closed Chelsea 2-0 Wolves

[Special Juan 27,093]

Kepa has conceded 8% of Chelsea's goals, and ranks bottom in letting in shots he should save.

Translated....he's shit.

[Vesper 27,282]

21 hours ago, NikkiCFC said:

Going with back 5 again or changing guys like Willian or putting Chris again is huge, huge risk...

You cannot drop players based on last performance. 

Back 4: Azpi, Zouma, Rudi and Alonso. This back 4 always kept clean sheet this season.

Kepa confidence is low so I am ok with Willy starting. 

Pulisic-Giroud-Willian upfront without saying...

And probably unpopular opinion but I would go with Jorginho, Kovacic, Kante in MF. Frank barely used them all together this season. And they were all regular for Sarri.

We can rely upfront on Puli and Olie.

 

got to get mount in there m8

Kant Kovacic Mount

by FAR our 3 best MFers atm

totally agree on the rest

no Jorginho

only thing he is good for is pens and we are not in a Cup tie

I hope Willian is taking B12 shots all day long, lol

he has looked dead lately

just need this to be a monster game from the old warhorse

and Kante needs to bloody run riot like it is 2016 again

 

[Vesper 27,282]

6 minutes ago, Special Juan said:

Kepa has conceded 8% of Chelsea's goals, and ranks bottom in letting in shots he should save.

Translated....he's shit.

The goal is wide and full of terrors

Kepa is shit and full of errors

 

[Vesper 27,282]

Young Chelsea team? It probably won’t be against Wolves – here’s why…

https://theathletic.com/1947509/2020/07/25/chelsea-team-wolves-reasons-young/

No Chelsea manager has done more in their modern history to give youth a chance, but don’t be surprised if coach Frank Lampard turns to the older generation for their crucial league season finale against Wolverhampton Wanderers on Sunday.

Arguably, the main theme of Lampard’s first year in charge at Stamford Bridge has been about how he has a “young team”. It started from the moment he chose Mason Mount and Tammy Abraham to start against Manchester United at Old Trafford in that Premier League opener 11 months ago.

It is rare for a Lampard press conference to go by where the subject or term isn’t raised, yet it is understandable. A remarkable nine academy players have been given their first-team debuts this season, while fellow graduates Abraham, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Andreas Christensen and Ruben Loftus-Cheek have also featured in the line-up.

Some of the decisions have been made out of necessity. The transfer ban last summer, the inability to secure targets in January after the punishment was halved on appeal and injury problems to other players have all taken a toll on the squad.

But Lampard has also lived by the famous adage often used in sport: “If you’re good enough, you’re old enough”.

Here are just a few examples: Mount has become the first homegrown player to make 50 appearances for Chelsea in his debut season; Abraham was regularly preferred to World Cup-winning striker Olivier Giroud for six months; teenager Billy Gilmour was picked instead of Italy international Jorginho against champions-to-be Liverpool in the FA Cup.

No game more emphasised the direction in which Lampard was looking to take Chelsea than the league encounter with Crystal Palace on November 9. Mount, Abraham, Fikayo Tomori and Reece James were all in the starting line-up, plus Gilmour and Hudson-Odoi came off the bench. The average age of the 14 players Lampard used that day was 23.

Four days earlier, five of those six youngsters were used during a thrilling 4-4 draw away to Ajax in the Champions League — the only one to miss out was Gilmour, though he was in the match-day squad.

In fact, Chelsea fans became accustomed to seeing these six names on the team sheet during a 10-match period between the late September win over Brighton and that trip to Palace in early November. As the table below shows, they had a lot of playing time between them — 3,178 minutes to be exact.

Former Liverpool defender Alan Hansen once infamously, incorrectly, said on Match of the Day: “You can’t win anything with kids.” Well, it didn’t seem to apply to Chelsea at that juncture: their record during those 10 games was an impressive eight wins, one draw and one defeat.

Yet since the season got back underway last month, following the postponement caused by COVID-19, there has definitely been a change in Lampard’s mindset.

With Champions League qualification via a top-four finish and a place in the FA Cup final to be secured, more mature heads have been trusted.

