g3.7

This whole thing seems fairly overblown, and 15 years ago would have certainly not required an entry into the pantheon of filmed mea-culpas*, but here we are. On the one hand i reflect on the unmatched pressures on footballers, but especially the biggest stars, to be constantly managing their PR. The ability to cause upset has increased exponentially. On the other hand lukaku is a sports star very much of and in his time. He understands and in fact courts this type of attention - and I say this without praise or criticism. I'm sure he'll be able to take any criticism that is coming. Part of what makes him one of the top 10-20 attacking players in the world is his self belief. *for me its the time and media environment today that has made this more than a non-issue. In the past his (lets be honest, mild) comments would have merited little more than an eye roll. Today they could be construed as a self inflicted damaging of tuchel's authority. Luckily it appears tuchel has handled it well enough that (with some good results) his authority could be strengthened. But if we look back at this point as the start of the end, then lukaku really would have something to apologise for. As it is, keep fit and score some goals mate.

I think this is a pretty reprehensible idea, but I don't have sympathy for the Premier league or their 'product'. This to me seems a logical conclusion of globalisation married to the non regulation of rising ticket prices. - there is a fast growing cohort of domestic / local football supporters who have only been able to follow their clubs digitally (i.e. on TV / online) who have been priced out, added to the rapid increase in international fans who for reasons of geography cannot attend. Covid had shown that even without fans the 'minimum viable product' on offer still has a huge demand. It isn't a conspiracy that young people are the group most in favour of a supposed super league and it isn't because they lack respect for or understanding of tradition, competition, or grassroots football. This is already the way the understand football to be, and the Premier league has not just been complicit, it has been an active architect of this situation.

seems that way at the moment, doesn't it? I still pop my head in but life has been getting in the way. but hope you and everyone else round here are doing well.

Lamps has done some really good things for us as a manager, notably blooding the kids, finishing fourth, and seemingly buying well. Even if he left tomorrow, his legacy as a manager for us would be pretty good. Having said that, i have to say- he's clearly not a good coach yet. Watching us over this year and a bit I think that much is pretty clear. He's a smart bloke and emotionally intelligent, so he has the makings of a potentially good manager. But to be honest he shouldn't be at a club of this stature at this point in his career. I doubt he'll improve fast enough to avoid getting sacked at some point in the next two seasons, which is a real shame.

that was alright

I don't think the stats indicate that a good player is more likely to make a good manager (and good players start out with the advantages I've outlined). Dont misunderstand me, I'm not criticising lamps, im criticising the club- if you are responsible for hiring a manager with blooding young players in mind, how high up the list of appointable candidates do you honestly place lamps at this stage in his career? Personally, i don't think he gets into the top ten, even factoring in his history at the club. It's lazy by the club - we could have given him more time away from the club to cut his teeth, why was it essential to appoint him now?

I am comparing like for like. A manager is a manager, and they should be judged against the job they do, not their age or experience. Our board wasnt forced into appointing lamps. They opted to let sarri leave to pay £4m for him.

we didn't let pep leave so we could appoint sarri, so I don't get the point you are making. in my view, the club created the conditions for sarri to leave so they could appoint someone more popular with the fans. (we could get into arguing about the club briefing against him, and whether he would have left or not if this wasn't the case given the lure of juventus etc etc, but that is my reading of it) this decision should be considered soberly, in the context of a transfer ban, hazard leaving, and our rivals strengthening. the truth is there is little evidence to say confidently that lamps is a good coach: 1) the championship is a very volatile league- aside from the very best and the very worst, the other sides all beat and lose to one another. 2) drawing firm conclusions from one campaign is hard. 3) lamps also had the advantage of being a recently retired great which earns him immediate respect, especially with young / championship players. in time we see that some great players can't sustain this as managers once the player they were starts to be forgotten, or when they start managing players as good as they were. 4) and of course he had a contact book for loans that others would not have. but there is little evidence to say he's a bad coach either. considering the improved quality of football, willingness to play young players, reaching the playoff final and some financial restrictions, his first season goes down as a qualified success. my point is that looking at chelsea's decision to take a manager with one season's experience in the championship, and that being a qualified success, rather than a avb style dismantling of the league, it has to go down as the most remarkable permanent appointment of a manager ever made by an english club in the last 25 years. it is an incredible gamble, at a time where we don't have lots of compensatory advantages against our rivals. it is irresponsible of the club, if you analyse it coldly. and if lamps is proven a success, the club will have gotten very lucky.

