ethicalstrategy

That's true, but I think you have to say that they weren't helped by not having any protection in front of them. I can think of a number of times where we were effectively playing 4-2-4 or even 2-4-4. Both full backs got forward and stayed forward and the two wingers were often at least as advanced as the strikers. Frank stayed well forward too so there was really only Sidwell to do the dirty work in midfield and he faded in the second half after a decent start.

No, but it was right in front of me and it looked nasty I'd be surprised if he hasn't either broken something or damaged ligaments. I thought it was a bad tackle from behind but Dowd didn't even see it as a foul - twat!

What a bizarre match. We might have scored 8 or 9 but for their keeper who made a number of outstanding saves. But defensively we were shocking. Alex and TBH looked like they had never met and Carlo made a glaring error for their second. He just stood in no mans land. He was never going to get the cross so he needed to stay on his line. The only way Campbell could score from that position was to loop a header over the keeper and Carlo made it easy. I couldn't tell if he might have done better on the other two goals but in general we were fast asleep at the first freekick. Sad to see Paulo injured. It was right in front of where I was sitting and no doubt it was a foul, but all Dowd could keep doing was indicating that the defender got the ball - absolute bollocks. He might have got some of it but only after going straight through the back of Paulo. It looked nasty. Very unlucky as he has been excellent in the last couple of matches. Sidwell was very lucky not to be sent off early for a terrible tackle on one of the Leicester players. Sinclair had a good game and might have scored a couple. Pizarro started up front but seemed to drop off in to a deeper role as the match went on. He is quite good on the ball but never looked like scoring. Sheva's goal was brilliant and came not long after he missed a great headed oportunity. In general though he wasn't in the game much. Malouda did very well as a makeshift left back. Frank was the star man. Loved his first goal - after being fouled the ball broke right and by the time the cross came in and was knocked down he had got up and made a run into the area to strike an excellent first time shot. He won't get the credit he deserves for it of course but it was an exceptional goal. When Leicester made some changes and took the game to us they found acres of space in front of our back four. I was waiting for Grant to bring on Mikel or Essien to stop it but he did nothing. On the plus side he did then go to 3 at the back when we were behind and Essien and Kalou definitely made an impact. We should have killed the game off in the first 20 mins of the second half and nearly paid the price. If we are going to win anything this year then we are going to need to defend a lot better or keep scoring 4 a game! Footnote: Players missing or on the bench last night - Cech, Cole, Bridge, Terry, Carvalho, Essien, Maka, Mikel, Cole, Malouda, Kalou, Ballack, Drogba. At least 8 first choice players. It's fair to say we do have some strength in depth!

The bloke who rated that clearly wasn't actually at the match

Voting for MoM without having seen the match With all due respect to Sheva, who did score a super goal, it was pretty much his only contribution to the whole match. Not really his fault, but he hardly had a pass. MoM was Lampard by a country mile. Without him we would have been in serious merde. He and Drogba seem to be the only people who we can rely on to score consistently.

Yep, I'd agree with that. Even if you just take a look at the newspaper and online coverage, there seem to be a lot less stories about us than there used to be. I guess thats the difference if your manager is not so outspoken.

Fair play for sticking to your guns but the main reason we started poorly - and to be fair it wasn't particularly poor in terms of results - was the turmoil surrounding the club which made it difficult for the manager to do his job. In fact he was being pushed to manage in a way he wasn't comfortable. So what happened was inevitable. Given a proper clear run at it I would have been very confident about us winning the PL under Jose. You are right in that there is now an air of uncertainty about things and that does make it more exciting which is fine if we achieve something at the end of it - I'm just not convinced we will.

I initially saw it clockwise and then anti-clockwise. I thought they were just changing it, but then I could see whichever way I wanted. I'm a lefty, but quite ambidextrous.

I firmly believe that had Mourinho been staying then Frank would have committed to a new contract. Because he knew that he would most likely be leaving he stalled and I'd be amazed if he didn't go abroad at the end of the season - quite likely to play for Jose.

The big test will be at the end of the season. Will we be staring at an empty trophy cabinet? or will be polishing the CC, FA Cup, CL and/or Premiership trophies? Will it be enough for the fans to play like we did on saturday and be in contention for prizes without winning any? or will we get the ideal and play like that and win stuff too? I'd be very happy if we did, but I'm still not convinced. 6-0 home wins don't win you things. Away wins at Valencia and scrappy draws away to Liverpool do.

