kellzfresh

Home grown value = £12m

Good answers. You specified on how we should improve our tactics to become a more complete team. But I was just trying to prove that even with our "boring" style this season, we could have won those smaller matches and the league with a more clinical striker. To improve our play to be complete, I agree with you. Here's a post about this I even wrote earlier.

Okay I get what you mean. You consider only a 1 on 1 as a quality chance. Imo we don't get enough of those because of how deep teams sit against us, (even every top team we did that against faced this problem) and even when we do get them, ba decides to fall against sunderland in front of goal Eto shoots off target against swansea in front of goal Torres is torres after dribbling the cardiff keeper. These are just the ones I remember our strikers miss in recent games, I haven't even mentioned the rest of our attacking midfielders misses. I haven't mentioned the strikers poor movement that makes them invisible, or useless first touch that ruins a lot of attacking moves. In the case of comparing with liverpool and city, we don't create as much as them to score 4-5 goals but we create just enough to score 2 goals in almost every match, with a solid defence we have an advantage over city and liverpool but we lose badly in terms of ratio of taking chances. Those positions that you are pointing that are not clear chances is where sterling scored a screamer from, Its where yaya toure won mancity the league cup in a tight match Its where nasri scored in the last game of the season Its where suarez has scored so much from this season Coutinho scored an equalizer against fulham It wasn't a clear cut chance for city and pool too but they score far more than us from these positions, we dont. Our strikers wait for the ball to fall on their chest in front of the keeper before they can score, pay me that money they earn, I think I'll tap in a lot of goals too. With better finishers, we get early goals and then we can play the counter style we are best at and steam roll the opposition. We don't have enough finishers in our team, only schurle and eto come close (I can't include oscar and hazard like you suggest because they miss too many shots off target to be considered a finisher). But city have aguero, dzeko, nasri, yaya from CM with and improved quality crossing of kolarov(compared with our fullbacks) Liverpool have suarez, sturridge, sterling, gerrard from CM. Its 2 against 4 finishers and when eto/schurrle doesn't play its 1 against 4 pure finishers. We are simply outgunned in the attacking area. We need a striker to lift that burden, score that 1 chance against barcelona, score that one corner chance against bayern in munich.

Look at those charts again, look at where we took those shots from, look at how nasri scored city's first goal against westham and tell me any of our players would have scored that. Surely you know that our front four except eto are average at best in finishing. Rarely score like yaya or nasri from outside the 18box against parked buses on their own. I didn't say we will play as well as bayern of last season with a striker, I said we don't play the most sexy football but we created enough chances to win games that we drew/lost. I said we would have gotten at least 5 more points than we have now and we would have won the league. That said, people also put this impression that we take all our shots from outside the 18 box. That article debunked that theory. Infact it shows we take as much shots in the box as any other top team in the league but like torres and salah showed once again in our last game, we fluff them. That changes the psychology of the game and makes things more difficult. See madrids last 2 games without ronaldo and bale, they don't score much because the rest are bad finishers as our team. With all the chances they created, morata fluffed them.

Here we go. Who's parreira??

Exactly. Most title winning sides I can think of used 2 strikers. Yorke and cole Henry and berkamp Rooney and tevez Drogba and anelka Rooney and chicharito Aguero and tevez Vanpersie and rooney Aguero and dzeko/negredo 2 strikers systems in the past 10 years win the league. Even suarez and sturridge almost won it. Sometimes it doesn't matter how shit the rest of the team is, if there are 2 pple that score chances and get combined 55-60goals up front, you regularly win the league. We have underatted the impact of strikers for too long. We must get it right next season.

http://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/2014/5/5/5682644/on-strikers-finishing-parked-buses-and-jose-mourinhos-tactics Our play may not be pretty, but this debunks any theory that we only shoot from outside the box. We actually create enough chances from the box to win games but we don't have clinical finishers at all. There is a huge difference being 1-0 up than going to the break at 0-0, a far more clinical striker and Am will change this. Mourinho knows what he is talking about when he complains about our lack of clinical players.

