Who to blame for the worst season in the Roman era ?

[Spike 12,049]

Hopefully this season is a wake up call for the the mad twatters in charge. Maybe they've learnt from their idiotic mistakes.

[Tomo 21,751]

This season is not the worst in the Roman era, not even close compared to 10/11.

[OneMoSalah 8,887]

For me the first mistake was start the season with RDM as the "permanent" manager.

Exactly.

Di Matteo didn't have the experience to rebuild a team such as Chelsea. I was surprised he was given the job because of one, Roman's so called admiration for Pep and two, his managerial inexperience but I suppose if your the owner of a club and the interim coach has won the CL and FA cup with an aging squad of average players and a few players putting in exceptional performances in vital games (Cech, Mata, Cole, Ramires, Drogba) you'd consider that you should maybe give the bloke a chance at least.

He brought in a few players but we needed much more. We needed another center forward and central midfielder.

The likes of Hazard, Oscar, Moses, Azpilicueta and Marin were along the right idea. Young, technically better than the players we had before, potential resale value etc.

We still needed another midfielder as Lampard isn't good enough and disciplined to play in the double pivot, Ramires neither. Mikel and Romeu can play the holding role out of the two but aren't helped with poor and inconsistent performances and a partner who suits the role. Meireles and Mikel in the game against Newcastle impressed me, why did we sell Meireles?

Torres has huffed and puffed all year long, hes not that same player he was before. Signing Ba has helped slightly with rotation but we could have done with Lukaku playing for us this year, another mistake by the board/Di Matteo/whoever.

Di Matteo managed the egos last year and got them on his side and playing for him but this year with the younger players he didn't exactly figure out how to incorporate them into the squad and that ultimately cost us due to the small squad we have. De Bruyne and Lukaku could have made a hell of a difference for us. Look at where WBA are thanks to Lukaku's goals, the mans proved all his doubters wrong after a frustrating season last year where he was branded a flop by many on here. De Bruyne didn't play well in pre-season for us but he could of still been useful for us when Moses was at the ACON or when Moses and Hazard were fatigued/injured.

Even looking at pre-season this year. We only won ONE pre-season game against Seattle Sounders. That is shocking, I don't care if the games were to gain fitness or not but the likes of Lampard in MF was found out and Ivanovic at RB too. The fact we got crushed by a championship side too made me question was Di Matteo out of his depth, he played a £200 million side and we got beat and were poor. The start of the season we played well but after that United game it all fell apart.

This isn't the worst season in the Roman era for sure as last year is despite the CL triumph, but its certainly not the best.

[remains of the day 564]

Calling for the board to be sacked is easy. No board is popular because they spend most of their time saying 'no' to things, and most fans haven't got a clue what they do. You'll never run short of likes calling for the board to be sacked, especially if it gives people someone to blame who isn't a billionaire that happens to bankroll your club.

To a certain extent, yes that might be true. But at the end of the day, Roman isn't receiving monetary compensation to do a job. I can see why *some* of the blame needs to be attributed to him for decisions regarding managerial appointments/firings and the whole Torres situation.

But to argue that he is fully to blame for this mess of a season and not the board, is absurd and removes accountability from people who are getting paid a shit load of money to ensure that x, y, z is being done. We know that Roman is involved with club affairs, but it's not like he's micro-managing everything relating to transfer dealings. Is it his fault that we don't have good enough players for the pivot? Or that 25 million was squandered on another attacking player when there are holes in other areas? Isn't that why he has a technical director getting a nice salary to ensure that the squad is in good shape to mount title challenges?

[communicate 2,703]

In term of result, probably but this team is far from the worst.

You can see the potential unlike last season. I remember looking at our bench and we only had bosingwa and malouda as our options. Now we have mazacar,moses and azpi.

[Tomo 21,751]

In term of result, probably but this team is far from the worst.

You can see the potential unlike last season. I remember looking at our bench and we only had bosingwa and malouda as our options. Now we have mazacar,moses and azpi.

Exactly, we have been treated to some superb performances this season where the potential of this team is there for all to see, but we can't let experience go replace them with under 23's and expect any more than what we have got this season it's pure fantasy.

I challenge someone to say (honestly) they felt better about the future of this club in 2010/2011 say when we lost to Wolves than what they do now.

[Bosnian Blue 2,471]

Exactly, we have been treated to some superb performances this season where the potential of this team is there for all to see, but we can't let experience go replace them with under 23's and expect any more than what we have got this season it's pure fantasy.

I challenge someone to say (honestly) they felt better about the future of this club in 2010/2011 say when we lost to Wolves than what they do now.

We're talking present, not future. 6 trophies lost out of 7, the 2010/11 season was way better than this one. But thats not the point, the point is this is a bad season and somebody is culpable for it.

[Tomo 21,751]

We're talking present, not future. 6 trophies lost out of 7, the 2010/11 season was way better than this one. But thats not the point, the point is this is a bad season and somebody is culpable for it.

Im responding to the fact you said this was our worst season under Roman, and imo 10/11 was much worse, our future looked dire that term, now we have some of the upcoming stars of world football.

