The only place to be

At the end of the day, Roman has the biggest yes vote in the room. For months now we've heard from other fans how some of our supporters are afraid to criticise the owner for fear of him walking away. I'm not too sure they aren't true. If you subscribe to the view that he has yes men in Gourlay and Emenalo then you have to acknowledge that he hired them, ergo he must like having yes men around him. If that's the case, why on Earth would you not call for Roman to leave?

Without Abramovich we might never have attracted fans like you though.

If we put a weakened team out in the Europa League then we have a chance. But some people still think a fucking coefficient is worth risking our league position for. :banghead: Anyone who still thinks the Europa League is of any importance is saying that Champions League qualification is not important.

200 appearances. 2 England caps. When do you start to judge a player? Shaw's a guy who has been thrown into a tough situation and held his own against players twice his age. Not just held his own, but been mightily impressive whilst doing it. What do we do? Wait until he's got a couple of England caps and his price has doubled? Which player looked better at 17? Shaw or Bertrand? (The answer is Shaw by the way) Actually, different question. Which one is better right now?

Sit down Nando.

We have Mata and Hazard. What Spurs have is a solid foundation in midfield who put Bale in a position to win the game. We have Lampard, Mikel and Ramires. People saying we should take the Europa League seriously really need to have a word with themselves if they think Champions League qualification is important. Personally, I think we can benefit from missing out on the Champions League - it might force us to cut some of the dead wood in the squad and in the stands.

Is it just Buck you want out? Haven't the current board been making smart moves in the market? Aren't we laying the sins of previous board members at their feet? People want the board out - do any of them have a fucking clue why?

You mean the ones who got sacked for underperforming? Now he's just got to convince the people who pay their hard-earned money to support the club week in and week out.

I'm not writing him off. I'm saying that after 200 appearances he's yet to convince me that he has the potential to be world-class. It's not a bad thing to present an honest opinion of a player and I see you don't actually offer an opinion. Yes he's been patient and yes he's worked hard but that doesn't mean shit unfortunately. It's a tough world out there. But be honest - who do you think has more potential right now and who do showed the more promise at age 17? The fact he's a Chelsea fan is a bonus and he's had good performances in all the games I've seen him in, not just the ones against us.

Here's the thing with the DM position in this league - no-one plays such a similar role to Mikel. I'd throw in Carrick or Scottie Parker's name but by Choulo's narrow description of what a DM should be they're probably be too creative. To be honest I'm fucking bored of arguing about him. But that's the thing - he's the most divisive player we have and for some reason there's a couple of people on the internet willing to make any fucking excuse for him. They see something we mere mortals don't.

Could Bertrand be world-class? He's 23 years old, played in 200 league games and has 2 England caps and I'm still not sure. Shaw on the other hand looks special at 17.

That he was disrespected by Arsenal and turned-on by their fans. It's pretty well-known there's no love lost between him and his former club. Have you ever read his twitter comments? https://twitter.com/TheRealAC3/status/227076381182406656

From what I've heard and seen at the club.

I've said that Lamps should get a new contract if Mourinho becomes manager. But we still need to replace him in the first team so I'm then arguing in favour of a bench player being given at least £80k a week (at a guess), which is against my frugal nature. I like the idea of Frank sticking around because I enjoy seeing him at the club and would hate seeing him at another. In footballing terms though, I don't know if he's needed. I can't stand Torres, but he was a £50million investment (probably double that with wages) and you can't just write them off. The fans didn't write him off either, up until last month (the Sunderland game was the last false dawn) so the board weren't alone in that. We knew how much he cost and that we needed him to succeed. I'm sure people on here were saying after Didier left that he would shine, I know I did. I think with the hiring of AVB the club showed a willingness to embrace stability and promote young players, but that didn't work out and we all have our theories why. But the willingness and the investment in youth is enough for me to believe that the club does want to do things the right way and until I believe differently I won't be joining in the calls of 'sack the board'.

If you want an atmosphere like Anfield, go to Anfield. Yes they finished above us in one season. They've had eight years without a trophy though, and they've sold their best player on at least two occasions. They have three players out on loan who could be part of the first team - we have Lukaku, De Bruyne, Courtois, Kalas, Chalobah and Omeruo who I expect to be part of the first-team. We haven't done well in bringing players through in the past but I expect that to change much like our transfer policy has. If you think Oxlade-Chamberlain has had a good season, then you either don't watch Arsenal or don't know many Arsenal fans. He's had a poor season and a lot of fans are blaming Wenger for that. Gibbs is a decent left-back but no better than Bertrand. In fact I'd hazard a guess Oscar has score more Champions League goals than those players have Champions League starts. The last paragraph is bollocks. Ashley loves Chelsea and doesn't tend to talk in glowing terms about the Arsenal fans who labelled him Cashley.

