Chelsc96

I like that he can run.

Reasons for optimism: it literally can't get worse anymore. 100% loss rate for Lampard. I think he has done a fantastic job of lowering expectations further in view of next season. He has destroyed every 'if' and 'but' with our performances, taking us to the lowest of lows. There is literally only up from this point onwards.

Pochettino - I never liked winning trophies, anyway.

I thought he would be a great signing, to be honest; he had all the assets I would want in a football player: lazy, uncommitted, slow, injury-prone. Where did things go wrong?

I always wanted to know why he does an impression of a T-Rex when walking around.

Welcome Home. Now time to serve him his eviction notice, permanently.

Terrible this season - we need Felix back.

Just fricking shoot!

Chukuwuemeka getting pulled down by gravity twice.

We look a hell of a lot better when we have a player that the opposition find threatening. Liverpool look terrified of Mudryk.

Don't see the point in sacking him, anyway. What is a new manager going to do with this team? It is just a very weak side that has no place challenging for top four. That just needs to be accepted this season.

I don't know why people keep going on about the Tuchel sacking. I think the sacking was inevitable, but I do agree that they got the timing wrong. I have no doubts that results would have continued to be poor, so it would have been better to have increasing reasons to sack Tuchel. Due to it being later in the season, the new manager would have had less pressure as people would be forced to accept that top four is already gone. Besides, the guy refused to communicate with the owners. How many people would keep their jobs if they refused to talk with their boss? Not a single one. I don't think it is all Boehly's fault, anyway. We have actually been run quite poorly for several seasons under Abramovich, also. Our signings being terrible isn't a new thing under these owners; it has happened for years.

They were there last season. People just didn't want to admit it, but our results were not very good from January onwards. It was fortunate that other teams were having terrible seasons because it saved us in getting top four. We need severe work in the summer and, somehow, we managed to make the team worse.

Is the current team we have available genuinely better, though? I don't actually think so. Firstly, I would say most of the teams above us have better attacks, so is it really surprising that they are above us? Our defence is also incredibly old: Azpilicueta (finished), Silva and Koulibaly (looks very poor from what I have seen). It is easy to attack because it is slow and frail.

The issue is that we just have too many crap players. The forward line is just so bad, there is no point of even trying to attack. The defence is becoming a retirement home.

Firmly cemented his place as a dreadful signing.

Yes, he swatted the mighty Iran aside like they were league-one quality.

Potter is in because he has been shown to be able to build and improve teams. Whilst people say he never achieved anything, that is absolute nonsense. Ostersund were a 4th division Norwegian side when he took over. He eventually got that club promoted to their top division for the first time in history and won the cup for the first time in history. He also took them into the Europa League, getting them through qualification and then they even got through the group. They were eventually knocked out by Arsenal, but even then Ostersund beat them in one leg. The jump was enormous since he took over. Are people expecting him to win the Europa League with Ostersund for it to be considered an achievement? That would arguably be the best managerial achievement of all time if he managed that - that isn't high expectations; that is just stupid. Brighton - they were a defensive side when he took over, fighting relegation. They only looked to try and concede as few goals as possible and to counter-attack, hoping to knab a goal. That is a far cry away from what they are now. They have been turned into one of the better possession teams in the league; they are considered one of the toughest matches for the top six, regularly taking points from them. This season was looking incredibly positive under him. They had come on leaps and bounds and have only been a consistent goal scorer away from challenging the Europa League positions last season. In the end, it takes time. You cannot build a side if you haven't had an opportunity to build. Arteta was given time, and it is proving to be the right decision. I know people will use hindsight now to say that is different to Potter's circumstances, but it is not. Remember when they got trashed by newly-promoted Brentford? Remember how they were only 10th in the form table at the end of last season? Don't kid yourself, there was massive pressure and calls to sack him. The owners were right to ignore them.

Didn't Arsenal play, what is effectively, their second-string side?

There is a huge difference between a manager who has built his own squad, or had the opportunity to, and one who has not. Tuchel had two summer transfer windows and failed to improve us - in fact, it probably made us worse. The manager holds responsibility for the signings that the club makes during their watch, and it was not acceptable. I never said the players did not carry any blame under Tuchel, but Tuchel had two major windows and one minor to correct a lot/some of these issues. But, other than Chilwell, we failed to correct any other major issue in the squad. Two summer windows were, essentially, wasted under him. He failed to improve the squad since the season he took over and, since then, it has actually regressed with the loss of Rudiger and Kante becoming a full-time patient. This is something fans seem to miss about his time here.

Alright, so what is he great at? At the moment, all I see is him being praised for being from the academy. I have not really seen anyone specifically say where his qualities are,

Well, there are huge limitations. We have an incredibly slow backline. Azpilicueta, Silva, Koulibaly and Cucrella are not exactly the best suited to playing a high line, so we need to compensate for it by dropping back. Rudiger has been a huge loss. We saw earlier in the season what happens when we play a high line; the opposition just run in behind and can merrily skip their way to the goal. This obviously restricts the level of positivity we can have in the match. Our attacking in line is not the most creative, also. Our attacking midfield options of Havertz and Mount are not good enough at passing to create any consistency in our forward play. They cannot be relied upon to sustain any form of pressure before giving it away. And likely, it won't end in any chances being created - we have seen this enough over the last 18 months to know this is not going to change, especially for Havertz. We struggle to control possession without Kante and Kovacic, who are both injured. This, again, will affect our ability to be positive in matches - we cannot take control when our midfield is no better than the oppositions. We have no replacements for these two, so this is not going to change until they come back from injury permanently.

City were just looking for some fools to take him off their hands. Chelsea was successful in their application.

You are looking at history. Cup competitions involve luck; leagues involve form. Our form at the beginning of last season carried us to top four through our poor form that was existent for most of the season. We had a 10 point and 11 point lead over Tottenham and Arsenal, respectively, which reduced to 3 and 5 by the end. And it wasn't even like those two sides were amazing; they were average and still closed the gap. We were just pretty poor and have been for a while. There is also one major change to the squad since that time. Kante is finished. Kante was top quality at that time, but we have never replaced him, so it is not the same. We no longer have Werner, who I think was our best attacker, Low bar, but he contributed far more than a lot of other players in the front line. Then we have to look at the aging of players who were already quite old at the time. You say that its management more than the players, so why has our form been so poor under Tuchel for so long? There is an illusion that our form was better based on our competitors being poor.

You can thank Arsenal, Manutd and Tottenham for us being around the top four last season. All three of them were awful - their points haul has increased massively this season, whilst we are continuing our 6th-placed form of the entirety of 2022. The warning signs were there. Unfortunately, we didn't act on it at all and are paying the price.