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Norwich v Chelsea (PL) 21/01/12 KO 12:45 GMT

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Lol after seeing the game again on motd first of all that bosingwa cross for the torres chance was once again shocking and got a masive deflection of the defender. Second of all that torres chance on second viewing isn't as bad as some make out. If for example sturridge would of missed it there wouldn't be half the fuss there has been. Still got to stick em away though nando!

 
Damnation said:
After I've heard this was Norwich's first clean sheet this season, I felt twice worse then before.. From all the sh*t rugby playing PL teams, we are the only ones that couldn't manage to score atlast once.. Shameful.
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They didn't play this game with their normal tactics. Once again, Chelsea was faced with a more or less packed defense.

 
Phillip said:
Well, that to me was the most worrying thing, since Norwich played very aggressively, and did not park the bus, but we could not score against them. Someone wrote that Torres missed a great chance and that Roddy make a tremendous save on him, but I cannot remember Roddy making any great saves. What did I miss?

Also, am I the only one who thinks Bossy did well? His move down the sideline against the LB of Norwich, twice, burned that player twice, and resulted in the Torres miss that everyone is talking about. Yes, he did not defend greatly, but it seemed to me that AVB told him to play very aggressively and make plenty of runs forward, which he did with aplomb.
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Norwich didn't play with their usual openess and aggressiveness. I wouldn't say they parked the bus, but they had it warming up in the parking lot.

Someone wrote that Torres missed a sitter. Don't remember that. Thought his curling slow-motion shot -- and Ruddy's save -- were both excellent in the first half. That's about the only time Ruddy was tested.

I thought Bosingwa was horrible. Norwich didn't really test him on defense. His crossing was as awful as it's ever been. What's the point of him creating space for himself, if the end product is useless?

We talk about Chelsea as a team in transition. Usually we're talking about the players.

But this is also a team in transition tactically. AVB is compromising what he really wants to do until he can get his own men on the pitch. That means we're going to suffer through a season of fairly unimaginative attacking football and on again/off again defending.

The only break from will come when Chelsea face a team that's willing to attack them, rather than sit deep and defend. Then we'll get some breakaway goals and some excitement. But otherwise, I think we'll see this same match played over and over again.

 
I thought it was laughable that Ruddy was given the man of the match on Sky. He had a very straightforward run of the mill bread and butter day between the sticks. There was nothing that he could not of thrown his hat on. I recall no finger tip saves to push things over the bar or incredible blocks with follow up saves. He stopped a few at his near post but if a keeper gets beaten at his near post he will usually get slaughtered for it. His award as MOTM said more about both side's ineffectual outfield play than it did about the keepers games. If Ruddy was MOTM then Cech must have been second choice.

The worst moment of all today for me was Malouda's terrible swipe late on. That said to me that he could not give a flying f*ck. And a City fan I have been drinking with tonight who watched the game said the very same thing. He reckons we have a few that appear to be on the gravy train.

 
Honestly there should be no one on this forum who is upset or surprised.

We knew last season that this team was not good enough and not diverse enough to win on a consistent basis or score goals the way a contender should. We have too many engines in the midfield, a shaky striker situation with one who is at the end of his rope and the other who can't find his touch.

How are we expected to score when Essien, Malouda, Ramires, Mikel, Meireles have no ability to break down defenses? When we have no speed anywhere on this team except for Sturridge....

This is a team that is missing basic ingredients required to win silverware. Right now we are a top 6 team at best.

I really hope AVB is playing dumb and just trying not to look desperate what he said in his post game PC that we don't need new players because this team is going to continue to falter until we add some speed, youth, skill and passing awareness. Players that can find solutions using short quick passes to break down defenses like what we faced today.

 
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I would also like to give Norwich City credit. They're playing well, tons of confidence and their manager seems to be getting it right.

 
A City fan described it perfectly with me as well: "Chelsea play in slow motion."

 
Disappointed but not surprised at all, when was the last time we really broke down a steady defence? Blame Torres solely would be the easy way out, and just cover up the underlying issues. Of course he missed 2 good chances, but we never break them down. We have a team of 'stars', yet we have no wingers who can cross the ball consistently, no midfielders who can put in a decent forward ball more than 20 yards. Where is the other signing AVB promised us? Put on Lukaku was a irresponsible and awful move. The guy hasn't played for ages and clearly have no clue where to go on the pitch. We were dominating the possesion at the time,need to keep every available attacking options on the field. Although Torres missed chances, he still looked threatenting on the ball and defenders had to track his every move. Taking him off and put a kid on ( who hasn't played for months) was handing the point to Norwich. Hopefully Essien will get back to full fitness soon, just about had enough with Mereiless. Hopefully Spurs and Arsenal lose tomorrow, will make us feel a lot better.

