Huttsey

75% possession, 13 shots off target, 3.5xG
Chelsea 0 - 1 Crystal Palace

What because we signed a young player who will be out for a massive 3 months with a slight injury? ~Yeah, destroying the club....

Beware of low flying pigs over Stamford Bridge !

You can't use the word shocking thrice like that, it's shocking.
What is shocking is the fact Tuchel was sacked straight after winning a London derby. For me it's the worst sacking by the club in my lifetime. I was hoping the Potter move would cushion the blow, but so far it looks like possibly being the worst manager at Chelsea in my lifetime.

I'm even bigger a masochist than I thought: not only am I going to my first Chelsea match in 3 years, turns out it will be one with my current favourite player out 

Thiago Silva has sustained knee ligament damage and is therefore out for quite a while. 
 
If you’re into sadomasochism then what a start to the day you’re having. 

Thiago Silva has sustained knee ligament damage and is therefore out for quite a while. 
 
If you’re into sadomasochism then what a start to the day you’re having. 

Thiago Silva has sustained knee ligament damage and is therefore out for quite a while. 
 
If you’re into sadomasochism then what a start to the day you’re having. 

The concerning thing for me is good players will not play better with us. They regressed to our levels eventually. So no matter how many good players we sign they eventually adjust to our very low levels. That’s concerning. 

I wanted Potter to succeed here but always maintained he needed to show us something in the short term to make us think he was worth buying into long term. There was that initial 10 or so games where we went unbeaten and for the most part things were pretty encouraging. Then we lost at Brighton and everything has just kinda nosedived since then. I was willing to give him time based on a number of factors, mainly the injuries and not having "his" own players. The injured players are all back now, barring Kante, and he has been backed transfer wise like no other manager has ever been, yet we still continue to underperform and lose games.
If we were in and around the top 4 this season, which I think now should be the bare minimum based on the players we have, then I would be willing to give him the time and would be able to see that we are heading in the right direction. If we were for example 8 wins out of 16 rather than the 2 in 16 that we actually are, then you could say there is something we are working towards. The fact of the matter though is we should be doing a lot better with the players we have and with the investment that was made in January (and the summer to an extent). There is no way that us being 2 wins in 16 is acceptable, regardless of what stage of the project we are at.
When you look at our run of fixtures in the league since the window shut we have had: Fulham (H), West Ham (A), Southampton (H) and Spurs (A), and we have taken 2 points from a possible 12 and scored just once in those games. Even if we had won 3 of those games and lost to Spurs, I think that would have won him a bit more time. This was meant to be the run of fixtures on paper where we should've picked up points and started to climb the table. If we had won 3 out of 4 of those games we would be on 38 points now and 3 points outside the top 4, with Newcastle to play at home. 
I've been one to make comparisons to Arsenal/ Arteta over the last few months but I don't think those comparisons are worth anything now. Arteta was never backed as handsomely as Potter was in the window. Potter also inherited a squad that contains world cup winners, premier league winners, champions league winners, and players with consistent experience of finishing in the top 4. 
I am all for giving the right manager time, but we (fans, players, and the board) need to see something in the short term which gives us an identity and the belief that we are working towards something positive. Regardless of how good we may or may not be in a year, given the investment and existing players in this squad - we should be doing a lot better than we are now. The players of course have to take some of the blame but ultimately it is a results business and at some point soon, the board will have to judge this manager on results, rather than sticking to this project line. I think @WhiteWall said it a few weeks ago and I think it sums up the situation pretty well "right course, wrong horse". As time goes on I don't think Potter is the man to deliver this long term project. I said in another thread yesterday that I think Boehly is digging his heels in because he is reluctant to admit publicly he got this wrong. I think if Vivell etc were in place in September, we might still have gone for Potter but I don't think there's any chance he would've been given a 5 year deal. Hopefully lessons have been learnt there.
Personally I would now make the change before Dortmund. I've said it a few times, and seen one or two others say similar but I think the best course of action now would be get an interim between now and the end of the season, and spend from now until May/ June taking time to find the right candidate for next season. If we sack him after Dortmund and then go down the interim route then JT wouldn't surprise me in the slightest, as long as we don't fall into the trap of giving him the job full time because he goes unbeaten for 7 games or something like that. 
If he does get sacked I do think it's a shame it hasn't worked out for him here, he seems like a decent bloke and he's obviously a decent coach on some level given his track record everywhere else, and hopefully he can go and rebuild his career somewhere else. But it's obvious that he is out of his depth here at the moment. 

