Corner

I can think of one VERY good reason: We sack ANOTHER manager after only 7 days of being in charge. Our club would be a compelte laughing stock. Could you ever imagine any other manager taking charge after we had sacked our previous manager after 7 days?

Ah, okay. Thank you.

I don't know why you're putting that in quotes because I don't recall anyone on here saying that.

Really? For a man that knows nothing on how to run a football club, he has managed to bring us a lot of trophies. That's a strange one.

The recently discussed topics box doesn't appear anymore. I was just wondering if this is a problem with my browser, a bug or if it's just a change to the layout?

Because things were going to shit under Di Matteo. We were heading down the same road we were with AVB. Can you blame our owner for not wanting to take that risk?

You see that picture you have there? You should get rid of it, because without Roman we would never have had Drogba nor the Champions League. Honestly, it's so childish that people here are saying 'Roman Out' after a loss, or however many losses. The players should take the blame, not the owner. We were playing like shit under Di Matteo anyway. Do you really think he would have made much of a difference today? I don't.

Any idea on the line-up?

I agree. In the meantime until we do sign someone like Moutinho, and hopefully we do, then I think it would be a good idea to deploy Oscar in deeper role to control the tempo of the game. Ramires and Mikel are just not quick enough at getting the ball into the attacking midfielders and while Mikel is very tactically aware, he can be a bit slow with his distribution which hinders the pace of our attack sometimes. And Ramires just lacks the techinical ability to perform this role well.

There are plenty of topics where you can already discuss this. We don't really need another one.

Impossible to know the day before the game, I doubt even Benitez knows yet. But I think Hazard needs a rest. The poor guy has played every game this season.

Hehe. I did read it when you first posted it, if that helps?

Indeed. Massive respect.

Sure, the decision to appoint Benitez as interim manager has been a massively unpopular one. But it seems to me that 99% of us still appreciate everything Roman has done for the club and as long as we still appreciate that, he'll never lose our backing (as long as the word 'interim' stays in Rafa's job title). We all know Roman has his heart set on bigger things (Guardiola).

I wouldn't worry about that, to be honest. Roman doesn't seem to give a f*ck about anything the media says. He loves this club and I can't see anything changing that.

I post regularly on another forum, and what you described is exactly the way things have gone there. But my god, it's been a breath of fresh air since I joined here. I'm loving the openness of discussions here. People on here seem to be less judgemental too. So, hats off to everyone here!

None of us believe that if Guardiola become our manager then we would have instant success and win every single match. But if Roman wants to play possession-based football, then Pep is the man for the job. He would have plenty of young players with great technical ability and he would know exactly which players he needs to get of and which to bring in. It wouldn't bring instant success, as you say, but if any manager is going to be given time to implement his ideas at Chelsea, it's Pep.

That's a very interesting article. You would think that Chelsea would have already been working on his sprinting though.

True, but he also has an itchy trigger finger.

It will be very interesting to see the difference in the team and how we play when he comes back from injury. And also, how Benitez decides to use him. We've needed our experienced players more than anything over these past few weeks. I didn't realise how much of a blow it was gonna be when Lampard got injured against Shakhtar, but now I do.

I think Roman is just like Pep. He gets nervous when we don't have the ball. And the solution to that is to keep possession. What Roman wants, Roman gets.

This. 4-3-3 is so versatile. It would be especially beneficial when Lampard is back from injury. No way Rafa would ever use it though.

It definitely seems a lot more active than other Chelsea forums. There are posts every minute here, sometimes every few seconds. And more off-topic, of all the Chelsea forum's I've been on it's definitely the forum with the least amount of trolls. The people here also seem to be much friendlier and assertive. In other words, I can come here without wanting to chew my arm off.

I couldn't agree more! With Oscar deeper, besides the obvious benefits, it would allow us to play Moses and Marin more also.

While I do agree with everything you said, I don't think you can fault Benitez for picking Romeu last night. We certainly do need Mikel in our team for almost every game, but a player can not play every single game. Players need rest, especially when we have played a lot of games fo far in such a short space of time, and we also have A LOT of games coming up with such a crammed schedule. It's the managers job to asses how fit players are and to make sure that every play has the required match fitness to suit how often they will be playing. And Romeu will be playing most games when Mikel is absent for the ACON, unless we sign another defensive midfielder. While Mikel is a lot better than Romeu in terms of positioning, anticipation, off the ball instincts and breaking up attacks... Romeu bring something to the table that Mikel does not. He can provide a killer pass and has more of an ability to control the tempo of our play. And the manager can't just ignore a player's abilities. Romeu certainly has a lot of other aspects of his game that he needs to work on and improve before he can be reliable and a regular starter for us, but it would be detrimental to his development if the manager did not play him at all. On top of all that, I can see why Benitez chose to rest Mikel and play Romeu against Fulham. We have a game against West Ham coming up that we will need Mikel for. Not even mentioning including Mikel's many qualities that I referred to earlier in this post, his physicality alone will be vital when playing away to West Ham. And we all knew Fulham don't pose as much of an attacking threat that a lot of the 'bigger' teams do, even though they have scored 25 goals so far. Obviously, Benitez knew this too which is probably why chose Romeu to play instead.