TorontoChelsea

There are two big differences with City. 1- City started in much worse shape than we did. When Mansour took over the club, City were a mid-table side. Chelsea were Fourth. We were in much better shape (not to mention having a young Lampard and Terry already playing great) We all hate Ken Bates for a reason but he also started to invest in Chelsea before Roman came along. For those of us who were supporters then, Chelsea were a lot of fun to watch and they had a good club. 2-City was dealing with a much more competitive spending league. When Chelsea started spending huge, nobody else in the Premier League was. In 2033-2004, Chelsea spent 153M pounds. Arsenal, their biggest rival at the time, spent 16M pounds. Chelsea spent 290M in the first three seasons of Roman's time at Chelsea. I doubt the entire rest of the Premier League spent half of that net.. When City was starting to spend like crazy, they did so in a league where Chelsea and soon United and later Arsenal were all spending big already (or in Chelsea's case, they had spent so much earlier and were still flush with that talent). If you were a team wanting to spend big now it would also be harder to move up because you are not the only one.

One of the reasons I hate the cult of managers is that I feel that managers overall don't actually make a huge difference. They can make a small different and sometimes, that small difference is the edge you need, but the media and fans give them way too much credit/blame usually. The real job of a manager at a club like Chelsea is managing the egos and motivating the players. Look at Mourinho's record overall at Chelsea. 8 years starter. I'd say about 4 of those years overall, Chelsea had the most expensive club in England and maybe the world and all of those years, Chelsea was one of the highest spending clubs in the world. In 8 years with an elite spending club Mourinho won the following major trophies: 3 Premier League titles, 1 FA Cup. In the five years in between where Mourinho wasn't a manager (where overall Chelsea had less talent) Chelsea won 1 Premier League title, 3 FA Cups, and one Champions League. Did Mourinho overall do any better than could have been expected? The answer to me is no. It's not a slight on Mourinho but a reality of managers. The managers that get called geniuses are also the managers who happen to manage the most talent. In the end, the teams that win are the teams that have the most talent and spend the most money. What Ranieri is doing with Leicester this season is far more impressive than what Guardiola has done with Bayern.

As others have pointed out, the transfers or lack of in the summer are not a real point. First off, we still spent more than the vast majority of clubs and bought Pedro who is a great player. Secondly and more importantly, we won the league last year. This is not a team four points out of first where a slight improvement or increased depth would have made a difference. This is a team near the relegation zone despite being filled with quality players. This is probably the worst sustained performance of a team of this quality I can remember.

When Mourinho took over, I thought it was a mistake because we had the wrong sorts of players for him to build his team, so, we sold them and bought more fitting players. Now, however, we are a mess with no style and no sound of the club so anyone can take over and rebuild. Something I think is missing from a lot of name managers is the ability to be flexible. Mourinho, Van Gaal, etc... they have to build their teams to play a specific way. You'd think that a good manager could just get the best out of their players no matter what the system.

How can people pretend that a dozen players weren't trying AND NOT blame the manager for that? If he can't control or motivate his team, he deserves to go anyway. I have never liked the cult of Mourinho. No player is bigger than the club and managers are worth a lot less than players. There was no scenario where Mourinho keeping his job made sense. We were awful, his antics were childish and disruptive, and Chelsea were not improving at all. This was not a rash decision in the least.

Except, this is a baker who chose and bought his own ingredients. I think managers and their impact are generally overrated but unlike RDM, AVB, Grant, Scolari, or even Ancelotti, this is completely a Mourinho squad. He has had three years and north of 150M pounds to spend on building this squad. Not only that, but he also inherited a squad brimming with young talent. He chose to get rid of many of them and replace them with his kind of players. The other thing is that the players aren't bad. Hazard was the best player in the premier league last season. Pedro, Costa, Oscar, Azpi, Fabergas, Matic, etc...have all been great for periods very recently and all are basically useless right now. This is an extremely talented club. On paper, easily a top-4 team. If you have a player not performing, it's on them, if you have an entire team not performing, the manager should take the bulk of the blame.

We have 15 points in 15 games. We haven't looked like a quality team in about a year. This, if anything, is overcompensation for sacking a few managers too early. RDM got fired when we were four points out of first after the winning the CL and the reason he was fired was that we didn't build a unique offensive style. Ancelotti was fired after coming in second and neither RDM or Ancelott had the same ability to choose their squads and build them in their images. How do you do that and then let Mourinho manage the team into almost the relegation zone halfway through the season?

Absolute garbage. Probably the most disheartening period in my 20 years of supporting Chelsea. I will support the club even if they got relegated but I'd really rather they didn't.

He's a bit of an odd player. Amazing energy, fantastic at free kicks, wonderful work rate, but I hate him on the ball. He is very slow at moving the ball once he receives it and runs sideways and in circles a lot instead of attacking. At the top level, you have to move the ball quickly and Willian just doesn't do that often enough. It's a strange contradiction that he's been both our best player this season and also that he has been too central to our attack.