Please tell me what part of 'my narrative' is wrong....
1) Club goes through a period of unprecedented turmoil, resulting in sanctions against us.
2) Club is sold, with all of the owners/boards senior leadership being changed - bringing with them a new outlook and philosophy.
3) Our manager at the time, TT, was overseeing some awful football and awful results. He was also increasingly combustible and irritated in the public eye with his mood and demeanor noticably souring following changes in his personal life (divorced from wife, moving away from kids, media exposure around new girlfriend)
4) There are also a number of noises that TT and the board did not see eye to eye or agree on the approach that the new owners wanted to take.
5)Given the timing of the takeover, lack of internal structure and vision - the summer transfer window was a shambolic mess. Overpaying for medicore/past it players in a bid to get new players in - players that evidently dont fit the new long term vision.
6) Post transfer window - we sack TT and hire Potter. Potter takes over and the results were lifted.
7) The season is hugely disrupted by mind blowing number of injuries. Fofana. James. Chilly. Kante. Kova. RLC. Zakaria. Sterling. Puli. Broja. All significant long term injuries.
8. The season was further disrupted by the World cup - leaving Potter with a fit first team squad of just Kepa, Bettinelli, Jorgi, Broja (who was not yet injured), Chukwuemeka, Cucurella and Chalobah to work with.
9. In the Jan transfer window we spent big on youth. Untested, unproven youth. Huge numbers of players unaccustomed to the premier league and who will take time to acclimatize and adapt.
10. Across all this we have a manager who has taken a huge step up, but who, following the initial promising results, has not been good enough. Not been decisive enough. Not been proactive enough. Not been passionate enough. 
11. All of the above, significant and unprecedented mitigating circumstances have led to our downfall. Time will tell if it gets better. Given the size of the rebuild we are going through, I think it will take time (years as opposed to weeks or months), with lots of ups and downs.
 
ALL OF THIS ABOVE... is my narrative. Please tell me which part of it is wrong.

As someone who does nothing but instill positivity in this forum, I can happily say it's at least refreshing to have 0 expectations for a change. It's probably the first time in a long time I've expected absolutely nothing watching this team play. 

The only way is up

I'm always skeptical about how trustworthy these 'sources' are.  I mean are there really multiple people presumably involved in an indepth level with the club with unfiltered access to players, who also happen to be reporting the ongoing to media.  If there are then what's their agenda?
I don't doubt there are unhappy players in the dressing room.  There are 30+ off them after all.  Is the average playing squad not 23/24?  Potter widely said it would be difficult to keep them all happy, anyone would struggle with that.  It's also common for squads to have rifts, infact I'd struggle to name a squad that didn't have a rift of some sort at any given time.
The real question is are the core 20 players (those with a future or who'd like a future at the club) downing tools.  I don't think they are.
As bad as we have been I don't think it's due to lack of effort.  Our defensive and closing down stats support this.
If we truly down tools, like has happened in the past then I'd expect immediate change.  Just now though we aren't getting Europe and we aren't  going down.  We don't really have anything to lose giving him until the end of the season.
Who knows we might go on a 10 match winning streak and end up 5/6th.

Bring back Carlo

And even if we do go out against Dortmund or don't finish top 4, a new manager could at least put this team on the right track to progress under somebody else next season. This team is far too talented to average 4 goals every 15 games.

The likes of Mudryk could potentially finish this season with no goals or assists, that's how sh*te we are at the moment. This is just dire football and I dare say our league position flatters us for the football we are playing. 

Potter has shown no sign of tactical insight or adaptability, he's going to keep playing the same way until the season ends if we give him the chance, and we are destined to finish in the bottom half of the table with a negative goal difference. Why is that okay exactly? People saying we've got nothing to lose so f**k it need to give their heads a wobble, the financial investment of this team can simply not afford such a thing and it can massively hinder our performances for next season. 

I think many reasonable fans may agree, to a point, with what you've said in your post, except this last part.
Swallowing your pride and accepting bad results is fine as long as you witness improvement in performances But I'm afraid I'm not seeing what you're seeing.

