Barrettinator

Survived a scare there. Morata was awful and frankly, I didn't expect Batshuayi to have any sort of impact but I'm happy he did. Looks like Conte recognised that strength was vital up front. Something Morata seems to shy away from. Willian's also put in perhaps his best performance of the season in 20 mins or so. What's puzzling is, I couldn't really point a finger at one glaring issue in that match apart from Alonso being w**k. Watford weren't even pressing us that hardly. Not sure what the issue was but I'm not the one getting paid 13 odd million a year to figure it out to credit to Conte for doing so in a timely fashion. We're shaky at the moment and limping along but we're still moving, thankfully. Wouldn't mind how we pick up 3 points weekly for the next 3 weeks tbh. Hopefully we can pick up maximum points pending the return of Kante, Moses and Drinkwater.

Time for a change, isn't it? Would 5 years be terrible to give a manager?

Carlo's still on good terms with Chelsea. Gets director's box seats too when he comes visiting. I'm sure he has no ill will towards the club. He's a gentleman.

That would be terrible. First of all, we should not be getting rid of managers the moment we go through a rough patch. The same patience that Mourinho was afforded last time should be afforded to Conte. I'm certain he's definitely not going to have us 16th in the league. We'll be in and around the title mix by January imo. Secondly, going back to ex managers almost never works. Thought we'd learnt that already from Mourinho? Hiring Carlo means we'll be looking to hire yet another manager in at most 2 years after that.

When you add our two wing backs to that, that should be more than enough to get the ball out. But then they seem to panic and throw away even the simplest passes. Hit it a little too long, control great passes that have beaten the press with a terrible touch, etc. Think Morata also needs to be better with his passing and his ball control. He has been piss poor. Always giving the ball away at the slightest push from a defender. He's supposed to be the anchor or as Conte likes to put it, the reference point for the rest of the team. Last night, he had 53% pass completion rate. I don't even know what to say about that.

Those days are long gone. We haven't been a mid table team in over 20 years.

As has been said, it's not the system, it's the players. They seem to be unable to play out from the back. More technical players would have no problem dealing with a high press.

Didn't even know the Individual made Chelsea related comments yet again. He can't keep Chelsea out of his mouth, can he?

So that's the difference then. You expect absolutely nothing except for "effort" while the rest of us expect a lot more. Fair enough. But don't have a go at fans that have different expectations just because your view is different. No one's forcing you to think that way. No one's forcing us to match our expectations to the club's ambitions either but we aren't having a go at you for not thinking the way we do. How about you stay comfortable in your lane and we stay in ours and we can all get along.

Right on cue. We're on a cracking run of form then, aren't we? Sorry to piss on your alternate reality. Even Conte complained about how we played. But we're whingey. You're consistently delusional and it's a bit of a joke really.

That's not a funny joke mate.

Teams aren't stupid. Closing down Fabregas is one of the main tactics they employ against our midfield. And once he doesn't have space, he doesn't seem to know how to create space for himself or get into positions where he can do damage. He doesn't seem to know what else to do. He certainly can't defend to save his life and he's slower than my grandma so right now, I really don't know what he offers us. Playing him in a midfield 2 these days is almost like playing a man down. Which is why I don't understand why Conte took Luiz off.

Imagine how much more goals he could have had to his name in his career if he played for a team that wasn't so defensive so often.

No, we don't. We haven't looked like world beaters with Kante in midfield either bar the Atletico game. It doesn't help that Cesc has been sh*t all season. Was shocking today again.

WTF??? What was the point of signing him then?

My point exactly. Once we get pressed high, it's straight back to Courtois. That's terrible.

Cesc at the moment actually offers us absolutely nothing. With his vision and passing skills, you'd think he'd be absolutely devastating to teams that want to press us.

How long is he out for ffs? He was signed September 1st, wasn't he? We're getting to the end of October and he still hasn't kicked a ball.

It's quite puzzling. Azpilicueta is a mystery to me. You get certain times where he pulls off a brilliant cross to Costa/Morata out of nowhere that leads to a goal or a brilliant pass into midfield that starts an attack and you assume he has the quality to do that consistently. But then when presented with the opportunity to do that with opposition players pressing him, he immediately turns around and passes it back to Courtois. Passing the ball forward to beat a press is actually the best way to beat it. When you pass it back, you're making their pressing more successful. When you have Courtois punt it, you're doing the same. I have zero hope in Cahill to do anything progressive with the ball. He'll pass it back to Courtois 100% of the time when he sees a press. He f**king passes it to Courtois even with no press. The most progressive passing he does is sideways. Luiz is the only one in that defence who actually looks forward. Christensen too to a lesser extent. Azpilicueta is a let down in that department because I know he has the quality to be a bit more progressive.

Good for us then. Saves us the embarrassment.

Teams seemed to have figured out our system. They press us high and we can't seem to handle actually playing out from the back. Man City's passing from the back to beat Napoli's high press last night was absolutely brilliant. If that was us, we'd have been slaughtered. We always seem to pass it back to Courtois and either put him in a terrible position or have him punt it up the pitch, which only sees us retaining possession barely half the time. I'd say only quality teams can do that to us but Palace pressed us off the pitch last weekend. You can be sure Watford will do the same this weekend. I really worry about this team, especially if we don't beat Watford. I know we've had a lot of injuries but Conte's tactics, team selection and substitutions leave a lot to be desired. His in-game changes when they're the right ones often come too late. Why did we only decide to press high after Hazard's second goal? It should have been a half time change. That's 3 games without a win now.

I think Conte's inexperience is starting to show. There was absolutely no reason to take Hazard off for Willian of all people. Especially when Hazard was up for the fight and was probably motivated to get a hattrick.

Considering how dire their performance against Qarabag was today, I'm starting to think we just dominated a side in sh*t form.

Has to be said that the ever reliable Azpilicueta is in probably the worst form of his Chelsea career. That Kolarov goal should never have even gotten to the point where he took a shot.