Ready Player One

Liverpool are very good. Reigning champions. Champions of Europe the season before. Miles ahead of where we are and able to bring Thiago off the bench. Containing them when the squad was depleted was the right call. It didn’t work. Sometimes it doesn’t. Didn’t expect to get a result here, and we didn’t. Silva, Ziyech, Chilwell, Pulisic, Azpilcueta all out. Plus the new keeper. You’d expect most of them to be starters more often than not. Take 4-6 starters out of this Liverpool team and are they this good? I don’t think so. Havertz needs to be less passive. We are a power play team, or trying to be. He needed to be making runs, creating options, moving their defenders around. Same against Brighton. You can’t just stand there, get the ball and pass it simple every time. Not at CF, RW, or No.10. He’s drifts through games, and that won’t cut it here. He’s new to the league, and young. There is no writing him off, just saying he needs to offer more. I’ve seen what he’s capable of and he’s an immense talent. But when someone needed to come off for a CB, it shouldn’t be plainly obvious that the sacrifice has to be the £80m signing. He wasn’t doing anything. Not mad at Andreas for the red. I’d rather a CB takes a red with some sh*thousery than just allows an easy goal. Almost got away with a yellow too. Mane is an insanely good player. It happens. I think he’s started the season quite well TBH, although I can’t say I’m a fan in general. The back 4 were actually pretty good both before and after the red TBH. No complaints there. Liverpool are hard to play against because their widemen become strikers, and their full backs become wingers. You’ve got to have your fullbacks narrow or they overload the middle, so you rely on your widemen to track their fullbacks if you want to stop them. Werner and Mount were tasked with that. They did ok. It’s a thankless task, Robertson and Trent are excellent at what they do, and impossible 10 v 11. But they did ok. Werner looked knackered by it all, but I already really like him. Mount must have chopped up Duracell in his Ready Brek every morning. He just doesn’t stop. This game was lost in midfield IMO. 11 vs 11 and we had one shot. The specific incidents that led to the goals don’t matter because we never had control. The incidents are inevitable if you don’t have control. Our midfield couldn’t touch theirs. Kante tried. The other two have qualities but they aren’t starters for a club at the level we want to be at, playing the way we want to play. That’s the worrying take away from the first two games. Our midfield was dominated in both. It’s clear now that’s what the chase for Rice is about. Lamps wants a midfield rock next to Kante. He wants a solid platform. Whether Rice is the answer, I don’t know. Saying that, it will all get easier when opponents have to worry about us, as opposed to us having to worry about them. That’s true for everyone in the team. Frank wants us on the front foot, not playing widemen with the sole intent of marking opposition fullbacks, but right now he’s putting out fires and making sacrifices. That’s only bad management if you do it when you don’t have to.

The back 4 won us that game. Reece, Zouma, and Andreas in particular were faultless. Kepa is toast. Not good enough. Targeted. By opponents. Not trusted by his team mates. He’s a liability. We need to take care of the ball better. That will make it easier for everyone.

No point defending him. He was really, really bad. But, he put in a decent defensive shift and it was his first game in the league having only signed like a week ago. I have zero worries about him. He is an elite talent. This was just a bad game. It happens. Even to elite talents.

I don’t find that thought more scary than Raheem Sterling running in behind Christensen, Rudiger or Zouma TBH. Thiago Silva is a top defender and will be even if he’s lost a yard. He was fairly obviously roided to the gills TBF.

Mate, not everyone who disagrees with you is a troll. If you start a conversation by calling people idiots, if that conversation becomes antagonistic it’s all on you. You have literally been abusive toward me in every post. Just chill. It’s just sport. Relax. FWIW, I’d have liked to have seen Sarri moulding a group of kids like the ones we have now. Although at the same time he had a few of these lads last year and didn’t play them. He’s wrong for a club with star players who need building around because he’s got a system and he needs people to buy into that. Give him young players with a lot to learn and a need for guidance and I think he can be the guidance they need. IMO. You do learn during your career, but you don’t learn much at 27 and are a “star player”. Anyway, I found the screenshot of Tammy offside, so have a good one.

Looking for replays of the CHO disallowed goal bro. Be happy.

Well. This morning I came back to find out about who was going to play in the Bayern game and just now I’ve come back to see if anyone had any info on that disallowed goal. Posting was just because I was reminded myself why I gave up on football forums. Full of abusive loons who lack the empathy to understand others with alternate points of view in any way other than name calling. And seeing as how “being nice” has gone out the window: Hazard learned f**k all from Sarri and the only people who could possibly disagree with that at this point are appalling Sarri nuthuggers, which is a real odd thing to be. Be happy.

