Reddish-Blue

To be honest, the start of last season, things were going relatively well, then we sort of struggled, then we had issues at the back end of last season with Lukaku wanting out. The start of this season is just replicating what happened at the end of last season. There are CLEARLY two players who don't want to be here (Pulisic and Ziyech) and not only did we keep them, we're actually playing them. I would be shocked if Fulham don't win the match on the weekend, Mitrovic will have a field day against our CB's. This has shades of that infamous Mourinho season where we were 15th or 16th before Uncle Guus came in to paper over the cracks.

Well of course the comments haven't gone down well...it's almost the same set of players he had last season (with the exception of Werner, Lukaku leaving and the two CB's departing on free transfers). Feels like Tuchel is trying to be Mourinho when facing the media but he doesn't have the ability to drop players like Mourinho did in the past. The real problem is, if you're playing like shit and you get to start every week, how does that make every other player feel in the team? It's not like we have a Hazard or Lampard to save the day with a goal or assist.

The only competition where it would 'affect' City is Champions League knockout stages. City could play in 2nd gear for the rest of the PL and they'd still finish top 2 without breaking a sweat. I don't see them struggling against too many sides other than Spurs & Liverpool and I guess United as Rashford doesn't mind a goal against City. I was sort of hoping Bernardo would be sold just to see how Pep re-adjusted his team and tactics without his skill-set but it looks like they didn't really lose anyone as G. Jesus and Sterling's attacking outputs will be covered by Haaland and young Alvarez.

Will be interesting to see if we overpay Mendy with the new contract. It's quite obvious that his biggest weaknesses are: - Rushing out of goal - Poor with the ball at his feet (can't deal with any sort of pressure) - His general command of the defense in set piece situations

"We at least try to play football" We basically got taken apart by both Leicester & West Ham at home and couldn't deal with Leeds pressing us. VAR saved us from another 2 dropped points against West Ham. As for your comment about counter attacking football being boring, have you watched peak Mourinho & Conte teams in action? It was some very good football and it always lead to chaos and goals. Much rather that than watching people pass the ball sideways and backwards for no reason other than to 'retain possession'. Possession stats mean nothing at the end of the day as no-one wants to be remembered as the team that tried to play football and had 60% average possession in each game but they finished 6th because their attack had the finishing ability of a Championship side. United seem to have found the way to get results and as many people mentioned last season, the key to their offense is a motivated Rashford. When Rashford is on and he is scoring goals, they don't need to get out of 2nd gear as long as the midfielders are good enough to play those through balls or over the top passes on the counter.

He'll probably walk back into Serie A in the summer.

Would be part of the rebuilding process, the club keeping options open on midfielders with both Kante & Jorginho out of contract Maybe we can throw Ziyech into the deal and get rid of another player that wants to leave.

Kepa was decent enough when called upon last season. Wonder if Mendy does get dropped if he lets in another howler like he did against Leeds.

Imagine that, Kovacic going under the knife, Kante & Jorginho's contract set to expire in June 2023... big decisions to be made in the summer! Onto the game, hope we get a good home win to get back on track before a tough game against in-form Mitrovic and Fulham.

We had no choice but to sign 2 CB's due to the fact that the previous management allowed two quality defenders to stay at the club without signing some sort of extension on their contract (especially in Christensen's case where a 5 year and 4 year contract was tabled by the club and he outright refused to sign). As for the Lukaku deal, it's a bit of a head scratcher as to why that deal went ahead if the player was not Tuchel's top pick. Surely the club wouldn't just go out and spend 97 million on an attacker without the manager's seal of approval. I hope for Tuchel's case that he starts delivering results sooner or later because with the amount of money spent in this window, the media will slaughter him if we're not capable of retaining our top 4 spot in the league. Looks like it's going to be a proper fight with all of the traditional top 6 in the mix...

I think both Pulisic and CHO should have been allowed to leave the club. Better than watching Pulisic play as a wingback for no reason. Either play him up top behind the striker or don't play him at all. Does Tuchel not have a Plan B for when our wingbacks are unavailable? Surely if he's adamant on playing the 1 system, we should have signed a decent backup RWB for Reece rather than relying on the veteran body of Azpi (who has lost a step in pace) to keep up with the opposition's left flank players. Same thing can be said about Gallagher, like what a waste of his offensive talents by making him play in a pivot...a position that he hasn't played much in his career to date (think West Brom tried him there a few times but they realized he offered so much more further up the pitch).

