I was wondering if having the transfer ban rescinded has caused our recent poor form? We seemed to be battling hard early in the season, maybe partially down to the "them against us" atmosphere created by the feeling of injustice over the ban. now that has been lifted its almost as though the players are now more hesitant, maybe wondering if new players will arrive in their position. of course this might be all bollocks (and probably is) but could it explain the drop in confidence and passion of late?

Happens every year around this time ever since Jose left. I dont think the ban has anything to do with it.

Don't think so dkw but constant tinkering with the starting eleven could be

I don't think so.

I think it's pretty simple really. This month teams have wised up to us and as of yet the coaching staff have not been able to come up with a solution.

The thing is we are still creating chances (unlike this time last season) , that's key. Hopefully we just need a solid win to get the ball rolling again. Though it would nice to see a bit of flexibility with the tactics which at the moment doesn't seem forthcoming.

I'm new to this site, located in Canada..a displaced Brit who has been following Chelsea since 1966. I have been an avid supporter and in the good old days a Chelsea Shed Boy, watching the likes of Chopper and the boys home and away. Even though in Canada for 20 years I watch as many games as I can via TV or internet. This team over recent years has suffered from inconsistency when they need to take points from lesser opponents, within 5 minutes of the West Ham game I turned to a friend and said the game would be a draw or they would lose. The tempo was so slow and they were farting about going no where, and don't give me the probing defences bullsh*t because they were playing in their own half. Yes they were unlucky against Everton with two flukie goals against them. As with most games they tend to dominate play but recently seem to have run out of ideas when Lampard is marked by three players and Drogba is marked out of the game as he was against Birmingham. Malouda is inconsistent with form and crosses, Deco can only play when it's sunny, Kalou is inconsistent, Sturridge is trying to hard, Borini...(is that a type pasta?) needs more time, Joe Cole is returning from injury...midfield has no drive since Essien has been injured...Why pay money for Zircov and sit him on the bench...etc etc. This team has not got the grit to play the old fashion way and get down and dirty when playing against the lower teams who tackle hard against the 'stars', look at the games against Portsmouth and West Ham..why couldn't Parker play like that at the Bridge. What happened to the good old fashion game of Chopper Harris and co when things needed to get done? By the time Jan is finished we will be lucky to be in third spot if things continue the way we are playing now. If we do not win against Fulham today the momentum will surely be lost as three players leave and CA insists that he will not be buying any one....good luck! Every one knows the 'system' Chelsea are playing is CA not capable of changing things up....I can see today Jose being cheered by the fans and being begged to return.....long live the King...

I'm new to this site, located in Canada..a displaced Brit who has been following Chelsea since 1966. I have been an avid supporter and in the good old days a Chelsea Shed Boy, watching the likes of Chopper and the boys home and away. Even though in Canada for 20 years I watch as many games as I can via TV or internet. This team over recent years has suffered from inconsistency when they need to take points from lesser opponents, within 5 minutes of the West Ham game I turned to a friend and said the game would be a draw or they would lose. The tempo was so slow and they were farting about going no where, and don't give me the probing defences bullsh*t because they were playing in their own half. Yes they were unlucky against Everton with two flukie goals against them. As with most games they tend to dominate play but recently seem to have run out of ideas when Lampard is marked by three players and Drogba is marked out of the game as he was against Birmingham. Malouda is inconsistent with form and crosses, Deco can only play when it's sunny, Kalou is inconsistent, Sturridge is trying to hard, Borini...(is that a type pasta?) needs more time, Joe Cole is returning from injury...midfield has no drive since Essien has been injured...Why pay money for Zircov and sit him on the bench...etc etc. This team has not got the grit to play the old fashion way and get down and dirty when playing against the lower teams who tackle hard against the 'stars', look at the games against Portsmouth and West Ham..why couldn't Parker play like that at the Bridge. What happened to the good old fashion game of Chopper Harris and co when things needed to get done? By the time Jan is finished we will be lucky to be in third spot if things continue the way we are playing now. If we do not win against Fulham today the momentum will surely be lost as three players leave and CA insists that he will not be buying any one....good luck! Every one knows the 'system' Chelsea are playing is CA not capable of changing things up....I can see today Jose being cheered by the fans and being begged to return.....long live the King...

