Closed Brighton Vs Chelsea

[Heisenberg 1,824]

Fuck attractive football. Loan out all these technical players and replace them with 190 cm tall muscle men.

Playing ugly wins things. We should play a 9-0-1 all season.

Agree.

Seriously , yes its very good to dominate games and wins matches , but look at Arsenal ? Won nothing.We must not think about good playing , we must think about how to keep winning.

[bababoom 4,478]

As i said before, i wouldn't worry too much about pre season matches, but i would like to raise a few points that's been on my mind lately.

It's clear we need a new CM, if we want to play attractive football we need someone who can spot a pass and dictate the flow of the game, sadly that's not what Essien and Lampard excel at.

I also think we may need to sell Essien, don't be fooled by these pre season games, if you think he's back... he's not. You can still see he's lost his pace and power that once made him one of the best midfielders in the world.

Raul Meireles was a shit buy, simple... too casual, not a care in the world. 12m? what a joke.

Ok, now this point may be a bit over the top but who cares, David Luiz... he's such a likable guy, the joker etc, but since joining Chelsea how many mistakes has he made? he needs to concentrate on the game and not lose focus, i'm not doubting him as a defender but come on he needs to buckle down.

[Noctourniquet 14]

Okay, okay. He was saying that Lampard was dreadful yesterday, something that I do personally disagree with. Then again I didn't watch it all, only parts. He was great last season but forget that for a brief moment will you?

Why would I forget that when some people here keep saying that he is past it and not good enough to start for Chelsea? Talking about the end of last season proves that he isn't past it. If he plays in midfield with the likes of Oscar and Mata, rather than Meireles and Essien, he would absolutely flourish. Some people here expect him to do everything on his own and start saying things like "he's past it" just because of a couple pre-season games. Yeah, right.

[Strike 6,971]

sell meireles and essien

sign cabaye or moutinho and play him alongside Oscar in mid.

sign azpi or debuchy

sign lewandowski or dembele or dzeko or any bargain to give us back up in attack. then we'll be ready to challenge for the title

[communicate 2,703]

I still don't understand how some/most fansy don't see how Lampard is not supposed to be our main CM. Dropping Lampard is like a sin.

Last year Lampard was awful when we try to play attacking football, he was outstanding under RDM when we play defensive football.

Right now we are trying to become more expansive team so It's time to get new cm and move lampard to the bench.

[TrippingStep 336]

It was only a friendly and many players didn't try very hard.

But what is the most worrying thing is that against team that sit very deep is that I don't see a good pattern of play to break down the defenses. It seems like the only idea was to put people in the box and around it and cross a ball into it.

Against team sitting deep like that, the midfield don't need to go straight towards the box, they can be 15-20 meters backwards passing the ball and waiting to set-up plays when players can run towards the goal. And while some players can go to receive a cross, there must be players that plays in front of the defenders their back towards the goal as a link-up possibility to give the ball to the players that have the game in front of them.

[capriccioso 2,545]

Next time someone parks the bus we should just hold out for a 0-0. Try scoring from a fluke long shot or something.

[francozola 2,040]

Next time someone parks the bus we should just hold out for a 0-0. Try scoring from a fluke long shot or something.

How adventurous.

[Tomo 21,684]

Sahin is available on loan, why aren't we even getting linked with him?

Who cares if we get an option to buy or no, he will sort so many short term problem's out its unreal.

[capriccioso 2,545]

How adventurous.

Better a draw than a 1-0 loss from a counter-goal.

[Tomo 21,684]

If there's one thing ive learned from this pre season.

Benayoun > Meireles

What was AVB thinking off last August? although then again considering what happened in May, its hard to regret anything that happened last season.

[planetchelsea 3]

I'm not a bit worried about yesterday's performance. Still a work in progress and I think the players were keeping their energy for the community shield match. I think they will silence all doubters next week. KTBFFH

[Badboy 1,526]

Sahin is available on loan, why aren't we even getting linked with him?