I fail to see how this season has been that bad (so far), unless someone was expecting a title win, were in a state of transition, these things take time. The best we could have hoped for this season was 3rd with a couple of cups on the side, we are in a good position to finish 3rd and claim a trophy, i would have accepted that in August given how much experience we let go.

While parts of this season have been frustrating, i am more than encouraged by the direction we are heading in on the pitch, the potential of this team is unreal, all we need is a bit more defensive balance (Khedira would be perfect) and we are laughing.

[Korea 734]

The funny thing is that the board is doing their job exactly like how I play PES master league...

Get all the top young talent of the world, go through 1-2 transitional years and becoming the best team in the world!

The thing I am worried about though, similar to PES, what are we going to do with the young talent that don't make it..... I remember I use to have a team of 26-30 top flight players mostly under 25......

It's going to be a problem in the future, since a lot of the guys Chelsea sign on were and are big names.

[Santiago. 1,500]

The Board, Making the biggest mistake in the world by sacking RDM and selling Sturridge as well as missing crucial aspects of our weakness that even I fucking pointed out in 2010 when we sold Ballack and Deco.

Torres and the amount of reliance we put on him as well as his consistent bottling.

Rafa Benitez

Lack of a complementary defender with Luiz.

Squad is a mess, focusing sooo much on the future we completely fucking ignored about our current problems and our crucial weakness in the midfield that we've been suffering from since 2010.

[underdrog 18]

our inability to stick with managers even when some of them were worldclass.

But good.This should have happened.I think CFC will be a better . Even if we finish our o. Don't know what but there should be some changes at the top.

[Badboy 1,526]

Maybe it's because Drogba/Lampard patched up our weaknesses so much since 05-06 that now we don't really have those type of incredibly driven players to constantly save our bacon anymore. Those flair players we have now are really good..... the likes of Hazard and Mata are superb but they can't do anything if they're not playing well but Lampard and Drogba even if they were not playing well they were still a danger because they had incredible drive to just dig out a win away from home when it mattered. In short we've basically tried to change our system too fast and we've paid the price with a shitty season. We've had a shit team since 2005-2006 and we only won the league in 2009-2010 because Drogba and Lampard powered us to it through their goals. We have to be honest with ourselves and say we've woeful since that season and that is a fact ! Since then we've relied on individual brilliance and now those players that constantly saved us are gone and in Lampards case basically retired.

[butchercoat 60]

Look on the bright side.....Fernando is finding his shooting boots again, if only he could lace them up in time for next season......

[Beirut_Blues 306]

_{Yaa it's definitely a shit season.... I'm just looking forward to a top 4 finish, Jose coming in and turning the tide.}

_{Whether Jose comes in I don't know, but the odds are pretty firm on that rumour and I'm sort of convinced he will be here.}

_{Regarding Roman, he fukkd up big time by sacking Robbie and bringing in Benitez.}

_{What's done is done so lets take the thorns out of our asses and look forward to a top 4 finish.}

[didierforever 7,349]

the only option that makes sense is BOARD. how many of us here knew that torres and sturridge as our only striking options would be a failure. still the board dint buy any strikers. loaning essien and selling meireles while having 4-5 players with absolutely no epl experience was always going to be difficult.

the mid is arguably the most important area of the pitch and for the 2 positions of the pivot we had 4 players mikel,lamps,rambo,romeu. with absolutely no back up.

chelsea were in 7 competitions in the start of the season and a team like chelsea should always be aiming for all the trophies they are playing for that is about 65-70 matches in the season or atleast 60 matches anyways yet we went into the season with a 20 man squad which included piazon and a relegated malouda.

at the 1st sight of a failure/wobble we discarded a fan favourite manager hence losing the home support to an extent which was followed up with a shocking and abysmal appointment of FSW.

how can this season not be the board's fault. from the decisions in transfer market to squad selection to the management appointment, they screwed it all up.

[TorontoChelsea 4,064]

I wanted something in between one choice and everybody. I don't think either of our managers this season really deserve blame for the current general state of the club and I don't think managers matter that much anyway. We wouldn't win with this club under any manager. We're simply not as talented as the top teams, we have less depth, and we have bigger holes in our roster despite generally outspending them. To me, that means that most of the fault lies with the board.

[LDN Blue 7,903]

I do believe this is a transitional season though. I mean we've seen the relationship between Hazard, Oscar & Mata click. We've seen a big improvement from players like Luiz & Azpilicueta as the season's gone along. It's not good for our league position, with what's happened, but there are little tells for positives.

[Beepu 1,714]

I think everyone can be blamed, although the biggest and the majority of it goes to the board who in the end is the one who made these decisions.

But really blaming anyone wont do anything.

[ZOS 580]

board..................................................................... 30%

old guard(Jose's Legacy, i.e. players inflated ego)..... 32%

fans, hero worshipers, CPO..................................... 15%

benitez..................................................................... 8%

roman...................................................................... 2%

di matteo.................................................................. 2%

the pivot, incapable, unwilling old players.....................11%

[Hamilton 2,120]

Lack of squad depth.

This,

the one decided to loan out some good squad players, starting with Lukaku what ment we started season with one striker..