🇧🇪 Eden Hazard

[LAM09 7,051]

Class above the rest.

[Belgiannutt 3,201]

Cheeky bastard

[MrExcalibur100 7,124]

He's shooting more (averaging 3 shots per game compared to 2 in past season), he's making more runs into space, into the box and between the lines (we saw signs of that 2 seasons ago), he's dribbling less (because he's playing further up the pitch so doesn't need to dribble so much).

Conte is doing the sensible thing with Hazard. Giving him as little defensive responsibility as possible within the system. Mourinho didn't have the common sense to do that. Instead, he claimed Hazard can become the best by "coming more to his direction" i.e defending the opposiing winger and fullback much more than a player of his calibre should and playing Hazard as an auxilarry left back at the sight of any strong team. This is 100% bullshit as we now know.  

 Just look at some of our past battles with Man City, PSG, Arsenal, United for reference. It's a miracle Hazard actually won POTY playing for such a cowardly, negative manager. Mourinho was the one holding him back. Messi and Ronaldo and even lesser players like Bale and Neymar rarely defend for their teams but they work within the team structure without compromising it.

Anyway, that's water under the bridge and I prefer to look forward now. Right now we have a player who in my eyes is currently the best in the world. None of the top players are playing better football than him right now. None. Anyway, long may the consistency continue. 

[Styles 9,790]

17 minutes ago, BlueLyon said:

And the thing is he is not only better in attack, but also in defense. You cant be absolutely top player (even attackers)  if you are not willing to defend  (because IMO team comes first and you have to contribute to team, not just yourself) And Conte made Eden a player who presses opponents. I love it.

The thing is, Hazard's pressing is now concentrated further up the field. He very rarely has to defend deep in the LB zone.

This formation is maximising his talents and hiding his 'weakness'.

The guy is a superstar.

[BlueLyon 9,359]

2 minutes ago, Styles said:

The thing is, Hazard's pressing is now concentrated further up the field. He very rarely has to defend deep in the LB zone.

This formation is maximising his talents and hiding his 'weakness'.

The guy is a superstar.

The formation is pure brilliance. I dont want to praise Conte too much, but damn I havent seen such managing in long long time. From poor team, he picked three new players, rotated a bit and voila. Everyone improved, the weaknesses we had are hidden and we play as team.

But IMO the greatest thing was to bring Moses and Alonso to the team instead of Iva and Oscar. Such athleticism and dynamics.

[Hybrid Angel 2,130]

I love this man. Stamford Bridge is the garden of Eden once again.

[Captain Ahmed 528]

Tir et le but!

[Barbara 15,149]

saw in MOTD that it's the first time in his career he's scored in four games in a row

[MrExcalibur100 7,124]

1 minute ago, Barbara said:

saw in MOTD that it's the first time in his career he's scored in four games in a row

league* games

[Dazzy_Vance 454]

On 31/10/2016 at 4:10 PM, Dazzy_Vance said:

I may be biased but I don't give a f***... Hazard is the best player in the PL.

Bump

[Mustafa 885]

Page 1,000 ffs. Hopefully 1,000 more to come of him at his best

[Mustafa 885]

10 hours ago, MrExcalibur100 said:

Messi is not like before. He's lost agility and explosivity and that's why I think right now Hazard is the best in the world. 

Agree with a lot of your views on Eden but Hazard can only dream of being on Leo's level. At the moment Leo has something like 51 goals in 53 matches in 2016. Although I agree that his agility and explosiveness has deteriorated a bit in the past few weeks, he still manages to adapt his game by not really trying to dribble past 3/4 guys like he usually does. He's happy to play the playmaker role and he plays that far better than any winger/forward in the world and he scores at will even when it seems like he's not trying.

 

Now, when it comes down to PURE enjoyment factor, you can say that Eden edges Leo at the moment because this level of performance really is not expected from Eden. We're all a bit surprised and we love him and he's carrying us. So of course.. its a bit surprising so we are ecstatic. Mind you, I believe Eden has done pretty much what Messi has done in terms of adapting his game to try and be more decisive. Eden doesn't juss dribble past 3/4 players anymore. He's doing what we've wanted from him all along.. productivity and when it comes to producing; no one comes anywhere near Lionel Messi.