Who cares if we get an option to buy or no, he will sort so many short term problem's out its unreal.

Because we have Oscar who is the exact same player as him. This pre-season is worrying because usually a poor pre-season is followed by a poor start to the season.

[CHOULO19 24,332]

Because we have Oscar who is the exact same player as him. This pre-season is worrying because usually a poor pre-season is followed by a poor start to the season.

Not necessarily. For example we had a perfect preseason last year and started awful while Mancity, I remember, had a bad preseason and they had the best start to a season in the PL history.

[Tomo 21,684]

Because we have Oscar who is the exact same player as him. This pre-season is worrying because usually a poor pre-season is followed by a poor start to the season.

Agreed but im worried about the strength in the midfield. Upto and including the double season we always dominated every game possession and control wise apart from against United, Barca and Arsenal, the last couple of years have been the polar opposite.

[francozola 2,040]

Better a draw than a 1-0 loss from a counter-goal.

Yes but we shouldn't really be aiming for 0-0 draws should we? But perhaps until our team develops further we might not have much choice. It's laughable that we're suggesting to play defensive football against teams like Brighton and pray for a goal on the break or whatever.

And (re: your post [i believe it was you who posted that, forgive me if it wasn't] a few pages back saying that you'd prefer seeing ugly football as long as we got wins) our current team is completely different from Jose's team when we were able to sneak 1-0s with not very attractive football. We had Makelele the rock back then, along with Lamps and Essien in their prime. We're now stuck with Meireles, a past-it Essien, a much older and less capable Lampard. We had Drogba and we now have Torres.

There's still a lot of work to be done especially in midfield. Our pathetic midfield affects the whole team. The defense doesn't have as much protection that it should and our attack doesn't have as much creativity and opportunities that it should because of the midfield's complete inability to dictate tempo and possession.

We're paying for Roman/the board's refusal to sign replacements for our core group of players and start the rebuilding process in 2008.

[Tomo 21,684]

@francozola, Spot on about 2008, ive said it so many times, key example is Modric was available for a mere £16m back then, why we let him go to Spurs without even competing for his signature ill never know.

[royg 96]

IMHO, 4-3-3 is very useful whenever you play pressing game but the problem is after winning the ball everyone is clueless what to do with it. The players are not quick enoguh to pass it and create something from it. What we all witnessed is our players (the brighton game) are not built for this kind of style. It is mostly succesful if we have 3 front players capable of attacking but unfortunately we only have Torres on that department and it is getting predictable.

Hazard: Showed he doesnt want to play as a wide player and always drift inside, always out of position. I'm not sure if language barrier is a problem but he's not in sync with other players. Hope he plays the ball and challenge the defenders and not just delaying the ball and let Ashley to run from behind. Take it to the defenders FFS!

Lampard: He might be the leading scorer for the pre-season but i would love him to play and stay deep and just distribute the ball. No more (or minmize) late runs please, it will only leads open spaces for opponents to play with. And please pass the ball quickly like what you do during the CL campaign.

Meireles: I dont know what to say but he was respectable during our CL campaign and thats it. Probably a last option player for me if we have all our players back to the squad.

Torres: Might be the most aggressive player during the game but maybe still lacking the movement to free him up from the defenders. Its either he is shit or the Midfielders are not giving him the service. But honestly he was the best player when he was on field.

Luiz: He was rated highly with his discipline on the later part of the season. I'm not sure why he keeps on attacking, maybe because he see lack of movements from the midfield but please! stop (or minmize) those runs and concentrate on defending!

Ramires: I agree to most everyone here suggests that he is not built as RW, horrible crosses and just cross it for the sake of crossing, no play intention at all. He could only play as RW if we plan on parking the Bus and take our opponents on counters. Other than that I dont know where we could position him.

Overall, We lack the quickness, we are clueless with the ball, most players our out of position and we play without desire. I'm sorry for the travelling fans for getting uninspired game to watch.