SwedishEntity

Brighton scored as many goals in GPs last 14 games as in RDZs first 14 while conceding half.

One of the best midfielders in the world and would without a doubt make a massive difference for Chelsea. I'd prefer him to stay with Brighton to see how high he can help them reach... but no doubt would be excellent.

Quality player who will likely be very useful (now or later remains to be seen), but until a new central midfielder is signed, serious struggle is bound to continue.

Oh yeah... because the rest of you lot are certainly a calm and collected bunch, discussing issues in a sensible and well-mannered fashion...

Its my impression from his body language. Could be wrong of course. If he stays, he probably needs to be absorbed by the team rather than being supposed to lead it. In Manchester City there was a lot of other players who carried weight and allowed Sterling one on ones rather than the one on two-or-threes he now often finds himself in.

If Chelsea gets a chance to ship him somewhere, it would be a very good idea. If he thinks he's too good or too much of a superstar or something to play like GP or any other coach wants him to - f**k him. He is a somewhat limited player that Pep was happy to sell to what is supposed to a rival... says a fair bit. Not sure which team could afford him though.

Just pleased to know my ol' Graham is going to sleep a few hours tonight. He sure looks like he hasn't done that in a while.

He was not particularly good no. Not that he f**ked up too many times with the ball, he just didn't get involved enough.

Crystal Palace brought on two big strikers, which is probably why GP went for Koulibaly instead of Cucurella. Overall... pretty poor game but three points for Chelsea was the ambition. Badiashile indeed looked good, more mobile than Kouli and with a good left foot. Lewis Hall is my man of the match though, really brings something different to this otherwise pretty slow and clunky side.

Excuse me for jumping in like this. On North Stand Chat (the Brighton forum) I am known as "Swansman" and as a fierce, die-hard Potterian defender. The similarities between "Swansman" and a fierce, die-hard Potterian defender called "Droyman" is a bit difficult to overlook. I don't like getting involved on this "Shed End" right now because of the nonsense spouted here, but with people believing you to be me - which would be a reasonable guess perhaps if it wasn't for your excessive and nauseating use of exclamation marks - I'm just going to have to straight out ask you: who the f**k are you and are you trolling me or Chelsea fans?

Sack or keep, nothing will get much better until recruitment improves.

He said this after the game: "It's the same area so we're concerned. We'll have to see in the next 24/48 hours. It is a bit too soon but it was in that action, a chop, and he felt something. We have to keep our fingers crossed at the moment. He is disappointed, of course. At the moment, we're just hoping it isn't as bad and we'll keep our fingers crossed. The plan was for him to not play 90 tonight, the plan was for him to play 60/65 minutes. We just have to hope it's not as bad as it was and that he can get on a speedy recovery."

As I've said, if it is a decision from the manager, the club is royally f**ked because you need a professional team doctor to make decisions on whether a knee is good enough of or not. You're right, I don't support the club, and perhaps that makes me less capable than you and other supporters to make medical assesements of knee injuries... or maybe none of us have any real insight but with only one of us claiming the opposite.

Other than GP saying so, nope, no evidence. You don't know if it was "avoidable" - there is no evidence that getting injured again would have been impossible if he had played say 30 minutes instead of the 50 or so it took before he got injured. Like I said, if Chelsea are going to make Graham Potter decide if a knee-injury is healed, partially healed or not healed at all, there will be a lot more trouble around because he has no medical education as far as I know. Better to do like every other club in England and make those trained to do that job make those calls... unless this is already the case despite your assumptions of the opposite.

And in a similar fashion to James "personal coach" you just sort of forgot to mention it until things went sh*t and you could play the role of Cpt. Wise-Arse Hindsight.

Agree, it does. It reeks of blame deflection and hindsight. Why didn't he post it when he saw James in the starting lineup? Would he have said the same thing if things went as planned and James was subbed off after 60 minutes?

"Unheard of" is not really the case - depends on how long the player has been training since coming back. If Reece James and/or the medical/physio department told GP that "James can't play x number of minutes" and GP said "I dont care, he'll play until he drops", then I agree with you: then it is definitely GPs fault. If on the other hand they said "he can play" and he couldn't, its on James/physios/his questionable personal coach. If James/physios/his personal coach said "maybe he can, maybe can't, you'll take a look at his knee - perhaps tap it a little bit and see if it makes a funny noise - and make the decision", the club is the least professionally run club in England because it says itself that it shouldn't be a managers job to make medical assessments of a player And then there's obviously the chance that it was a case of bad luck... in which case no one is really to blame.

