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why did we lose the title?

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The Brit

The Brit

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no faulting today's effort, but it's time to start the inquest of where it went wrong...looking back for me it was last summer and what we did in the transfer market...we made the squad smaller, we bought in players in sheva and ballack who either struggled with english football or just came for the cash...we lost a player in gallas (forgetting the reasons why) and replaced him with a left back who was no better than the one we had in the first place...we got in boulahrouz, who hasn't been a footballer since we beat barcelona in october...the only successes were mikel and kalou and they only began to make an impact in second half of the season and still have a lot to learn...I hope the club goes back to the transfer policy that worked in the past, younger hungrier players than the likes of sheva/ballack, still of decent quality who are desperate to win...

 
It is very simple for me, just two major reasons:

1. change to 4-4-2 from the successful 4-3-3 in recent seasons due to the transfers of Sheva and Ballack and

2. our very unlucky injury crisis

 
Played all season with only two quality centerbacks. Who you blame for that doesn't matter, it's just fact.

 
Simply because we chased too many trophies! I have said on another thread the only thing that really beat us to the title was fatigue, too many games not enough players, all this nonsense about "the quad", is just that, nonsense! to do that you would need a squad of 35 world class players prepared to take their turn on the bench and sit out a 1/4 of the season playing mix & match accordingly, and that is never gonna happen!!

Next season I would love to see us go for the domestic treble, stuff Europe! let's dominate the home front first, and build up our "history" that is the sign of real domination, you can get lucky in European cup draws for years while sceptic bladder is in control of things,(hot balls, cold balls ?) but to win your own domestic championship for a decent amount of time will always be my priority

Put the " Champions league" back to being just that, Champions, and 2nd place having to qualify, otherwise in my mind it's just a high profile "WAFA CUP"

 
1. That Pr** Hunt kicked Cech out for half a season

2. We only have 2 class Centreback from day 1, part of our own fault

3. We still dont have the cutting edge to kill teams off, enough said about Scheva, Drogba had a great season but Kalou is not the natural goal scorer( at least not yet)

4. Man U had a very good reason, they were out there to win games from game 1 and with a little bit of luck they did..

The disappointment of this season will do us heaps of good in future, providing Jose and most of the players will stay, we will be back stronger and hungrier next season..

 
Definately the centre backs issue , losing J.T. for crucial games as well as our keeper . We can look for excuses alright but our injury list this season is not an excuse , its a plain fact and a major factor . Losing Guddy and Crespo .

Allowing teams to come at us by defending too deep is an issue that Jose has to sort out too, i also feel sides have sussed us out and dont fear us the way they used to , certain players giving the ball away too easily.

Major factor too has to be the summer signings , I thought Ballack was going to be an instant hit but his poor form hasnt helped. Depending on Drogs too much , a one man team at times .

I agree with Fansince65, the C.L. is becoming a far out joke .

 
Simply because we chased too many trophies! I have said on another thread the only thing that really beat us to the title was fatigue, too many games not enough players, all this nonsense about "the quad", is just that, nonsense! to do that you would need a squad of 35 world class players prepared to take their turn on the bench and sit out a 1/4 of the season playing mix & match accordingly, and that is never gonna happen!!Next season I would love to see us go for the domestic treble, stuff Europe! let's dominate the home front first, and build up our "history" that is the sign of real domination, you can get lucky in European cup draws for years while sceptic bladder is in control of things,(hot balls, cold balls ?) but to win your own domestic championship for a decent amount of time will always be my priority

Put the " Champions league" back to being just that, Champions, and 2nd place having to qualify, otherwise in my mind it's just a high profile "WAFA CUP"
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In principle I agree with every word. How can a team that previously finished FIFTH in their domestic league be eligible to play for the title of Champions of Europe? Come to that, how can any team that failed to win their respective domestic league be considered Champions of Europe?

The thing is of course, that the present format generates so much money that a return to a "proper" European cup just ain't gonna happen. The same argument applies to the playoffs. Say what you like, but nothing in this world is going to convince me that it is even remotely fair for a team to finish fifth or sixth in the table to be promoted ahead of the team that finishes third, with a gap of as much of 20 points between the two teams. In such cases, it's apparent that the team finishing third will have put a great amount of effort into going for the automatic playoff places but will have just failed to get there. Whereas a team finishing way back in sixth place can afford to sit back, rest players and get into the playoff places with plenty of energy left for the playoffs themselves.

And just like the Champions League, money is the main incentive. Surely the parallel between the Scousers again getting to the final and a fifth place team getting promoted are obvious? An another argument for the playoffs is that it keeps the season going for the fans. Well yes but, if the fourth, fifth and sixth teams put as much effort into the entire season, then maybe their fans would have a sustained interest in attaining an automatic playoff place? Just as the Scousers never once had a realistic chance of getting anywhere near the Premier League title and have repeatedly had the luxury of being able to rest players before European games. Champions League? It's just one dirty great big mickey mouse money spinner.

 
The loss of Cech, JT and Joey. God knows where we'd be if those 3 had played more. More solid and more creative.

