SwedishEntity

No way. He's been a lot better as DMC and no one, including RDZ and all Brighton fans, wants him in the RB role where he's been forced to play recently due to injuries to Lamptey and Veltman (who is now back). He's a brilliant player, one of the best DMCs in the world. He'll go to a very good club - someone like Declan Rice (overrated and would cost bizarre money) is probably more likely for Chelsea.

Your POTS Lewis Hall is the best Chelsea today.. again

Depends on your style. If you want to play possession oriented football, Abraham won't do much (though he'd obviously outscore every single current Chelsea player). More interested in quick counter-attack football? Then Tammy is a pretty good choice for £65m and could score 20+ goals in the league.

Bruno Saltor has the UEFA Pro License, which is the highest level. Frank Lampard only has the UEFA A license, meaning Chelsea needs to pay up some £20k+ every game he's coaching.

This guy, along with the alleged great leader Thiago Silva, really gets away with doing absolutely nothing useful in four out of five games. As if pretending and using your will power to perceive him as great actually would change the reality of him performing as a very, very meh footballer. He has some skill and some vision, and we all know that sometimes it can take 18 months or so for young players to adapt to a new league, so I wouldn't rule out that he'll be good for you eventually. However, spending that money on him rather than say Moises Caicedo looks like another piece of mad business. Really feels like the Kleberson scenario where someone has a good World Cup and you buy the player just because of that.

Of course Pochettino is interested, whatever the results and the state of the team. Think the whole idea that people are a lot more interested in a nice job place than earning £15-20m a year is a bit unrealistic. Pochettino has done ok or slightly above ok in most of his jobs but also had the pleasure of coming to the right club at the right time several times. In his final year(ish) with Spurs, they took 25 points from 24 games. With PSG he eventually won the league of course, but so would most people in here if they had access to Messi, Neymar and Mbappe. Real Madrid, Barcelona, City, Arsenal and so forth aren't going to hire him. The best opportunity he has to get a well-paid job in a club with resources is either Chelsea or Spurs. In both of those clubs, people would expect him to be the saviour. Whether he can live up to that... we'll see.

First major mistake by Boehly was to keep Tuchel and provide him with the junk he wanted. Tuchel is a winner, not a builder. If you want to build something there is no point in keeping Tuchel around. He left Borussia Dortmund with a lot of old junk, most of whom he had brought to the club, on their hands, while giving nearly zero game time to top class talents like Mikel Merino and Alexander Isak. Did the same in PSG: all fine at first, then decided to bring in players who were either washed up (Buffon, Ander Herrera, Idrissa Gueye etc.) or had sh*t attitude (Moise Kean, Mauro Icardi etc.).. and eventually that was his downfall. Chelsea: great things at first, then bringing in players at/past their "peak" while letting younger players go. The only manager not to give any teenager a single minute in the PL last season, despite Chelsea having one of the best academies in the world. Bloke is not a team builder but Todd Boehly allegedly wanted to build a team. Solution - bring in someone who is indeed a team builder (Potter was a good choice but there's obvious more ones). But you don't do that six games into a season or midway through it or whatever, you need to do that in pre-season where the manager can do team building, training and so forth without the pressure of playing a game every third day. Boehly didn't want to sack Tuchel because he knew that Tuchel was popular among your fans. It wasn't a strategical decision. It wasn't a sport decision. It was a PR decision to keep him despite the club entering a phase where something else was needed.

Unfortunately a few years ago some big stat company bought the running/distance stats, selling the data to clubs for big money. For this reason, the running statistics aren't publicly available other than once in a blue moon when the PL or a broadcaster pay up to publish some of the numbers.

This is quite simply incorrect. None of Nick Pope, Kieran Trippier, Sven Botman, Dan Burn, Bruno Guimaraes and Alexander Isak (6 out of 11) played for Newcastle when Steve Bruce was in charge. With Steve Bruce's squad, Eddie Howe's Newcastle won 1 out of 9 games. Of course, managers play a part in success, but their role is very overstated because people have this (most likely natural) belief that authorities are somehow more important than those with less authority. In reality, football is a sport played between 11 players from both sides. What these do on the pitch usually decides the outcome of the game. Its not some sort of armwrestling game between coaches.

You have to wonder if Tuchel was just trolling Boehly when he was in for Sterling and Aubameyang. If the bloke had the hunger and ability to take Chelsea somewhere, Pep would not have sold him to a "rival top club".

Must be very easy to be a Chelsea player. Can do nothing all day every day since people are just going to blame whatever poor bloke "in charge" of this sad lot. Most of these players haven't done anything useful for about 18 months. At some point they should have some sort of responsibility for their own performances.