[kellzfresh 7,229]

Wow. I feel like crying. I've never been happy when people were satisfied with hazard being unselfish, I've been begging for so long for Hazard to stop being shy, stop showing mercy to defenders, get the ball, dribble past your marker and shoooot!!!! Seeing him take the responsibility and not pass it on to another is what was missing and seeing him do what I've always wanted is pure joy.

[Beigl 1,387]

I said in the summer that Eden needs a coach who tells him to be more decisive in the final third, because we all know he has all the tools to score goals from everywhere. It seems like Conte is the right manager for him. Hazard isn't as shy when it comes to shooting as under Mourinho, not to mention that he can concentrate on playing as an attacker like he should do. This is what I really like about the 3-4-3 system- our wingers get protected by two workhorses who are also capable of scoring goals and creating chances, so there is much more fluidity in our game in comparison to the last few years.

Hazard and Costa are starting to link-up much better than in the last two years, which is really helpful against defensive teams. I have always thought they don't really like to pass to eachother but this also seems to have changed.

 

[kellzfresh 7,229]

I found this post on Facebook about what happened to hazard last season. 

 

"To me it's perfectly simple, and I never bought into the criticism of Hazard.
Jose ran him into the ground when the guy needed a rest, when he wasn't tip-top physically Jose played him and played him and played him and demanded the same as he does with all his wide players, that they run backwards almost as much as forwards, or even more.
The more he played the more his body suffered the more he put in poor performances the more he lost confidence the more Jose didn't have a clue how to manage him and just kept on running him into the ground, demanding even more effort.
A player knows his body better than anyone, and a player like Hazard, who runs at players and takes them on, needs to feel comfortable physically more than anyone, he needs to have that confidence to skip past players.
There was the game at Leicester, Jose's final game, where Jose wanted Hazard to carry on, he looked disgusted on the touchline, as if the fault lay with Hazard, as if Hazard had betrayed him, this was a player that had played and played and played. Jose wouldn't take him off so Hazard forced the issue, and quite rightly in my opinion. He was carrying god knows how many knocks and he couldn't carry on, and he had tried, he had tried throughout the whole season.
Guus, a calmer and more experienced head, gave Hazard six weeks off. Look what happened, he came back a different player, scored a brilliant goal at Anfield and came on for the second-half against Tottenham with us trailing 2-0. The rest as they say is history.
People said he should have done it earlier in the season and saved Jose. I had every sympathy for Hazard and none for Jose. A player needs understanding, and I'm afraid Jose showed none whatsoever."

And looking at how Mourinho is already looking for fighters in manutd to play through injury, alienating luke shaw, this is looking more true by the day. 

[MrExcalibur100 7,124]

2 hours ago, kellzfresh said:

I found this post on Facebook about what happened to hazard last season. 

 

"To me it's perfectly simple, and I never bought into the criticism of Hazard.
Jose ran him into the ground when the guy needed a rest, when he wasn't tip-top physically Jose played him and played him and played him and demanded the same as he does with all his wide players, that they run backwards almost as much as forwards, or even more.
The more he played the more his body suffered the more he put in poor performances the more he lost confidence the more Jose didn't have a clue how to manage him and just kept on running him into the ground, demanding even more effort.
A player knows his body better than anyone, and a player like Hazard, who runs at players and takes them on, needs to feel comfortable physically more than anyone, he needs to have that confidence to skip past players.
There was the game at Leicester, Jose's final game, where Jose wanted Hazard to carry on, he looked disgusted on the touchline, as if the fault lay with Hazard, as if Hazard had betrayed him, this was a player that had played and played and played. Jose wouldn't take him off so Hazard forced the issue, and quite rightly in my opinion. He was carrying god knows how many knocks and he couldn't carry on, and he had tried, he had tried throughout the whole season.
Guus, a calmer and more experienced head, gave Hazard six weeks off. Look what happened, he came back a different player, scored a brilliant goal at Anfield and came on for the second-half against Tottenham with us trailing 2-0. The rest as they say is history.
People said he should have done it earlier in the season and saved Jose. I had every sympathy for Hazard and none for Jose. A player needs understanding, and I'm afraid Jose showed none whatsoever."