Drogba. He and JT are the real leaders in the team

Examples please? apart from the Man U game where he was really a bit unlucky to be sent off. The thing is that he made a similar tackle this weekend. A two footed tackle which only resulted in a freekick. Should have been a yellow and, seing as he got a red against ManU, could have been that too. He's reckless. He can be a little rash and he did go flying in on saturday which could easily have cost him a yellow card and possibly a goal from the resulting freekick - I accept all of that. But my point was that his tendancy to be a little rash does not keep costing us. It did once - unluckily so. He is still inexperienced and he was caught out a couple of times on saturday but on the whole he has been excellent and we look a much more solid side with him in there. My only complaint about him really is that his attitude looked a bit casual earlier in the season. There was no sign of that on saturday. Sorry the already costing us part was a typo. What I meant to say is those rash tackles that he has been making are going to cost us BIG sometime, although it already did at the Manure game. and there was me thinkng that you were the optimist and I was the pessimist

Examples please? apart from the Man U game where he was really a bit unlucky to be sent off. The thing is that he made a similar tackle this weekend. A two footed tackle which only resulted in a freekick. Should have been a yellow and, seing as he got a red against ManU, could have been that too. He's reckless. He can be a little rash and he did go flying in on saturday which could easily have cost him a yellow card and possibly a goal from the resulting freekick - I accept all of that. But my point was that his tendancy to be a little rash does not keep costing us. It did once - unluckily so. He is still inexperienced and he was caught out a couple of times on saturday but on the whole he has been excellent and we look a much more solid side with him in there. My only complaint about him really is that his attitude looked a bit casual earlier in the season. There was no sign of that on saturday.

Examples please? apart from the Man U game where he was really a bit unlucky to be sent off.

Come on now, you dont really put that down to Grant do you? Have to say though it was a great performance and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Easiest choice of all time today. Has to be Frank. honourable mentions to: Paulo Joey Drogs Essien Belleti Mikel Riccy Alex Kalou Cech Sheva and Pizzaro Henk Ten Cate's Blue & White Army!

Sounds to me like you are letting what you hope will happen cloud your judgement about what is actually happening at the precise moment. If you really believe that last nights match was any more exciting or that we were any more attacking than previously then I think you are seeing things that aren't there. I said in my previous post that I could detect some instances of where he is trying to make some changes but equally none of them really came to much - that may change and if it does I'll acknowledge that. Just for the record - I don't have to sing about Grant to show my support for the team! My voice is very ropey this morning from singing and shouting at the game last night. And I'm pleased we won, And I enjoyed it. But then again I was enjoying it before Jose was sacked too.

Amazing how 2 people can view a performance form a player quite differently. Although his performance wasn't bad he does have a habit of moving the play in one direction all the time, rather then switching, dare I say it like a scholes or fabregas. Frank's big problem last night was the lack of options he had when he wanted to pass. There were a lot of times where he was looking to make the forward pass and there was nothing on for him. He is definitely at his best when he can swing the ball wide but neither Joe or Malouda really gave him that option too often. He was our best midfielder but as you say that wasn't too difficult last night.

I'll quote you on this Loz, but I'm responding to Chippy and Kev too. First things first. Avram Grant's Blue and W...... nope, sorry, can't bring myself to sing that just yet So did we see something different last night. Overall I would say both yes and no. Overall it was no more creative, attacking or exciting than a lot of matches that we have seen under Jose over the last 3 years. I quite enjoyed it but was a bit frustrated too. There were definitely some things that we were trying to do differently - mostly not successfully, but I won't necessarliy criticise that as changes do take time to work. I agree that we started out moving the ball more quickly than before. As the match wore on we became a little more ponderous. Cech definitely tried to play the ball short to one of our back four much more often. We didn't see so much of the big hoof up towards Drogba. We saw a number of players trying some flicks and tricks that would undoubtedly have got them a bollocking off Jose - I am assuming that they are being encouraged to do this by Grant. Particularly liked Drogs "back pass" early in the game. Both full backs definitely got forward more than we would have seen under Jose in 4-3-3 fomation. We tried to get midfield runners going beyond the player with the ball - this would have been ok except that there were a number of occasions where the player in possession then lost the ball and we were exposed at the back. The down side of pushing more people forward is that it leaves Maka having to do too much. He is most effective when the other two midfielders are channelling players towards him and he can then perform his magic trick of taking the ball off them without them really knowing how he did it! Left on his own he can't do that so effectively. We definitely didn't try to shut down the game at 2-0. In fact we looked more vulnerable after we scored the second. I was waiting to see Grant change something after they started to find space in the gap between midfield and the defence. I know that Jose would have made a change to stop it. Against a team like Arsenal or Barca we would have had a big problem with the amount of time and space that we allowed them on the ball in our final third. It will be interesting to see how we go against Man City on saturday because that is the space Elano likes to play in. A couple of random observations. There were a number of times that Drogba got the ball wide and put it in to the box and we had no more than 1 player in there. If he is going to drift wide, which he did to good effect, then we have to get more support to him. Playing with Joe and Malouda wide we really lack pace. There were a number of times last night that Joe looked like he was running in treacle and Malouda doesn't seem to be particularly quick either.

