The Hiddink Thread

[Ljpaddock 187]

• Fabregas, Pedro, Oscar, Matic : at the very best, they belong to a big team's bench.
• Terry, Ivanovic, (Falcao LOL) : not belonging to top-flight football anymore.
• Mikel, Cahill, Ramires, Remy : players for 'small' teams.
• Azpilicueta, Zouma, Costa, Willian : 'okay' players for a big team. Though, Azpi is a very good defensive right-back that plays left-back ; Zouma might be 'great' for is age but if you considere him as a first-team player (i.e. regardless of his age) he is good at best ; Costa has clear limitations in term of technic and self-control ; I have no complains in regards to Willian, though he should not be the 'player of the year'.

That leaves us with : Hazard. He is the only (out-field) player we have that is world-class. And unfortunately for us, he is not the kind of player to get on the score-sheet (i.e., he is more an 'Iniesta' than a 'Suarez').

Do you remember, a couple of years ago we did have : Luiz ; Bertrand ; Azpilicueta ; Oscar ; Hazard ; de Bruyne ; Hazard ; Mata ; Lukaku (; Aké). It was not a great team by any means however, that was an exciting project and it was a very good base to build a great team. A few key signings here and there (i.e. a great CB to partner Luiz, a great central-midfielder, a great striker) and some additions of 'good' players to compliment what we already had would have been enough to build a competitive team that would be able to play good football. Yet, two years later, we are left with a squad full of utility players, some dead-woods and some 'okay' players and only one world-class player. Above all, we are left with only a very few players that are able to do things with the ball at their feet...

We are not back to the step 1 we are back to step -10. Mata, Luiz, Bertrand, de Bruyne, Lukaku, Schurrle, Salah... We have sold all these young and fresh players. We are left with nothing to build upon and the only hope for people nowadays seems to be the combo 'Kennedy-RLC' which is a clear indication that we are at the bottom of a bottomless pit.

Why, oh why did the board let Mourinho shape the team to his non-football philosophy ? He got rid of all the players that could play football and the players that could have been a bright spark for the 'long-term'. Instead, he gave a free-pass to all of our dead-woods and utility players because they are tall and would run behind the ball like donkeys and more importantly, as they cannot keep the ball at their feet, the chances of them doing a mistake was greatly reduced, because hey, not doing any mistake is the most important thing in football.

Unfortunately, we are not Real Madrid and we are not full of 'stars'... So we can forgot to bounce back like them. No, we are going to take the Inter route, and unless other clubs mismanage their team and unless we make some signings that turn out to be brilliant, we are not fighting for the title for the five next years. I am so pissed off.

This is the best post this forum has ever seen

[Ossie the King 634]

This is the best post this forum has ever seen

It probably is if you're the type of person who uses phrases like 'non-football'to describe Mourinho's teams. In that case it ticks all the boxes for a great post.

For me it rewrites a lot of history and I'm not so she that selling players like Luiz and Bertrand was the worst thing in the world. We won the league last season. Were we perfect the whole way through? No. But no team is.

What happened is that after we won the league, we did nothing to improve the team. We stood still. We didn't get Jose's targets, who were young, 'footballing'players. He saw the problems in the team like everyone else did yet instead on John Stones, he got Papy.

Whilst it's fun for some to indulge in this narrative that it was all Jose's fault,and he's by no means perfect, the problems at this club go way beyond him.

But I think some are a little too scared to criticise the sugar daddy in the slightest. If we did, maybe he'd put us back in the toybox and play with his boats instead.

[Jase 43,479]

It probably is if you're the type of person who uses phrases like 'non-football'to describe Mourinho's teams. In that case it ticks all the boxes for a great post.

For me it rewrites a lot of history and I'm not so she that selling players like Luiz and Bertrand was the worst thing in the world. We won the league last season. Were we perfect the whole way through? No. But no team is.

What happened is that after we won the league, we did nothing to improve the team. We stood still. We didn't get Jose's targets, who were young, 'footballing'players. He saw the problems in the team like everyone else did yet instead on John Stones, he got Papy.

Whilst it's fun for some to indulge in this narrative that it was all Jose's fault,and he's by no means perfect, the problems at this club go way beyond him.

But I think some are a little too scared to criticise the sugar daddy in the slightest. If we did, maybe he'd put us back in the toybox and play with his boats instead.