I have been in the "Let's give Potter time/this is not his squad/no preseason/long injury list etc" team since he's arrived. Lately though, especially after last night's performance it's getting increasingly difficult to defend the man. If you can't perform well, let alone get a result at home against the bottom team in the league, what hope do we have for when we have to face somebody better?
His whole demeanor seems a bit off. I realize he's a reserved soft spoken guy, but recently he seems and sounds like he's in denial. "‘I’m sure there will be people out there that think I’m the problem, absolutely. I don’t think they’re right but I’m not arrogant enough to say their opinion isn’t worth articulating." Well, that's mighty white of you Graham, but what the supporters actually want to hear is that you're angry with that performance/result and that the fans deserve much more and you want to apologise to them on behalf of yourself and the players for that shambolic performance. Because you aren't at Brighton anymore, the expectations are different, you have an array of top talent at your disposal and it's not as if you have just landed in a middle of Cobham but actually had five months to figure things out.
I'm prepared to be patient and suffer when needed but he needs to show improvement, and fast. The signs are not good.

For me it is due to the culture on the players not changing. 
Players got tired of Jose MK1, was Grant a step up? Heck no, the players made that step forward happen.
How about RDM? What did he do before or after his double CL and FA Cup win for us? Nothing, the player made that happen.
Come on Southampton are terrible, 9 losses out of 10, lost at home to 10 man Wolves. All the quality we have in our side, is it only on the manager that they show up with professional pride? Was it all Grant that had us one JT none slip away from winning in Moscow? Was it all RDM that won it for us in Munich? No.
The players get paid a fortune, and they are serving this sh*t up to us game after game so they can place all the blame on Potter and get off Scott free cause they have seen it happen time in and time out here.
Am not saying Potter is not at fault too and needs to up his game, but the players are due a huge portion of blame, most of them not just Cucurella.

Personally I'd still stick with him Coco. But I have said today that these results can't continue and I understand why people who were previously supporting him are turning. We are all looking for some improvement, some progress, some consistency. But when he takes off the one attacking player who was causing them problems at halftime, it's impossible to understand a decision like that.
Again personally, I think we have only had three very good performances all season. Tottenham in the league, AC Milan in the CL and Dortmund in the CL on Wednesday, even though we lost that one despite creating a stack of chances, the football we played was great to watch IMO. So I was expecting a lot more today off the back of that performance.
I accept that right now, at this moment, my commitment to stick by him is probably down to gut feeling, wishful thinking and a lack of experienced, stand out candidates available to replace him. 

That's because those people who said give him time just assumed things wouldn't get worse. They'd either stay the same or get better. 
In November and January we weren't losing to bad teams. The problem was we weren't getting better. The draw away to forest was the first time we dropped points to a team in the bottom half. They, me being one, didn't envisage that draw to forest would lead to us being outplayed by the worst team in the league when we had no real injuries in the squad. 
Now we are getting worse it feels difficult to see where we get the ten points we need to confident we stay up. 

Well until we reach that point, we can't compare. But as it stands right now, Potter is doing worse with the same amount of games at the club.
No we don't. We haven't put in an eye pleasing performance since the win at Milan. I've seen 10-20 minute flurries, but nothing more. I hate our football, it's the most boring sh*t I have ever seen us play. I'm sick to death of seeing us walk the ball out of the penalty area, playing 6 or 7 passes before moving the ball into midfield, often getting us into trouble. I hate watching our wingers isolated out wide because we take an age to get the ball to them. I hate seeing our fall backs run forward only for our slow ball passing midfielders to get out muscled, lose the ball and force those fall backs to sprint back. I'm sick of us playing the ball backwards every time we can't see an opening. We try and walk the ball in, but we have a total of zero players who even have the passing ability to do that. It's like this in every single game, it never changes, it never improves and it's definitely not eye pleasing. We barely even manage a worthwhile shot in a game and we finish almost every game seeing our keeper forced to pull off more saves than any opposition keeper.
We have the players suited to a more direct approach, that is the kind of football I find entertaining and eye pleasing, not this sh*t version of Man City.

He was to begin with. He had 1 win in 8 league games to begin with, but he won 8 of the remaining 13 league games and 6 in the FA cup which he won. I see no chance of that happening under Potter. I genuinely can't see where we get our next win from. See, if Potter at least managed to show that kind of progress, I would give him a chance, but he can't even get us scoring a goal. It's getting to the point where we need the game to be 0-0 to take anything from the game. As bad as Arteta was at times in his first season and a half with Arsenal, at least they could still grab some wins, score goals and show there was something there to build on. I see none of that with Potter, he's only making us worse. We just keep sinking lower and lower.