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They do look less confused by the tactics / system, like they’ve figured it out. Only problem is if our players have figured it out and it still looks this sh*t, then its gonna be a bad season

Love Guiu effort. Gonna be a beast by the time we sell him at age 22 with some more muscle on.

Not gonna get political here, already might’ve spoke too much, but it is doubtful that the PL will be allowed to loosen any restrictions they’ve put on. Whether self imposed or otherwise, so I just see it as unlikely that we will face a situation where the club (clubs in general) has more freedom to maneuver financially anytime soon.

You had me right till the end. Excellent post hahaha

I highly doubt that with the government just elected that any organization in the UK will be getting Less regulated. Unfortunately

This has to be the worst two kit designs we’re ever gonna see featured this season in a matchup. The geometric patterned orange of Madrid vs. The teenage boys bedsheet under a black light of Chelsea

I’m gonna jump on the bet365 odds of +2500 for Chelsea to get relegated. At least I’ll make some bloody money if it happens. This defence is about as atrocious as I’ve ever seen. Might give up 100 goals this season in PL alone

Thinking Chalo isn’t good enough for what Maresca wants to do is completely disingenuous… he can play both FB and anywhere on the back line, can invert and play an excellent CDM, excellent passer, a calm on the ball and in defence… legitimately should be the perfect Maresca defender

You hire SDs from Brighton to implement the Brighton model and eventually you’ll arrive at Brighton results

Happy for him. I think we will regret this in the long run, who in our squad has the heart and refusal to quit when down a couple goals? Reece? Then who?

Just shambolic… wonder how many more millions we need to spend for a competent back line?

We could also finish 18th… ohhhh the possibilities!!!

Maybe I’ve had a few too many tonight but I’m on team Conor 100% here. Seems like blueco is taking the same smear campaign approach thy did with mount but its gonna be a tough sell. Conor and his whole family have been true blue since before he was even in the academy, so to try and fool us into thinking he’s gonna do wrong by the club is risky at best and disingenuous at mid and really dumb at worst. the kid has truly loved chels through and through and this is actually shameful, whether he is good enough or not is inconsequential. He was on the chopping block all last year, and what did he do, stayed fit and captained us from 11th to 6th, that is a fact. if he, as truly one of the last remnants of what Chelsea was. Wants to run his contract down to get a £15m signing bonus at Atlético next summer, instead of letting these twat SDs reap £30m profit. Good for him. I hope this is a wake up call to the powers that be to stop treating our club like a f**king software company that they just rolled into their portfolio and finding profit through cutting existing resources. ive worked a decade in PE and hoped against hope it would be different in the sporting space but nope.

Who says chilly can’t defend!?!

It seems timo will in fact go down a Chelsea legend. Much like Ghengis khan and his famous lineage: most Chelsea attackers can trace their net missing genes back to one man.

Scary that it only took club America 45 minutes to figure out how to f**k with Maresca’s tactics… we’ve gotta score about 4 goals in first 10 mins in the prem to win games before managers adjust. or: club América, played their sh*tty 11 first half to lull us into a sense of security?!?

Also would love to know. Spanish only feed is quite grating on the ears after 45mins

Been that way for a lot of years. It’s part of our culture now.

Don’t think club América is even up to wrexham level, but this is a much better performance so far. Seems way more direct than Maresca traditionally likes though, but that could just be really low quality opponent making it easy to skip a couple passes building up? Guiu looks great and KDH is doing his best Mount / Conor impression blasting everything into a defender or over from top of the box. But he looks decent so far. Madueke is not PL level, needs a loan somewhere easier or maybe find a league that plays with larger nets?

If (when) he goes there truly is no lasting remnant of culture left. Reece James is proper chels I guess, but not to the same level as Conor. I hope he absolutely kills it in Spain, which he definitely will as that’s a perfect fit for him… imagine when we were talking to simeone last spring… would’ve been incredible for this squad.

I stated it in the Celtic post match chat but I will repeat the thought here again with an added wrinkle. invertinng Reece or Gusto is counter productive and limits their abilities to be their most creative and effective so we’re capping the output of our right side at 75% of potential. and if Maresca is only inverting the right side because Cucurella isn’t available right now and he actually intends on inverting the left once the season starts that’s somehow even dumber because then we’ll have wasted preseason teaching a tactic to players who aren’t even going to play those roles.not to mention the further forward players who rely on the tactics and attack that the inversion generates etc. that would look even stupider to me than the already insanely dumb decision to invert 2 of the best FBs in the PL. maybe we’re all wrong and the analytics actually show that gusto, Cucurella, Chilwell, James, Veiga, etc. are all better as CDMs/ CBs who don’t use their speed than the eye test would show to anyone with eyeballs? It seems like taking a stable of racehorses and deciding they would be better as plough horses… sure they can do it but it ain’t what they’re built for. additionally, rewatching that Celtic game, Guiu, Nkunku, mudryk all tried to break lines and make runs only to see the man on the ball choose to pass sideways, again wtf is the purpose of having intelligent speedy / shifty attackers if we just want them to play at a walking pace? none of the players in our squad really seem to mesh with what Maresca wants to do, and it really seems that we’re for a gloomy season, and Maresca looks to have been the worst possible hire available.

Really hope I’m wrong, but everything I’m seeing scares me. a stubborn manager implementing a rigid system is fine in a vacuum but when said system will negate or severely limit the best abilities of our top creative/goal generating players (gusto, Reece, Palmer, chilly, etc) Deciding to limit the production of your best players to 75-80% of their potential seems like a “smartest guy in the room” type thinking and doesn’t show me a manager who can look in the mirror and see that his tactics got found out last year, he just had a level better talent compared to competition so got away with it. If he thinks his tactics are so good that he can implement them within a little over a month of training and preseason, with half his players on vacation as well as effectively a u23 squad, then I have no confidence. Seems his tactics work when you have the talent advantage in a matchup like city does in prem or like Leicester did in champ last year. I just can’t see us being anything but chasing top 4 from tenth or eleventh position around November, again. this is all without even mentioning how dreadfully boring the football is gonna be. Thank god I can record and then watch at 2 or 4x speed.

And he’s already started making poor ones… I see zero real leadership on the pitch, he (maybe not his choice) chose Fofana over trev, and that looks horrid. also, he allowed them to take the pitch in this kit, which is undoubtedly one of the worst ever seen. And before you say not his decision, silence is complicity

I mean until he’s fired in January while we’re fighting to avoid relegation

Also, forcing gusto to invert, instead of just letting him play to his strength… this Maresca tactical rigidity is gonna be f**king painful this year