That is not to suggest the youth experiment has been abandoned altogether. As our second table demonstrates, there have still been a credible amount of chances given, just not at the same level.

Instead of 35 starts and 3,178 minutes over 10 games in the autumn, the same six have made the line-up 19 times between them in the 10 matches following the restart and played only 1,693 minutes. Almost a reduction of 50 per cent in both categories.

Another contrast is the average age of the players used in the FA Cup semi-final victory over Manchester United last Sunday. On this occasion, there were 15 players used at an average age of 27, four years older than in that Palace game mentioned above.

Mount and James were the only ones on the field from the outset. Abraham and Hudson-Odoi came on 10 minutes from time with Chelsea 3-0 up and the tie already won.

Naturally, there are some mitigating circumstances in how the figures differentiate. Some injured players from earlier in the season — Antonio Rudiger for example — are now available for selection on a regular basis. Similarly, some of the younger players have had injury issues limit their chances. Tomori, James and Hudson-Odoi picked up various knocks and strains in training before the season resumed last month.

They are all fit now, but in the cases of Tomori and Hudson-Odoi in particular, their absence from the outset allowed others, such as Rudiger and Willian, to take advantage and regain their places.

However, there is the counter-argument that the post-lockdown option of using five substitutes, rather than the customary three, has been available to share the minutes around. Lampard has done that, but not massively to the benefit of the six youngsters in question.

Gilmour has been more involved than during the earlier schedule quoted in this piece, but his season was cut short by a knee operation following the rematch with Palace on July 7.

Speaking before the Norwich City game a week later, Lampard explained the importance of the elder statesmen to his side’s hopes of finishing the season on a high.

He said: “It’s part of the situation we’re in. With the amount of younger players we have playing their first year in the Premier League — let alone playing for Champions League spots, which is a lot of pressure — part of the process is them adapting to that.

“They need to be helped by the players that have been there and done that: won World Cups or won Premier Leagues, as some of the players in our squad have done.”

It’s worth noting though that the results haven’t been quite as good during the past 10 games compared to the run highlighted above — Chelsea boast one fewer win and have suffered two more defeats.

However, all this does give a clue to what the team will look like for the visit of Wolves, where Chelsea need a point to ensure a spot in Europe’s premier club competition for 2020-21.

From the six academy players discussed in this piece that Lampard has regularly employed, only Mount and James are strong contenders to make the starting XI.

Willian has started all 10 post-lockdown games and last summer’s £57 million arrival Christian Pulisic, only 21 himself, is just too good to leave out, making it unlikely Hudson-Odoi will suddenly be brought in on either flank; Giroud is the striker in form, with seven goals in his last 10 appearances, and deserves to play ahead of Abraham; Tomori won’t be match-sharp, having not had a minute of competitive action since February; and Gilmour is unavailable following that knee surgery.

If the team announcement at 3pm on Sunday confirms Lampard has gone for the older players, it shouldn’t be seen as a U-turn on his policy. He knows what it’s like to be under strain from his 13 years as a player at the club and how prior experiences of these situations can help.

When the stakes are this high, there is no shame in turning to experience.

No one will complain should Chelsea be sitting in the top four come Sunday evening.

[BXL70 395]

I am skeptical about playing Kante given the current circumstances: He's back from injury, hasn't player for a while, and might lack motivation or won't risk another injury since he is likely to leave the club any way this summer. 

[Jype 6,398]

30 minutes ago, BXL70 said:

I am skeptical about playing Kante given the current circumstances: He's back from injury, hasn't player for a while, and might lack motivation or won't risk another injury since he is likely to leave the club any way this summer. 

Lack of motivation, really? Kante is a top professional and there's been absolutely nothing solid about him leaving and even if there was he's not the kind of person to let anything affect his performances. He could still end up going if there's a good enough offer from a top club but I can assure you that's not something he thinks about the moment he sets foot onto a football pitch.

And it's not like he's been out for ages and lacking match sharpness, his last game was three weeks ago. If he's fit enough to play, he will play.

[Jase 43,479]

33 minutes ago, Jype said:

Lack of motivation, really? Kante is a top professional and there's been absolutely nothing solid about him leaving and even if there was he's not the kind of person to let anything affect his performances. He could still end up going if there's a good enough offer from a top club but I can assure you that's not something he thinks about the moment he sets foot onto a football pitch.

