Reddish-Blue

Without knowing what happened behind the scenes, there were some pretty bad rumors coming out in the media about what Tuchel said to the ownership group (especially when they mentioned the idea of a footballing director structure being in place at Chelsea)....which eventually led to them deciding to sack him. It is a different team though, with two of our best defenders no longer with the club, Jorginho out the door and Mount is pretty much gone as well. Let's try to compare apples to apples rather than trying to compare apples to oranges. I still question whether we actually needed Cucurella or Mudryk. 130 million that could have been spent on a partner for Enzo in the engine room...and instead we signed squad fillers.

I don't see the club drastically changing the CB positions. I feel a mix of Silva, Fofana, Badiashile and Colwill will be solid next season. You would think Kante is a certainty for next season as well, assuming he's fit. Massive question marks remain over Mount (likely to leave) and hopefully we see Ziyech & Pulisic move on.

I disagree about utilizing the squad to their strengths. I think what Tuchel lacked was the ability to keep the attackers happy and motivated throughout the season. It's interesting how most of the attackers that he managed at Chelsea (Pulisic, Ziyech, Werner) mentioned that they weren't really given much freedom to express themselves on the pitch and it was more about the team game and trying to ensure we had control of possession. Again, you are just mentioning the UCL run and the good performances in that period but if you actually go back and look at the league results, they weren't great for a team that was capable of beating anyone. As I said before, Tuchel developed the team for cup finals rather than for the league as we barely dragged ourselves over the line for top 4.

Does that matter though? Most of Haaland's goals were from tap-ins and/or rebounds inside the box/penalty area.

He also lost the other cup finals to Klopp (as Chelsea were unable to take chances in front of goal) and winning the UCL is a great achievement but you can't honestly believe that we were "competitive" in the league. Some of the football under him was borderline pathetic as well (mixed in with top class performances when it mattered). Tuchel was simply papering over the cracks, now with Potter, the band-aid is well and truly off and fans get to see just how awful we are.

What did people expect him to do? Turn that average list of players into world champions?

We were nowhere near City in the league. Pep has shown that he can be beaten by a number of managers but the one thing he does really well is keep the team running smoothly over the course of the season. We should all be relieved that Tuchel wasn't backed as he is no different to Conte or Mourinho, his methods only work in the short term....and let's not forget his history of falling out with the board at both Dortmund & PSG and funnily enough, he followed the same path at Chelsea.

It's no surprise that Potter was strongly linked to the Spurs role (IIRC, he was keen on finishing the current season at Brighton before discussing the role at Spurs). Then out of nowhere, we give him a nice fat contract to manage a top 4 side and he would have been a fool not to accept such a deal. Even if Potter does get told to go at the end of the season due to finishing 10th...he'll get a very nice payout and in a few months, he'll be back to managing a mid table side without any issues. As for Conte, that's the first time I've seen a manager go public with a simple message: 'sack me now but you'll still be Spurs, it's in your history'

We'll be found out when it really matters regardless of who the manager is. We haven't been close to challenging for the league since Conte left....and that should be a massive concern for the club. He's likely the only one available with a solid profile. The other one would be Poch but he's just a better version of Potter, at the end of the day, the result will be the same: zero trophies.

This may actually be a good thing. He'll fit like a glove at Liverpool as Klopp loves his pressing machines.

The other question is, can you play Nkunku and Felix (if we did go ahead with his transfer) in the same starting XI? Feel like our tactical setup would be too narrow with two players who like playing in that #10 type role.

That's because our team is built to play 3 at the back. If you want to play a flat 4 at the back formation, you need a workhorse midfielder in the engine room to pull it off. Go back to previous years where we won the league and beat teams properly and there was Makelele, Obi Mikel, Essien....then years later we had Matic in that role, then the focus changed and the Italian managers brought the 3atb and we had Kante who was a cheat code in midfield.

Feel like Crystal Palace needed a change, similar to Dyche taking over at Everton.

Hazard at full pace was something else for defenders to deal with. Amazing video

We wouldn't be able to match Real Madrid over 2 legs, they have too much firepower for us (the way they ripped apart Liverpool for 5 goals could happen against us as well as they have finishers all over the pitch). Same with Bayern & City. Ideal draw would probably be Milan clubs (as they haven't had that many high scoring games in the UCL), followed by Benfica/Napoli.

It just depends on who we have lined up to replace the outgoing players. If Kovacic wants to go back to Serie A, that's his choice and it's better that we get some sort of fee for him rather than watch him walk out the door like Rudiger/Christensen and lose out on 60+ million worth of transfer fees. It's a shame about Mount but he doesn't look like the type of player who would be happy as a squad player and he's not worth 200k a week.

If he gets called up for France, he'll get injured again. Deschamps was always intent on picking Kante even when he was injured. I'd love to see Kante continue at Chelsea but it's up to him. If he decides that he wants to retire elsewhere (e.g. playing another year or 2 in France), I'll respect his decision.

Our attack needs to improve massively to dream about winning the league.

Very good prospect but feel like he needs another season of development before taking that next step.

Have to agree, I like the fact that Kepa is growing in confidence and playing well. I didn't think he'd be putting in these types of performances after some of his performances in previous seasons.

Kane & Son are built for each other, I don't think he would have as much personal success at United and as much freedom as he does at Spurs. It's a shame he didn't put in a release clause in his contract as he could have easily retired with some proper trophies to his name (as Bayern were keen). The one positive would be Spurs not having a talisman and hopefully that would push them out of the top 4 for a few seasons.

I can just see an overweight Lukaku reporting for pre-season training....

This makes the whole transfer look even worse as the last thing we needed was a system player. In January, you go after players that can help you right away, not players that will take at least 12 months to settle down, get used to the intensity of the league before making any contributions to the team. It's like we signed him just to give Arsenal a headache rather than signing him because we actually needed that type of player.

Could you imagine the press if Potter decided not to give Mudryk minutes after splashing 70+ million on him? He'd be killed the next day. At least now there is a reason as to why he's not playing, it's because he's nowhere near good enough (yet) and looks well off the pace. Will go back to my previous comments on Mudryk, you don't sign a player who isn't ready to play significant minutes for 70 million in January, it's just bad business. Go look at Liverpool, they needed someone to top up their attack, they go and get Gakpo for 30-ish million, already has 4 goals to his name and looks like a proper finisher. Badiashile, Enzo have been good for the most part since joining Chelsea (was actually sort of shocked that we went after Wes Fofana in the previous window instead of Badiashile considering Fofana was coming off a pretty bad injury for a young defender). Madueke and Mudryk made less sense as January signings as they won't massively impact the first team for a while. Even the PSV coach said that he hoped to keep Madueke for his development but when Chelsea came along and doubled his value, he had no choice but to accept the deal.

Arsenal are not an inferior side, they've just been very very lucky with injuries this season (i.e. I don't recall them having multiple first team players out with injury at the same time). They had a stat the other day where it said Arteta has made 20 or less changes to his first choice XI across the season....compare that to Potter who has had to make 70+ changes in the season.