5 things to learn from the MCFC defeat

[EskWeston 696]

1- Chelsea are not invincible!!! :

yes they are not , and i think most of us already knew that but we didn' know exactly the type of teams that can beat chelsea and now we do , those teams are the likes of Man city , Inter milan and may be Real madrid . in other words teams who have very solid defense in terms of discipline , physical strength and aggressiveness and very sharp and deadly on the counter attack having speedy forwards with clinical finishers .

so for me i am not too worried about this as there is only one man city in the league . and to be honest i have expected this even before the league starts , we can beat any team in the EPL but we tend to have problems when facing Man city so as Drogba has said if we were told that we will lose both games against city but win the league we would have signed for it , and i think that we would win our first five games , lose against city and still be the top of the league with 3 points ahead of united most of us would have signed for it as well .

I think maybe you could be reading too much into 1 game. Yes we lost against City. It doesn't matter if you think we lost because we gave City too much respect or was too casual, we lost because we didn't play the way we should more than what City did to stop us in my opinion. That loss does not mean that every team that sets up the way City did we will struggle against. Yes we will lose more games this season, and we may even lose a game against a "lower" club, that is football and the Premier League for you.

3- Chelsea has one of the smallest squads in the league :

last year when we had mikel , essien , belleti and deco injured we still didn't have to use the youngsters like McEachran or Matic . in the very few times we used kakuta , sturridge or Matic it was to give them game time not because we didn't have other options ... but still i like that because it means we will get to see a lot of Kakuta and McEachran this year .

the only place i am worried about is defense with iva the only decent cover for CB and RB because as much as i hate to admit it bruma looks way far from being ready for regular first team action and ferrera is completely useless now .

the other player that can not be replaced in chelsea is Lampard , yes you can play ramires while he is injured or benayoun but no one will be able to provide what lamps does .

As far as Carlo is concerned, your damned if you do and damned if you don't. It was so clear that we needed to clear out the players that we did, and what Carlo is doing is using the ability of our youngsters to help us this season, rather than token gestures here and there. This will ultimately be of MORE benefit to them in the long and short term! The fact is had we not lost against Newcastle and Man City there would not be 1 single mention of our squad "problem" and lets be honest, the team we put out on Saturday was pretty much perfect. Our small squad is better in my opinion, we have no weak links now, we have good experience that we are rotating and we have top class youngsters who are quality but lacking in experience and are now getting that experience the only way they can, by playing.

4- Sturridge still has a lot to learn and he must learn quickly .

after his cameo in the community shield a lot of the fans have been crazy about him waiting for more but he was very disappointing to them as he has been one of our worst players against zilina , Newcastle and man city . so unless he starts listening to what Carlo says and improves quickly he will just turn into another kalou .

Sturridge had a poor game against Newcastle, of that thtere is no doubt. Against Zilina i thought he played pretty well to be honest, and the Man City game he didn't stand much of a chance as the whole team was struggling. Again, lets not put too much pressure on a player who is learning to play in this team and learning how to use his ability the best way that he can. I think with more game time Sturridge can be a class player for us, putting too much pressure on him is not going to help him. He WILL make mistakes, as will all the youngsters, if we are willing to make allowances for that then we may as well shut down the academy now and never sign a youngster again.

5- we have every right to say that kakuta and McEachran are the future of the club .

those two are absolutely future world-class stars if they stay away from bad injuries and i am talking about near future . they are both very smart players and clearly have special talent . so while kakuta proved that with one moment of brilliance he can change games like our first goal against new castle that was pure class assist also his assist in the U-19 final , Josh McEachran proved to be very mature for his age , i have never imagined a 17 years old midfielder playing with this calmness and awareness of the game some are already linking him and jack wilshire with Lampard and gerrard .

they will be provided game time not only because carlo said so but apparently he doesn't have a lot of options as i have mentioned before and that will help their progress to turn into wold class footballers

Josh is something special, as is Kakuta and Bruma, so good for their age, and so good in quality in general that with playing they will become exceptional. But this goes back to the previous 2 points, they will learn big time this season because they will be used in high pressure situations and big games. But we have to make some allowances for the fact that they are still learning their trade.

We have so much to be happy and optomistic about so far this season with the quality football we are playing the goals we are scoring and the game time we are giving some unbelievably talented youngsters and i would hate to see that get overlooked on the back of a game where we let ourselves down, it was 1 game. Last season we went through a tough patch and everyone was predicting doom and Ancelotti's quick departure, and look what happened, no-one can barely remember that now.

[Styles 9,790]

What has Sturridge actually done wrong? Man City were extremely difficult to break down, even Messi would have stuggled under those circumstances (think back to how he performed against Inter).

He is our best 'young' player and the only one with (relative) experience of playing football at the highest level. He is direct, has pace, technical ability and a good shot. He played fairly well against Zilina and has also been doing well for the England under 21s this season. If Ancelotti actually gave him more of a chance to play and establish some sort of consistency and understanding of how the team plays he would do even better. All those minutes wasted on Kalou would be better served by allowing Sturridge to develop. We know Kalou's level of ability (not much) but Sturridge has a lot of potential and needs minutes.

[Madmax 9,219]

As far as Carlo is concerned, your damned if you do and damned if you don't. It was so clear that we needed to clear out the players that we did, and what Carlo is doing is using the ability of our youngsters to help us this season, rather than token gestures here and there. This will ultimately be of MORE benefit to them in the long and short term! The fact is had we not lost against Newcastle and Man City there would not be 1 single mention of our squad "problem" and lets be honest, the team we put out on Saturday was pretty much perfect. Our small squad is better in my opinion, we have no weak links now, we have good experience that we are rotating and we have top class youngsters who are quality but lacking in experience and are now getting that experience the only way they can, by playing.

Sturridge had a poor game against Newcastle, of that thtere is no doubt. Against Zilina i thought he played pretty well to be honest, and the Man City game he didn't stand much of a chance as the whole team was struggling. Again, lets not put too much pressure on a player who is learning to play in this team and learning how to use his ability the best way that he can. I think with more game time Sturridge can be a class player for us, putting too much pressure on him is not going to help him. He WILL make mistakes, as will all the youngsters, if we are willing to make allowances for that then we may as well shut down the academy now and never sign a youngster again.

Precisely.

[zolayes 14,489]

Precisely.

ONLY a bean counter would use the word "Precisely"

[bloody 209]

malouda should always keep his hair pattern as funky as possible. the one he had in the city game was too simple.

[Madmax 9,219]

ONLY a bean counter would use the word "Precisely"

Bit offensive that, mate.

[zolayes 14,489]

Bit offensive that, mate.

sorry ....kiss

[Madmax 9,219]

sorry ....kiss