it's just a bit of a moan. I think chelsea, not unlike most premier league clubs, are happy to try to extract every last pound out of their customers, all whilst paying lip service to the idea that is is actually a club, that' we're supporters, etc etc to me appointing the likes of lamps and cech embodies a kind of nasty, corporatised tokenism from the club. as if its supporters are idiots who will lap up this veneer of community while spending £60 on a "chelsea dna" t shirt. I don't like what I perceive to be an attempt to have it both ways. either this is a proper sports company, in which case, run it properly, or this is a basket case football club, in which case, appoint people with no experience, hire and fire with no plan etc etc, but maybe do something serious to stop the average age of a matchgoing fan being 59 or whatever. chelsea are not one thing or the other.

in amongst the positives (which start and finish with the not insignificant blooding of young players), concerns already arise: 1) our defensive problems are essentially structural not individual, and lets not pretend otherwise. yes taking zouma out and putting rudiger in will help (and the same with kante for one of the midfielders), but this is not the reason why we're conceding lots of goals. we're conceding goals because, in every game, we concede huge huge areas of space routinely. 2) without being unkind, what is the point of playing two midfielders who pass the ball well and do everything else fairly averagely alongside a player who concedes the ball as readily as donald trump concedes the moral high ground? jorginho and ross barkley as as compatible a couple as susan sontag and piers morgan. but probably more painful to watch together. 3) if you have jorginho and kovacic, and a wide player who is coming infield, and a third player in the middle, and you still can't control the midfield at home to a promoted side then you need to look at the coach. I wasn't totally convinced by sarri, and I think it is fair to say having a club where the supporters back the manager is hugely important, but let's not beat about the bush; there is no comparison between him and lamps as coaches at this stage. given that, I think success will be not totally embarrassing ourselves this season, and hopefully proving that maybe 2-3 of the kids are realistically going to be chelsea players in the medium / long term. this isn't to have a go at lamps - he's one season in and isn't a jose / guardiola wondercoach - but already this looks like weak, facile management by the people who run the club. if you treat your supporters like customers you are obliged to be better than this.

there is the slight feeling - not so much just because lamps is the manager, but more the fact that everyone who has ever played for us since 1999 is now on the coaching staff - of having left the house in a rush and telling the babysitter you promised the kids they can do some baking tonight... and that is fine, because you expect it to be a bit messy. and yes, licking the spoon is fun. but then, as the wild pear tree enters its fourth hour, just before the beautiful, revelatory ending, the thought occurs to you: "am I coming home to a cake or has the entire house burned down?"

From ctrl-alt-delete to ctrl-alt-right. Loz returns the day after Trump officially gears up for 2020. Coincidence? Am i saying that they're the same person? Of course not- one's an orange faced authoritarian with no taste and questionable 'hair', the other is... Ah. Never mind.

I'd say first of all, hire a director of football and give them a mandate to run the club with a view to the long term. (which won't happen) from that point you are able to recruit players and managers which suit the vision of that DOF, so even if a player or a manager does not work out, the direction of travel remains the same. we can't outspend our rivals, so we need to be run properly. I don't really have any names- superficially, the ajax manager uses a 433 and they were nice to watch, so there would be a tenuous degree of continuity I suppose. it does amaze me that antonio conte was our manager just over a year ago. I wonder if anyone at the club has the humility to think perhaps they should have removed the people he didn't get on with (at least from directly working with him), replaced emenalo as swiftly as the send out those season ticket renewal forms, and maybe not signed him danny drinkwater etc?

No, and hoddle did well before him too. Both appointments were made by people with, at the very least, a modicum of football nous, and were made with a clear intention. This appointment, on the other hand, is another dart thrown at (and by) a board that may no longer be fit for purpose.

A guarantee that is not worth the paper it isn't written on. While it is nice to have lamps back at the club the reality is he's- on the strength of his managerial cv- the least qualified person to be appointed by the club since gullit. Im pretty worried.

letting sarri go, particularly if it is with a view to bringing in allegri or lampard, confirms beyond all doubt that under abramovich this is a club with no strategy whatsoever. if you have a massive financial advantage, or if you have a core of legendary players, of if you have eden hazard, or a mourinho or a conte coaching the team, or better yet some combination of all of the above, then you have a chance of being successful. if on the other hand you don't have any of the above, and you are up against one club, let alone two, that have their own equivalents, then you have almost no chance. what I'm saying is that we are no done as a side with a realistic path to even challenge for the title again. we are confronted with an unfortunate truth: without his spending, abramovich is a net detractor to chelsea in 2019. this is because he isn't going to suddenly offer an amazing understanding of football. he might get lucky and strike gold as he did with conte, by hiring a manager who gets every drop of talent out of the squad. and if that happens at the same time as liverpool AND city get distracted, or suffer a huge injury crisis (etc), then it might be possible. but otherwise, we have very little chance. to my recollection he hasn't made 3 good consecutive decisions related to running the football side of the club (the important bit) since 2004/5. it is a shame, but there you go. we still exist as a club and have seen us win everything under his ownership so we have to be happy, but make no mistake, the golden era is over. could still be fun though.