 
Ive just seen a stat that said there were no fouls at all in the first half of our game. Well f**k that, I dont wanna see us turn into preening wimps on the pitch, we need some mongrel and we need it now. Romeu looks great on the ball but does he have that bite and nasty side we saw from Maka? Well he should have.

 
rahul said:
The "Mr Suarez is not a racist" caption under everyone's username is pretty amusing. So typical of them though.
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For a proper laugh hunt out the "slience" thread on RAWK, its so messed up I am actually embarrassed to admit they are the same species as me, well the same other than a few billion missing brain cells.

 
rahul said:
The "Mr Suarez is not a racist" caption under everyone's username is pretty amusing. So typical of them though.
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And we're gonna have our problems with that soon enough... And truth be told it may be a quite ugly result. Let's hope its not!

 
I am not sure if any one on this forum would do something like that whatever be the outcome of the JT hearing.

But we also didnt do the JT tshirts and the numerous articles on our official website about how we're not a racist club blah blah and playing the look-i-got-a-black-friend-i-cant-be-racist card.

Their handling of the whole saga was apalling as if the Suarez incident and then the racist fan incident stirred the guilty conscience pushing them into ultra defensive mode.

 
The speed of passing is the thing you really notice on replay. Oddly i think it might be even slower after Lamps' departure

 
It's quite depressing to see people on previous pages putting almost the sole blame on us not scoring on Torres, when he came closer than any other. Sturridge, Mata, Malouda etc offered almost zero going forward. And just take a look at Bosingwa's crossing record for this match (12 crosses, 0 landed with a Chelsea player) to see the real problem here.

Why our entire team (Luiz aside) seemed to play so poorly I don't know. Nor do I have any clue what the solution is.

Sturridge in particular I found really frustrating yesterday. Him playing on the left does have it's advantages, but the fact he always has to cut inside on his left boot slows down play and gives the defenders a chance to get into position or to get back at him and knick the ball from him. Sturridge really was so innefective yesterday it was painful to watch. I'd have preferred to see Lukaku coming on for him rather than Torres tbh...

 
Spiller86 said:
The speed of passing is the thing you really notice on replay. Oddly i think it might be even slower after Lamps' departure
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Yes, for all of the criticism he gets on here for slowing down play, he's lost his legs, he doesn't think as quickly etc etc we looked a lot worse when Lampard went off. Saying that I think if AVB had put Essien on in his place, we'd have done a lot better than with Malouda on the pitch. f**k is that guy selfish on the ball at times.

 
I've officially gone off AVB. I'm not calling for him to be sacked, but the only time he's impressed me this season were his tactics against Valencia at home.

The subs he makes are strange, and are always left too late to make any real impact. He seems to make the changes at the 75th minute mark. I think we can all agree that yesterdays game needed changes at half time, or at least the 60th minute. But when he finally made the change, it was a petty irrational like for like change because of Torres' missed chance. Daniel Sturridge had to be the the player to come off, he was absent all game.

The wingers don't run to the bylines anymore. You can tell they've been instructed this way. Bosingwa had so many chances to run the ball down there, but it was like there was some invisible shield stopping him. I think we went down there twice the whole game, the first time led to that Torres chance, the second time was that Lukaku run. It's obvious to me, that things happen when we're allowed to run down there. Chelsea struggle to defend crosses from the byline, so why isn't it obvious to AVB that this is a good form of attack? Use it!

Why wasn't Cahill playing? surely he's match fit, he was playing for Bolton last weekend. Why buy a player if you don't know where to put him? again, i scratch my head.

Then at the end of the game I find out that the team are now catching a flight to Spain for a team building exercise. What on earth is going on in the camp? I'm not expecting a good return against QPR next weekend.

 
Torres wasn't bad he was one of our better players miss aside.

Though perhaps i am being generous because i missed a couple of absolute dollies at indoor this evening so much so that the referee described my finishing as 'Torresesque.' c**t.

 
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Rowley87 said:
I've officially gone off AVB. I'm not calling for him to be sacked, but the only time he's impressed me this season were his tactics against Valencia at home.

The subs he makes are strange, and are always left too late to make any real impact. He seems to make the changes at the 75th minute mark. I think we can all agree that yesterdays game needed changes at half time, or at least the 60th minute. But when he finally made the change, it was a petty irrational like for like change because of Torres' missed chance. Daniel Sturridge had to be the the player to come off, he was absent all game.

The wingers don't run to the bylines anymore. You can tell they've been instructed this way. Bosingwa had so many chances to run the ball down there, but it was like there was some invisible shield stopping him. I think we went down there twice the whole game, the first time led to that Torres chance, the second time was that Lukaku run. It's obvious to me, that things happen when we're allowed to run down there. Chelsea struggle to defend crosses from the byline, so why isn't it obvious to AVB that this is a good form of attack? Use it!

Why wasn't Cahill playing? surely he's match fit, he was playing for Bolton last weekend. Why buy a player if you don't know where to put him? again, i scratch my head.

Then at the end of the game I find out that the team are now catching a flight to Spain for a team building exercise. What on earth is going on in the camp? I'm not expecting a good return against QPR next weekend.
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On the Cahill comment, we bought him so we can stick one of our only creative players on the bench, Luiz. And then surely Bosingwa will continue to get his place in the first team for doing absolutely nothing.

 
To be fair to bosingwa, he did get one cross in. The one Torres missed from.

We really didn't play that badly. Replay is kinder to us. We just didn't finish well enough.

 
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