g3.7

pochettino is the real deal sadly. also a good example of what good coaching can do with players who initially struggled. note he was allowed to build his team without interference or the suggestion he could be in trouble after an unspectacular first season in charge. patience- the thing I least associate with chelsea and abramovich.

So he's taken his ball and he's gone home? Presumably to count the panels, add the info to his spreadsheet and then pester the bookies with a photocopy of his mortgage?

forget what is or what isn't a forward as it is becoming a way of slightly ducking the point for you. you are the man with stats at hand- give me the goals / assists stats (for apparently that is how the worth of an attacking / creative player is determined) for iniesta and rui costa throughout their careers. and then tell me whether they are / were actually any good. stat wise theo walcott will knock the socks off rui costa. yet, for some reason, probably my fidelity to my eyes, I think rui costa was the better footballer. weird. closer to home I would never describe lamps as a better creative player than inesta, yet he too regularly got multiple times the amount of assists iniesta did, and this in a side that was rarely as good as barcelona, and which always scored fewer goals than them. again, weird. I. just. can't. understand. it.

I don't care too much for stats, but I read this piece earlier in the season: http://statsbomb.com/2016/09/new-tech-and-a-little-story-about-neymar-andros-and-eden-hazard/ it sort of helps to explain why even in the season hazard won player of the year his goals and assist ratio didn't reflect the influence he had for our attack. @just I rate bale very highly, but hand on heart wouldn't swap him for hazard. I don't think it is a great comparison any way- bale is very much a cutting edge player, a pure forward for me. hazard does much more prompting / midfield work. he's a hard player to categorise IMO because he's halfway between a winger / wide midfielder and the type of creative midfielder who is patient and probes around with his passing. there aren't many players I would directly compare him to. ribery is one perhaps.

Pogba had a great euro 2016? Hazard has only really had one good season in his career? Hnmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I think guessing how much a player would leave for is a pretty dull game, but it certainly doesn't have a huge relationship to what they are "worth". He's our best player, Chelsea are a big club owned by a Russian oligarch. We are boosted by a huge TV deal and the player is on a long term contract. Fees are inflating in a huge way. These are more relevant factors than his current form, whatever that is. It would be a huge fee, make no mistake.

Okay. I see what you're saying but I'm a little bit sceptical of the idea that what you are describing is what most top sides are trying to achieve / implement and I still think "attacking" is slightly too vague a term for that. This is an example of one of the things I'm struggling with : declarations that we are, at least in our two defeats, playing deep. Now the picture you are using is both a good illustration of what you are describing and at the same time meaningless without more contextualisation. I think we can probably agree that how deep or high you play is best measured using the average positions. So people confidently saying we played deep in those games are both stating something that is a fact and simultaneously speculating wildly (and wrongly imo). It can't be denied on the one hand- look at the average positions of our entire 11 against Liverpool in the first half and they may have all been in our half on the edge of the box. But is that by design? For me, no. Looking at the spacing / positioning of the players and to me it is clear that they are being instructed to establish possession before releasing a free midfield player (facing goal) or finding the striker (facing away from goal). Your picture illustrates this first phase of play) but it shows it at the end, where Germany have established the ball after a failed press (or no press) as Italy have reset into shape. Hummels and Co do not start the move that high up the pitch. They start much much deeper than a more direct side would and the entire 11 need to be positioned and moving in sync properly for them to reach that point. Looking at conte teams from the past and looking at us now I am confident that this is what we are trying to do. Against sides who have defended positionally when we have the ball at the back we have had no issues. Against arsenal and Liverpool we have repeatedly failed at the first hurdle. So in summary I'm saying I'm unsure how people can be so convinced we are trying to play deep and defensively (presumably purely because Oscar, matic, Willian and kante have all been picked at once- a conclusion I find to be lacking in insight) when to me it is obvious that what we are doing is faltering so early in its implementation. It's like rubbishing a book that hasn't been written yet. You can criticise how long it is taking the author to write it, or whether he's got a good idea, but the fact remains there is very little on the page to make a judgement of.

mourinho quotes on juan mata (telegraph) much as I dislike this insane anti mourinho sentiment that is within a small section of our support who place the blame upon him for any and every problem we face, have faced or will face, my take on these words (and previously similar comments on the sales of lukaku and de bruyne) is that he is being completely disingenuous. these players left chelsea as a direct consequence of his management and there is no doubt they left with his total consent. to distance himself from that is surely fooling no-one and whilst I understand why he won't admit to a mistake that doesn't stop it grating.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-37451773

@didierforever it is the argument you are putting across, in effect. even if we go by your warped way of evaluating a player, you still need us to ignore the evidence against your point of view. I'm not criticising you for this, because it is, at last, an argument that makes some logical sense from you. it is true- if you ignore the times hazard plays well it really is the case that he's never played well. now, you won't have known this, so there is no need to apologise, but I am severely allergic to stupidity. my doctor told me to stop coming on here immediately after defeats because of the strain it places on the nhs. you know all that stuff about junior doctors that became big news last year? well it wasn't a coincidence that became a huge story around the same time as jose got the sack. what I'm trying to say is it is nice to read a post from you without having to reach for the inhaler.