I think this situation goes both ways to be honest. Peace was not wrong with he said in his post. 3-4 years ago, we started to buy certain type of players - the footballing type, if you like (seems like the latest buzzword around here) - because we wanted to change our style of play, to adopt a more attacking approach as opposed to sticking with our pragmatic football from the years before that.

We wanted to have a system in place whereby we instill this new style of play in the club from top to bottom and hire a specific type of manager to manage those players. Even if we were to sack the manager or he leaves after a few years, the style will still be there and we just need to find the same or similar kind of manager (think Barcelona). That's arguably why we were hell bent on getting Guardiola back then but when he didn't want to join us, for whatever reason, the club decided to betray what they had been planning all along by hiring Mourinho, who we all know his playing style is the complete opposite of what we tried to implement going forward.

Perhaps, they had no one else to turn to, panicked and chose Mourinho because it was a marriage of convenience - the club wanted to success with style but when they couldn't get someone to implement that style, they ditched it just for success. They probably wanted to believe Mourinho was a man changed and a man wanting to fix his damaged reputation after his Real Madrid days. On hindsight and without wanting to sound like a total hypocrite, I - and most fans too - enjoyed the success Mourinho brought to the club last season but one cannot deny that our squad depth and quality - the squad given to him with those players bought by the board - got worse each season under him.

He ostracized certain players from the start and sold them almost immediately - because they weren't tall or supposedly didn't run about enough. He doesn't put the same faith in every one in the squad - certain players can play poorly for 100 games in a row and still start every week while the minute others perform poorly, they're out of the team and we won't see them for the next few weeks. People like to say it's the players' fault for not showing the hunger, desire to fight for their place but if you were in their shoes and you see boss treat you differently to some of the other players like in this case, you would want to leave, wouldn't you?

Others play badly but still get chances to play and rectify their mistakes. You play badly and you don't get to play for the next few games and get a chance to prove the manager wrong. It's just like Peace said, it says a lot when we're almost wanting/relying on the Kenedy-Loftus-Cheek combo to spark us into life, to get us out of this mire. It has become that desperate and that is without mentioning the fact that we only have 2 players who we can put in the world class category - Hazard and Courtois (we're a top side FFS!). Maybe if he weren't so quick in ditching some of the players and kept them in the squad, we might actually have enough strength, quality and depth not to be in this mess right now. Our team is such in a bad shape that it's almost depressing that we need another major surgery and it's going to be even tougher now with our situation and the huge TV money coming in next season. At this point, we'll be even lucky to get a B-grade player in, never mind an A-grade.

On the other side to all of this, you are right in saying we did nothing to improve the team after winning the league last season. We stood still. We should have gotten in quality players but it's not in our given rights that we will get those players Mourinho wanted (e.g Pogba, Stones). Gone are the days when we can throw money at the other clubs and 'bully' them into selling their players. Maybe it is the board's fault for not doing things right to get the players but Mourinho shouldn't also be expecting those deals to completed like we're stealing a candy from a baby.

And there's also no excuse that we should be struggling this badly this season under Mourinho - with or without Pogba, Stones etc. Having those players wouldn't have solved our problems. Like you alluded to there, this team won the title last season and even if it's not perfect, they are still good/decent enough. If we're not challenging for the title this time around, we should at least be around the top 4 or in the top 10 but the fact that we aren't perhaps says a lot about the Mourinho's management with the squad than the board not getting the players he wanted. And oh, before you start pinning the blame entirely on the board on transfers, let's not forget Mourinho's own blunders in the transfer market. He, after all, was the man who championed for Falcao, Cuadrado, Salah etc and look what has happened to them now.

[The Skipper 20,609]

Haven't read the whole thing but that image is spot on. Apparently Jose destroyed our side whilst winning the league. Didn't have any plan for the future despite wanting specific YOUNG players to strengthen the squad in the summer.

The club's in trouble. There's no plan. Whether you like what José wanted or you think we should've built a team with David Luiz and Ryan Bertrand in it, you have to acknowledge he was the only guy in the club with a plan of how he wanted to strengthen the team and mount a defence.

The club didn't back him and those who wanted him sacked have got their wish. The hilarious thing to me in this rather shitty time is that neither of these groups have a plan of what we do to move forward.

Honestly those fans deserve Emenalo and his chums. It's just a shame the rest of us have to be taken along for the ride.

How do you know the club hasn't got a plan in place? That's just pure speculation from you, you're saying it as if it's some fact.

