Niall1905

Hopefully big sam comes in and tears the league up. Stats/Eye test aside, would be nice to have a big strong striker come in and cause problems again if he's any good.

I'd go for Jorg Fofana Tosin Colwill Gusto Lavia Caicedo Nkunku Palmer Guiu Sterling Think Enzo has had a lot of minutes in a short amount of time, give him half an hour. Maybe the same for Lavia though. Cole hopefully will be good for 45 mins at least, he played under Enzo before I think he'll pick up the system quickly. Would love to see Jackson get some game time and we need to start trialling non RJ teams ready for the first few games of the season.

Having slept on our performance last night, the positivity train has returned. I'll start by saying that I completly agree with every reason people are giving for being concerned about this season, there are certainly lots of indications that this could be another tough year. Our defenders, in particular, don't look like they are capable of filing the Thiago Silva shaped hole in my heart and we constantly look vulnerable to conceding. Maybe my bar is lower than everyone elses, but I think I have seen enough encouragement in these games to suggest that things will, eventually, click into place. I think another week back at cobham, with our full squad and no travel etc will do us a world of good. Maresca has already said that training tactics has been limited on the tour due to the schedule and I wonder if we have overloaded the squad a bit with the frequency and number of games we have played out there. Seems to be a common complaint since the new owners have come in, with a travel heavy pre season hampering preparations. If we take his words at face value, and we have made the progress on the ball that we have with limited sessions, then I am optimistic there is more to come. Obviously that is on the ball though and we have looked awful off of it. But I think a lot of our defensive issues get resolved by our on the ball play improving. Not necasarily the player on the ball, but those in space. I still think there are runs being made/movements taking place that won't once we have the system down. But these moves are leaving spaces and vulnerabilities that are being exploited when the ball is given away. I think transitions are going to be hugely important in how we play, and right now I don't think we've got a grasp on how to manage them. The way I see it, if Maresca would have come in during the Roman era, or even if we hadn't have had the few years that we have had leading up to his appointment, I don't think the meltdown would be as widespread as it is right now. Its natural, we've come to expect this type of failure from the new owners, and there are indications that Maresca is just going to become another name in the story of how Clearlake have torn us from greatness. But thats not his fault. He deserves at least a bit of patience going into the new season, especially as even the average football fan can see that his new system is going to take time to implement. There are excuses that can be made for everything that has happened in pre season, the squad size, the amount of travel, the pitches, the new system, the fact that pre season games dont really matter. So bring on Sunday, bring on getting some real preparations done back home and hopefully we will see some real progress when we walk out against City. At the very least, we'll have some actual clarity on where we stand.

General take away from this (and the America tour on the whole) - No injuries on those crap pitches - I think we look good building with the ball up until the final third, players look like they’re really starting to get it - We look really bad in defensive transitions and defending on the whole. Lack of recovery runs isn’t helping them though. - Results haven’t done us any favours but we shouldn’t get too hung up on them. Take a breath, enjoy what’s left of the British (or wherever you are) summer and get ready for the real stuff to start. I’m not saying it’s going to be any better, but it’s silly to lose sleep and get wound up over glorified training sessions

Agree with all of this other than Madueke being on form, other than his goal I thought he made poor decision after poor decision tonight

Defenders all look confused again, Colwill half asleep for most of that half. Noni seems to be playing off the back foot, so many first touches that their fullback has been able to capitalise on, but another goal so can’t complain. I think we look good outside of both boxes, we seem to be playing through them easily and picking up some great positions. Shame we can’t score or defend.

This feels like a desperate attempt to find some joy this summer 😂

I think there will be a big push once we are back from the states, with any stragglers given the Gallagher treatment. Season starts in two weeks but window is still open a bit after.

I don't see how we can regret it. The amount of players we have to play in the middle, especially with the chance that some of our attacking players are going to fill in there as well, its very likely that if KDH turns out to be a flop he wont get much game time. We have plenty of cover. He'll be serving a lot of his purpose already, in a similar way to how Jorginho did under Sarri. He's looked bright when hes played so far, albeit he hasnt set the world on fire. We need to give him a fair crack and leave the conor comparisons in pre season. He'll work hard for the team and give his all, im sure of it. All we can ask for, for now.

I think anonymous is harsh. He looks like he is playing with a bit of caution, which I think is reflected in the comment from him that his targets for this year are just to stay on the pitch. You can't underestimate how detrimental the number of injuries hes had must have been on his mindset. Lads probably just trying to feel his way through pre season, serve his ban and then get back out there. Hopefully he can shake it off a bit once hes properly back.

If you take the emotion out of this, its decent business. Gallaghers attitude and application cannot be questioned, but his overal quality can be debated. I don't disagree that hes a decent player but, through no fault of his own, the owners have spent money in his position and he's not 'clearly' better than the other options. A year left of the contract, not going to a rival and getting a decent fee. Put it this way, rivals reactoins over social media is annoyance at our ability to sell rather than mocking another Clearlake mistake.