I never labelled him a joke then (although I was accused of doing so), didn't here either. The problem with "idiots like me" (and thanks for going straight to abusive, you are clearly a charmer) is that we realise that reality is complicated. Sarri wouldn't be teaching Hazard anything he doesn't know, just like he couldn't possibly teach Ronaldo anything he doesn't already know, but I still think he's a good manager, although he was what I consider a "fundamentalist" rather than "pragmatist". Neither is right or wrong, they are just less and more effective, or appropriate, for different circumstances. No manager worth his salt was walking into Chelsea last year and identifying the problem as our best player standing in the wrong places. It was super weird that some Chelsea fans thought he would. And oddly, at the time I was saying that Hazard probably would benefit from a more attacking coach after two years of Conte, but I was still getting called "mental" because I didn't think Sarri would be "teaching" him anything. I thought of it today. I thought the problem was clearly that Ronaldo didn't want to learn from Sarri. Had a chuckle. I wondered if things have changed here, or whether I'd get called an idiot straight off the bat. Question answered. Cheers. TBH, I accept that what happened was that everyone was super-excited about their shiny new toy and was swinging straight off his nuts, refusing to hear any criticism. That is well past now, for most anyway. There is a sorta mentality that means everyone is either brilliant or sh*te, and anyone who says someone isn't brilliant is saying that they are sh*te, and everyone who says someone isn't sh*te is saying they are brilliant. It's an intellectual vacuousness that you have fallen into I'm afraid. Reality is complicated. Anyway, KTBFFH. I doubt I'll be back, so enjoy the football (even if right now isn't the best time to say that).

Just thought I'd pop back and reminisce about that time I was called "mental" and "a whopper" of a "WUM" among other insults by multiple posters for saying this guy won't be teaching Eden Hazard how to be a decent attacker. For some reason that popped into my head today.

we'd be due £5-10m in compensation (amount decided by a tribunal) if he left. he's going nowhere on a free. but i'm pretty sure he'll sign a new contract. i don't think he'll get more money elsewhere (from the sound of it we're offering silly money), and he's gonna be in our first team plans. that'll be enough.

at least they've cleared up handball, which has been entirely at the discretion of refs for far too long. before this, the "laws of the game" were just it's an offence to "handle the ball deliberately", and that has been completely ignored for years with unintentional handballs constantly being penalised (like the cl final, that was never a pen imo...even under these rules). what var will do is stop refs making decisions. that's why it was resisted for so long. and when refs want to make sh*t decisions and stick by them, they will anyway. wasn't there an fa cup game we had with var under conte that was chock full of horrific decisions against us? norwich at home? i remember being furious about it, but i can't remember specifics tbh.

It's good to have a manager that is proper Chels. Since we sacked Jose the second time, I've known full well that our managers have seen us as a stepping stone, no intention of sticking around. No offence to them, but they were never long term things. It's hard to put my finger on, but it honestly feels a bit mercenary. Managers who are here for the quick buck. Players with so little pride in the badge they'll down tools for a season if they don't like the training or whatever. Frank may or may not last a while, but I know he cares about the club. I know he's a fan, just like us. It actually feels like we could get some of the identity back that we have been missing. We're not a clone of what the "next big thing" gaffer did at his last club. We're Chelsea. We're not a stepping stone, or an easy ride. We're Chelsea. I don't know how well you'll do, I don't know if you're a good manager or not. But good luck Frank. Great to have you back.

here's that 6 month bump i promised you. lulz.

#SarriOut trending in Italy:

I don't really know or care whether he should stay or go. He's not irreplaceable, but replacing him doesn't have to be a priority. He's a good manager, he has a style of football he wants to play, but he's inflexible, and I think the quality of players he has will tell more than anything he does. One thing that bothers me, and probably bothers the board, is that he was presented as a "super coach" who "works with players" and doesn't need any say in the transfer market. What a load of bollocks that was. He is more inflexible than any manager we've had here since AVB. If we want to play "his way" we're going to have to sell half the team, and if we don't do that, he's going to go with it anyway and let us get exposed. If the answer is selling Azpilicueta, Kante and so on, then the question is wrong. And for all the talk of it, "Sarriball" is the exact same carrot on a stick possession football with fast breaks that AVB tried to implement nearly a decade ago with players far less suited to it. I don't want to criticise him too much, he is what he is, and a good manager, but he came here under false pretences, and a whole load of people bought the bullsh*t. New shiny things are exciting, but they lose their lustre under close examination. It helps if we understand that we are just looking more closely at what we have, not that what we have is worse than the exciting looking thing that someone else has in the highlights programmes. And I include Sarri in that. There is no point replacing him because someone else is selling us a different brand of bullsh*t (a criticism i could make of manager hires since Carlo telling Roman that the team "lacked personality" and Roman lapping it up like a mark).