Slojo

That's true, but I can't remember him missing sitters like that.

Personally, I don't think the Chelsea job is a job where you learn your trade. I think we get a good reason to be harsh with Lampard due to his lack of experience. A manager who has good experience can provide evidence that they know how to win things, by that you can give them more time and put more faith into them. Lampard doesn't have that, for that reason I'm not very patient with him. For me he had to hit the ground running, and again that might seem harsh but given the reasons I've just explained I think it's a reasonable take. Even if we do manage to get 4th place, what then? How do we know the exact same thing isn't going to happen again, after 10 weeks of football we sh*t another brick and win one game every 5? That's what the evidence says. I understand the argument that managers have to start somewhere, but it's very rarely at top clubs, and it's rare managers pull it off. This is a reality people must accept.

It appears that we're going through the cycle again as others have mentioned. This season feels a lot like the 2012/2013 season when we went out and signed a sh*t load of players to finally replace a lot of the old guard from 2005-2011. Right now, we're replacing the old guard from 2013-2018, with the likes of Willian, Hazard, Luiz, Cahill, Courtois, Matic, Costa gone, and Azpilicueta on his way out. This is the fresh batch we've got in that's going to start a new Chelsea experience (hopefully a good one). The defence and midfield are still areas that need improvement, but we do have some really good talents, good wingbacks, excellent wingers and attacking options, plenty to build on. The big question is, who's going to be the manager to build this team? No matter what happens, Frank has done a great job with starting and helping our development. He's brought in some good players through the ranks and he has established a team there that can play well and look like title contenders when they're in-form. But I think it's pretty obvious that we need more than that. And as you've pointed out, this season has been a setback, when it shouldn't be, we look worse than we did last season and that's simply not good enough.

Is there any history of strikers having terrible seasons then afterwards they're scoring for fun? I'm trying to be hopeful. I think it's so silly to write him off considering his age, first season, etc. But when you look at the chances he's missing, and then on top of that the history we have with forwards who lose their confidence? I can't help but be concerned. I think all of us here can agree with this, when you saw Werner through on goal against Fulham you knew he wasn't scoring that. That's exactly what happened with Morata and Torres, I don't even have faith in him to score chances like that. f**k me...

I hated Rafa before the job, but I do think he did a decent job here and salvaged a season, I can respect him for that (a bit). But I still can't forgive him for how much of an absolute twat he was towards us as Liverpool manager.

Depends what you mean by tears, they ended in tears in a negative aspect. That's what the original point was, it's going to end in tears, but in a bad way. However, bluntly yes, everything ends in tears really, good or bad, FSW probably didn't end in tears, we didn't really care about him and still don't.

Happens all the time now doesn't it, especally this season.

ALL midfielders need to start contributing more. Mount imo has been the best out of a bad bunch. Don't get me wrong I'm very glad he came up with the goal at the end, but I wasn't impressed with his performance that day besides the goal. And that's his 2nd league goal of the season, so lets not pretend that's something you can always rely on with Mount. The likes of Kovacic and Jorginho I completely agree, them two are not playing good enough and shouldn't be playing. But that doesn't give Mount a pass, the midfield in particular are letting the side down, lack of ideas and lethargic.

Is it worth keeping the 3 man midfield? Might be a good idea to shot Kai in there now over Kovacic. It's obvious Gilmour isn't going to get the nod.

I think it's Liverpools in the bag, United are riding their luck ridiculously. Liverpool actually have talent. United won't keep this up.

But if United get a point here, that's job done for them.

I wouldn't mind seeing him back into the team to see what he can offer. He was pissing me off big time last month though. If he plays anything like he did against Wolves and Everton with his Bakayoko-eske performances I'll be fuming. No reason why a young player should be playing that badly. But he has looked better when he's come on recently.

Goal aside I don't think he's been impressive at all for weeks now, I also think his defensive aspect are very overrated.

Getting a bit emotional are we? I'm sure she wears the pants.

He was actually an Ancelotti signing, they asked Ancelotti who he wanted and he said Torres.

He did well in his first season, but this season? Not at all, let's not kid ourselves. Yes we had some great performances and went unbeaten for a while, but all that work has now been undone.

There's a difference though. Conte ended in tears but he still won things, as did Mourinho, Carlo etc. Although I wouldn't put Lampard down as an AVB situation, Lampard did do a great job last season, a cup final and top 4. But this is his first real test, and it's looking Di-Matteoish. I fell in love with Robbie after his first season here, won us two trophies, and the BIG ONE. After that I thought he was the man, Roman has to give him the contract, but now I see why the board were so reluctant. In the longrun, it was the right decision to axe him after that shocking Juventus game (I think it was, or shortly after that). I think it's going to be the same situation with Frank, I think in the long run, we'll agree with it, just right now it's difficult to accept it.

Whatever we do, we can't go with the same lineup and personnel that we did against Fulham, we'll get torn apart. Got to try something different, play CHO.

Not even including his miss today. Find me a compilation of Torres's misses that match this, besides that United own goal he didn't actually have that many horrendous moments in front of goal, his problem was that he lacked moments in front of goal because he was piss poor.

I think you're dead wrong. By all means Werner looks better, and has been better, due to his pace, skill and contribution. But if you put a compilation of all his chances missed this season alone, it rivals Torres's full career here of missing chances.

This is exactly why I want Lampard to give Gilmour a chance, just for something different. Our current midfield are not providing any sort of creativity in the middle, but I think that's also due to tactical instructions, not just the players themselves.

Fully remember that game, but he also scored in that, he had 2 chances, scored one, missed another. The funny part about it, the one he scored was on a very awkward angle and the chip was beautiful, the 2nd one he had it on a plate and missed.

Yeah but the point is, is that those one on one chances were not very common. When we first signed him and it took him like 12 weeks to get a goal, he didn't actually have one chance until that West Ham game and he took it. He wasn't actually getting any good service, but he wasn't helping himself with that either. It was just a bad signing on all fronts, he was A: Past it, and B: Didn't suit our style of play. He started to comeback deep for the ball and we did get some use out of him, he was actually good when he was playing deep surprisingly, but he still never scored the goals until Rafa came and got some consistency out of him in the Europa League. Besides that I don't think Torres is the right comparison here, I think it's Morata.

Probably, I have no doubt about that, we currently lack those leaders. But what we lacked then and what we have now is quality. Back then our only source of creativity was Mata, at the moment we have plenty of talented players, fast paced, skillfull, creative, and flair but they're not performing well.

When was this? Torres missed some sitters for sure, but a lot of the time Torres was never on the end of anything. He completely lost his confidence and at one point he was playing as a playmaker and just walking around the edge of the box. Morata however, had a boatload of chances and kept missing, Werner is doing the same but to an even worse extent which is really scary.