Saaladin

The EPL is the top league in the world for a reason. You can lose to anyone on any day. Particularly when your board didn't back you and handed you a small squad with little depth. Man U lost to WBA...

Giroud was for Morata though. I think Conte needs to go with Giroud for the rest of the season. He's more prepared for EPL physicality and fits in better with Hazard and Willian.

Actually, looks like it was a discipline related issue based on this article. Rudiger must have done something or said something to have Conte axe him. Possibly because he questioned tactics publicly. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-5620133/Chelsea-defender-Antonio-Rudiger-no-idea-dropped.html

I don't think he changed the formation to begin with. Giroud came on for Morata and Pedro came in for Zappa. Pretty sure Pedro just moved into the wingback position and we stayed in 3-4-3.

I thought the team wouldn't play for Conte anymore? Seems they would enough to comeback from 2-0 down. And pretty sure Rudiger and Conte are fine. Cahill has been on the bench a lot recently before West Ham and Conte is giving him a start. Christensen was also on the bench before this match.

So Conte rotates as many here believe he should and that is the criticism? He sat Christensen the game before and this time Rudiger sits so Cahill can get some minutes who has desires to play for England.

I don't buy this. Hazard was asked to play as a lone striker, and yes that was a tough ask but he could have done better at it with a better attitude. When playing in a 3-5-2 he was essentially playing as a 9.5. Striker with freedom to roam which is a perfect position for his skills and desire to have nothing to do with defending. Hazard simply hasn't had the drive or the will to play up to his potential in any position whatsoever. He's not willing to take risks and attack defenders and not willing to create beyond making a pass or flick. When is the last time he drew a penalty? That should be a regular occurrence for a player of his ability. Hazard IMO is thinking of Madrid. His heart may not even be here at this point.

Same here. Hope there's some quality here to replace us.

Maybe he was tired, in fact he probably was. But Fabregas is not on for his running. He's there to control the pace of the game and make key passes.

My point is that you came up with one example. And that example - from a coaching perspective is not a good option. If I am winning 1-0 with a whole half to play why would I take out one of my more creative players after 50 minutes? What if we concede? Now I'm stuck with Drinkwater on the field and not much in terms of forward passing out of my CMs. Now would it make sense to bring Drinkwater on leading 1-0 at minute 75? Sure. I can get on board with that. Problem is we conceded well before that so Fabregas had to stay on to help rescue the points.

In the form Drinkwater is in? No I don't. And I don't know how you can say our midfield was torn apart. Sorry but how many chances did West Ham really create? One? Two? I would keep Fabregas on in case we concede a goal I would need one of our most creative players on the field.

You keep ignoring the size and quality of the squad as if that means nothing. Sorry but Conte isn't a wizard. He's not going to give them magical powers. We had a team that won the league playing a fairly light schedule. That team was stripped of 2 key players. So not only was the team not reinforced and improved for the season to come it was downgraded. Yet you will continue to say that Conte didn't do his job. I'm still not sure what you expected from this squad of players. Everyone knew Chelsea was shorthanded going into the season too. It's not like Conte was alone in his assessment. No one really thought that Chelsea was going to challenge based on their summer activity. The Manchester clubs were always favored so its not like this was a surprise and some massive disappointment occurred.

Drinkwater? That's your defining sub? Ok. I think I made my point clear enough.

I keep asking this argument to be backed up by one piece of evidence... Who should Conte have been bringing on before the last 10 minutes?

It's easy to point to the second half of the season and extrapolate our would be finishing position. However the reality is we did ok in the first half and a tired team with no depth struggled in the second half. Which Conte said would happen if we didn't increase the squad size. Tactically, I see nothing wrong with our setup. It looks right and for most of the game it goes well. But a fatigued team will make errors and concede foolish goals and/or fail to make decisive moves that gain you more than 1 goal. Again, I saw a vibrant team playing some nice football against West Ham - But when we needed a goal to kill off the game it seemed there was no juice left. Then we concede. Is our starting 11 bad enough to finish 15th? No of course not. But at some point that talented squad will be beat up enough that even the neighborhood wuss can put him down once in a while. And still we are 5th not 10th.

I don't think its harsh because in reality we are talking about 2-3 more wins. If Hazard is playing the way he should we get those extra points and more. He refuses to take people on - he refuses to attack the penalty area. It's a massive loss of penetration which is Chelsea's biggest problem this season.

I blame him 100% if he was playing to his capability we would have been in the top 4. Hazard has become the best passer in the EPL. We don't need that... On top of that, he is refusing to sign a contract that can at least give us leverage with Real Madrid in the transfer window.

I don't agree because I am simply talking about individual accomplishment. The golden boot is one thing. They both play wing so for Salah to win golden boot as a winger is pretty impressive and maybe the last winger to do that in the EPL was Ronaldo? Also, we are talking about what the player does in big matches. How many truly big matches has Hazard taken over and won for Chelsea either in the EPL or when it really counts in Champions league? There are a few for sure that I can think of but Salah has been doing all season against all the top teams in both competitions. Hazard simply doesn't have the drive to impose himself on matches in more meaningful ways.