Hopefully he plays a similar role to Giroud for us, feel like he'll link up well with Sterling. I hope he can bring a bit of confidence back to Pulisic as well, he showed patches of what he can do in that free role behind the striker at the back end of last season. Will be interesting to see how the manager uses him & Havertz together once he recovers from his jaw injury.

Klopp also hasn't finished lower than 4th since the 15-16 season and he broke the Liverpool winning PL curse. Most of their big signings like Alisson, Van Dijk have paid off. If Tuchel finishes outside top 4 this season with the amount of money spent, questions will definitely be raised. The club has backed him with these signings, there's even rumors that the club wanted Ronaldo to spearhead the new ownership this season but Tuchel declined and was persistent in wanting Aubameyang...even though he was let go on a free by our local rivals.

He's definitely in the pressure cooker now. If Fofana & Auba don't start clicking right away....I really do fear for Tuchel. No excuses as even United are scrapping their way to wins and their offense hasn't even clicked yet.

That's probably the biggest positive from the window. Getting rid of the deadwood in our first team squad should have been a priority and that's what our new ownership group has done. Hate to bring up Arsenal but they've done similar with Arteta in charge (in terms of getting rid of players who they don't need).

Cech was due a few poor showings considering the top class career he put together at Chelsea. Mendy's known for having brain fades and being beaten at his near post and charging out of his goal for no reason, that was the summary scouting report I got from multiple Ligue 1 fans who have been following that league for the past 5+ years. They said Mendy is solid most of the time but if he loses confidence, it'll likely take 8-10 games for him to get back on track.

West Ham will batter us as we literally have no midfield available. Don't think a goalscorer is the biggest concern for us at the moment, we should be more worried about the defense buckling under pressure against sides that will very likely end up in the bottom 6 of the PL. Rice to score from outside the box just to show Tuchel what he's missing.

Agree with this but we have no-one else in the squad who provides a similar output to him. Banking on RLC as a backup midfielder (considering his injury issues over a long period of time and the fact that lower back injuries are very likely to flair up at least a few times a season) is also quite risky by Tuchel & the coaching team.

I honestly don't know what fans expect from him. He can't work miracles without any backing in the transfer window. We were clearly lacking in terms of fullbacks and wingers heading into the season. The board do nothing about it apart from signing Zappacosta on deadline day (who has looked average at best). You replace Conte with any other attainable manager and I doubt we would be in top-4.

Cahill will always be an average defender. He's had some high points in his career at Chelsea but if i'm being honest, he'd probably be at some other club if he wasn't homegrown. Would love to see a Chelsea backline in the future without any limited players! I don't get the hate for Rudiger. He's still got time to improve as a defender at 24 years of age....as for Cahill, he should be at his peak.

Hopefully he moves to a different club. We should be focusing on wingers & wingbacks. We don't need a square peg for a round hole.

I'm surprised at people's reactions to Bakayoko. Did everyone really expect him to become a class midfielder over night? He is as raw as they come from the French League. Barely played two full seasons of senior football, gets a big money move to a top club and he's expected to be the new Matic. As his former mentor (Makelele) mentioned in multiple interviews, Bakayoko has no discipline in his game, he'll never be a calm midfielder, ready to sit and recycle possession, he's unpredictable, he can do something brilliant then make an awful mistake straight after, he has a while to go before he becomes a consistent threat.

Simple as that. Win the FA Cup, see how far we can go in the CL and retain top 4 and we can move ahead to next season positively. If we want to move ahead next season, we need to clear out the deadwood in the first team and sign decent squad players (or even blood 1-2 loaned out players as squad depth).

This game showcased Chelsea's biggest flaw. No attacking identity. It's shocking that we don't have another player in the squad capable of creating/scoring goals apart from Hazard. Questions have to be asked as to why we signed both Bakayoko and Drinkwater when it was clear that we needed another quality attacker (like Salah, Mahrez etc)

Fixed.