No. not really. I considered Jose to be a success. If Grant had come in and achieved what Jose did then I would have considered him a success too. The point is that we have changed manager for a reason. That reason is pretty indisputable. Roman wants us to play more attractive and attacking football whilst still winning. To make a judgement about whether Grant is successful in doing that will ultimately be quite easy. If he does nothing other than continue to play the same way as the team did under Jose then the whole exercise will have proved to be a failure and I will consider that Grant has failed because he won't have achieved what was required of him. It is one thing taking on someone else's team and to continue managing that team - it is quite another to build your own team, playing your own style. So far all we have seen is that the team, if so minded, can still play the way that they have been coached to play for the last 3 years. Let's see what happens when some of the players change and the team is required to play differently. Take Bolton as an example. Sammy Lee wanted to change their style of play after many years under Big Sam. The players didn't have the belief in what he was doing and he didn't have the ability to sell those changes to the team and so he lost the dressing room and results were poor. Maybe if he had carried on the Big Sam way things would have been quite different for him. Anyway, the point is that we are clearly a very good team with very good players. There has been a huge change at the club which has caused disruption. We have a new, untried and untested manager at this level and we are 6 games in. Despite all the change results haven't been bad. How much of that is down to the players and how much to the new manager is pretty hard to say, but I don't see any evidence of any particular influence from the manager so my inclination is towards believing that it is the players themselves who have buckled down and shown a good deal of professional pride. It is far too early to make a judgement about Grant. We will only be able to do that once he has the opportunity to implement the changes that he has been talking about. i remain unconvinced. Finally, to go back to my original point. I hate hearing him talk about the team as if they were underachieving no hopers before he took over. It represents a gross misrepresentation of the truth and instinctively makes me dislike him. Particularly as I am not convinced he doing anything other than parrot the party line.

So if Chelsea play out the season in a style similar to that we played under Jose, win say the CL or the FA Cup you won't give Grant any credit because he hasn't changed their playing style and brought in new players? Isn't that tantamount to saying that a manager is superfluous as it would mean he had no input into maintaining the success. If that happened then what exactly would have been the point? We changed manager because the owner didn't like the way weplayed not because we couldn't win anything. So to be a success Grant has to deliver waht Roman wants.

But seriously, I will only consider Grant a success if he is able to build his own team and get them playing in a more "Arsenal like" way and still match the previous success of Mourinho. That's one very big if.

And if we have a horror season would it be fair to say a large chunk of the blame will be laid at Grant's door? So if we do succeed this season who do you think should get all the credit? If we have a horror season then I will be laying the blame at Romans door. He was responsible for getting rid of Jose and for appointing Grant. . Still doesn't answer who you are going to give the credit to if we end up having a good season. The players -and Jose of course

And if we have a horror season would it be fair to say a large chunk of the blame will be laid at Grant's door? So if we do succeed this season who do you think should get all the credit? If we have a horror season then I will be laying the blame at Romans door. He was responsible for getting rid of Jose and for appointing Grant. i don't have anything against Grant, but I am struggling to see what qualifies him to manage chelsea. 6 matches is not enough to draw a lot of conclusions other than the fact that we have a good squad with a lot of good players who are capable of beating anyone if they play the way that they have been coached. Some detect a change in the way we are playing but I can't see it myself.

I'm obviously the only one who thinks it is ironic and rather pathetic to hear Grant keep saying we need to play a more attractive game, we're improving slowly, match by match (as if we were a heap of crap before rather than 5 time trophy winners in 3 years) and implicitly slagging off Jose whilst at the same time watching Jose's team win, playing the Jose way! Anything we achieve this season under Grant will be inspite of him rather than because of him in my view. Ten Cate may well help. He at least has experience of guiding an average manager in charge of a successful team in Rijkard. Although his comments about changing our attitude from a team whose main concern is not losing rather than winning suggests that he hasn't actually been taking much notice over the last 3 years, which is worrying.