I'm not the one who said the guy who wrote the piece had 'nailed it'. You're the one who did that and you've been walking it back ever since. My view on Roman is that he's made plenty of mistakes, but that he's human and that he's been trying to run this club properly in recent years. Still, the signings of Torres (for which Carlo gets a free pass but others don't) and the hiring of Benitez (who I defended at the time because he seemed like the best option) were indefensible in hindsight. But I made a point to put them into context with the other things we do. I look at the Lukaku and Courtois signings and think we're replacing key players. I look at the performance of our youth team and think we're doing exactly the right thing in the academy. I look at the signings of Azpi, Ba and Moses and think we're finally moving away from the high-priced 30 year olds we used to sign. I look at the continuing moves to secure a bigger stadium and think this is a guy in it for the long-haul. I look at the contracts we've offered to players like Mata and Cahill and think we're finally looking to balance the books. Right now, we're in about as bad a spot as we've been for years. But I truly think we have something very special coming together that will start with the appointment of the right manager. Until I don't think that then I'm not going to call for heads to roll because I personally see no reason to. And I'm going to continue to read things through and compare them with my own thoughts and feelings before I say someone's 'nailed-it'.

I love how you accuse Roman of being out of touch, and then say we should be more like Arsenal. :lol2: :lol2: So you want the atmosphere of Liverpool (no league title in how many decades), the resourcefulness of Arsenal (selling your best resources and not replacing them is resourceful?), the pride of Bayern (can't argue with that) and the stability of Barca (that stability followed a lot of instability). Is there anything about Chelsea that you like? As for a plan, we do have one. For the first-time in a while it's a long-term plan based on bringing through young players. We weren't doing that even a few years ago, and it's not surprising because Roman's investment in youth is less than a decade old so now is about the time you'd expect them to start coming through. Going back to the Arsenal point though, they don't bring through much youth now. They're success this season (such that it is) is based as much on expensive signings who are about 27 than it is youth products. You're talking about Arsenal from about five years ago aren't you?

I've called you on this before, but we have a chance to beat United. And we have Ba up front.

He's a guy running a business. Show me one person who doesn't make mistakes in the first ten years? And he probably did the right things to get us to the level where we could win titles, but it's shifting from a business based on outside investment to one that can be self-sustaining that is tricky and that's where we've fallen down. There are so many positive signs though with the signings we've made and the performance of our young kids (our future) that people need to take a long-term view of things rather than simply calling for 'the board' to be sacked without being able to explain why. The main thing needs to be sorting out the managerial situation.

Come on. You're trying so hard to excuse Roman when even he would say the buck stops with him. You call these people sycophantic scroungers, but HE HIRED THEM. If you think he's such an insecure billionaire (because there are so many of them) then why would his next hirings be any different?

Exactly. The thing is, when I see Roman in his box I see a guy who genuinely enjoys owning a football club. That doesn't mean he hasn't made mistakes but I genuinely think we're heading in the right direction and that we'll achieve success built on sustainable grounds. But I expect more articles like the one in the OP if we fail to get into next season's Champions League.

Well he's a tactical moron as well, but all managers are aren't they?

He should be given a chance but they shouldn't? Some opposition fans might say that we're too cowardly to call out our owner because we realise how much we rely on his money. I'm sure that's not the case and I'm sure that you're not just calling for the board's heads because they're an easy target. But let's look at who exactly we should sack and who we should get in. The first team is a mess because of mistakes made by people in charge around 2008 in my opinion. Now that includes Mr 'Silver Bullet' himself, Peter Kenyon yet the author of that piece seems to think he's the right choice to bring back. Is he on the money in that regard? If you look at the most contentious issues in the last few years, the purchasing of Torres, the sacking of AVB, the sacking of RDM, the hiring of Benitez, doesn't the buck ultimately stop with Roman? Blaming the people you think are nothing but yes men WHO WERE HIRED BY ROMAN seems to be a kneejerk reaction specifically designed to avoid upsetting our owner. Why not go the whole hog? Let's just sack the yes men and hire another group of people who definitely won't be yes men. But how does Roman hire these people? Oh right, by consulting with another group of yes men because he sounds like a frightfully insecure person. Or we can look at what we have at the top of the club and try and look at what they're doing with a sense of perspective. Have they made mistakes? Absolutely. Are there key areas where they've fucked up? Yes. Is the club on the whole moving in the right direction? I think we are. I think we're suffering from mistakes made half a decade ago and there's no quick-fixes for them.

The old 'people don't understand Mikel's role' stuff. It's patronising bullshit when you realise that every Chelsea fan loved Claude Makelele. Fellaini is a DM playing in an advanced role with sound technical skills. His positioning as a DM was perfectly good. We can have this argument again but you don't want to discuss what he was like when he was a DM at Everton and Liege, so let's leave it. Mikel's problem is that he's an average DM and that's not a bad thing in itself. But when a sportsman is average then 50% of people will say he's underrated and the other 50% will say he's overrated. He doesn't make the team worse but he doesn't make it better. He's a shirt-filler who has been lucky to have played in some good teams, but he'll never stand out on his own merits. Now it didn't have to be that way. He was a stand-out player as a more creative midfielder but was converted to a DM by Jose. I hate that. I hate trying to make a more offensive-minded player into a defensive-force because they require different things. It's why I favour Chalobah as a DM (to go back to that point). His first instinct will always be to defend. It's why I don't think the most urgent thing we face is replacing Mikel. He can be in the team, but that team has to be much better because he won't elevate a single player's performance. He'll occasionally fuck-up but most of the time the other players will cover for him. And when all else fails, there will be fans like you to tell supporters they're too stupid to understand just how good Mikel is.

You said the author of that piece nailed it and you said the problems at this club run deep. Why wouldn't you be calling for his head?