Whats_The_Mata?

Must have been an excellent half time team talk by Poch today.

Think a few here will be more upset with that Jackson goal than Eddie Howe

The Geordies are gutted

Ah yes Oscar Bobb truly the first name Guardiola turns to when needing to change a game from the bench.

I wonder what Peps excuse is given City have conceded first 10 times this season. I wonder if he'd have been able to turn as many of those results around if he had the attacking "talents" on the bench Poch has at his disposal. Poch can do better but this clearly isn't a squad built with the experience or quality to turn things around

"Why can't the manager who's attacking options from the bench this season have been Mudryk, Madueke, Broja and Washington change games"? A team suffering so much with injury we've often had 2 keepers on the bench and benches that would embarrass the newly promoted sides. How is any manager supposed to change a game with these tools?

Wage bill and transfer budget is irrelevant. The fact we decided to spend a small fortune on absolute crap is a massive failing and it's why we're 11th but It isn't a failing by the manager. Our squad is laughably bad for the money wasted on it.

We don't need another Gusto for LB. We need an actual top LB in his prime. When fit you could argue Reece is the best right back in the world that's why he's worth persevering with through injury. A fully fit Chilwell doesn't break the top 15 left backs. we've tried to upgrade on him once and in truth we'll need one to be competitive anyway.

I imagine Luton and Burnley supporters would be very happy if their managers led them to 11th place. Poch is spot on here. Any manager we hire will be the fall guy as long as people continue to operate under the Delusion we've actually assembled a talented squad capable of competing despite most the players proving otherwise every time they step onto the pitch.

We've been mostly shopping in Aldi since the new owners came in. We've just ended up paying Harrods prices. I imagine most of our negotiations start with agents phoning us saying "Mr Boehly very good price only for you my friend"

Struggling to read and taking sentences out of context? Another clown for the ignore list Though if anyone thinks Tuchels recruitment would hold back this potential winning machine Boehly has built you can't help but laugh.

At no point have I said Tuchel has good talent ID. I've simply stated the fact that the owners recruitment strategy is objectively worse as shown by all the crap they've filled our squad with and any manager that comes in has to be in control of transfers. Our terrible recruitment over the last 2 years that gets worse every window is being driven solely from the top not the manager because it isn't a transfer policy anyone involved in football would ever support. Funny comment on Sterling though given Pep openly wanted him to stay and City offered him a new contract. Neither Pep or City beg anyone to stay. Same with Palmer, Laporte, Mahrez, Jesus, Gundogan, Zinchenko, Aguero etc if a player wants to leave they just replace them with another quality player. You can be like that when you've got a team of winners hired from the world's biggest clubs involved in player recruitment rather than trying some nonsensical lucky dip scattergun approach signing dross in 3rd rate leagues at £20m a pop.

No. It might be hard for you to understand. But the point is quite clearly that the recruitment has been significantly worse after Tuchel. Tuchel didn't sign Mudryk, Madueke, both Monaco's struggling centre backs, 27 Brazilian and Venezulean teenagers at £20m each, Ughochogu, Chukuwmeka, Sanchez, Fofana the ghosts of Lavia or Nkunku or want to spend £115m on Caciedo and £108m for Enzo while we've had f**king Broja and then Jackson up front. Top level squad building. Tuchel openly didn't want to be involved with recruitment and the fact he's being criticised for players the owner failed to sign (who then signed worse players instead) and signings that he didn't get to work with is ridiculous, we don't know how good Sterling who started well under Tuchel and Auba would have been because the manager he openly wanted to play under again was sacked days after signing him and he ended up playing under one of the premier leagues all time worst attacking coaches. Auba's Doing alright now though.

Obvious you've just made that up. But if it were true Boehly would be a bigger moron than he already comes across as signing players based on the recommendations of a guy that said he didn't want to be involved in transfers who he sacked as soon as his first transfer window ended. Very eager to see the hoops you jump through to explain why our backwards transfer policy is Tuchels fault 2 years and 3 managers after he left the club.