Ladies and gents, it has finally happened. We are now reading the following argument: "Aside from the times hazard has played well, he has never played well."

I appreciate the answer but I don't agree that most top teams play in any one specific way. At least it doesn't appear to be the case to me. Also that description could equally be used to describe a team set up to play defensive football. Although I'm not completely sure what that means either.

He's also been the man of the match against all of those sides. His lack of defensive awareness was exploited against arsenal, but going forward he needs help- not in this absurd idea that he gets "triple marked" or some nonsense like that, but we need to do more to play him into the game. Receiving the ball back to goal well inside our half and with one player further up the pitch doesn't give him much chance. One thing I see again and again is when players are ineffectual people rush to point the finger and usually the solution is to swap him for the guy on the bench. There is so rarely an understanding or appreciation of why a player does poorly in the context of the team (which is ultimately the most important thing). Conte is trying to get us to play in a particular fashion and to my mind in the last two leagues games it has repeatedly faltered before the forward players could even get into the game.

I don't know what the relationship between what you've quoted and this response is. I also don't understand the term "all out attacking football" and don't know what that would look like. Is it how Germany played at the euros?

Sometimes I get this incredibly powerful sensation of talking to a brick wall.

Yeah- I'm just saying whilst obviously it could simply be the case that we have two overrated keepers, I'm sceptical of that being the case.

Good to read in recent days that Jose has duped our fanbase into thinking there is only one approach to football and that he has ruined our chances for the next twenty years. It helps explain some things I didn't understand before.

that is an entirely different matter though. I don't think the idea is to play deep or with long balls though. I don't think playing deep necessitates playing two up either. I think you are reading too much into the last game and applying it as a general rule- obviously we're not playing well, but putting another striker up there isn't an easy cure.

I don't subscribe to the idea that bad games mean the players need to be changed (as a matter of course). this team isn't playing in a way you could identify as a conte side at the moment either in approach or attitude. I don't think making five changes of player, and / or a change of system, 'fixes' what is wrong. we could win this game and problems could still be there so it is going to be hard to draw conclusions if that is the case. if ivanovic is out of the side and we win and keep a clean sheet, that isn't mission accomplished. if we don't win we may be none the wiser. it is conte's job to get these guys to buy into what he wants. ivanovic's take on the arsenal game has some stuff that concerns me more than the performance, although it goes some way to explaining it. this alarms me greatly. and angers me. after last season who are these guys to improvise when they're given a script? but then I remember. these guys are not machievellian plotters looking to oust manager after manager to the detriment of their own careers. if you are told to do something and you don't agree with it, then you'll play with doubt and hesitation no matter how pure your intentions are. I think conte is as good a coach / manager as really any of these lot are players, but I repeat- his job is to convince them of this. as a fan I'm happy to wait. I'm happy to let him get on with it. picking the same side game after game isn't necessarily that definition of madness- he's trying to ingrain something new, and until that is assimilated we are going to falter. but changing players doesn't necessarily speed up that process. we need to back him as supporters, and hope abramovich doesn't do what he usually does (now is the time to invoke einstein). guardiola's got a similar job, but he's gone to a club who have been preparing the nest for some years, he arrived as undoubtedly the most powerful person at the club and the most coveted coach in the world and all of those things are big advantages. we shouldn't bother to look at city this season for comparison. all we need is to improve at our own pace, slowly if that is the case. but in saying all of that, branislav can't run anymore antonio. do the decent thing.

well, yeah, maybe. that could be the case. it seems to me though, that after a poor result the unpopular players have another 5 pages to their threads full of anger, regardless of how they played (or even IF they played).

with all due respect, that's plainly not true- one central player up front is de rigueur in european, if not world football. two up front is more of an outlier in tactical approach these days. anyway, on paper formations are nonsense anyway. they don't exist.

and conte may well go with two up- in which case all bets are off. but van gaal, whether you like him or not, is the type of manager who actively likes putting young players in, whether that is negative in the short term or not. conte is a pure meritocrat, he isn't going to be inclined to do the same (if he's even our manager next season). not to hijack this thread but I'm getting increasingly worried / annoyed with the whole solanke situation. it looks like a situation where everyone is going to lose out.

people say gold and sullivan don't really care about the fans but how can you argue with owners that do everything in their power to stop them from being subjected to west ham's football?

if we are playing one up front then is that the best use of his talents? I mean he'd likely be behind costa and batshuayi. obviously it would be a great opportunity for everyone to complain, but I'd argue if he continues to play this well then next year he should be going on loan in the premier league.

in the first line you've called someone idiotic and made a baseless assumption to back up a point of view that has nothing to do with what you've quoted. in the second line you position yourself as a rational voice in opposition to insanity. I mean... for two lines... that's pretty impressive.

I accept that he's not inspiring confidence in many, but then I also think he can't have done much more with most of the goals we've conceded and is an easy target because people obviously don't like him. p.s. whenever begovic steps in, and this is a proven first choice premier league standard player, he routinely does worse and we look a worse side overall. that is a fair indicator that goalkeeper isn't really where we should start looking at when it comes to our problems.