Brighton 4-1 Chelsea

[milka 3,393]

Citeh - won , Spuds - won , Newcastle - won , Arsenal- won , United - won 

Chelsea ✖️

Perfect weekend . 

[Blue Armour 4,446]

34 minutes ago, milka said:

Citeh - won , Spuds - won , Newcastle - won , Arsenal- won , United - won 

Chelsea ✖️

Perfect weekend . 

Liverpool 

[milka 3,393]

Liverpool nobody considers them alive this season anyway 

[Laylabelle 9,535]

32 minutes ago, milka said:

Liverpool nobody considers them alive this season anyway 

Just like us really. No constiency or convincing performances...

[MoroccanBlue 5,383]

Maybe we should replace the players that continue to be inconsistent for us for years? 

[bigbluewillie 1,930]

How have we got in this fucking mess?

No midfield, certainly no creative, and no defensive, forget about Kante coming back he's finished.

Then we have no forward line, I said I didn't want Sterling here from the very off much to the consternation of many, but I think my assessment of him is proving right, furthermore we have no wide players, apart from Chucky and Potter wont play him.

Then the defence is fucked we spend £80M on a crock who's also finished before he's started, and Potter keeps playing that muppet Cucurella as a left side defender.

This whole lot is reprehensible there's no passion, no drive, no creation, and a total lack of interest from them.

I have absolutely no faith in them at all, I dread having to watch them.

So how have we ended up not improving the squad yet again, we do it now season after season fuck up's in every position.

Edited October 31, 2022 by bigbluewillie

[Reddish-Blue 2,509]

9 hours ago, MoroccanBlue said:

Maybe we should replace the players that continue to be inconsistent for us for years? 

Where would you start?   That would mean replacing everyone other than James, Mount, T.Silva, Kante, Kovacic, J5, Chilwell and the new signings this season. 

[Reddish-Blue 2,509]

3 hours ago, bigbluewillie said:

How have we got in this fucking mess?

No midfield, certainly no creative, and no defensive, forget about Kante coming back he's finished.

Then we have no forward line, I said I didn't want Sterling here from the very off much to the consternation of many, but I think my assessment of him is proving right, furthermore we have no wide players, apart from Chucky and Potter wont play him.

Then the defence is fucked we spend £80M on a crock who's also finished before he's started, and Potter keeps playing that muppet Cucurella as a left side defender.

This whole lot is reprehensible there's no passion, no drive, no creation, and a total lack of interest from them.

I have absolutely no faith in them at all, I dread having to watch them.

So how have we ended up not improving the squad yet again, we do it now season after season fuck up's in every position.

• Chucky is too young to play all the time, he's been given minutes recently but it'll take time for him to settle in
• It really is a shame that Fofana is out and now Koulibaly has been out recently as he was just starting to settle in before that injury against Brentford (you take 3 starting defenders out of our top 4 rivals and I bet they'd struggle as well!)
• As for no passion & drive, that's because we're not selling off the average players (like RLC) and the players that don't give a shite (Ziyech, even Pulisic), I really do hope that we can clean out our first team deadwood and start building a proper team again
• Feel like next season's transfer window could be huge in the make up of this team, massive opportunity to build that midfield with two key players off contract
• Long story short - we're in for a painful one this season, tough to see how we go past 6th place this season unless Aubameyang, Sterling and Havertz start banging in goals for fun....

[Strike 7,492]

12 hours ago, milka said:

Liverpool nobody considers them alive this season anyway 

They have a much better squad than Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea and Man United. 

[OhForAGreavsie 6,076]

On 30/10/2022 at 08:49, Reddish-Blue said:

The bigger question is, does that mean that the club has a replacement midfielder lined up for January?

Agreed.

On 30/10/2022 at 08:49, Reddish-Blue said:

...and we basically got a midfielder in for no reason other than 'cover' on deadline day. 

I hope that Denis would have had a real squad role had TT stayed. Otherwise, it's hard to see what was behind this move.

 

On 30/10/2022 at 08:49, Reddish-Blue said:

...we are a few months away from having Kovacic and RLC as the only midfielders under contract...which is quite alarming! 