 
The loss of Cech, JT and Joey. God knows where we'd be if those 3 had played more. More solid and more creative.
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Make that the loss of Cech and Carlo at the same time. Hilario might not be the th worst keeper in the world, but he's nowhere near those two, and did cost us a fair few points.

 
I've been too sad to post here for a while as our season came to an end that was always possible. And who really cares about the cup though of course it would be nice to win it.

Although its obvious that the squad was thin and we never really replaced duff any more than we replaced gallas. Its also obvious to me that Sheva was never going to be a success. He was injured in the world cup and is just too old to be worth that much money. Its the young strikers on the way up that we need.

Injuries were crucial.

But despite all the squad problems we still blew our opportunities even at the end of the season. Bolton was the prime example.

so more than anything I feel the pressure of having to continually defend the title and chase the european title impacted our form.

Drogba was fantastic and Lampard scored amazingly well, but other than that goals were just too hard to come by. There were a lot of performances where the effort and determination were enormous but the chelsea football product was in some sense lacking.

Here's hoping that next season the boys can play with a song in their heart instead of looking at the axe over their head.

 
Too many draws at home. Aston Villa, Reading, Fulham, Bolton.

Last season we won 18 and drew 1 game at home. This season we have drawn 5 at home. That's 8 points less. If we had won 4 of those 5 then we would be 1 point ahead now.

Why didn't we win those matches? A combination of all the things people have already said. But the main factor has been injuries.

 
I agree too many injuries, which led to too many draws.

Lets also note that we didn't necessarily lose the title, Utd won it. In the past 2 season we have 'raised the bar' but this year United have taken every oppotunity to win the title and have had a great season. They would have won it 3-4 games ago if it wasn't for our resilience.

Back to the original question:

Why did we lose the title?

Swapping Gallas for Ashley Cole IMHO!

We left ourselves with 2 recognised center halves and bought a left back that was not much better than we already had. Also Gallas could play left back if needed, but Cole is no centre half! Add to the fact we had Terry and Carvalho missing for long spells, we needed Gallas. AND Cole was responslible for the Essien OG v Fulham, you don't clear the ball across your own goal when defending, thats schoolboy stuff, and you don't turn your back, like he did V Lennon at Spurs.

Add 2 points from the Fulham game and 1 from the Spurs game and the title isn't over yet!

 
Our defensive record was the best in the league, event though it should have been better. So the problem was obviously not scoring enough goals.

Drogba 19

Lampard 11

Kalou 7 (but late in the season as I recall)

Shevchenko 4

Ballack 4

Carvalho 3

Robben 3

SWP 2

Essien 2

Clearly Robben, Shevchenko and SWP needed to score more goals, or else someone else from central midfield had to compensate.

Of cousre this doesn't really address the issue of why goals weren't scored. Was it the formation, the tactics or technical skills of the players involved.

Terry started 25 league games, only Make, Essien, Carvalho, drogba started more.

Overall I feel that Robben didn't do enough for us this season anymore than SWP did. I am not a big fan of the price paid for Sheva, but I do think he would have done better with better wide players.

Above all this though is that the weight of expectations crushed CFC's spirit this year. Having won the title twice we then bought two mega stars Sheva and Ballack so the expectation was we would do it easily.

 
I firmly believe that if we had kept three players - Gallas, Duff and Guddy - we would have won the Premiership by 10 points.

I think that Cech (and Carlo's) injuries were so unlucky that there is nothing that could have done differently to plan for this.

But, JT and Carvalho's injuries would not have been a problem if Gallas had been available as cover.

In hindsight, with a trimmed sqaud, we were relying very heavily on two things. Firstly that Sheva and Ballack would instantly adapt (which they didn't) and secondly that our youngsters (Kalou, Diarra, Mikel and SWP) would step up and show themselves as quality players - which they did to a certain extent, but in the end, were too heavily relied upon.

 
I firmly believe that if we had kept three players - Gallas, Duff and Guddy - we would have won the Premiership by 10 points.
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I firmly believe Gallas wanted out and that there was nothing we could do about it. Duff has been out injured for long periods this season so I'm not sure how much he would've been able to contribute to our season. I agree that keeping Guddy would've been a good idea, but I'm not sure if it would've made such a big difference. Maybe.

It's interesting to notice that with one match to play, we've conceded just one goal more, lost two matches less than we did last season, but we've drawn more than twice as many games we did last season. So you could say goalscoring was our problem. ManU didn't have problems scoring goals and it feels daft to say it, but ManU won the title because they scored so many goals. I mean, they've lost one game more than us and conceded three goals more than us, but they've also scored over 30% goals more than us! We drew twice as many games as they did. We simply lacked the killer instinct in front of the goal. Ofcourse you could also bring up the fact that we've had more games in Premiership this season in which we conceded more than one goal than we've had in the two previous seasons combined! Ok, so inconsistency and lack of goals which may or may not be the result of having all those injuries to key players.

Could've, would've, should've... aaargh! To heck with this useless hindsight and stats stuff...simply put: we were not good enough. Manu had a fantastic season in the Premiership, we didn't. Simple as that.

 


3 reasons why we lost the title:

1. Injury to Cech

2. Injury to Terry

3. Khalid Boulahrouz

 
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