kellzfresh

I think he's far better than costa who played from January. But is behind the costa we saw at the beginning of the season. I'm not as bothered about his first touch as many here, from what I can remember, costa was worse imo, terrible at holding the ball Infact and we still won the league with 93 points. What I don't like the most about lukaku is this I think his runs off the ball is poor, and I think he doesn't move enough to create angles for passing and putting off defenders. But I'll give him the benefit of a doubt and say maybe the midfielders he's been playing with at Everton and westbrom are terrible passers and couldn't locate him with accurate passes so he didn't make sprints behind because of that.

Since we're surely getting him, I guess Conte is seeing a dembele-like player who can carry the ball forward against tough midfielders and get the team high up the pitch. His passing after the dribbling isn't better than Matic though, in fact quite similar. But he and kante will cover a lot of grass in the middle easily. I hope Conte will still field Bakayoko. Kante Fabregas Them together against the big teams has to be the way to go. 3-5-2, no surrendering of the midfield to the likes of arsenal. The only problem is if we remove Pedro from the team, we lose goals/creativity. So we must create from the wingback positions: fast dribblers, good crosses, stamina and one on one defending wingbacks has to be a priority.

The suspicion was correct. Costa was intentionally playing rubbish for us from January. Any Chelsea fan who thinks otherwise must have no eyes for perception. Just watch our matches for the season again, compare costa from August till December and then from the China news till the end. No player can look world-class performing better than even hazard for months, then suddenly look like a pub player who can't pass, holdup play or shoot for months and months. It was as intentional as ever

In the final 4 out of the 5 goals scored was because of fullbacks who beat their man and put in proper crosses for the striker to finish. When you look at marcelo, carvajal, Alves and Sandro then you know we're not on the same planet with them. You cannot defend against when the fullbacks are pushing the opponent wingers back with dribbling, energy and accurate crossing. I hope we improve on Moses and Alonso or that's what we'll be competing with next season. Even here in the league as tottenham did and Guardiola is also going out for energetic dribbling fullbacks too.

The naive nature of European leaders to allow refugees without any vetting to enter Europe freely and ISIS followers sneaked in among them is appalling. Look at the previous bombing of children, someone visited a failed state where ISIS has a stronghold and he's allowed to get back into Manchester without any measures to monitor him. If you even dare to discuss proper measures to halt this, you are called racist, islamophobic etc. All these leaders want is to show they are sympathetic to the Islamic people so that they can win their votes in elections. And the heartless scums are doing it at the cost of the lives and livelihood of the citizens that voted for them and put them in power. Incredible really. What stops a powerful country like Britain from checking everyone who visited Syria, lybia, Afghanistan etc and making them report to the nearest police station weekly/monthly to monitor their movements effectively?? Or will they say you are racist, islamophobic etc so you rather put your own citizens at risk? What stops safe zones from being created in countries with proper vetting done rather than let them flood in and cause harm and fear into your own citizens? No doubt we'll start seeing "#prayforLondon", "don't let them stop our way of living" and other propaganda flying around instead of the vote hunting political people to take harsh decisions to stop this becoming a normal way of living in Europe.

If Conte lands him, my confidence in his eye for midfielders will be raised higher. Conte knows his stuff when it comes to midfield as a former midfielder himself who played beside Zidane and Edgar Davids; and Conte even proved it with Juventus bringing vidal, Pogba and Pirlo and gave them the top 3 midfielders in Europe. Hopefully Conte still has that eye for midfielders because I'll trust him 100% with who he wants

You're in luck

Double post

Realistically the best way to improve our team most efficiently with our resources and competition from others is to get a CM that can pass and is mobile (holding unto the ball or dribbling under pressure) and can cover space defensively, then improve our wingbacks. When we used to dominate Europe, we had among the best midfield (Ballack, Lamps, Essien, Makelele) and wingback (Ashley cole) in Europe. We had the likes of anelka, kalou and malouda upfront and it didn't matter because of how dominant our midfield and defense was. This way we drastically improve the whole middle of our 3-4-3 which will help with the spine of our team. We can hardly find improvements on Hazard and Costa, Pedro improvements that is available will be very expensive. But surely, surely a team of our status is capable of doing better than Matic, Moses and Alonso. These 3 players have not had one good game against a top team and that is why we'll struggle in the Champions League.