🙂 

If that were to be the case, it would be 'quite alarming' in the same way that the wings falling off the airplane you're on is quite alarming!

Edited October 31, 2022 by OhForAGreavsie

[OhForAGreavsie 6,076]

18 hours ago, manpe said:

[The world cup was awarded to Qutar] Because of corruption.

Plain and simple.

And it didn't stop with the corruption of the bidding process. When people are forced by economic desperation to work in conditions which have cost thousands of them their lives, and this is done for the provision of entertainment, then I say not in my name. I won't be watching a single minute of this competition.

Edited October 31, 2022 by OhForAGreavsie

[Special Juan 28,141]

That was shambolic on Saturday- from the first minute we buckled and allowed them and the atmosphere to dominate. The likes of City go to these place and quieten the crowd, we play into their hands by shabby control, wasteful passes and general shit play.

The amount of fucking times players receive the ball and fucking stupidly and naively think nobody will be on their back pressuring them is laughable. Slow and shite both in thought and movement all over the park. I can't even single anyone out as they were all shite.

Get away NOW from this Pulisic and Sterling wing back shite, it's awful and doesn't work.

We are a soft touch right, bunch of kittens the lot of them.

[Reddish-Blue 2,509]

54 minutes ago, Strike said:

They have a much better squad than Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea and Man United. 

That might be the case but they lost a key player to Bayern and they are light in midfield (just like us...the Kante & Reece injuries have left the rest of the team exposed in terms of work ethic).   

Arsenal are flying as their first choice midfield is all fit & firing, City have the best midfielder in the PL, United appear to have found some balance with Eriksen & Casemiro providing the experience.  Funny how we always looked a midfielder short incase of injury and the club decided it was better to spend 120 million on Fofana & Cucurella...

[Superblue 6,372]

I get the idea of not playing Zakaria to give us the flexibility to move him on in January, but I just hope we don't bomb Zakaria out in January for a short-term fix, that's going to leave us with another player we overpay for and in a year or two we're trying to move on. Alvarez for me fits this bill completely, he'd potentially offer a more solid base than we have currently in the midfield but I don't think his ability on the ball is at the required top level that we'd need it to be. 

Out of the truly top midfield targets, the only one remotely possible in January would be de Jong and that's completely dependent on him. There's been a couple of murmurings that he might be more open to moving now than he was in the summer but as usual with the Spanish boys you don't know whether it's just a club spin to the media to pressure him again.

The only other player I can realistically think of currently that I mentioned in the transfer section the other day is Konrad Laimer as his contract is expiring in the summer and we have been linked with him (although so have Bayern). If we got him agreed in January, there may be the possibility of convincing Leipzig to part with him 6 months early for a few million perhaps and also that might be where someone like Zakaria could possibly come into play if we could help broker him a second half of the season move to Leipzig to replace Laimer. 

But besides the above, unless we're able to pull a true rabbit out of the hat elsewhere, I'd rather we keep our powder dry for the summer. As a club, we have an unfortunate history in recent times of buying what might be deemed the "best available" at the time to fill a need and not being prepared to wait for something better to come along. That has to change from January onwards if we're going to rebuild this team in a proper manner.

[Reddish-Blue 2,509]

22 hours ago, Vesper said:

Conor Gallagher
Carney Chukwuemeka
Mason Mount 

plus

 
Cesare Casadei    
Harvey Vale
 

None of the players listed provide an immediate solution to our central midfield/pivot problems.   Gallagher & Mount won't survive playing in a pivot as they want to be on the ball higher up the pitch, not recycling possession/breaking the opposition's play in the defensive half of the pitch. 

[Superblue 6,372]

1 minute ago, Reddish-Blue said:

None of the players listed provide an immediate solution to our central midfield/pivot problems.   Gallagher & Mount won't survive playing in a pivot as they want to be on the ball higher up the pitch, not recycling possession/breaking the opposition's play in the defensive half of the pitch. 

I think with the current absences we have at present, it would make more sense to look at a 4-3-3 that included Jorginho, Kova and one of the above to fill that midfield 3. A back 4 then would consist of Azpi, Chalobah, Silva and Cucurella/Chilwell.