[CurlyHairLikeLuiz 1,625]

• Fabregas, Pedro, Oscar, Matic : at the very best, they belong to a big team's bench.
• Terry, Ivanovic, (Falcao LOL) : not belonging to top-flight football anymore.
• Mikel, Cahill, Ramires, Remy : players for 'small' teams.
• Azpilicueta, Zouma, Costa, Willian : 'okay' players for a big team. Though, Azpi is a very good defensive right-back that plays left-back ; Zouma might be 'great' for is age but if you considere him as a first-team player (i.e. regardless of his age) he is good at best ; Costa has clear limitations in term of technic and self-control ; I have no complains in regards to Willian, though he should not be the 'player of the year'.

That leaves us with : Hazard. He is the only (out-field) player we have that is world-class. And unfortunately for us, he is not the kind of player to get on the score-sheet (i.e., he is more an 'Iniesta' than a 'Suarez').

Do you remember, a couple of years ago we did have : Luiz ; Bertrand ; Azpilicueta ; Oscar ; Hazard ; de Bruyne ; Hazard ; Mata ; Lukaku (; Aké). It was not a great team by any means — however, that was an exciting project and it was a very good base to build a great team. A few key signings here and there (i.e. a great CB to partner Luiz, a great central-midfielder, a great striker) and some additions of 'good' players to compliment what we already had would have been enough to build a competitive team that would be able to play good football. Yet, two years later, we are left with a squad full of utility players, some dead-woods and some 'okay' players — and only one world-class player. Above all, we are left with only a very few players that are able to do things with the ball at their feet...

We are not back to the step 1 — we are back to step -10. Mata, Luiz, Bertrand, de Bruyne, Lukaku, Schurrle, Salah... We have sold all these young and fresh players. We are left with nothing to build upon — and the only hope for people nowadays seems to be the combo 'Kennedy-RLC' which is a clear indication that we are at the bottom of a bottomless pit.

Why, oh why did the board let Mourinho shape the team to his non-football philosophy ? He got rid of all the players that could play football and the players that could have been a bright spark for the 'long-term'. Instead, he gave a free-pass to all of our dead-woods and utility players because they are tall and would run behind the ball like donkeys — and more importantly, as they cannot keep the ball at their feet, the chances of them doing a mistake was greatly reduced, because hey, not doing any mistake is the most important thing in football.

Unfortunately, we are not Real Madrid and we are not full of 'stars'... So we can forgot to bounce back like them. No, we are going to take the Inter route, and unless other clubs mismanage their team and unless we make some signings that turn out to be brilliant, we are not fighting for the title for the five next years. I am so pissed off.

Pedro was brought as a squad player and since Hazard's been injured he's been playing.

John Terry was not at fault for any of the goals today, have I missed something? Sorry but Terrhill needs to die, they're too slow to be paired with each other. Zouma must play next to him to keep enough pace in there. People have been moaning about lack of character so it would be very, very unwise to remove the only leader we have from the team. Coach Drogs can't come soon enough (and will help out DC)

We need a clean out, sure. But at least people can finally stop blaming Jose for the board not backing him - the team he was fielding really was our best team

"Do you remember, a couple of years ago we did have : Luiz ; Bertrand ; Azpilicueta ; Oscar ; Hazard ; de Bruyne ; Hazard ; Mata ; Lukaku (; Aké). It was not a great team by any means — however, that was an exciting project and it was a very good base to build a great team. A few key signings here and there (i.e. a great CB to partner Luiz, a great central-midfielder, a great striker) and some additions of 'good' players to compliment what we already had would have been enough to build a competitive team that would be able to play good football. Yet, two years later, we are left with a squad full of utility players, some dead-woods and some 'okay' players — and only one world-class player. Above all, we are left with only a very few players that are able to do things with the ball at their feet..."

:lol: Luiz was and is a terrible CB. He was a great complement to Matic in MF, but in 12/13 and 13/14 Cahill-Terry was our best CB pairing by a country mile.

Much of that project still remains - the problem being that most of them have not kicked on. When Oscar and Hazard were signed in 12/13 Oscar was supposed to end up being better than Hazard, I think we all remember the Juve game and thinking 'yeah, he's gonna go far' but it hasn't happened.

I really don't understand why people are so annoyed that we sold Mata, he hasn't done anything since January 2014 which has suggested Jose was wrong to cut him loose.