I'd love Tuchel back but only with full backing, no point pretending his talent ID would be a problem for us given we've spent a billion pounds on players without managers approval since Boehly bought the club and assembled the least talented squad per pound spent in sporting history. Any manager that comes in needs to be allowed to sign actual adults and for any decent manager that will be a none negotiable. No manager of any ability is accepting a project that is guaranteed to fail both long and short term like we are because the owner is obsessed with children and thinks if he buys them all they'll turn into a super team in X number of years.

Feels like we're less of a football club and more a trafficking operation for bringing injured youth to London. Under the age of 21? Played a handful of football matches without scoring goals? Struggling to maintain fitness and picking up a few niggles? Stamford Bridge is the place for you providing you're happy to sign for 10 years. I think the player is decent but I'm worried hearing this, after 3 terrible windows under Boehly if we're still exclusively signing children the club has no future because the ownership just seems unable to grasp that you have to blend the talented kids you sign with actual senior proven professionals to help them develop.

I don't agree we're in the rebuilding phase at all. A scattergun approach of signing every young player who gets in the fifa team of the week while having no idea what kind of manager to hire isn't any kind of rebuild. We're in the decline phase with the hope that we can actually develop a coherent strategy to eventually start the rebuild.

I had us down for anywhere between 9th and 13th before a ball was kicked. Expectations were massively inflated because we're called Chelsea and spent huge amounts on players but anyone who looked at the players themselves was lying to themselves if they thought top 6 was realistic. If Luton had gone into the season with Jackson and Broja as their strikers and Madueke and Mudryk as their wingers no one would have backed them to stay up because no one has shown they can score goals at PL level. That's all we had + Palmer a kid with a total of 0 career league goals and a Sterling who many don't rate. it's been a huge improvement since last season when we couldn't buy a goal but I have doubts about Poch's ability to manage games and he probably isn't the man to take us to the top but very few of our players are ever getting near the top regardless of the manager.

This made me spit out my coffee laughing. The mistake was hiring Potter in the first place. If any manager has had a consistent track record of losing it's Dull Graham. 27% win rate in 3 years at Brighton, never beating a PL team in a cup in 5 years of English football and never finishing with a positive goal difference in the Premier league. Not sure his tactical masterclass guest speaking appearances will be well attended.

Chilwell has the 1 thing Alonso has never had. Great PR. Alonso got scape goated for everything while people bent over backwards to pretend Ben was a top class fullback, he got very lucky being injured at the same time as Kante and James who were genuinely world class so people tended to group him in with the other 2 when he was out. He's decent enough but he's a long way from that level.

As you said the players haven't regressed under Poch. Results and performances are better than last season under both Potter and Lampard. The same problems and results as we've had under Poch will persist next season just as they did before him since we brought in these players. It's reasonable to argue Poch isn't getting the most out of our players it's far more reasonable to question just what level of talent a bunch of young players that have struggled under multiple managers and never performed at the top level at any point in their lives actually have. Though I suspect you're right Poch will go and this time next year we'll be be sat 9th and blasting the next manager for not being a Pep Guardiola/Alex Ferguson Hybrid when the reality is if we hired either of them they'd bin 70% of our squad before the pre season starts.

You say that like Havertz isn't clearly a much better player than the rest of our attackers.

What is Colwill actually good at? He got a lot hype playing less than half of Brightons games last year but I've only seen a really poor young player this year. You say he's not great with his head, different people have said he's not the quickest and I've heard others say he isn't good with his feet or defending 1 vs 1 So where is this potential top centre back?

How many of these donkeys would have been signed under Roman?

You're aware the other striker we went into the season with has 3 goals in his last 62 games across 3 different clubs? Won't make the Fulham bench once Jimenez recovers. Mudryks got 5 goals in 44 in English football. Which is equal to his good touch to bad touch ratio. Madueke has the impressive 5 in 33 but everytime he starts a game he's an opposition fullback, gets took off almost every time and has a total of 0 assists and 0 big chances created in the PL since he signed for us it's not looking great there. Yet for some reason some people want to pretend they're top talents. God knows why. I'm not sure if Jackson will ever be good enough, he definitely isn't good enough right now but I have sympathy for a player bought to be a supporting player being forced to lead the line every week because he's surrounded by absolute sh*t he gets a lot of criticism because he misses chances and he has to improve but given he's the only young attacking player at the club (bar Palmer) with the intelligence to make a f**king run and always gets involved I'll back the lad.