It's really easy to point at the last match and say we lost because of weak mentality, but it's to argue the opposite for many big matches this season: Where we mentally weak when we survived City's offensive assault and rallied from being down 1-0 to winning 3-1? Where we mentally weak when we recovered from letting Spurs equalize twice in the FA Cup semi final? Where we mentally weak when we crushed Man U 4-0 and also against our club's most successful manager? Where we mentally weak when we went down 1-0 to Spurs at home but ended up coming back to win 2-1? Where we mentally weak in all those matches it took a late winner or defending a 1 goal lead for a long time to secure the 3 points? Where we mentally weak when we destroyed Arsenal 3-1 after they destroyed us earlier in the season? I could go on and on, but I think you get my point. We didn't lose that last match because of mentality imo. It was another example of us struggling against a big club that could press very effectively. We just don't have the players to handle those situations consistently. Matic is too slow at making decisions. Moses is poor when he isn't given a ton of space. Alonso was unusually subpar against teams that press compared to what we've seen recently against smaller teams. We got better in the second half not just because fabregas came on for the woeful Matic, but because arsenal got a little tired and couldn't press like in the first half. I would have liked Conte to adjust his tactics against big teams to press back too against teams that press us, but he wants us to absorb pressure and punish them when they tire. There's nothing so bad about this, since Juventus uses the same tactics. But compared to Juventus who have dribbling energetic monsters as wingbacks, an impenetrable BBC backline, and an attacking player in mandzukic who can hold up the ball when Buffon clears the ball up field, we don't have players who can concentrate, absorb pressure, and have the holdup or passing quality to punish teams on the counter. If Conte is backed in the summer, he'll easily mould the team to Juventus like style. And we'll be dominant in big games once again imo....

It's incredible what Conte has achieved with this type of technical deficiencies. When Courtois has the ball, he passes to Azpi, because luiz is marked by welbeck, Azpi passes to Moses, Moses is pressed along with Azpi and we kick the ball up field to costa who never jumps for any ball. We are so so bad against pressing, so so bad. This is why we need to improve on the back 3, it requires passing out from the back or a striker who can jump to win those aerial balls and help us up the field. Conte always had Pelle for Italy who knew the meeting of hold up football to get the team up the pitch, we don't. So when we play the ball up, we lose it again because costa can't jump to save his life. Hazard too can't shoot, if he isn't touching the ball for 30 minutes, he doesn't care and just accepts it, when he is near the box he doesn't want to shoot (2 times today) He needs to learn how to make use of all that world class talent. Getting nainggolan is a priority, we can't keep playing Matic against big teams when he turns into a lumbersome dunce under the slightest pressure. Another problem is Alonso, the only big match he ever played well for us is against arsenal in February. His centerback speed is such a disadvantage against big teams that press. Conte has performed miracles with this team honestly. But if we think we don't need to develop the back 5, then we will be destroyed in Europe

Fair play to Mourinho. He stifled another match and got the goals (scruffy or not) to get into Champions League through the back door. Let's see how his style of letting the other team play the football fares against higher quality in the champs. Griezmann has already admitted to going there if champs lge is guaranteed. Hopefully this motivates our board to improve our team as much as possible so that we don't get caught by the Manchester clubs next season.

When you watch him, you understand the idea Conte wants to bring. Having two midfielders (kante and Bakayoko) who can cover so much space, win back the ball and be mobile on the counter to make us more dominant against big teams who press. Especially as we are already totally dominant against the smaller teams with fabregas playing. Bakayoko has that essien potential, to dribble right through pressure but he's still very rusty in his passing. Maybe Conte thinks he can fine tune the passing like he did for vidal and Bakayoko is still very very young anyways.

Conte drills us to a pattern of play and players like Pedro who don't have the individual dribbling talent of Hazard benefits massively from this. I think if Costa was a better linkup player, Pedro would have been even better.

Very frustrating indeed. I'm looking at Thierry Henry reincarnated in mbappe and Chelsea can't do anything about it because Madrid.