Nice positive first post mate,

I can understand your concern but think you might be reading more into it than is necessary, I've supported the team around the same time as yourself and remember with fondness the days of Chopper, cookie, Ossie Hutch and Bonetti and they are all legends to me but the game is a lot different now and comparing the way we played then is almost like comparing a different game,

I don't know how you managed to Judge the game against West Ham so well when the game against Arsenal started equally as badly with a far better result against a much better team?

You may be right about Borini needing more time, Sturridge trying too hard, but I think Joey is suffering from more than a return from injury, he is seriously out of form and needs a decent run of games to get it back.. a run we can little afford to give a player so out of form (imo) maybe today it will just click back? lets hope so.

I think Carlo is a bit obstinate with his formation but he knows it gets results and if he had an in form player who could play the tip of the Diamond properly I'm sure it would be getting results now, he is just short of that player at the moment,

Zhirkov I agree looks to me like he deserves more game time but I don't see him as often as the manager who has surely thought about starting him somewhere other than at LB if Ash is out.

I can't see why fans would be begging Mourinho to return, his time here was great but the players he had to choose from were basically the heart of the team we have now but in the prime of their careers, there is no guarantee they could be as good as they were then and even then we had started to go stale the way we did last season and this,

what the club needs to do is let a manager work through that stale spell and get the team winning again, let a manager stay long enough to work out the strengths of the team and get to know the players well enough that they play as a group and want to win for a man they know will be at the club for the foreseable future and not just until they have a few bad games and he gets sacked.

Lets hope the boys get back on track today and we can leave begging back the manager of a team we're gonna knock out of the CL until we lose a few more.

I think Joey is suffering from more than a return from injury, he is seriously out of form and needs a decent run of games to get it back

How about a few matches in the reserves? If Joe reacts to it in a good way, it should be the ideal solution. Then again, we don't really have an on form player to play at the tip of the diamond, so I suppose we're just gonna have to hope that Joe finds his form soon.

Yeah sorry just trying to be synical....in my observations and I see more games than my family in the UK, when they start with no tempo they tend to become lethargic for some reason and don't seem to have a player to drive them on and pick up the pace. I am watching Spurs V West Ham as I am writing this, Spurs are 1-0 up and playing with so much confidence and pace...albeit the Hammers have already used 2 subs with 20 minutes gone...I hope the team plays with some passion that has been sadly lacking since the Arsenal game...our pace down the wings is missing with most things going down the middle which is becoming far to crowded and Lamps gets crowded out more so now than the start of the season...as expected...but when Essien is not playing there seems to be no drive...I cannot understand why they insist in playing over paid players who are not performing and the youngsters are not getting a chance to play....this has been going on since RA bought the club...look at Utd and Arsenal...they invest in their future players playing one or two gradually...we can't give one more than 20 minutes it appears..where is the future? Overseas in foreign players our kids get to be loaned out......frustrating...what will happen over the next four weeks with the African players missing...the future has not had more than 90 minutes between them and we expect them to put the ball in the net and keep us at the top!

If Joe is going to the reserves then let's send half the the first team! They need some inspiration from somewhere sending Joe down is the only player with flair left in the team....the others are stale and running out of ideas at the 18 yard area..if the diamond isn't working there seems to be no plan B during the game.

I cannot understand why they insist in playing over paid players who are not performing and the youngsters are not getting a chance to play....this has been going on since RA bought the club...look at Utd and Arsenal

We weren't really giving the youth a chance during the last pre-Roman years either. We had an aging squad when Roman came and we desperately needed new blood to be brought in(which we did during that mad summer back in 2003). It hasn't helped us that we've had so many managers during the last few years and they're expected to start winning the games straight away, so it's no wonder the managers aren't too willing to take risks by playing the youngsters when we have experienced international players to choose instead of them. I'm not sure if the youngsters have been good enough in the previous seasons, but at the moment we're beginning to be in a situation where we have to start introducing the youngsters because some of our core players are quite old, which is not the ideal situation. We should give the youngsters matches because they're good enough, not because our squad is too old.

