Waterblue

I think that decision is probably the worst VAR decision I've ever seen, and last night's is right up there. 
What bugs me is that, on rare occasions, the FA or Mike Riley will go public and apologise for an error, and the referee will be publicly shamed by being demoted to the Championship ("It's not a top league, so they can have sh!t officials for a weekend").
This should have happened after Dean allowed Liverpool to take a quick free kick that led to a goal on Sunday, when he should have restarted with a drop ball ( a decision that could cost us or Leicester tens of millions, and could benefit the Dippers by that same amount). It should happen now after last night's fiasco, with both Dean and Marriner getting the demotion. (And, of course, the pairing of Dean and Marriner should never have been allowed after Dean's showing on Sunday and Marriner's last Wednesday at the Bridge).
And Taylor should have been demoted after his handling of the Manure game at the Bridge last season, when he made several shocking decisions, as should that night's VAR Kavanagh, who reviewed the Maguire kick in Bats' nuts and thought "That's fine", and later ruled out the Zouma equaliser for a shove by Azpi and ignored the shove on Azpi that caused Azpi to shove the player in front of him. All massive high-profile officiating errors, that somehow didn't warrant an apology to us as a club or a demotion to the jokers who made the bad calls. And Taylor was later rewarded by being given a second cup final in three years - which he completely ballsed up with his incompetence.

VAR needs to go back to the clear and obvious errors part. This nanny cam on offsides is a joke.
If they can do such a beautiful job with the goal line tech, bar that one big error between villa and sheff u last season, they can make this system better.

Today was the first day ever that Chelsea made my (6 year old) son cry. 10 mins after the game, my wife found him upstairs crying because we lost.  Perhaps he needs to toughen up....perhaps I don't care as much as him!
I was raging at full time. I have now calmed down and reflected.
First up, congrats to Leicester. I thought that they did well, and nullified us. They scored a cracking goal, and stopped us making many chances. Enjoy the win.
Now Chelsea......
- This was yet another game where we clearly demonstrated we have no plan B. Bringing on a 50 yr old Frenchman to hoof it up to with 10 mins to go is a joke. Even then, we hardly get any crosses into him.
- We generally seem to have 2 ways of playing. 1) the all action, buzzing about, energetic style in which we played against Madrid. A style that creates a lot of chances 2) the sit back, slowly slowly, knock it around the defenders, inch up to the pen box, knock it back to the midfield approach. Rinse repeat. Style 1 seems to work well. Style 2 worked in the cup semi final against city, but doesn't create enough chances for us to score many.
- Against Arsenal and Leicester today, we were far too one dimensional. Far to boring. Far to negative. We created nothing for our strikers. Speculative shots for outside the box are a shameful return for all the possession we had. Simply put, this team is clueless and has no idea how to break down teams.
- Coupled to our bluntness up front, is the habit we are getting back into of making mistakes that gift opponents goals. City had Christensen karate kick at the ball that led to the goal, and the Zouma tumble over sterling, that thankfully we were let off on. Arsenal had the backpass. Today had Reece, inexplicably passing it straight to their midfielder, leading directly to the goal. We used to put such errors on Frank, and once TT cam in, they seemed to have been cut out. But they are back, and they are costing us.
- Too many players today didnt offer a damn thing. Alonso was anonymous. Jorginho was back to his 5 yrd worst. Kante was back to being disruptive and didnt push forward. Mount seems incapable of playing a through ball onto Werner. Werner seems incapable of playing any pass and always takes the wrong decision (shooting when he should pass, passing when he should shoot etc). Ziyech, well I think Ziyech was on the pitch.  Simply not good enough.
We didn't create enough. I recall only 1 real save from Kasper, from the mount shot in the last 5 mins. We also had the header onto the post. That isnt enough in a cup final. Those crying handball are grasping at straws, no way was it handball. Those crying VAR offside also need to stock take, this is nothing new, until they change the rules this close calls will continue to happen.
We have hit bad form at a bad time. I fear the worst.
 

LBH win lose or draw VAR has ruined top flight football. Not just today but very prem game it comes in and some faceless ref with zero accountability makes these kind of decisions, it’s taken all the joy out of celebrating and when you boil it all down isn’t that the point of it, going to games and going mental when your team scores. Not anymore just a stifled pause until the aforementioned faceless ref decides.  Well they can keep it, not stopping a lifetime habit , but today and the last few VAR seasons have taken the gloss off the joy of watching ones team and other top games big time.

The loyal's salute you, take a break Frank, remove the knife carefully and get the smile back on our face.

A message to any of our players scrolling through ......
On the quiet they'll be more than one player at this club who has conveniently used Lampard as an excuse to themselves for their own poor form. No names mentioned because that would just be guessing.
Those days are gone.
You all need to step up a gear or several now.
Just because the new manager will have his honeymoon period, that won't mean you are excused piss poor form.
If the fans were in the stadium it wouldn't be Frank getting booed.