This with bells on. When GP moved to your club and I started watching your games... I was shocked to the physical status of the players. Something very wrong has clearly been done on that side of things for years and it'll take time to sort it out. One of the strengths of Potterian teams is that they can play intense football for 90 minutes - not the case (yet) in Chelsea and probably months away from being the case in Chelsea.

Ok. Easy to imagine that maybe he should have had one. But what do I know, I'm no doctor (though there should be one around to make wise decisions around these things).

Yup. Or a sh*te surgery. It would be somewhat out of character for GP to play a half-injured player. When Tariq Lamptey in Brighton had his surgery with prolonged absence, it took six weeks from Lamptey being declared fit to him getting a start. It'd be nice if his performance coach would stop biting his tongue and tell what he thinks because I think GP & the coaching staff is no more happy than he is, and would like to get some answers.

Hi Chief Grahampotterologist here. When Graham says "managing minutes" he more often than not refers to the number of minutes done over a prolonged time - meaning James wouldn't be starting two games in a week for a while and so forth. Today I'm guessing he would have been subbed off around the hour mark. Sad for the lad, he is a fantastic player. Hopefully nothing horribly bad but it did not look good. At first I thought it was just a small feeling in his knee since he kept playing for a minute or two despite not moving properly when he didnt get that corner early in the second half. But then when he saw that the sub was going to happen and his adrenaline level dropped, it was noticeable that he realised exactly how bad it was... My guess is another surgery and similar amount of time out injured as last time it happened.

Bloke seems to have the same mentality as the average Chelsea fan so would fit right in in that sense. Don't see a world where GP would like to work with him though. GP thinks team spirit and sensible personalities are quite important.

He does. Verheijen is a strange fecker, but he has good points in the limited areas he know something about. The reason why I mentioned data was not because of Verheijens attitude towards it, but because data gave legitimacy to Verheijens preferred methods (which aren't unique but he was one of the early and strongest promoters of the 'new' approach).

I think the idea is that you're supposed to be patient about a new direction that the club is taking. Similar to how Arsenal fans were supposed (but obviously wasn't) to be patient about Arteta, how City fans were supposed to be patient with Pep, Liverpool fans with Klopp etc. Often when you have a long-term plan, there's problems and poor results before you start reaping the rewards. Obviously no one expects you to be patient so it will be up to the Chelsea board & staff to provide that part. Same as in most big clubs. Not long ago most Arsenal fans wanted Arteta out, but the people in charge kept him. Same with United and SAF in the late 80s.

Thought it was obvious from GP game 1 that the squad is very poorly trained from a fitness perspective. The exact reasons are difficult to nail down without knowing how Tuchel and previous managers approached the issue. GP works according to Raymond Verheijens model. Back in the old days (and in many countries it still the case) it was believed that just turning players into generally good athletes was the optimal thing to do. Go run in the mountain, lift heavy weights etc. But with data, it became apparent that this was a flawed model - because running mile after mile at the same pace has very little to do with football. It became clear that after a sprint, players would generally perform a lot worse for up to five minutes after the sprint. Today, GP and other managers wants to condition players into developing footballer bodies rather than athletic bodies. One example is that excersises in training are shorter, but more intense. By doing this, the body adapts to the realities of football: recovery times after a sprint decreases, muscles get used to go in and out of intense actions etc. Quite possible, Tuchel wanted to work according to these principles as well (because most modern managers do) but over the last years, Covid resulted in very tight schedules - nearly all training will be about rehab & recovery rather than actually developing players. Difficult to really make a change then. The fact that Chelsea has also had a tendency of signing players at ages where they're unlikely to improve or change is obviously not helping either. Unfortunately, conditioning footballers into having bodies that thrive in intense situations is a bit of a long-term project. It takes time. Marcelo Bielsa struggled at first in Leeds, before his squad adapted and became the fittest team in the league. GPs boys in Brighton struggled a bit in the latter minutes of the games in his first season there, while last year his Brighton was one of the teams that scored the most goals in the final 10 minutes. The process can be made shorter if you actually sign players that has been trained according to Verheijens model. But Chelsea in recent years got zero idea about what they want to do in the transfer market. Its just a randomly assembled group of players with good reputations or good CVs.