn't matter. Mikel will have 10 very good games then have a bad game and we'll get the "see, he's horrible we need ....instead".

I was one of the people who liked the Moses signing, but don't you think that 60 minutes over two games as a sub is a little early to be judging whether it was a good signing or not? I think it will likely be, but let's wait at least a couple of months to see. Shevchenko scored 2 goals in his first 3 games and he turned out to be one of the biggest flops ever. There just seems to be this knee-jerk pendulum that when someone looks good in a game, they are fantastic players and when they play poorly, they are worthless.

I saw the ball boy pumping his fist. It was tremendous. I don't understand what people are saying when they talk about attacking dominance. We had 60% of the possession and a lot of it inside Stoke's half, but it was mostly empty possession where we passed the ball around the midfield. What was our second best chance to score? Torres chesting a ball down perfectly (which he did) and turning and firing (which he didn't do)? Oscar shooting wide from outside the box? Most of our shots came from long and never troubled the keeper. We really created one good scoring opportunity against what is a very weak team away from home (The 4th worst away team last season, the 3rd worst away team two years ago). We played well in spots and we won which is really what matters, so I'm always happy about that, but count me as someone who doesn't understand the extreme enthusiasm for the way we played. .

Are you saying out attacking players are too far from each other? To me, the problem is the exact opposite. There were times today where we had 5 players standing within a few yards of each other. None of the attacking midfield 3 seemed to want to go wide to create space.

And he also has to watch his fouls. He has a fantastic first touch.

No, he isn't. He's awful there. He's very good defensively, but he can't make outlet passes at all so Oscar and Mata had to drop way back to pick up the ball. He can't hit long balls, he doesn't have vision to create openings. I''m not saying that I would necessarily have started with a different lineup, just this "oh my god, our lineup was so amazing" stuff is absurd. There were very serious issues which it created that you are pretending don't exist. And being one tackle away from scoring a goal is like being one bullet away from winning at Russian Roulette.

The best we played all year? We barely squeaked a 1-0 win at home against Stoke and we barely even created any good chances. We've played 5 matches in the Premier League and this was our 2nd worst result. The conformation bias here is ridiculous.

Teams don't stay narrow no matter what. If you have a winger, it's not like teams are going to just let them get the ball and pass into the box without marking them. Creating width is about spreading the defence and creating lanes for your players to be able to get through. You need width in every single match, no matter who you are playing. It's about creating space. I'm not criticizing RDM, because he has to rest players and he was probably curious to see what the Hazard, Oscar, and Mata looked like together (and he took off Hazard when he needed to), but the result was not unpredictable. Ramires simply can't make outlet passes because he's not a good enough passer and we were not able to create any space because we were completely bunched into a small area. Where was he supposed to make his runs?

Basically I was watching a game without thinking, "this is the starting XI I want so it's going to be great". We had the majority of possession but we barely threatened goal. We had 4 shots on target. Yes, we prevented Stoke from scoring, but Stoke is probably the worst offensive away team in the Premier league. (11 goals in 19 games last season) and they could easily have scored a couple of goals. This side was actually our least balanced all season. We played with three #10s and 2 defensive midfielders, we had nobody to switch play, no creativity from midfield and nobody going wide. It wasn't until Moses came on, that we were able to open up the game. Before that, we were having all this possession that went nowhere that ended up with us taking long-distance shots. I would be very surprised if we see this formation again anytime soon.

What are you talking about? Stoke had come great chances. Until we scored, they actually had better chances than we did. They hit the bar for crying out loud. Have a look at the average position of our players http://espnfc.com/us/en/gamecast/345799/gamecast.html?soccernet=true&cc=5901 Creating width is not just about being able to cross for headers, it's also about creating space for players to run into and our spacing was just atrocious.We were way too easy to defend against. We completely lacked balance (no width, no central midfield creativity.) Torres actually played decently today. He maybe should have done better on the ball from Mata, but it took a great first touch to even get the ball under control.

Unsurprising problems based on the starting XI. We were way to narrow, Mata, Oscar, Hazard, and Torres basically all played in the same spot which made us very easy to defend against. This made us rely on Cole and Ivanovic to give us width. After Moses came on, our spacing was much better.