1. Who should he have brought on before 80 minutes to flip a game? Barkley? Hudson-Odoi? Zappa? 2. Your statement makes no sense here - He is obviously complaining about the size and quality of his squad to he will clearly keep picking the same team. Which rotations should he have made? What were the results when he did a rotation? If you remember it may have been the Watford game where he rotated the team - as you suggest he should have - after the loss he said that he chose the wrong team - Bakayoko got a red I believe and there were one or two other guys who got a start. 3. Who else should he choose in his 2-man Mid? Vidal? Fabregas was the only choice and every supporter knows it. Bakayoko was tripping over his laces and Drinkwater was pedestrian. 4. Moses was average all-season - all flare no result - however - our last minute bargain basement purchase Zappacosta was worse. So again, no choice for Conte. 5. I believe Conte tried for the last 3 transfer windows to buy the Juve wing back only to be rejected despite the price going down. Then he tried about 2-3 other targets and couldn't get the board to spend for them. Only in January did we finally get Emerson who was injured all season up to that point. Great! 6. Batshuayi was not fitting in to Conte's football. He wasn't holding the ball and was inefficient in playing simple passes on the ground. He was losing the ball under pressure too much. 7. It is not a coincidence that the teams that spend money in football win. City and United are #1 and #2 for a reason. Madrid and Barca the same. What you are asking from Conte, "To fight" he did that as best he could. I see a team that is playing for him the best they can. I haven't seen guys giving up. Even against West Ham it was a great performance but lacking in critical areas. I saw no giveup in them. And Conte was visibly frustrated and has been throughout this poor run.

You prefer being unrealistic then in my opinion. Our schedule was significantly harder, our competition in the league and CL all went out and spent huge amounts of money and Chelsea basically downgraded and you think Conte should make the best of that? Well, he did. We are still in Europa league contention so the board got what it invested in.

And that is simply where we disagree. This team is actually exactly where it should be in the standings. We have an unproven striker - Conte probably did want Morata, that being said, he knew he was selling Costa and was very clear from the beginning of the summer we needed TWO strikers to be purchased. The club bought only Morata (who was never a proven lead man) and held on to Costa until January while scraping the bottom of the striker barrel until settling on Giroud. Conte never wanted Batshuayi and regardless of what he is doing in BVB he never performed well from Chelsea outside of a couple of goals. He doesn't hold the ball well and has difficulty with ball retention and re-distribution. Getting rid of Costa, that had to happen. He was dead to Conte the day he started stirring up transfer trouble right in the middle of a title run. It was selfish of Costa to not wait until the summer and he could have quashed those rumors but chose to play it out and piss off his coach and club. Conte wanted him out and I would to if I'm trying to win a league and my star striker is thinking of glorious moves to China. Again, regarding not getting targets, he has every right to moan. He won the league and got absolutely NO backing from the club. For every decent player brought in - a better player was sent out. We did not strengthen at all, and in fact reduced the overall quality of the team.

Conte having poor body language is simply a myth. The guy has been as emotional as ever in our most recent games. The results being bad means he is not jumping into the stands with glee. I assume that is expected. That being said, when Tottenham scored I remember Conte kicking a water bottle across the dugout. Pretty sure that is not an emotionless, care-free manager that is just waiting out his contract. You can see in his face that he cares.

If I remember correctly it was either Watford or Bournemouth that were sitting around with an 11 day rest before playing Chelsea who was coming off a long stretch of playing every three days with the same squad.

You're evaluating things without relativity. You say we only lost Costa and Matic. Yes true, but we also added champions league play. So not only do we lose Matic, who have us strength and balance in midfield as well as sound passing we lost our most influential forward. Then we added the most difficult and prestigious competition in the world and continued to the semis of two other competitions. That is a lot of matches for a coach who literally has no influential options off his bench. Not one single player that you would want to come in to make a difference. You say we spent more than Liverpool and Arsenal and Tottenham. That means nothing when you are constantly evening it out sales. We sold Costa got Morata = downgrade sold Matic got Baka = downgrade Conte was fuming all summer because his team got WORSE when they were mounting a title defence and wanting to challenge in CL. He had every right to be annoyed and with this tiny squad Chelsea didn't stand a chance. Please tell me which 11 you would have been choosing that Conte was somehow missing... Liverpool went out and bought Salah, Mane, Milner, Oxlade, Virgil, Wijnaldum -- They did exactly what Klopp asked. City - let's not list the names they bought for Pep. Its actually outrageous what the Chelsea board did. Selling Matic to United? Wth... And you people blame Conte because he wasn't a good enough cheerleader? It's actually naive...