TorontoChelsea

] Lampard and Mikel are not meant to do that. Lampard's position is not a defensive one. It's the deep-lying midfielder which is actually geared more significantly more towards attack than defence. It's not absolutely necessary to have a defensive aware player in the attacking midfield, but many teams do have that and RDM certainly likes it (the reason he used Kalou last year and Bertrand and Ramires this year). Even if you decide not to use a defensively able player there, you at least need shape. All three are #10s right now and that's where they want to play and how they want to play. It is possible to change that in training, but it might not happen right away. .

They didn't play that at all. Aguero was used as a striker.. Here are two different samples from games they played last year. http://www.zonalmarking.net/2012/04/09/arsenal-1-0-manchester-city-city-lose-the-midfield-battle-and-probably-the-title/ and http://www.zonalmarking.net/2012/05/01/manchester-city-1-0-manchester-united-kompany-tactics/ In the first, they are sort of playing a 4-2-3-1 with Milner, Nasri, and Balotelli. In the second, they play the 4-2-2-1-1 that they often played last year with Tevez behind Aguero and Nasri and Silva giving width. In that formation, Toure and Barry provide the defensive balance. This year, what they seem to be doing is actually moving Ya Ya Toure a little forward and using Javy Garcia, Rodwell, and Barry to rotate in and cover their defensive midfield

No, real football is actually different than playing FIFA12. You can't just put on the players you like and say "go, play", there has to be some balance in the side and player roles. An attacking midfield of Hazard, Oscar, and Mata is too offensively minded, doesn't provide enough width, and all three want to quarterback the attack. It doesn't mean that they aren't all incredibly talented, just that right now, playing them altogether would be imbalanced.There is a reason RDM has been playing Ramires or Bertrand in games even if they are out of position and that's because they provide defensive cover and track back, don't need to touch the ball very often, and provide real width (i.e. happy enough to actually stay in their lanes.). Contrary to popular opinion, it's not that he's an idiot or a coward, it's that he understands that shape and balance are important and the players that would naturally give us that (Moses, Marin) were hurt or just recently brought onto the team. (and yes, he's conservative ). (We could still beat most teams playing like that, but we could beat most teams in a lot of different ways. There's a logic I don't understand- when a manager makes a decision and the team wins, people will say "his decision has been justified". Well, not really. If Chelsea sat Hazard and played Terry instead at attacking midfield, could Chelsea still win? Yeah, sure, they'd still be favoured to beat poor sides. If they won, would it have been a good decision? No, it was a terrible decision no matter what. Similarly, if a manager takes a risk and the team doesn't win, it doesn't mean it was a bad risk. We don't have time machines where we can go back and play out every single possible variation.)

To be fair, I think it's a natural thought when you have two strikers and one of them goes down and the other ones has been awful for almost two years.

We could but we won't.

We're being reactive instead of taking the game to the opponent. This is in a large part true, but it's also to be expected when there is such a high turnover of players and so little continuity with coaches. We have had 3 coaches in the past 2 years. We've had a lot of players leave and a lot of new ones come in and there will undoubtedly be more new players to come.Of the 18 players who were available to play in our opening game against Stoke last season, only 8 are currently with the club. It will take some time to find out how players fit together and even who goes where and how to best integrate a style that fits the squad.

Any way we score is a good way to score.

Ramires has probably been our worst player so far this season but we all know he's playing out of position and being asked to do things hes just not capable of. I'm not sure there is a good role for him on this particular team, but he's an excellent player if given the proper role. Ivanovic has been poor so far, but has been great for us for years. I don't care if someone has a bad performance or even a bad stretch of games, it happens to everyone. Mata was our best player last season but finished poorly and started this season not that hot either but it's fine. People have stretches where they are just not at the top of their game, especially if the system requires them to change their game somewhat. and if the criticism of Torres was based solely on this season, I'd be with you, but Torres has been awful for a year and a half. It hasn't been a bad performance here or there, it's that about 90% of games, he's been basically useless.

UEFA's passing stats have him at 33% but I think whoscored is probably more accurate.