in, but that isn't to say he's been perfect. reasons are: -he's essentially a coach. his reputation is built on that. so joining so late before the season started, and having to play thurs-sun all season, has denied him of a lot of time to really imprint his methods. despite this, we've acheived the target of going back into the champions league, and we've made two finals. -the squad is a mix of players suited to different styles, and a lot of the "best" players in the squad are past their very best (or on the turn). so even with a flatter track in terms of coaching time, this isn't the easiest set of players to mould. sarri signed one outfield player to add to this, and a further two on loan. he shouldn't be judged against most other chelsea managers under abramovich in this respect, as he has been afforded far less. -I think a lot of people have an artificially large expectation of what this squad should be doing because antonio conte is one of the four or five best managers in the world. even those who may no longer like conte may suffer a little from this. sarri is a fine coach, and the football his previous sides in particular attest to this. -I know there has been a lot of frustration about his reticence, or apparent reluctance to do so earlier, but this is actually the manager who put loftus cheek in. and he put huson-odoi in too, and had the welsh kid in ahead of cahill for a lot of the campaign as well. I'm not pretending there was no argument to do so earlier, or more, but credit where it's due here. -finally, I know a lot of people point to guardiola's first season (with others assuming the implication is that those who do are suggesting we will canter to the title next season), but I'd like make two slightly related points: a) recall pochettino and klopp's first seasons with spurs and liverpool. if you can. b) we've met our minimum target, and yet we're still supposed to sack the manager? how is starting from scratch again going to help us? guardiola must laugh himself to sleep every night thinking about how right he was to reject our advances. this is no way to run a club: allowing relations with a genuinely great manager (the calibre of which, be in no doubt, we can no longer attract) to sour to the extent we need to sack him; allowing our best player to run his contract down so we need to sell at cut price; sacking said manager too late to give the new one time to actually do any coaching or truly assess his new squad; then sacking the new guy despite his meeting minimum requirement with a hand tied behind his back, so the new guy can arrive to a club with no director of football and a two window transfer ban. for those keeping count, we've done all of the above and you are proposing we follow that up by doing the new bit in bold. In the long term sarri might not be right for us, but keeping him for now is the pragmatic thing to do.

Given no pre season, not many signings, a patchwork squad put together without any long term vision or idea and his alternative to jorginho let go without replacement... He's shouldnt be in danger of being sacked, and I read guardiola's comments about us never being a realistic option for him with interest but no surprise. The club behaves as if it can (and does) mask a lack of strategy by outspending its competition even though it cannot (and does not).

this thread has not been a pleasant read. might I suggest that what we as a fanbase should be worried about is that there is a racist section of our support and that our energy should be spent focusing on how to remove it, rather than worrying about the size of it relative to other clubs, or the way (or frequency) it is reported? there should be no space for whataboutery or equivocation on this issue.

I've just read this post, and it has reminded me that I really need to finish reading that Daniil Kharms anthology.

look- no one can be unconcerned about the way his form tapered off. we already know, even when he signed, a lot of the comment in football was that he needed more self belief, so it is a real issue and anyone who states confidently that yes, he definitely will come good, I think is being blindly optimistic. I just think he is talented, and he has all the physical attributes required. and it was a huge sum of money, on a young player on a long contract. I want to see us as a club take that investment seriously. almost with 'moral seriousness'. I don't know what it is in me that thinks spending £4.5m on zola in 1997 is acceptable, but £35m on daniel drinkwater in 2017 is not, but that is how I feel. I am almost disgusted by the transfer market. part of me wants us to stop signing players altogether, and concentrate entirely on producing our own. yes, pay the players the going rate in terms of salary, but these transfer fees totally repel me, and in the last few years (despite two amazing title seasons, under two genius coaches), I have felt less and less interested in 'football' as this big corporate concept (granted this is an almost irrelevant tangent).