Arsenal isn't really a great example of how to handle the youngsters, because they haven't really won many trophies lately. You need a good mixture of youth and experience.

If Joe is going to the reserves then let's send half the the first team! They need some inspiration from somewhere sending Joe down is the only player with flair left in the team....the others are stale and running out of ideas at the 18 yard area..if the diamond isn't working there seems to be no plan B during the game.

Joe isn't really inspiring anyone at the moment with the way he's been playing. The one midfield player that seems to have ideas and energy to spare is Zhirkov, but for some reason he doesn't seem to fit into Ancelotti's plans. He's probably not the player to play at the tip of the diamond, though.

Not having someone capable of playing at the tip of the diamond is clearly a major problem which needs to be addressed (either through the transfer window or by scrapping the diamond) however it isn't the only problem we have with the diamond.

If we are to stick with the diamond then the other players in the team need to learn how to play it properly. Far too often we are ignoring the fact that we have a player at the tip of the diamond and bypassing them in the hope that going straight to Drogba will deliver results.

This makes it far easier for teams to defend against us as the player at the tip is not being given the opportunity to influence the game. So although we do have an issue that none of the three players we have tried at the tip are proving to be particularly good in the role I do have a degree of sympathy with them as I don't think the players around them are doing them any favours.

I see what you're saying Loz and although I hadn't mentioned it I had noticed it,

I have been as usual shouting at the TV every time we pass back to Cech and he aimlessly boots it up towards Drogba effectively wasting any build up or posession and mainly leading to Drogba either getting a knock down to nobody or ending up laying on the ground,

This was happening a lot in the Arsenal game and at one stage we had passed to the keeper 8 times before they did once..I looked a mug at the end when we had put three past them with no reply thankfully.

I think we looked better when Bos was bombing forward and although Ivan is a very good player in that position (usually MOM lately) I still think we miss him.

It's hard to fathom how Spurs picked up a player like Modric when at the time they did I would have thought we had a better player in Joe and was quite excited at the thought of Deco.

He would be nailed on for what we are missing so long as we didn't just hoof the ball over his head obviously.

I'm not happy that we are keeping on with the Diamond when we have hit a rough patch and would take a chance with Malouda/Zhirkov wide left and Joe/Kalou right to shake things up a bit but I just feel we need to have faith in the manager or we could easily have the normal seasonal manager out chants soon.

The whole idea of the transfer ban being behind this sounds far fetched but of course it's not the worst. We've always lifted under the siege mentality, which is one of the reasons why Jose was/has been so successful, he played the us against the world card. I don't think it's ridiculous to see that as a motivating point earlier in the year. That said I also agree with CFCCAN on one particular point and that is the lack of speed in our passing and movement. In the second half against Brum some guys were running there guts out I'm talking Ash and Lamps as well as Sturridge before he came off, especially when we were breaking quickly on the counter, but when we had sustained possession it was just so slow. We're just not moving it quick enough atm, and that could be just an Essien thing, because it was the same last year when he was injured during this period. Perhaps rather than someone at the tip of the diamond, we need someone similar to Essien who can provide that drive and impetus we are looking for. Not sure, my real hope is we spank Fulham 6-0 this evening and we can all be safe in the belief that we've all been worried over nothing.

Happens every year around this time ever since Jose left. I dont think the ban has anything to do with it.

Actually we were already doing the same in Jose's last year at the club. We had some terrible draws over the holiday period during Sheva's first season that effectively cost us the league when factored in at the end of the season. Notably a 2-2 draw against Reading at home and I think a 2-2 draw at Fulham.