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Posted

Cech 7/10 Didn't really have a chance with their goals. Made a couple of smart saves. Did the bread and butter stuff well.

Ivan 5/10 Sorry, when you tackle like that you give the ref the opportunity to send you off. Thought it was harsh but it was unnecessary and possibly a sign of being ring rusty. His sending off changed the game dramatically.

Cole 6/10 Not his best game. Did well on a couple of occasions but other times sloppy.

Luiz 5/10 Just didn't think he played well at all. An accident waiting to happen in my book. All a bit gung-ho. Needs to rediscover the discipline that served him so well under RDM last season.

Terry 7/10 The pick of the defence for me.

Mikel 2/10 I'm not really sure what he did to deserve 2. Maybe you tell me. He was absolutely appalling. Sadly, we have seen too much of this for too long. Not at the races at all. Was definitely their best player in the first-half, followed by the ref. He's obviously won a little bit of good will with his performances last season towards the end, but this was back to the old Mikel we know so well, and it is not good enough. It is not good enough for a Championship side. Our midfield could well be the cause of some problems this year, as we look unable to dominate the top sides, either through strength, energy or technique. Mikel does not look like he wants to be on the ball, and this was a major cause of our problems. I wouldn't mind this if he was a great destroyer, but he's not.

Rambo 7/10 Thought he was our best player. Not a great game. Assisted for the goal. Took a vital yellow for the team in the first-half, when they were on the break. His energy and drive would possibly have been better served in the middle of the park today.

Lamps 6/10 Quiet and ineffectual mainly. Tidy as usual but is it enough?

Torres 7/10 Took his goal well. Too often isolated in the first half, before the sending off, and obviously afterwards. Looked up for it, more than most of his teammates.

Mata 6/10 We need to get him on the ball more. In dangerous areas.

Hazard 6/10 He will be a player. I am sure of that. Couple of small glimpses today but didn't do much.

Subs ..

Bertrand 7/10 Scored his first goal for Chelsea. Do goals in the CS count? I know sendings-off do.

Sturridge 7/10 Looked lively.

The manager ..

RDM 6/10 Thought the first-half scoreline flattered us. City were clearly the better side. We could not get our creative players on the ball and Robbie seemed to lack the wit to change that. We didn't really dig in in the second-half but his substitutions worked well. Same formation as last season and the performance was more or less what we are used to, albeit the players do not look sharp, neither physically or mentally. He has a game-breaker in Hazard, which will hopefully give us a different dimension, with more unpredictability and cutting edge up front. However it looks like we're going to play exactly the same way, and with no Drogba, that puts a lot of onus on Hazard, together with Mata and Torres. The question is, can we get them on the ball, and can we give them the necessary support. He needs to look at that midfield two, in my opinion.



Posted
Mikel 2/10 I'm not really sure what he did to deserve 2. Maybe you tell me.

He made a solid run in the build up to Bertrand's goal. One of the few times today that he carried the ball forward with confidence and didn't immediately give it away.



Posted

Cech 7/10 Didn't really have a chance with their goals. Made a couple of smart saves. Did the bread and butter stuff well.

Ivan 5/10 Sorry, when you tackle like that you give the ref the opportunity to send you off. Thought it was harsh but it was unnecessary and possibly a sign of being ring rusty. His sending off changed the game dramatically.

Cole 6/10 Not his best game. Did well on a couple of occasions but other times sloppy.

Luiz 5/10 Just didn't think he played well at all. An accident waiting to happen in my book. All a bit gung-ho. Needs to rediscover the discipline that served him so well under RDM last season.

Terry 7/10 The pick of the defence for me.

Mikel 2/10 I'm not really sure what he did to deserve 2. Maybe you tell me. He was absolutely appalling. Sadly, we have seen too much of this for too long. Not at the races at all. Was definitely their best player in the first-half, followed by the ref. He's obviously won a little bit of good will with his performances last season towards the end, but this was back to the old Mikel we know so well, and it is not good enough. It is not good enough for a Championship side. Our midfield could well be the cause of some problems this year, as we look unable to dominate the top sides, either through strength, energy or technique. Mikel does not look like he wants to be on the ball, and this was a major cause of our problems. I wouldn't mind this if he was a great destroyer, but he's not.

Rambo 7/10 Thought he was our best player. Not a great game. Assisted for the goal. Took a vital yellow for the team in the first-half, when they were on the break. His energy and drive would possibly have been better served in the middle of the park today.

Lamps 6/10 Quiet and ineffectual mainly. Tidy as usual but is it enough?

Torres 7/10 Took his goal well. Too often isolated in the first half, before the sending off, and obviously afterwards. Looked up for it, more than most of his teammates.

Mata 6/10 We need to get him on the ball more. In dangerous areas.