And it's not like he's been out for ages and lacking match sharpness, his last game was three weeks ago. If he's fit enough to play, he will play.

It is hilarious that people make assumptions about Player X, Y, Z leaving or gonna get sold and then treat them like a fact even though there have been no reliable stories or rumors about them leaving or gonna get sold.

[DDA 9,570]

Nervous 😒

[Special Juan 27,093]

Confident

[Laylabelle 9,292]

This will be such super fun...either be woooo....phew...or wtf did we do...

[Jase 43,479]

Champions League is overrated anyway. Europa League is the place to be. 

[Magic Lamps 11,444]

13 minutes ago, Jason said:

Champions League is overrated anyway. Europa League is the place to be. 

Whilst I think it is nothing to aim for and below our level as well as financially devastating, a season of EL could benefit us in the long term, blooding in more youngsters and having enough games to keep a bloated squad happy it also renders us a great chance of winning a trophy.

[DanP2311 65]

1 hour ago, Jason said:

Champions League is overrated anyway. Europa League is the place to be. 

LOL.

I am putting my emotional eggs in the ManU > Leicester basket. ManU's transfer budget is on hold pending CL qualification.  I think they'll be motivated.

Nuno frightens me. Somehow I think he has a plan to bottle up Pulisic, and I hope that our brain trust has a plan for that, because Pulisic seems to be creating a large percentage of the chances (and the general offensive menace) since the break.

I'd a Mount-Kante-Kova midfield, and a Pulisic-Grioud-CHO attacking corps would make me more optimistic that we will make enough happen offensively to compensate for the inevitable defensive lapses.

[BXL70 395]

CL is a at least 30 million as additional cash not taking into account knock-out stages + higher negotiating power for transfers. Qualifying fo the CL or not will drive our transfer market and shape our team.

[BXL70 395]

3 hours ago, Jype said:

Lack of motivation, really? Kante is a top professional and there's been absolutely nothing solid about him leaving and even if there was he's not the kind of person to let anything affect his performances. He could still end up going if there's a good enough offer from a top club but I can assure you that's not something he thinks about the moment he sets foot onto a football pitch.

And it's not like he's been out for ages and lacking match sharpness, his last game was three weeks ago. If he's fit enough to play, he will play.

Really? If we buy Kai, and it seems that the deal is all done, we would have to sell Kanté to raise funds, no surprise here.. Of coure, Kanté is lacking match sharpness. Maybe he can play 30 minutes or so. But I would not put him at risk of another injury that would make the deal with Kai collapsing all together. We are talking about Wolves here, not Man City, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Barcelona or Bayern Munchen/

[Pulisicismydaddy 91]

13 minutes ago, BXL70 said:

Really? If we buy Kai, and it seems that the deal is all done, we would have to sell Kanté to raise funds, no surprise here.. Of coure, Kanté is lacking match sharpness. Maybe he can play 30 minutes or so. But I would not put him at risk of another injury that would make the deal with Kai collapsing all together. We are talking about Wolves here, not Man City, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Barcelona or Bayern Munchen/

We don't need to sell anyone to get Kei, it's only after that if we want to buy more we will have to offload a few and Jorginho probably one of them.

[Puliiszola 519]

21 minutes ago, BXL70 said:

Really? If we buy Kai, and it seems that the deal is all done, we would have to sell Kanté to raise funds, no surprise here.. Of coure, Kanté is lacking match sharpness. Maybe he can play 30 minutes or so. But I would not put him at risk of another injury that would make the deal with Kai collapsing all together. We are talking about Wolves here, not Man City, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Barcelona or Bayern Munchen/

Why do we need to sell kante..

We already seem to be selling jorginho as well as barkley. 

We have bakayoko, Drinkwater to sell too. Just those mid options pay for kai

[BXL70 395]

Kanté is our main asset that can be sold at high price. Drinkwater and Bayayoko are loanees, so they bring us revenues. Jorginho and Barkley can be sold, but we won't get 80£ million or anything nearby, be serious, they are very much average players.