Magic Lamps

Good selection. Just a bit confused with Kenedy and Palmer. Don't think they have a future here and should be sold. Same for Drinkayoko but I guess it's harder to get rid of them. Shame gilmour is not travelling as he is one of the few that could become a Jorginho backup Also I hate the city of yokohama in a football context -.-

You can literally see his thought process. he was fending off that challenge, controlling the ball, taking his time to make his decision, deciding to pass the ball to his right but at the time he was physically and mentally ready to execute players had long run past him, expecting the pass earlier and more forward. Mind this is a situation where he had an unusual amount of time on the ball to make his decision. Just too slow in his thinking. This is the kind of mistake you make in level E youth. If you still make them as a pro you are not meant to play at a high level. Such a (nowadays) Mourinho type of player. So focused on 6'2+, powerful, athletic players that you forget to check if they can do the basics of playing football right.

Glad to see there are still loyal, talented kids who pledge their future to to the club despite our poor record of integrating them. Good luck lad

+he is recovering from a long term injury right now and bayern are literally the only Club in for him. It also not that he is some Mbappe kind of Talent. This guy has some nerves. I have some weird kind of respect for that pure cheek and stubbornness. I get nervous when my paycheck is a few days late and this guy there is chilling, spinning his thumbs while stalling on a contract that would secure his and his familys financial Future forever

I also like how he still uses an 2 y.o. iphone 8..not on the hype train this boy

Didn't want to derail the discussion in the Super Frank thread so I put it here Just came across of this rare complete collection of his West ham goals. You already can see the scoring instinct and match intelligence at 18-21 y.o. Having seen most of his 211 Chelsea goals a dozen times, this really caught my eye how mature he already was taken all those excellent finishes. a few absolute crackers as well, worth watching till the end Lets hope he is as good as rookie manager as he was as rookie player.

Maatsen is one of those I never heard befroe. Was decent tho, still only 17 and playing i an position where we are not exactly loaded with quality. Given he will be kept on, he will have more chances to how himself. gilmour reminded me a bit of mceachran back in the days, lots of nice play but not really the conviction behind his actions to actually score. Mount and Abraham i am also really looking forward to. Esp abraham. If he hits the ground running, he could really help us this season.

lol I call this BS. Pulisic is a born winger, everyone can see it. He is quick, direct, great dribbler and crosser. Also we have more than enough players who can play as a 10 but only 3 more wingers. He will definitely start on the wing this season. Pulisic only plays more or less no. 10 for USA because no one else there has the same footballing ability as him. But here at Chelsea we still have plenty of players who are much better playmakers than Pulisic.

I'm not even convinced you can learn that. You either are born a scorer or not. This goal instinct like Gerd Müller, Ronaldo, Lampard, this ability to know where the ball will end up in the box is something you have or you don't. It does not define if you are a good player or not. For everything but strikers it is pretty much irrelevant but even some strikers are not natural born scorers and still make a career out of scoring goals when they just work their technique to create their own chances, score enough half-chances, have hold-up play or just stay in the position of a target man. Examples are Bergkamp, Klose, Drogba or Giroud. For Kovacic I am pretty sure he is not a natural scorer and never will be prolific in front of goal. Mount was a goalscoring midfielder even before Lampard coached him, so I don't think Lampard wil lhave that much of an impact on someone like kovacic. But he should be able to perfect the run-timing ability of guys who like to drive forward like RLC and Barkley. Still, you are right. Midfielders should take shots just to make this an option. how often do we see players score from rebounds or ricochets, poor shots becoming passes. When the opposition know your midfielders will shoot they will try to close them down, leaving more space between the lights for good passers to exploit. A player who can do both, like Lampard used to be one, is thus a nightmare to defend against. You saw that later in his careers, he wouldn't attempt that many long shots anymore being closed down earlier but always thread the ball through instead. We need more of that from Kovacic, try some shots and use the space for more direct, vertical impact. I would love him to become such a player. He has amazing technical ability, his close control is maybe best in the squad now with Willian's but they are similarly slow of mind in the attacking third as well. But with Kovacic i have not given up hope that he can lean to become more daring and decisive.

That overreaction....guys, they have been in training for 4 days or so. Hardly any first team members and a few kids even a dedicated Chelsea fan has never heard of. Also the Irish Premier divison is in the middle of its season, so the pros they featured were full inc ompetitive mode and much fitter than our guys right now. So a draw is a very fair reflection of the fitness+quality levels. Because that is what i saw as the reason we slumped in the game late on. Fitness+quality. not commitment or willingness. Just in the first few minutes you see very player on the pitch busting a lung to get forward, they were openly running into tackles because they were so over-enthusiastic. But I dont think you could go out and say they did not play for Lamps etc. It is a fitness exercise ffs. Thsoe games in Ireland have nothing to do with competition but only with getting fit against sides that already are. If its a good idea i dont know but it was obviously the lack of quality and lack of fitness that made us draw here not a lack of spirit.