If you genuinely think anything that happened last night is a step back because of comparisons to our league games with city last season then I’m not sure what to say. Especially considering we actually looked fine other than the 2 5 minute spells where we gave them free goals. Assessing in a vacuum is exactly what you are doing. There is a multitude of extraneous variables that impact decisions in pre season games. One that doesn’t though, is the result. They are glorified training sessions that, if not for marketing purposes would probably be played behind closed doors. If we’d have battered City 6-0, do you think the bookies would suddenly have us favourites for the league? We can all sit and pick these games to bits, but the cold reality is we have no clue what is going to happen this year until we kick off on the first game of the season at the earliest and realistically we probably won’t actually know until closer to winter

Do you honestly think the bloke has got to this point in his life without realising PL forwards are better than championship forwards? Whether you like it or not, implementing a style of play where we look to confidently play through a press isn’t going to be achieved in 4 pre season games and some training sessions. Maresca will know full well that we are going to get punished, I think he even said so after the Wrexham game. But no one has ever achieved anything when giving up at the first point of resistance. So when we concede goals at the start of the league campaign because we’ve miss placed a pass, it isn’t going to be because he doesn’t realise that the prem players are good. It’s going to be because he expects our players to learn from the early mistakes they make.

I think we’ll get there, I really do. When it clicks, it looks good. There are sparks of the end goal showing, particularly going forward but they’re being covered up by costly defensive mistakes right now. Take out those two, five minute spells where we utterly collapsed, it was fairly even.

Or you know, maybe he’s using it to get minutes into legs of players who need it. lets try and remeber this is pre season, not every decision is done with winning this game in mind. I doubt he’s tactically shifted his system to win this game, so he’s either trying something that hasn’t worked or he wants minutes in their legs (or not in the legs of the wingers)

It is reactionary, we’re 3 and a half games into pre season. We’ve looked sh*t in places, we’ve looked good in places. We haven’t seen a good Chelsea team in years let alone a defence, but I’m not going to start saying this team is sh*t before they’ve played a meaningful game.

We’ve caused our own problems here and haven’t looked great but it is fantastic how reactionary people can be in this place 😂😂 Sure, it’s worth raising questions about the performance levels and the suitability of the play style based on existing evidence. But let’s not go writing off signings and seasons based off of a fairly even first half, which happened to start off with 5 minutes of sh*te

Id imagine it is, he played an awful lot of the games already (think he even completed 90 in the first?) but 0 minutes seemed odd. Colwill had a knock and wasnt named, Carney was;

Does anyone know what the deal with chukwuemeka getting no game time was? Havent seen a mention anywhere and I watched the game without audio for large parts last night.

He certainly gives us the option to mix it up, he seems equally happy dealing with a long ball, a ball into feet or a ball in behind. He's obviously still a bit raw and clumsy but that is to be expected. Really hope he sticks around and we get to see some more this season, particularly with the amount of games we'll likely have.

Momentarily drifted off at half time watching the game last night, woke up just in time to see Sanchez appearing to dive head first at a strikers feet about 30 yards out. I thought to myself "I can't wait for that new lad to get a game instead, fed up of Sanchez doing something nuts each game" Sadly the camera then zoomed in on Jorgensen, who had in fact been subbed on and was the crazy keeper flying at the defenders feet 😂 To be fair to him though, he looked good in what we got to see of him and the incident in question probably wasn't even head first, just my tired mind making it seem worse than it was. Plus he got the ball so who cares!

Ah perfect even better, hadn't seen that.

Thats completely different though, he signed one of the long term contracts about 2 years ago? But even if you force the comparison, he proves my point. He's been left home from the tour, but we can't force him to leave. Trev has a massive advantage in terms of negotiation, he has a huge contract and can stay as long as he wants. He is in a similar position to when he signed it, he's never been a nailed on starter. He chose to stay and fight for his place, which hes done so since signing the contract

Which is fine, but thats looking out for his own interests which is all the club are doing too. Again, I dont agree with it and I know they've done this to plant these exact ideas but it does take a chunk away from the 'proper chels' view on Conor. As I said, if he was as desperate as we would be led to belive he is to stay, then a contract keeps him here longer. He can't be forced out before that contract ends and he'd be able to negotiate with a new club in a couple of years for his increased salary as you said if he still isnt in favour.

Wouldn't say fighting, but he caused another conversation. From what the live feed it looked like he was debating with Nkunku and won the debate, with Reece even coming and taking Nkunku away. But then as Madueke put the ball down, Tosin came and had a very short word which ended up with Tosin taking the ball and giving it back to Nkunku and Madueke walking off. There had to be something in it, as I think Nkunku made a bit of a point of giving Noni the second pen. It's another case of him needing to manage how it looks, rather than the action itself being poor. It was definitely more civilised than the mess we saw last season and I think its good that he wants to put himself out there and be that guy. He just needs to be careful that his manerisms and attitude convey that too, instead of coming across a little moany and stubborn which he can at times.