You're right that 1v1s are very necessary for wingbacks (marcelo, Alves, Mendy proved in champions League) but I wonder why Moses with all his dribbling and experience as a winger is outperformed massively by Alonso this season both in goals and assists. And even Azpi is a far better crosser which is important for a wing-back. Hopefully Moses improves his crosses because from what we've seen today, no way should Azpi be moved from the centerback position, none of the rest are good enough to replace him.

He's our very own Lahm. Versatile, can play any position and give you a 7/10 performance. I know people will disagree but I think Azpi will be better than Moses in the wingback role. He already has more assists than Moses as a centerback.

I thought I was the only one who has this problem. I literally can't open the next page on any thread on talkchelsea unless I open on a new tab

Manutd are used to attacking football along with winning things for so long under Ferguson. We'll see how long they can take this especially when Mourinho doesn't win. And he had the guts to say he played the same football as Conte with us and his was not praised?? Lol Dreadful park the bus stuff for two consecutive games

You're right. A lot of people don't consider that when the striker constantly loses the ball, leads to counter attacks against his team, which in turn harms the team’s defence. And it hampers a team from mounting pressure on the opponent or taking advantage of counterattacks. Having a good technical striker is a more important factor of a team than a lot of people realize.

The things Morata instantly improves over Costa is the linkup play, holdup play, dribbling and aerial threat. Hazard will love him. Morata still runs the channels like costa, is energetic and presses from the front like Conte likes. The major problem is if he's as good a goalscoring striker as Costa or even lukaku. But his stats are good though. http://imgur.com/a/ACpjm[/img] http://imgur.com/a/ACpjm http://www.imgur.com/a/ACpjm http://www.imgur.com/a/ACpjm[/img]

Good post. Because we've dominated the league, suddenly everyone has forgotten how we got here. Everyone has forgotten that Moses couldn't get a start for Westham or Liverpool, Everyone has forgotten that Alonso was average in the league for Bolton/Sunderland, everyone has forgotten that Luiz was benched for marquinos in PSG and a defensive liability before in the league, everyone has forgotten how Cahill was costing us goals with back passes lapses in concentration. Ivanovic, Oscar and Terry were still starting and we were eight points behind first position by late September. Conte has given on a season of excitement. Top scorers in the league, Lots of fantastic, memorable matches (3-0 Burnley, 3-1 Mancity, 4-0 Manutd, 5-0 Everton, 4-2 Stoke, 3-1 Arsenal, 4-2 Spurs, etc) Yet jealous peeps like Mourinho criticize our style and even Wenger is saying we play like Leicester city last season without taking the initiative. Even without landing his first choice players, combine this with facing two managers (Mourinho & Pep) who spent 200mil and got their targets he has done magnificent. Just imagine what we can do if we get his technical and mobile targets. The future is looking good for us, hopefully he's backed massively.

Exactly. And we are going into the Champions League next season, so we need to prepare a team capable of competing. I look at Juventus and see a team we should aspire to be like. Dogged defensively, tactical adaptive to different formations at anytime in a match, two wingbacks who are fast, energetic, can dribble and have a good cross, a striker upfront who can hold up the ball incase of long balls. mandzukic Higuain Dybala Sandro Pjanic Khedira Alves Cheilini Bonucci Barzagli Buffon Vs Hazard (Striker) Pedro Mendy (CM) kante Azpi Ake Luiz Cahill With a few signings, we can put out a team on their level imo. The main areas where they blow us out of the water is their wingbacks and back 3 (especially wingbacks) (Sandro) Mendy to provide speedy, energetic runs and take our attacking on the left side with hazard to a whole new level. A striker who knows how to hold up the ball and win aerial balls, so that we have another outlet to escape pressing.(Morata, Bellotti) People on here underestimate this but it's a very big tactical advantage to have. A midfielder who can pass and dribble or is very comfortable under pressure, but is a good tackler (Nzonzi, Fabinho, Naby keita?) A few proper signings and we'll be dark horses for the CL easily

Some manutd fans are beginning to see through the excuses but many have already been thrown into delusion already.

Defensive as ever. I wonder how Mourinho will spin this though