And looking at how Mourinho is already looking for fighters in manutd to play through injury, alienating luke shaw, this is looking more true by the day. 

Mourinho is known for over-tasking his wingers. Jose ran Hazard ragged 2 seasons ago after the 5-3 Spurs game. The situation was excarcebated when he decided to shut up shop for the entire 2nd half of that season, become ridiculously negative and shift all the attacking burden on Hazard. Add that to the fact during this time period Azplicueta was playing as a Left back, mostly for defensive purposes and Hazard was double-marked every game, gettting tactically fouled and basically abused by thuggish premier league defenders who invariably went unpunished.

It's not a surprise his body broke down and he became injury prone for the first time in his career. Eden might be strong as an ox when he has the ball at his feet, which is decieving since from the waist down, he's built like a tank, with some of the most freakish thigh muscles I've ever seen on a footballer. In reality he's not built for the punishment he was handed out in that 2013-2015 time span. Looking at his upper body, he's built like a regular guy, not a professional athlete. 

A similar thing also happened to Matic, having to cover for the defensively inept Fabregas all the time. The thing is Mourinho was never a player himself and struggles to relate to players who actually play the game. For him, players are nothing more than chess pieces, manuevered to suit his goals and ambitions.

Conte on the other hand was a top player for Juventus and one of the most decorated Italian footballers ever. He puts Hazard in a position to maximize his talents, instead of forcing him to bend to his every whim like Mourinho did. And when the match is decided, Conte subs him out. Mourinho never subbed out Hazard, regardless of what the scoreline was.

[MCM4PR3Z 411]

Hazard was praising Alonso in the Belgian media. He says it's because of his hard defensive work that he can focus more on attacking now. He calls Alonso one of the main reasons of his good performances.

[DYC. 7,542]

We'll never really know what happened to Hazard last season so all we can do is speculate. But all of last season, bar the very end, I kept saying Hazard isn't fit. And by that I mean he wasn't in top shape. He was slower, less energetic and a lot less sharp. Top physical condition is everything to a footballer.  I remember the things I read when the man went off because he was injured. Slated because he was injured (!).

Anyway, poor match fitness sounds a lot more plausible than some devious scheme to get Mourinho sacked. That was a little too 'cartoon villain-y' for me.

[MCM4PR3Z 411]

29 minutes ago, DYC. said:

We'll never really know what happened to Hazard last season so all we can do is speculate. But all of last season, bar the very end, I kept saying Hazard isn't fit. And by that I mean he wasn't in top shape. He was slower, less energetic and a lot less sharp. Top physical condition is everything to a footballer.  I remember the things I read when the man went off because he was injured. Slated because he was injured (!).

Anyway, poor match fitness sounds a lot more plausible than some devious scheme to get Mourinho sacked. That was a little too 'cartoon villain-y' for me.

He repeated today in the media that he wasn't fully fit physically and mentally due to little time of before the season and no winter break mid season.

[Tomo 21,751]

41 minutes ago, DYC. said:

We'll never really know what happened to Hazard last season so all we can do is speculate. But all of last season, bar the very end, I kept saying Hazard isn't fit. And by that I mean he wasn't in top shape. He was slower, less energetic and a lot less sharp. Top physical condition is everything to a footballer.  I remember the things I read when the man went off because he was injured. Slated because he was injured (!).

Anyway, poor match fitness sounds a lot more plausible than some devious scheme to get Mourinho sacked. That was a little too 'cartoon villain-y' for me.

That was always a straw clutching narrative by fans who Couldn't let go of Jose. Thinking logically it was insane even as a thought, the Real players you could almost imagine it but the idea that our 15/16 lot who were widely critisied for lack of character and leadership would at the same time rebel vs Jose was just ludicrous. As much as i liked Jose there was a line, one that he not only crossed but shat on and sacking him for Antonio is probably the best decision we have made since we appointed Jose the first time.