Hazard 6/10 He will be a player. I am sure of that. Couple of small glimpses today but didn't do much.

Subs ..

Bertrand 7/10 Scored his first goal for Chelsea. Do goals in the CS count? I know sendings-off do.

Sturridge 7/10 Looked lively.

The manager ..

RDM 6/10 Thought the first-half scoreline flattered us. City were clearly the better side. We could not get our creative players on the ball and Robbie seemed to lack the wit to change that. We didn't really dig in in the second-half but his substitutions worked well. Same formation as last season and the performance was more or less what we are used to, albeit the players do not look sharp, neither physically or mentally. He has a game-breaker in Hazard, which will hopefully give us a different dimension, with more unpredictability and cutting edge up front. However it looks like we're going to play exactly the same way, and with no Drogba, that puts a lot of onus on Hazard, together with Mata and Torres. The question is, can we get them on the ball, and can we give them the necessary support. He needs to look at that midfield two, in my opinion.

Id agree with most of this bar Terry and Mikel. Terrys positional sense ,clearances and overall play from the back was def not up to his standards 7 is way off . He kept coming out of position leaving gaps for Tevez to run into. Mikel on the other hand had an off game but 2 I wouldnt go that far lol . He only stood out because he got caught in possesion in a dangerous area . Nearly every Chelsea outfield player was wastefull with the ball don't think anyone deserves a special mention.

Posted

Terry 7/10 The pick of the defence for me.

Agree with everything but this.

John was just as bad as Luiz, for the most part, even though for a different reason. He's got even slower and a new look Chelsea doesn't suit him, thus he's getting exposed regularly. The instincts are still there but the body doesn't react quickly enough. It obviously doesn't help when you have Mikel for a defensive mid, but JT is clearly struggling and I'm afraid it'll get worse.

Posted (edited)

Starters:

Cech 6/10 Felt he should've done better on Toure's goal. The other two weren't his fault. Victim of poor defending more than anything, but I can't award too many points for a performance in which he didn't really distinguish himself.

Ivan 2/10 Everybody's jumping on Mikel, but Ivanovic has gotten off far too easily for that stupid challenge. It might have been slightly harsh on the ref's part, but it's revealing when one has to use qualifiers about the game being a glorified friendly to try and defend the challenge. The ref was shocking today, but not for showing Ivan the red. He knows better. He let the team down.

Cole 6/10 Seemed to be on the verge of losing his head at times. A couple of solid challenges stand out in my mind, but was somewhat sloppy on the balance. Overall, probably our best defender, although that's more a result of everybody else being worse as opposed to him really distinguishing himself with his play,

Luiz 5/10 Wasn't awful, but definitely seemed to indulge his overly aggressive side. One incident in particular on the edge of the box was very risky and could have cost us. Like Cole, there are a few solid challenges that spring to mind and his passing wasn't poor, although he could have been more incisive.

Terry 5/10 Loses points for that botched clearance that led to a Citeh goal and for generally seemingly slow and exposed. A 5 might be slightly generous.

Mikel 2/10 He was pretty dire today. It's down to him and Ivanovic for the worst player on the pitch today. I'd lean towards Ivan as being the lesser of the two as his sending off had a greater negative impact on the game than Mikel's more numerous, but less critical, mistakes. To his credit, he kept possession and made a nice run forward in the build up to Bertrand's goal.

Rambo 7/10 He wasn't brilliant, but in a game where a lot of players went missing, he made a number of important contributions. Grabbed an assist, made a couple of solid tackles and twice put himself in harm's way to stop Citeh on the break. Made a case for himself as our best player today, although I'd lean towards giving the nod to Torres.

Lamps 5/10 Didn't do much for me today. No key mistakes but not much of an impact either.

Torres 7/10 Excellent strike on the goal. Wasted no time thinking about it, he took the chance brilliantly. Was threatening with his runs and looked quite lively. If the circumstances of the game were different, he might have bagged 2 or 3 but the service wasn't there. My man of the match.

Mata 5/10 Shouldn't have been on the pitch.. Even though he didn't play at the Olympics, I'd have liked to have seen him rested in a meaningless match. Fairly anonymous performance today but, to be fair, he needs the ball at his feet to make an impact and that didn't happen often enough.

Hazard 5/10 Looked somewhat lively in the early going, but tried to do too much at times and nothing was really coming off. Seemed to give an effort at coming back to tackle so I'll give him credit for that.

Subs:

Bertrand 7/10 Loved his goal. Pounced on the rebound instinctively and displayed excellent hustle. So much for a defensive substitute.

Sturridge 7/10 Played a key role in Bertrand's goal by blasting a hard shot at Lemon Pants/Frankenstein's Monster/insert derisory nickname for Citeh's mug of a keeper here.

