TorontoChelsea

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.

I think we'll see a few changes for this one. Most players have played 2 games already this week and we play again on Tuesday, so a rest would be beneficial. Good opportunity to get some new faces in the lineup. If Sturridge is fit, I am pretty sure he'll start. Lampard should be rested. Cahill will almost certainly play . Might be a good match to rest Hazard as well (he's not going to play every single match). I can see a whole lot of rotation coming as the games are going to come fast and furious for a while. I'd expect that every one of our usual starting XI will sit out one of the next two matches (except Mata who has been rested recently). Will be interesting to see how RDM manages it.

This is exactly the problem with the expectations of Lampard. Somehow, he is supposed to function as a defensive midfielder covering for Mikel and the back four and also be helping to lead our attack and scoring and assisting on goals while also not making a lot of runs while also not being too static. Those are all criticisms I've seen of Lampard in the past few days. It's just madness. There isn't a player in the history of the game who could do that. They'd have to run like 50 miles a game at Olympic sprinter-like speeds without tiring. Lampard is not going to get a lot of assists or goals from play. The deep-lying midfielder just doesn't. Xabi Alonso gets about 5-6 assists most seasons and a couple of goals. Same with Modric. Same with Pirlo (except last season where he had 13 assists). The job of the deep-lying playmaker is to open up play with their vision and accurate passing. They are rarely the guy who makes the pass before the goal, though they are often the player who makes the pass right before that. They have to be able to make long passes and short passes in tight areas. They have to have defensive discipline while being able to make smart runs. They have to be the outlet for the defenders to start the transition to attack. Lampard's game today was excellent and if he plays like that all season, he will be a very good deep lying midfielder for us. People have to accept what the deep-lyiing midfield position is or they inevitably be disappointed by everyone who plays there. According to whoscored.com, Lampard had a 92% passing rate including 9 for 9 on long balls. He had the second most passes on the team (66 to 64 to Cole who had...ho hum, another great game).59 for 64 in passing especially for a non defender is simply incredible.

His runs worked well. He made fewer of them than usual and when he did make them, there was a reason, they opened up the attack and had Ramires spotted him, he would have had a goal on one of them. It may take him a little time to get back to 100%, but I thought he was clearly one Chelsea's best players today (Oscar, Hazard, Cole being the others and Mata for his brief spell as well.) It just bothers me how Lampard has become such a scapegoat that people can't even admit when he plays well. (It takes about 5 good games from Mikel for many people to admit he isn't awful although after his poor pass today, it will probably take another 10 good games.)

So, last game Lampard's form was worrying because he joins the attack too often and this game it was because of his lack of movement? Of course, the statistics say otherwise. Lampard ran 10846 metres in the game, that's more than any other Chelsea player. His movement today was excellent. He initiated a number of good attacks, he passed well, he linked up well with Oscar, Hazard, and later Mata,he timed his runs well, he defended well. He did exactly what he was supposed to do. He had a very bad game against QPR but he played very well today (especially considering that Chelsea were outnumbered in the central midfield).

This is exactly it. We were almost always out-numbered in the midfield 5-4 which inevitably meant that someone was unmarked . http://www.uefa.com/newsfiles/ucl/2013/2009489_tl.pdf Our double pivot actually did quite well to limit Juve's chances despite being outnumbered Our advantage should have been to go wide and we tried it but our team is not really set up for that as Torres isn't a real target man and seems hesitant to get into the spaces he would need to get into to score and Ramires is not good at crossing to say the least. (His 33% passing rate today is just awful).

Probably the best defender in the world right now and so...old school in that intimidating defender sort of way.

Another thing we need to sort, is that someone needs to sit Luiz down and tell him that he's a defender. Today, Cole, Terry, and Ivanovic attempted a total of 12 long passes. Luiz attempted 17, most on the team. I'm sick of seeing Luiz bomb long passes towards Ramires or Torres and sick of seeing him run up the right side. It didn't cost us today, but it's extremely dangerous. We had some beautiful build-up play today and need to work on that. Luiz is great when he stays back and plays a simple game and terrible when he doesn't. RDM's biggest task might be figuring out how to use Mata. Hazard, and Oscar. All three really want to play the same position and play playmaker which is of course, not possible. Not sure why people are getting on Lampard (well, I know why they are but it's absurd). He played quite well today moving the ball quickly and opening up play. In fact, the double pivot worked well today except for Mikel making 3 or 4 terrible passes one of which cost us a goal.

Decent result. Didn't play poorly. Mikel had his worst game in a while. Torres needs to stay more centrally and stop drifting out so wide. Second goal by Oscar was as good as it gets.

Wow. First goal was a fluke, second goal was just brilliant.

Makes sense. Can't see any other reason why he wouldn't be on the bench at least. Hopefully, it's minor and he'll be available for Stoke.

No, he doesn't. He's played fewer games in the last 4 months than almost anybody else on the squad. Since the beginning of June, he's played in 10 matches. Torres has played in 15, Hazard has played in 14, Cole has played in 14, Lampard in 13, Ramires in 12, etc...It's nice that Mata has gotten a break, but people need to stop acting as if he's a geriatric patient. He's a 24 YO professional athlete .

Why is Sturridge not even on the bench? What if Torres is useless or gets hurt? We don't really need three defenders on the bench anyhow. Maybe Sturridge is ill.