"We are not back to the step 1 — we are back to step -10. Mata, Luiz, Bertrand, de Bruyne, Lukaku, Schurrle, Salah... We have sold all these young and fresh players. We are left with nothing to build upon — and the only hope for people nowadays seems to be the combo 'Kennedy-RLC' which is a clear indication that we are at the bottom of a bottomless pit."

And that is the most ridiculous thing yet. de Bruyne is not a big character, he would still be in the same funk as the rest of the players here. No show against big teams. Luiz was sold because to advance the team we had to comply with FFP, and we brought Costa (the first great striker we've had since Drogs) and Cesc Fabregas - we needed characters in the team and Fabregas was well qualified, as well as being a midfield general - sure he has been terrible recently but it would be harsh to blame that on Mourinho. Lukaku has been "De Bruyne-ised"; last season he was awful and now he's kicked on we're suddenly moaning about selling him, but you cannot have it both ways. To get him to that level we would have had to play him instead of Costa for all of 14/15 for a very low goal yield and we would not have won the title, and even now having him here while Costa was not firing would only have brought us up about 5 places - and that's assuming he would have scored the same amount of goals this season, whcih he wouldn't as his support won't give him as much service.

Schurrle was unlucky, a muscle disease basically cost him his top flight football career, not the fault of the club at all.

Salah was not good enough as many people here said.

So yeah, Kenedy and RLC are big hopes now, because you can't just stop winning to integrate 5 youth players, not at a club like Chelsea, the average supporter would not tolerate it and I don't think anybody was moaning when we were winning.

"Why, oh why did the board let Mourinho shape the team to his non-football philosophy ? He got rid of all the players that could play football and the players that could have been a bright spark for the 'long-term'. Instead, he gave a free-pass to all of our dead-woods and utility players because they are tall and would run behind the ball like donkeys — and more importantly, as they cannot keep the ball at their feet, the chances of them doing a mistake was greatly reduced, because hey, not doing any mistake is the most important thing in football."

That's a completely fucking false statement to make - Mourinho brought in Fabregas to replace Luiz, Hazard his star man, and Costa to play good football but if anything the statement by Jose that he took the players to an unsustainable level is correct, it would explain the poor football from the same team from January onwards.

We will not finish more than mid table because there are so many quality teams this season, it's not a normal thing and next season when the new TV deal comes in we can rebuild and be better again but just about everything that could conspire against us did - other teams drastically improved while we stood still, bad luck (that West Ham game is a perfect example - the ball 1cm from being a goal, an incorrect offside decision, a harsh red card) and other teams' good form.

[Ossie the King 634]

I think this situation goes both ways to be honest. Peace was not wrong with he said in his post. 3-4 years ago, we started to buy certain type of players - the footballing type, if you like (seems like the latest buzzword around here) - because we wanted to change our style of play, to adopt a more attacking approach as opposed to sticking with our pragmatic football from the years before that.

We wanted to have a system in place whereby we instill this new style of play in the club from top to bottom and hire a specific type of manager to manage those players. Even if we were to sack the manager or he leaves after a few years, the style will still be there and we just need to find the same or similar kind of manager (think Barcelona). That's arguably why we were hell bent on getting Guardiola back then but when he didn't want to join us, for whatever reason, the club decided to betray what they had been planning all along by hiring Mourinho, who we all know his playing style is the complete opposite of what we tried to implement going forward.

Perhaps, they had no one else to turn to, panicked and chose Mourinho because it was a marriage of convenience - the club wanted to success with style but when they couldn't get someone to implement that style, they ditched it just for success. They probably wanted to believe Mourinho was a man changed and a man wanting to fix his damaged reputation after his Real Madrid days. On hindsight and without wanting to sound like a total hypocrite, I - and most fans too - enjoyed the success Mourinho brought to the club last season but one cannot deny that our squad depth and quality - the squad given to him with those players bought by the board - got worse each season under him.

He ostracized certain players from the start - because they weren't tall or supposedly didn't work hard enough - and sold them almost immediately. He doesn't put the same faith in every one in the squad - certain players can play poorly for 100 games in a row and still start every week while the minute others perform poorly, they're out of the team and we won't see them for the next few weeks. People like to say it's the players' fault for not showing the hunger, desire to fight for their place but if you were in their shoes and you see boss treat you differently to some of the other players like in this case, you would want to leave, wouldn't you?