Well they are both teams in the Irish premier divison (no 3 and 4). They are in the middle of the season, so no wonder they look sharper than us. i just wonder why we even go to Ireland, there is hardly any marketing potential there with that few dozens of population. I expect our showing to be similar to what we saw earlier. Those games in Ireland really are obviously just to get us going quickly physically against way fitter opposition. So i wouldn't read much into this. I expect this one to be a similar shit-show performance wise with all oru players being super rusty and the youth were obviously still very green.

dafuq how tall does tammy look there? maybe its just the camera angle but he looks a head taller than giroud

He is playing games. I dont think its about money nor playing time. Both of which we can give him more than Bayern can. He either plays us or there is something that has torn CHO and the clbu apart which we do not know of. If he really leaves it will look just like he would do it to make a point. but usually behind every pointless transfer there is a greedy agent

I think midfield is the least of our worries. It will be harder to decide for a set up there with Mount, Barkley, RLC; Kovacic basically all competing for the attacking slot when Jorginho and Kante are set deeper. Kovacic can play the Jorginho role I guess but who is gonna fill in for Kante? He will figure it out I guess... Also defense I think should be alright. Emerson has been solid in the latter stages of the season and Reece gives us the opportunity to rest Azpi. Luiz-Rüdiger should also be at least as good as last season, now they had a year to get used to back 4 again and playing together regularly. DL especially has been the more proactive CB next to a static Cahill, Terry or Silva most of his career but with the way rüdiger has emerged as a an aggressive CB i think, DL can actually be the more tactical one. He has experience enough and albeit his occasional brain farts which got rarer, he still got it. The main worry is obviously attack. We will need a lot of goals from midfield. In the absence of RLC one of them has to hit the ground running. Without Hazard we play more fluently but we are also less efficient in front of goals. The main thing about hazard was that he almost always was ready to shoulder the responsibility and take on the shot, be the hero for the team. (OTT but haazrds weakness but also most redeeming quality was that he would always contribute for the team first before pursuing personal glory. some say that was lack of drive but it was also a sacrifice for the team not to risk tactical set ups or waste energy when the game was one just to boost his scoring stats) Every team needs such a player from time to time. Even very balanced success ful teams like 2007-2010 Inter Milan, Pre-Lewandowski Bayern Munich, the Lyon side that won 7 titles in a row, post-Ronaldo ManUtd had a player for the important moments. I have no idea who that is gonna be for us. Surely not Giroud, Tammy or Bats. Cos face it, neither is good enough to lead the line. the only solution I see is do it like our German national team and share the goals around. We have plenty of both fast and strong players. We should steamroll teams with our pace and power, attack in numbers. There is no use in trying to pass our way through opposition teams. Who is gonna finish the chances? just like Lamps said, Playing as quickly as possible is the key. Transition in both directions must be super fluent which requires hard work from all players.

desperate times, desperate measures. Can not remember the club putting that much effort into prolonging an 18 year old's deal with the manager himself going on for paragraphs over a player that has featured a handful times.Not sure if it is smart, because when the club is buying CHO's hype, he himself surely is way past that. At least it is transparent. The club shows that if CHO ends up leaving they at least did everything to keep him.

Still it is self destructory. The more dominant they get the weaker the league the less tv money for bundesliga the less tv money for them. They have always been proud of their 300m bank account. Today that is an average transfer Window for a top club.

I agree. No guarantees that Candreva would have had a good transition in to Englisj football even though he used to be quite good. Llorente and Giroud used to be like exactly the same player but Giroud has aged way better. Will be interestint how Lamps deals with our super diverse 60 players roster. He surely should hav3 enough Material to implement his style. Also love how fit and involved he looks like a player coach. Probably the best footballer to ever be our coach both back in his playing days as well as at the time of being coach.

tbf those kits only look marginally better than the home puker. I prefer the traditional swoosh anyway. Classic black kits have always suited us well. I remeber the ones from 2008/9 and the best match we played in them. https://www.premierleague.com/video/single/847674

Let's hope he signs that contract first. If not, I hope he gets snail pace. This is dragging on way too long. At some point it simply makes no sense for CHO not to sign a new deal. He is injured, might never recover fully to fulfill his potential and yet refuses to finanically secure his future for good. If he wants to leave eventually, he should have noticed that the club never keeps someone against their will anyway so there really is no harm in signing that damn contract. And if he never becomes the player he was, he would be out of contract next year and never make it to pro football again. He must be pretty damn sure he has lost zero burst or he has balls of steel to toy with us like that. If RLC renewal who is in a very similar situation with the injury and just off the back of a successful yet short spell in the first XI does not make him sign a new one before the season starts, i fear he is gone.

I also think he prefers to stay in Germany or join his friend Klopp but I its worth a try, given we are the only top club who has a starting spoton offer for a young striker. In Germany pretty much everyone expects him to join Bayern on a free next season, that is just how they roll.

Looks classy. But when did they brink that early 00s Nike logo back? Never seen it on a football kit since.

It fucking looks like it. We really ripped off Atletico in transfer windows lately for the past few years. They took Torres off us, Costa back for 20m more despite being 3 years older, Morata who was bang average for them for 65m. We were a bit soft on the Filipe Luis transfer back, other than that great business. Would never have believed they would actually buy him just bc we threatened to recall him. Rather would have expected them to be like "Please do". Dafuq that is like loaning someone a 10 year old malfunctioning Prius that cost 40k back then, it works alright and then say, well now you better buy it for 38k or I take it back

Good business for all parties involved. Good luck to Tomas, will forever be remembered for bossing Suarez when we denied Pool the title in 2014. Also that "longest serving Chelsea player" line cracked me up

If this is achieved with 4+ youth players integrated in the first team, I would consider it a success.

Obreqd that too. Their joke sporting director brazzo salihamicic even spammed pulisic with weekly video messages lol. But only unreliable sources reporting Bayern interest so take with a pinch of salt