Manager:

RDM 6/10 We looked flat for much of the game, but his substitutions were excellent. Some have suggested that he should have brought on Cahill and moved Luiz to fullback when Ivan was sent off, but I disagree. The Ramires to RB move worked brilliantly when Terry was sent off against Barcelona so I can't fault him for trying the same thing here. Luiz is not a fullback. Period. Full Stop. End scene. Beyond that, there's not much to analyze based off of one game. The team played poorly but I'm not sure there's much he could have done when the players were wasteful in possession and sloppy on defense. It wasn't a case of one player bringing down an otherwise solid performance. How we react to what we saw today will reflect far more strongly on Robbie than this one result.

Edited by That Boy Brandinho


Posted

Team plays bad - blame Mikel!

No one is actually blaming Mikel for the defeat. But 1-0 up and the going down to 10 men are exactly the circumstances when you need your DM to step up and earn his £. Unfortunately he had a shocker and our defence was left completly exposed - time and again.

Not soley his fault but he couldn't have played a lot worse than he did.



Posted

Well it seems many of you think Terry was just as culpable as our other defenders but for me he was the pick, admittedly of a pretty poor bunch. His pace and positional sense are being questioned but he has never had pace, it is his positioning in which he excels, and although yesterday wasn't his brightest game, it was clear to me that he was compensating for Luiz who went chasing the ball far too often and who generally was a bit erratic. The trouble you have is that, unless Luiz keeps his discipline, his centre-half partner has no idea what he's going to do, and that creates all sorts of problems, and this is what happened yesterday, and far too many times last season. Centre-back pairings are all about understanding, about working in tandem and I'm afraid Luiz was a liability yesterday. When you consider the performance of Mikel, which offered no protection at all, you can see that Terry had his work cut out. He didn't come out looking good but I think there were extenuating factors. He was the one holding it together as best he could, with a makeshift right-back for the most part.

One thing was clear yesterday. City targeted Mikel as our weak link. They pressed him every time he collected and as a consequence, he lost possession a lot, in dangerous areas, so much so that he became a liability, and as a result we started pumping it far longer than we would have planned. We know Torres is not Drogba. That wasn't the tactic but it became unavoidable sadly and Robbie needs to look at it and quick. Mikel needs a lot of time, he wants to play at his own pace, and he simply wasn't allowed to do that yesterday. City were sharp and hungry and they went after him and he couldn't cope, and having Lampard alongside him didn't help much because suddenly we had no-one in that position who was able to wriggle out of trouble and initiate attacks. For me, we looked slow and cumbersome in that department, with neither the destroying power nor the creative power to stamp our authority on the match.

Posted

...........................a variety of scores for players, some of which are OK-ish and some of which are just silly......................................

RDM 6/10 Thought the first-half scoreline flattered us. City were clearly the better side.

..................................some other stuff.......................................

This is where you go seriously off-piste in the downhill of knowledge. It might have looked like that on the telly, I don't know, but from the Doug Ellis stand the first half up until the dismissal was fairly even, and they looked no more likely to score than us. After that we were mostly three at the back and Ramires was trying to do two jobs at once, so Citeh took the obvious advantage of attacking down their left. Oh, and Mikel was nowhere near as bad as most of you are saying, and was sorely let down by the team when it became obvious that De Jong, Zaboleta and Toure had been given free rein to go off on a kick-fest by their "friend" in black. (About minute 2 by my reckoning) As they pressurised Mike very hard and very fast each time he was on the ball, some of the rest of the team should have been helping out. Just my view, really, but sometimes, perceived wisdom about any specific player isn't necessarily truem just because most people believe it. Just look at Camer-clegg.

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Posted

I'd agree with most of that tbh.

Mikel for me is not going to be the answer if we are to win thigns this season, we need a player with composure and who can release the ball under presure. Romeu was used last season and done very well, could he come back into contention?

Since Mikel has been at Chelsea I can count on my 2 hands how many times he has impressed me and a good few were towards the end of last season, it's not good enough imo. Midfield is going to be a battle this season with the better teams and we used to be masters in this area with Ballack, Lamps, Maka ect but these days it's becoming a real weakness.

Attacking wise we are one of the strongest in the division but is that going to be enough?

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Posted

It might have looked like that on the telly, I don't know, but from the Doug Ellis stand the first half up until the dismissal was fairly even, and they looked no more likely to score than us.

I would say we got more into it during the latter stages of the half but to me they looked sharper, stronger, hungrier, and their overall play was better. I felt our forward(s) was far more isolated than theirs, for the most part, whereas they were linking-up much better in our half, where most of the game was concentrated. We did have a chance, prior to us scoring, with Lampard shooting straight at the keeper, but I think to call it even-stevens is stretching it.

That was the view from my armchair anyway ..

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