Others play badly but still get chances to play and rectify their mistakes. You play badly and you don't get to play for the next few games and get a chance to prove the manager wrong. It's just like Peace said, it says a lot when we're almost wanting/relying on the Kenedy-Loftus-Cheek combo to spark us into life, to get us out of this mire. It has become that desperate and that is without mentioning the fact that we only have 2 players who we can put in the world class category - Hazard and Courtois (we're a top side FFS!). Maybe if he weren't so quick in ditching some of the players and kept them in the squad, we might actually have enough strenght, quality and depth not to be in this mess right now. Our team is such in a bad shape right now that it's almost depressing that we need another major surgery on it and it's going to be even tougher now with our situation and the huge TV money coming in next season. At this point, we'll be even lucky to get a B-grade player in, never mind an A-grade.

On the other side to all of this, you are right in saying we did nothing to improve the team after winning the league last season. We stood still. We should have gotten in quality players but it's not in our given rights that we will get those players Mourinho wanted (e.g Pogba, Stones). Gone are the days when we can throw money at the other clubs and 'bully' them into selling their players. Maybe it is the board's fault for not doing things right to get the players but Mourinho shouldn't also be expecting those deals to completed like we're stealing a candy from a baby.

And there's also no excuse that we should be struggling this badly this season under Mourinho - with or without Pogba, Stones etc or not. Having those players wouldn't have solved our problems. Like you alluded to there, this team won the title last season and even if it's not perfect, they are still good/decent enough. I we're not challenging for the title this time arond, we should at least be around the top 4 or in the top 10 at the very least but the fact that we aren't perhaps says a lot about the Mourinho's management with the squad than the board not getting the players he wanted. And oh, before you start pinning the blame entirely on the board on transfers, let's not forget Mourinho's own blunders in the transfer market. He, after all, was the man who championed for Falcao, Cuadrado, Salah etc and look what has happened to them now.

Fantastic post. I could pick up on the minor points I disagree with but it's a well balanced argument. We did go through a phase of buying a certain type of player then hired a manager who wanted something different and just told him to win the league.... And he did.

Then when he did that we just downed tools. It shouldn't have been as bad as it was but it was always going to be a step back. Every club sensed the blood in the water and games we'd win last season we'd either draw or lose.

And now we looked prime to make another change in what we want. Pure speculation of course!

[kiwi1691 255]

Yes, Mourinho completely destroyed the team, thats how I see things.

How old are you??? That is a comment so stupid you must be a child.

[Azul 1,615]

Look around 00:28 secs

This shows that he has not watched any game this season and that he does not have any clue how the players performed.

I think that it will take 3 to 4 weeks until he realizes that some players are just average and that's when he will change the line-ups.

It will be too late by then though, how can a professional manager not analyze our previous mistakes....? Sigh, here we go again.

Let's just hope that he is not as stubborn as Jose.

[Blue Colored Sky 1,807]

Look around 00:28 secs

This shows that he has not watched any game this season and that he does not have any clue how the players performed.

I think that it will take 3 to 4 weeks until he realizes that some players are just average and that's when he will change the line-ups.

It will be too late by then though, how can a professional manager not analyze our previous mistakes....? Sigh, here we go again.

Let's just hope that he is not as stubborn as Jose.

It's hard to demand from a guy who was on vacation to watch Chelsea games and analyse them. He could have watched a couple but there was that thing that everybody had a clean slate under him. He probably got as much information as he could from staff that is here. And if everybody started with zero there's more chance that someone like Ivanovic is going to play than Baba or Fabregas than RLC or Diego Costa than Remy. Guus had only 3 days with training sessions with this group of players so he had to rely on information he has. Which is training. And Jose said that players are very good in training.

So yeah, it maybe takes time for him to draw his own conclusions.

[Last Sicarius 610]

No the effect of the new broom so he needs to make some changes.

[xPetrCechx 13,570]

only 3-4 days here...

give him some time.

[edetarod 2,155]

Look around 00:28 secs

This shows that he has not watched any game this season and that he does not have any clue how the players performed.

I think that it will take 3 to 4 weeks until he realizes that some players are just average and that's when he will change the line-ups.

It will be too late by then though, how can a professional manager not analyze our previous mistakes....? Sigh, here we go again.

Let's just hope that he is not as stubborn as Jose.

why would he do that to himself? watching us play football this season has been torturous