Speaking of Scottish footballers, what about bringing Mark Yardley back from retirement? He would give us size up front.

Sickening racist monkey noises from Lazio supporters in their match against Spurs. This sort of thing needs to be taken seriously and actually stopped.

It's not just about resting Hazard, it's about our lineup. Oscar deserves to start and Mata has been rested a lot recently so should start as well. I think the three of them together is just too imbalanced unless they drop Oscar into Lampard's spot for Saturday (which could make sense).

Where is that? I know a lot of Chelsea supporters go to Scallywags to watch the matches.

I also think that just playing on teams that dominant can hide defensive weaknesses. Ramos is excellent going forward but he's like Luiz defensively. Make some great plays, but makes silly mistakes too. I think transitioning from Spanish football to English football is harder for defenders than for other players. For some reason, I trust central defenders coming from Germany and Italy much more. (Could be the more physical nature of those games and the skill set defenders need to succeed is more similar to the English game,)

Hey, don't diss hockey! Teemu Selanne was my favourite player for a while. (Never understood why Finland and Sweden play Hockey and Denmark and Norway don't). Anyway, in Canada as with the US, football (or soccer as we call it here) is a pretty minor sport. Hockey rules in Canada to an insane degree. Toronto has a massive immigrant population so it goes crazy during international tournaments and the area I live is particularly Italian so if Italy wins anything, they actually close off the street for the party. We have a huge Italian community here so their top teams are popular. Same with Portuguese teams. In general, like everywhere, you'll see fans from all the big world clubs.

Wiell be surprised if Oscar doesn't play. Would like to see Hazard rest though. Can't see Mata, Hazard, and Oscar all playing together at this point. Way too imbalanced. Happy that this game is on TV in Toronto. Streaming is not the same. One of the great things about Chelsea becoming a bigger club is that more matches are on TV. When I first started following (pre-streaming days) I'd only get to see a handful of games a year. Now, I can watch every one.

No, you are absolutely wrong. MIkel is not meant to be anything like Vidal. Vidal is a box to box midfielder who is capable of attacking the opposition and scoring and playing in a system which allows him to go forward. If Mikel got into those sort of positions, it would be a nightmare for the shape of our squad. Mikel's job is to have positional sense, to win tackles, to slide in to cover for the back four, and to make simple, short passes to relieve pressure and to get the ball to more creative players. He generally does his job very well but had a terrible second half yesterday.

No, seriously, explain to me how a striker who has scored 9 goals in 50 matches, has been anything other than crap. But first let me just get rid of some of the usual arguments 1) Chelsea has no creativity-Juan Mata created 3.1 chances per game last season. The most of any single player in the Premier league. Overall, Mata ranked as creating the 2nd most chances in the Premier League, Lampard created the 7th most chances. Yes, two midfielders behind Torres were among the 7 most creative players in the Premier league last season. Chelsea was one of the most creative teams in the Premier league 2) Teams park the bus against Chelsea- No, they don't. Maybe they did a few years ago, but do you remember anyone in the past couple of years playing super defensively who didn't play super defensively anyway? (say, Stoke). Anyway, this argument is nonsense because teams like City, ManU, Arsenal, and Spurs all had their strikers score more and any team that would have played especially defensively against Chelsea would have done the same against them. 3) Teams go out of their way to stop Torres-Even if that's true, who cares? Every defence tries to stop the opposition's striker. Torres has gotten no more special treatment from defenders than Grant Holt. 4) We don't play the right system-Since Torres has come to Chelsea, we have had 3 coaches and 3 systems and Torres has been bad in all of them. I'd love to hear what super secrets you have that justify not only accepting ineptitude but pretending ineptitude is actually world-class talent.

There's no point because you have no argument. It's not a serious argument. It's fact versus fantasy. I can say 9 goals in 50 games for one of the best offensive squads in the Premier league and all you can come up with us fantasy...no, um...they try harder with Torres so it's harder for him to score....no, you don't get it...like Torres is secretly amazing because um...we have no creativity even though we had the single most creative player in the Premier league last year. It's not fair! I have a poster of Torres in my room!!! He's amazing!!!!!

