Kentonio

I still think given time and some player changes, Sarri can turn us into an English version of his Napoli team. It’s obvious we’re not playing the way he wants us to yet, and it’s equally obvious that he’s a manager with massive tactical knowledge based on his previous teams. I’d have taken top 4 in a heartbeat after the mess of pre-season, and we’re fighting for it and also looking good in the EL. I don’t know what other fans were expecting, but this really isn’t some huge disappointment for me position wise. I do wish the players were adapting to his tactics faster, but I think there’s a couple of players basically holding that progress up, and I really hope we can get rid of (or at least postpone) that transfer ban so we can get rid of a few and bring in people he thinks fit his ideas better. I’m tired of changing manager every 5 minutes and I’m beyond tired of seeing the players downing tools when things get tough. It’s time for a new approach at Chelsea, and I reckon Sarri is as good a bet as anyone to bring it.

If it had been most talented it’d be Eden, but greatest has to be between JT and Frank. Gave it to Frank by a whisker, although still not really decided. Both great for very different reasons.

Top 4 potentially.

I thought them, Atletico and Barca all got done for the same thing as us, shenanigans regarding youth players. I read just now though that the chairman of the appeals board took over after the Spanish cases, so he might be trying to toughen up the system. It still seems wildly unfair to us though, and hopefully CAS will agree.

Outrageous that the likes of Madrid can just have their bans postponed by appealing, but when we ask it's denied. I hope we take it to the court of sports arbitration and see what they say about there being one rule for one club and another for another.

Feels like he plays the kind of role where he’s always going to look underwhelming unless the other players are making the right moves. He’s not Fabregas, who can put outrageous passes onto a strikers feet, he’s a conductor who drives play with fast, small passes. If the guys ahead of him aren’t in the right positions to receive passes and get the attack moving, he’s always going to have to play sideways or back to keep the ball moving. Feel really bad for him that he’s being blamed for the teams performance, and it really sucks that our fans booed him the other week. We’re better than that, that sh*t is what we slate Madrid for.

I didn’t think Eden was captain material, but seeing how he reacted in the seconds after City won, I’m starting to think I was wrong. He was the one immediately going around picking the lads back up.

I’m still fuming over this. We had played an awesome match and win or lose it gave us a superb platform to move forward on. Instead we look like a complete laughing stock, and we’ll go into Spurs with everyone questioning whether Sarri has any authority left. These f**king players..

Thought we were really good until their goal. Then we slowed down, got nervous and it just petered out. Was disappointed with Sarri’s subs, but not the end of the world.

Conte was actually trying to get rid of any player that considered himself too big for the team. But most fans turned against Conte himself as a result so am not surprised. I think many of us only turned against him when he started acting like a sulking teenager, slagging off the board every 5 minutes and standing on the touchline with a face like a slapped arse. If he'd continued to show the same passion in the second season as he did in the first, I think we'd all have stuck behind him, and players be damned.

Absolutely not. There will be a time for Frank, but it's certainly not now.

We hired him and he deserves to be backed. I hate this idea that because he hasn't won a title before, he should be treated like some second class manager. He's done amazing things at Empoli and Napoli, and only didn't win the league in Italy because it was practically impossible with the resources he had and the domination of Juventus. And he still nearly did it. Yet now apparently everyone and his dog knows better than Sarri does about how to organize a football team and about tactics. More than the guy who Sacchi called a genius. Ok then, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.

So Sarri doesn't deserve to get the same time/opportunity as Pep or Klopp? Why exactly?

I didn't notice Pep changing his system much in his first season. He just kept making them learn, replacing players who couldn't do it, and now he's enjoying the rewards. Same with Klopp.

Simple fact is Sarri is giving more time to youth than Conte or Mourinho did. Plus we can hardly say RLD is sitting and watching, he's getting plenty of time, and has also had an injury recently.

Well my reply would just be 'more than they've had under any previous recent manager'.

It wasn't a counter attack, that was just what Pep described it as because he's a bad loser. We didn't just sit back and counter that game, we were constantly building from the back and trying to play our own football.

Mine too.

Yet the same tactics and virtually the same team beat City earlier in the season.

Rudiger without a doubt. I don't think he seems too nice at all, on the pitch he looks like he's a hardass in the vein of JT. Frequently shows he's more than happy to get stuck in on match day, and I'd love to see someone like that giving our own players a kick up the arse when they need it.

I don't understand why we haven't seen Emerson get more minutes, but CHO is an 18 year old kid. If it wasn't for Bayern coming knocking, I seriously doubt everyone would be insisting he's a bang on starter. As for Jorginho, he isn't a problem for me at all. He's a great player who is there to set up moves for the team. If the team aren't making the right runs and getting into the right positions, then he can't do sh*t. That's on the team, not him. Re Kante, I'm tired of this insistence that he's in the wrong spot. He's having an excellent season as he learns that new role, and this idea that the only place he can play is as the furthest back CM is baffling. We're trying to transition into attacking football, yet we should immediately change back to being defensive?

Huh? RLC has had 21 appearances, Christensen 14, CHO 12 and Ampedu 4, and it's only mid February.

Why are you insisting that he played the wrong team and tactics? Who is to say if the players didn't actually do their fecking jobs, that we couldn't have won? We beat them earlier in the season didn't we?

Players. Time for a clear out, people like Willian and Alonso need to move on, and I've reached a point where selling Hazard wouldn't seem like the end of the world either.

Why is this such a problem? We knew what football he wanted to play when we signed him. We knew it would be a long hard battle to teach it to the team. We knew we weren’t title challengers this year. So now when we’re in one final, still fighting for 4th and still in the other 2 cups, now is the time we should just abandon the whole thing and go back to defensive football? And people act surprised that we’re stuck in an endlesss boom/bust cycle. As soon as sh*t gets hard, everyone wants to jump ship.