All those years I stood in Shed and never realised it had an upper tier, or are they corporate boxes up there, bloody prawn sandwich brigade!!
"We're the corporate, we're the corporate, we're the corporate of the shed"

No! Missed that and I was watching this morning to see what spin they would put on it. Strangely the sports news when I saw it was concentrating on Watfords mascot and no mention of their darlings even playing last night

Isn't he a bit of a tit, though?

We played well, especially first half, but we were always vulnerable in transition. They got the ball and bang, they were swarming all over us. We had absolutely nothing shielding the defence. It was a problem the entire pre-season and hopefully this is a wake up call for Frank. Away from home, we were way too open. It was easy for them to attack us. Right from the off.
 
Performances, well our CBs are a concern. Rudiger walks into this team but one of the other three has to step up. Kante obviously walks back in too, for one of Jorginho or Kova. I feel Frank made a mistake with Barkley. He excelled at number 10 in the pre-season, our best player by far, he should have started there today, with Mount on the bench. I'm very surprised Mount got a start, though he looked confident. 
 
We're going to have to be patient. I really feel Callum will be the key player this season as he will give us an attacking edge. He obviously needs to sign that contract.
 
The likes of Tammy, our CBs, Mason, Reece James when he comes in, Callum, Pulisic, we're all going to have to be very patient. We're on the start of a journey and it will take time but I'm fully signed up to the journey and I hope you all are too. We lack a commanding CB without Rudiger, we lack a top class striker but Tammy may grow into one, and we lack a midfield enforcer though I think Ethan will provide that next season.
 
On another day the game could have gone differently but the scoreline may have done us a favour. I think it might focus everybody's minds. This is going to be a hard season and we mustn't be under any illusions. Our manager is a rookie, with only one year under his belt in the Championship. The same applies to his staff. The same applies to a few players, including Tammy and Mason today. Let's be realistic. Let's temper all our expectations. Let's embrace the journey we're on. Most importantly, have faith.
 
Mourinho? I can't stand him. Think he took pleasure in watching us lose. He certainly has no loyalty towards Chelsea and he's going to delight in trying to apply as much pressure on us as possible. Frank is right to play the youth. Jose resents that because he's not a nurturing manager, Frank must learn to cut off all the noise. I've got a feeling most of it will be coming from Jose's mouth.
 
Appointing Frank Lampard and playing all these kids is never going to be about the short-term. That's something Jose Mourinho will never understand.
 
Onwards and upwards. Come on Chelsea.

Another rant. Do we actually practice corners? Most fans natural reaction is to raise a small cheer on winning a corner. Last night I was cursing when we were winning corners towards the end. We used to be a powerful team from those sort of set plays.
 

f**k agents, transfer windows, sky sources, Twitter, and newspaper rumours, this was the mother of all summer transfer business and none of them or us saw this lot coming!! And us old gits on here are still talking about that team 36 years later!! "We are going up, we are going up"

I read that. Good no nonsense article.
I liked the bit when Tommy Doc asked him to take out Bestie proper.
Chopper “ But what if I get sent off”
Tommy Doc “ They’ll miss Bestie more than we miss you”

great pictures - after the cr*p last night I always avoid all other threads and head straight here for my fix of CFC  … thank you to all that post such great pictures ,I especially love the Cardiff away ones ,just one mad day. I actually went on my own and remember being a tad dubious before hand but I need not have worried as CFC had the full compliment of mad men out  

Proper Chelsea Legend. Proper Chelsea strip.

I don't get here as much so apologies if this has been posted but deffo worth it.
 
 

Enjoy ... 18-year old Ray Wilkins interviewed at around the 7'42" mark ..
 
A couple of fabulous passes in the actual match as well ... spent most of the 80s telling anyone who would listen that it was Manchester United that turned Ray into the "crab". At CFC he was a brilliant attacking midfielder who scored plenty of goals. Still can't believe he has left us ...
 

The only joke is really people like you, turn up in here after a massive thrashing, whingeing and moaning on with no gratitude or respect, with a sh*t-for-brains "witty" username and all yer 'istory and your extremely rational and sensible
"Whilst not meaning to sound ungrateful for what Abramovic has done for the club, I completely agree. I have no doubt the reason we miss out on a lot of top signings is because of the way he runs the club, we will soon be facing the scenario where we struggle to attract the top coaches due to the way past coaches are treated and undermined in their duties. Ambramovic needs to realise what his actual responsibilities are, and that's to keep the club competitive and solvent, and leave the playing side to those that know what they are doing. If he doesn't like that then move on and let someone take over who can do it, and take his Russian entourage with him."
I really did laugh my cock off at "Ambramovic needs to realise what his actual responsibilities are".  
Supporters (fans, whatever) "need to realise what their actual responsibilities are" - Support the team when they are playing and accept the fact that we as fans are not entitled to anything above the players doing their best as far as they are able.  I'll accept the Sunday it didn't look like they were, and they deserve some criticism for that, but only that, not "Worst in 35 years", implying some long-standing season-ticket holder with a deep and in-depth knowledge of the club's past, over and above all the wonderful bits of insight you have googled for us.