Do you think there is one single director of football, manager or scout watching this game and thinking "yeah I'm gonna buy some Chelsea players"?

Or you stop signing players that fits into whoever has the very temporary job of being your manager, and instead sign players who fit whatever kind of football your club wants to play in the long term.

Best chance for you to get some points was against a rather fatigued Brentford. I could see you losing the rest of the games now and I'm saying that out of honesty, not to feck around. Maybe something against Nottingham but they have a lot to play for and has produced good results against good teams (might not matter though) this season. You are definitely not getting relegated but falling behind Palace, Wolves and maybe West Ham seems quite likely. I'll go with 13th.

Agree with a lot of things. Winning the odd title here and there has made you look more well-run than you've actually been for at least ten years. But that you are not a "top club" anymore is bollocks. I don't think any of us neutrals see it that way. Okay, other than in Africa, you are not like Barca, Real or Manchester United in the sense that hundreds of millions of kids dream about playing for you one day, because you never had any Ronaldo/Messi/Ronaldinho/Beckham level of superstars, but you are still massively attractive to any player or manager who wants to play in a top club. You will also compete in the top of the league sooner rather than later, it is nearly inevitable with your resources. Problem for you is that it seems it will be through sheer buying power and fluke rather than actual planning, which means any success won't be consistent.

Think you have a better chance of getting something here than against Brighton or Brentford. Yes, Chelsea are tanking it to get a good placement in the Premier League Draft, but Arsenal is being Arsenal and self-destructing after giving their fans false hope.

I'd say there's about 7 billion people who would gladly take £100k to coach a Premier League team for six weeks.

He's been a crowd pleaser from day one. Just like every other team owner, he didn't like Tuchel but knew that you did, so he brought in whatever Tuchel pointed at and then took the first best opportunity to sack him, like he really wanted from day one. He knows Chelsea fans have been wanting less of a yoyo team (more City, less Spurs) bouncing around between seasons, so he brought in the proven long-term team builder Graham Potter who likes to work for a long time with a small young, squad improving year by year. It was never going to be pretty to start with but you could see the pieces with players like Chalobah, Hall, Gallagher, Borja and so forth getting more game time. I know his methods and he was probably hoping for three players in and three players out in January, but nopes, and the Potter project was pretty dead. Finally with a slight upturn in results (just one loss in five? when GP got sacked I think), Todd pulls the trigger. In comes Lampard and.. well. But every single one of the decisions above apart from MAYBE the sacking of Tuchel (though you gave him a lot of sh*t in the beginning of this season) was pure crowd pleaser stuff. Impossible way to run a football club given how fickle and impatient fans are.

Like I said, like Thiago Silva said, like every sensible person said... Its not a manager problem. Yes, Frank Lampard is a little bit sh*t but his job is impossible. Graham Potter is great, his job was impossible. Thomas Tuchel is a winner but not a team builder and was part of the problem (lets face it: he wanted to bring in players who has caused a lot of dressing room issues in the past), but ultimately the problems wasn't his fault either. There's 35 players. Some of them doesn't speak English. Some are young with desire, some of them old, well-paid and not hungry anymore. Some are there for the cars, some for the football. Some fits best into possession football, some better into counter-attack football. Some need to develop a lot but are expected to be great today, some are stagnating yet people in the club hope they'll be better tomorrow. Individually, the players are ok but not much more than that. As a team, its a massive failure. Players have been brought in without any idea and without anyone thinking about synergy. You could put Pep or Alex Ferguson in charge of this lot and nothing will happen. Sacking Lampard is entirely pointless, just like it was pointless to sack Potter and (in hindsight, since there was actually no plan to build a good young dynastical team) Tuchel.

Copying whatever Spurs is doing seems like a good idea.

New rumours about this bloke heading to Chelsea. Overpaid, always injured, on a downwards trajectory for years, plays poker in the middle of the night, eats at McDonalds, sometimes take a game or two off to nurture his weirdo relationship with his sister. 8-year-deal it is.

If you like football, you want Manchester United to lose.

Oh Solly. Feel so bad for him... but always a true hero. Oh well, pretty much just a game about who will get the chance to get shat on by City in the final.

f**k me, United will probably win this now. Rob Sanchez is a poor penalty goalkeeper and there's a bunch of Brighton players who no Brighton fan would like to see at the penalty spot.

Spending a lot of money actually doesn't make a team challenge for a title. You actually have to buy the right players, preferably in the right order, while also selling players, or cause will happen. But it seems that you and mr Boehly are in agreement that as long as you spend money you'll magically win things. Just one more change in the circus director role and Marc Cucurella will suddenly be the new Ashley Cole and Kai Havertz win the PL top scorer title.