We don't have the best strike force as the best strikers always seem to top the premier league in the past 10 years, but we were almost there and should have done better at the last games in the bridge.

Exactly. Forget the astonvilla and palace.... Norwich and sunderland were our home games!! We should have gotten 87points with 2 home wins and we didn't.

I said so many times in this thread that 87 points will get us the title. So frustrating knowing I was right now

He is not invisible because he dictates the tempo of the game. He's older now so he doesn't move as well as he used to. He was even better at milan IMO, people are only noticing him now because there is no kaka in front of him.

I was about to like your post till I saw pirlo. Seriously?

Like I've said in another thread Paulinho falls into squad level players IMO.

Don't need him IMO Concentrate on striker and CM. No distractions

I like this kid more than all our loanees except courtois

Glad you havnt ignored him. We're all chelsea fans and are passionate about our club in our own way and I respect that. He's an excellent poster on this forum. Him along with you, and Barbara are the peoples posts I click on like the most, bcos you guys put what I want to say in a better way most of the time. It will be sad if you both don't have debates regularly bcos the quality of this forum will drastically reduce.

This^ They needed to win and they stupidly sat back. But bcos its chelsea, the media don't keep touch with reality just to slate us. Well done wankers

Mourinho only played modric there as a tactical switch at halftime, but he mostly played in ozil's position. Martinez is more intelligent than people give him credit for. He is a good passer, he has energy and is a vidal type player IMO. We could adopt a brazil type system where gustavo-paulinho pivot destroyed teams with fluent attacking football. A matic-martinez partnership will do the same adding strength and complete solidity to the team. I just know mourinho won't buy this tiny midfielder (cabaye, modric, gundogan, xavi, pirlo) type player to play in the pivot. I've studied his past teams to realize that. This^ he was a DLP for athletico bilbao when they destroyed manutd in the europa league in old trafford

He's good. Martinez is spanish, automatic inherited good passing is in his DNA. Would love him next to matic. Let's be honest, mourinho won't play a tiny DLP in our pivot. He's never done in his career, he can only accommodate one the size of Alonso and matic can play that role IMO. Get martinez with funds from mikel and lampard/cole wages. We need to change our minds from buying squad players to buying starters

Loooool

Get me cavani and cabaye and my life is complete

I hope we get a proper replacement to improve the CM and not stop gap guarins. If we can't get a vidal, pogba, gundogan, modric level replacement, we should just play vanginkel and promote our youth because I'm tired of us over-paying for squad players and not first team starters.

Last season we were all optimistic and we didn't win a trophy. So the trend is to become pessimistic so we can win....

We look so uncomfortable on the ball sometimes and looks like we don't want the ball... its ridiculous But our slow tempo is a big issue, if we attack faster, mistakes will happen even in tight defences. So we should attack with much quicker tempo and stop playing so slow like grannys

Nice. That's why the clinical striker is important. A striker good in tight spaces or can use his physical strength to create space for himself and shoot. Not just that. 1. We also need team combinations. 1-2 movements between hazard and willian is needed and with the striker. We need a constant front 4 again with no rotation to increase team chemistry. 2. I heard that pellegrini trains with his team in shooting practice at the etihad stadium a day before home matches. We could adopt similar methods to increase our accuracy in finishing. 3. Also hazard needs the leftback to support, we can't have him marked by 3 people and not let a runner take advantage of the space. If we are building the team around him, we should do it properly with more team support. 4. We need to learn how to keep possession too. It will help conserve pressing energy in matches so that the players can rest a little. Be like athletico, perfect pressing and good on the ball with two full backs going forward at EVERY attack. We shouldn't just play like they met each other for the first time when opposition let us have the ball, we should have more passing triangles especially in the attacking third. 5. We play too slow!! Increase the tempo and we force defenders to make mistakes. This is our biggest problem against small teams.