At the moment the two biggest areas of weakness I see in our team is being overrun in midfield and teams playing direct against us into wide positions and a lot of that is a result of the personnel we have trying to play currently a 3-5-2/3-4-3. 

I don't mind what Potter is trying to do but you need the players for it. Reece James in that formation is almost a cheat code for us because he's elite on both sides of the ball. It allows us to be a bit more creative on the left side because in a defensive shape at worst Reece can tuck in to make a back 4, which is something neither Sterling nor Pulisic will do. Being so threadbare with defensive options currently and having no true DM to anchor the team leaves us incredibly unbalanced in that set up at present. 

The frustrating aspect is that Potter has at times used a back 4 during his short time here and it's looked significantly more effective than when we played back 4 systems under Tuchel, so I'm a bit perplexed why he hasn't gone back to that as an option with the defenders we currently have out injured.

Hopefully he finds the right formula quickly because Arsenal and Newcastle are two sides on current form that could exploit those same weaknesses.

[YorkshireBlue 3,277]

20 hours ago, manpe said:

We have been a project (or in "transition", whatever you call it) since I don't know when, but many years have passed where the same things have been said. In that case our project management is horrible as we're only getting worse. Over the years there have been very few signs that we should be trusting or having faith in said "project". A project where we still sign past it old players as stop-gaps

Difference now is we have new ownership which has basically chucked all the old out and starting new, we was never under a project under Roman, he wanted instant success and when it got abit stale the manager was gone. It did work for a time but also a huge part of why we are where we are now.

[bigbluewillie 1,930]

2 hours ago, Superblue said:

I think with the current absences we have at present, it would make more sense to look at a 4-3-3 that included Jorginho, Kova and one of the above to fill that midfield 3. A back 4 then would consist of Azpi, Chalobah, Silva and Cucurella/Chilwell.

At the moment the two biggest areas of weakness I see in our team is being overrun in midfield and teams playing direct against us into wide positions and a lot of that is a result of the personnel we have trying to play currently a 3-5-2/3-4-3. 

I don't mind what Potter is trying to do but you need the players for it. Reece James in that formation is almost a cheat code for us because he's elite on both sides of the ball. It allows us to be a bit more creative on the left side because in a defensive shape at worst Reece can tuck in to make a back 4, which is something neither Sterling nor Pulisic will do. Being so threadbare with defensive options currently and having no true DM to anchor the team leaves us incredibly unbalanced in that set up at present. 

The frustrating aspect is that Potter has at times used a back 4 during his short time here and it's looked significantly more effective than when we played back 4 systems under Tuchel, so I'm a bit perplexed why he hasn't gone back to that as an option with the defenders we currently have out injured.

Hopefully he finds the right formula quickly because Arsenal and Newcastle are two sides on current form that could exploit those same weaknesses.

I agree 4 3 3 this is the team I picked, what do you think..

Kepa

Dave Chalobah Thiago/KK Chilly

Jorginho Kovacic

Mount

Sterling Broja ????(I really don't know)

4-2-1-3

The only reason Sterling is in there is because we have no one else

[manpe 10,861]

On 31/10/2022 at 08:43, Reddish-Blue said:

Where would you start?   That would mean replacing everyone other than James, Mount, T.Silva, Kante, Kovacic, J5, Chilwell and the new signings this season. 

The only consistent players we have are Silva and James. Kante too if you count him being consistently injured. But Mount, Kova, Jorginho and Chilwell are the definitions of inconsistency.

[Reddish-Blue 2,509]

1 hour ago, manpe said:

The only consistent players we have are Silva and James. Kante too if you count him being consistently injured. But Mount, Kova, Jorginho and Chilwell are the definitions of inconsistency.

Harsh on Kova & Jorginho, they might not be at their best this season but they've been solid in midfield in previous seasons.  Probably part of the reason why we haven't even bothered to re-invest into our midfield as the trio of Kante - Kova - J5 were getting the job done on most occasions. 

Massive transfer window coming up at the end of the season, it may set us up for the next 5+ years or put us down to scrapping/fighting for a Europa League spot.