I have a huge objection to us investing that money in him (in theory a conte style player), knowing the relationship with conte had gone, and then appointing a manager who clearly would have no real use for him. take the fact bakayoko had a disaster of a season aside for a second, and ask what type of player he is. I think he's hugely physically gifted, great stamina, power, change of pace. technically not that bad actually and not without some skill or decent feet. that monaco you could see played a classic 90s premier league type of football where running power was prioritised over keeping the ball, and where keeping the ball was not so important because their football was predicated on a high turnover of possession. I can see why conte might have wanted him- had he settled well and adapted you've got a player who can help compensate for us playing with a numerical disadvantage in midfield. what he doesn't appear to be a natural fit for, is the type of football sarri wants to play.he's almost antithetical to it. the club is being very poorly run on the football side of things at the moment. so yes I do have an objection to him being discarded. not with the decision to discard him by sarri, more with the way the club is being run. we need a director of football, we need that director to appoint managers and buy players who fit the same approach. what we have been doing is appointing managers reactively and signing players in an ad-hoc manner without any strategic thinking. not replacing emenalo is a huge problem, and when we do, we need to give the director more control than he had. I don't think his plan was to let de bruyne, courtois, lukaku etc reach their potential elsewhere, nor do I think he wanted the academy to be unbridged to the first team. but that is more the fault of internal pressure, probably from abramovich himself (i.e. the demand for immediate results), and the managers he appointed.

I absolutely hate this idea that you invest £60m in a player, he has a bad season and then you discard him. he's got huge confidence issues but the talent is there. I'm pleased we're still banking on him.

he's wound up chelsea supporters and atletico supporters over the move, but I'm not sure you can really make the reach you're attempting to here. what evidence do you have that any of courtois' colleagues feel this way? it is a reach, as I say. you're conflating how you feel (rightly or wrongly) with how you presume his colleagues feel. having a an option to buy in a loan contract does not mean you HAVE to spend that much if you want to sign the player. it merely gives you the knowledge that if the player is successful there is a fee at which you know you will be able to negotiate with the player to sign on a permanent basis. it isn't the same thing as a compulsory clause to buy. the way it would work is real benefit by getting his wages off their books (plus perhaps a loan fee), he would benefit from the increased opportunities to play, and we would have some assurance that if it is a mutually successful transfer, we could make it a long term arrangement. real are a bigger club than us, always were, and always will be. but we were once a better squad, a better side, and had genuine ambitions of competing with them. now we are not. going from where we were then to where we are now is the definition of decline. we've taken a big step back from that, and that is no longer even in service to a long term goal like building a new stadium. I am comfortable with that, but I'm not going to enter into any kind of self deception. the imperial phase in chelsea's history is over, it was a pleasure to witness and I'm looking forward to some fun football this season. but we are domestically an also ran and internationally a footnote. why? the point, when we loan out a player like tammy abraham to bristol city, is that the club taking him on loan could not dream of doing so on any other basis. chelsea exist in a different stratum. loaning a player like kovacic, with no assurance that we could sign him, is in no way the same. no clubs near the top of the food chain loan players of kovacic's age (unless they are intended to be squad filling back up) without some kind of option to sign them. I don't know why it is a controversial or even necessarily a negative thing to state: we have declined. most clubs do. even the absolute top clubs have their fallow phases. we were never in that group, which in part reduces our chances of returning to where we were. I don't think we will, and I'm comfortable enough with that. I don't think being a supporter of one of those mega-clubs is necessarily very nourishing for the soul, and I expect to leave the bridge giddy from some of the football I've seen maybe once a month this season. that will be good enough for me, especially after manchester city away last season, which was a game that took me close to completely and permanently falling out of love with football.

completely agree with this line. for now we've spent a huge- i'd say ridiculous- sum of money on a a poorer keeper than courtois. jorginho- great, a fine purchase, and a player of the calibre we should have signed last summer. kovacic- IF there is no option to buy, then this is a waste of time. we're not winning the league this season, so we've got ourselves in a situation whereby if he's poor then we've wasted a season's worth of first team minutes that could go towards developing our own players, and if he's good he's off to real madrid. like courtois. like eden will be. had the club given courtois a bit more money last summer and had we signed a jorginho player at the same time, we would have fought for the title and courtois and hazard may well have committed to us in the long term. and this season we'd still be looking at another title challenge. as it is, this is a clown club we're dealing with. why didn't we sell hazard this window? he'll go for less money next summer, so why not do it now? make no mistake, this is a club in decline. I'm looking forward to the season because we'll be fun to watch, and actually that is the most important thing. but if you're in this to see chelsea compete for titles and be a 'big club', sorry. those days are over.