I didn't miss it and in fact if you looked at an earlier post you would have seen my link to the game positioning. Marchisio's runs were not picked up but it was mostly because Chelsea were outnumbered in the midfield on every attack. This is something the commentators noticed and something that is evident when looking at player positioning. Chelsea had four central players, Juve had five. What I thought RDM was going to do at half-time was bring Ramires back into the middle in order to help out because we weren't able to take advantage of the space they gave us on the wings but they were taking advantage of the space they had in the middle of the park. The double picot worked very well because despite being outnumbered, Juventus had very few chances. Also, Mikel should mostly be playing the ball short and he gets into trouble when he tries to get too offensive-minded, but again Lampard had 92.2% passing including 9 for 9 on long balls. If you only saw him passing backwards or squaring the ball, you were not watching the game. Lampard made 6 passes to Hazard, 4 to Mata, 3 to Oscar, 2 to Torres and 17 to the fullbacks including a number of times when they were streaking down the wings.

That's just nonsense and goes to show how ridiculous the pro-Torres stuff has gotten. It's harder to score for Chelsea than it is to score for Stoke? Then why did Chelsea have 12 more goals than Stoke last season? 23 more goals the season before that? Stoke doesn't have any creative players. And defenders try harder against Chelsea? That's just idiotic. Teams don't try hard against Man City, Man U, Arsenal, Spurs? Nope. They only care about Chelsea. They only play defensively against Chelsea. The entire gameplan of every single team when it comes to Chelsea is to stop Fernando Torres. I can't even begin to say how ridiculous this is. 9 goals in 50 games is unforgivably atrocious.

Really wish I had access to that sort of link in non-UEFA games (if someone knows where, please tell me!). I'm becoming more and more interesting in the coaching aspect of the game (reading SEB's posts are always interesting) which can be like chess matches (and things like shape and balance are incredibly important). About Ramires' pass rate. UEFA had him at 33% but whoscored.com who I generally like better, had him at 74% which was still the second worst on the club.

I think 99% of the criticisms of all players on here are over the top to say the least, but with Torres, it's a cumulative thing. 50 league matches, 9 goals. I don't care what kind of service you get, that's just atrocious. Forget about 50M pound striker, that's the kind of numbers you'd be disappointed with from somebody you got on a free. You think Peter Crouch is getting fantastic service at Stoke? He has 12 goals in 36 matches there. You think Bobby Zamora is just getting set up for tap-ins all the time? He has 9 goals in his last 31 games.And those guys don't have Juan Mata behind them (who led the Premier League in chances created last season which kind of makes you wonder how bad the service really was.) No, I don't want to see Torres injured or booed, but what is so frustrating for so many supporters is seeing other players get dumped on for having a bad match while Torres has been basically useless for a year and a half and people still defend him. Take Ivanovic who has been one of our best players for the past few years, one of the best RBs in the Premier League. He's off to a mediocre start and people want to drop him. Torres has been bad for almost 75 games, has never been good with us for anything more than a game or two here and there and we have to applaud Torres for "sacrificing himself for the team?" I have never seen any player in any sport get as long a leash with the supporters as Torres has with ours. I'd love for Torres to start scoring and start impacting games, there's just no reason to believe that will happen with any regularity.Many of us would rather see Sturridge (he of the 19 goals in his last 43 Premier League matches), get a chance to show what he can do as a striker. Torres will still have to play a lot, but he shouldn't be the automatic #1 if he doesn't earn it.

It was difficult to see though. Mata had his back to Torres who has a distance away. Mata would have had to have stopped and looked which would have been a mistake as he had an excellent opportunity to score himself. Watching it live, I didn't even see Torres, it wasn't until the replay that I saw him coming into the picture.

If Sturridge is healthy, I think we'll see something like this. I think Bertrand might get a LB start in the next couple of games and Romeu might get his first shot as well. I think Stoke would be the best game to rest Hazard as he gets fouled a lot and Stoke sometimes foul often and hard.