Yeah. Been lurking a bit but life got in the way of posting.

I agree there's no hope but I want him gone for other reasons. I'm sick of the BS. The mind games, the immature garbage. The tantrums. I don't find it endearing or interesting. It's extremely childish. I want a manager who can just shut up and manage the team sans drama. Chelsea doesn't just need a new manager, it needs a culture change.

So, explain why Drogba is close to being one of the greatest Chelsea players please. TWO years of 12+ goals in the league. Apart from those two seasons, he had a pretty mediocre goal-scoring record for the other 6 (87 goals in 237 games is not good). He was a very good striker who had two fantastic seasons and happened to play on fantastic teams so he had a lot of big game moments (he also had a lot of bad moments in big games which is normal) . We have had a lot of very good strikers but none have ever been on teams like Drogba was so never had the opportunity to have those massive games in front of the world. Chelsea have had a lot of very good strikers. Bentley, Osgood, Dixon, Tambling, Greaves. What makes Drogba stand apart from any of those players except that he played on better teams and was able to play and score in big games? By and large, those players played for longer for Chelsea and were more consistent. You look at someone like Lampard or Terry who were excellent players for Chelsea every single year for about a decade on the same team. I'm not saying Drogba was not a great player overall, just that because of his big-game moments, many Chelsea supporters have elevated him to a status he doesn't belong to. As for belonging to the best of PL forward, there's not really a serious case. Henry is the best Premier League striker ever IMO (but Shearer is very close). Henry got UEFA team of the year 5 times in 6 years (he scored 26+ goals 6 times). Wayne Rooney has scored more than 16 goals in 10 straight years. Hassailbank did it 7 times. Fowler did it 6 times, Shearer did it an amazing 11 times. Michael Owen did it 7 times. Van Nistelrooy did it 5 times in 5 years. Van Persie has done it 5 times. Drogba did it twice. You're comparing a player who had two excellent seasons with players who were excellent for 5-10 years. Hassailbank is a good comparison to Drogba because they both played 9 years in the Premier League (and both played with Chelsea.) Here is where Drogba finished in the EPL scoring race in his career in the EPL. 16, 10, 1, 24, 54, 1, 12, 59, X. Compare that to Hassailbank who finished 4, 1, 1, 2, 14, 13, 4, 14, 113 in his Premier League time. You don't see the difference? Hassailbank was a top-5 scorer in the league 5 times. He was a top-15 striker in the league 8 straight years. Drogba finished top-5 in the league in scoring twice. He was top-15, 4 times in 8 years (and won't be this season either obviously). Hassailbank also had a year in there with Atletico where he finished second in the league in scoring in Spain (24 goals in 34 games). You don't think if Hassailbank played on the slightly later Chelsea teams, he also would have scored lots of big goals in big games? Of course he would have. Drogba was a great player but not an all-time great.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/fourth-place-medal/u-women-hockey-team-scrimmaging-against-high-school-170704740--oly.html Against just a high school team, an elite women's team would win the vast majority of the time in most sports (no for baseball though. Even high school pitchers throw in the 70s and 80s and the fastest fastball by a woman ever recorded is about 65MPH which is incredibly hittable. Against an elite high school team then it would be different as the boys would likely win in every sport.

Was awful. Normally, I think small sample sizes are absurd to look at it, but in this case, there is reason for concern. If a player looks out of rhythm or mistiming things, that is very often down to just lack of gameplay, but Drogba this is pretty much how he can be expected to play. He is 36 YO and has not been a top striker in about 5 years. He was declining quickly even with Chelsea, becoming effective in only a handful of games in his last couple of years with us. Look at it this way, had Drogba stayed after the CL win what would have happened? Almost certainly one more year of continued decline before Chelsea not offering him another contract and him going on his way. Because he left Chelsea, people didn't see that decline, but it was there. We have a much worse player than the one who was mediocre for us 3 years ago. (16 goals in 60 league games the last 2 years at Chelsea). I've been thinking a lot about Drogba. Drogba has been a great servant to Chelsea, seems like a genuinely good human being, was a real pleasure to watch, and was key to a lot we did , but his legacy is going to get seriously re-examined the further we get away from the emotions of winning the CL. He was a very good player playing mostly on great teams but not really close to being one of the best Premier-League strikers or the best Chelsea player ever. This is a player who scored over 16 goals in a season only twice with Chelsea and only more than 12 in the league twice. These are not particularly high benchmarks and are fairly low benchmarks on what was a high scoring team.. Wayne Rooney has done 16+ goals 10 straight years. Henry had 7 straight seasons of at least 22 goals. Van Persie has done 16 5 out of the last 6 years. Hassailbank did it 8 times.

Schalke is getting slaughtered in the Bundesliga. They are an utter mess. While having a super easy group for the second year in a row is good, I actually miss having a challenge. Not a group of death or anything but one difficult team to at least get two marquee group games to really look forward to. The only way Chelsea will not finish first in this group is a screwup of historical proportions.