I don’t think I hate anyone now as much I hate Roberto Martinez. I’m Watching hazard against Bosnia on a shocking pitch in a completely meaningless game and hoping he ends without any injuries. Fellaini has already suffered a knee injury from game and looks like might be out for some time. 

  

and of course fukaku was left out of the squad for minor ankle problem

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Edited October 7, 20178 yr by mojo

The state of the pitch is shocking. What in the world......how can you play footie on that? Atrocious and hope none of our boys got injured or anything. 

One of Hazards biggest problems is simply that he is Eden Hazard! Most teams know at the moment that one step to stopping Chelsea play is to stop Hazard playing. If you do that effectively then you have a great chance of getting a result against us. To counter this you need other players to take up the slack left by teams marking Hazard out of the game, which simply isn't happening at the moment. Morata goes so far in giving us another target man, but when he's out of the team no-one else steps up. City are by far the best example this year in how to deal with this problem, by having so many talented players in midfield and up front, there is no way you can target one player to affect how they play. If you mark Jesus, Silva will be left free to do his bit. Mark Silva? Well Aguero will just smash 2 past you instead! 

 

So what's the answer? I think it's obvious what we do depending on what your expectations are. But I'll let you answer that yourselves. 

We've never really had another world class player there to take the load off Hazard for an entire season whilst he's been at the club. Shame, Hazard really does deserve better. In City's team he'd be battling for that Balon D'or.

46 minutes ago, RIP Mourinho said:

We've never really had another world class player there to take the load off Hazard for an entire season whilst he's been at the club. Shame, Hazard really does deserve better. In City's team he'd be battling for that Balon D'or.

Which is why I believe he will end up leaving us soon. Probably end up at Real Madrid. Good luck to him, it's his life and he aloud to live it how he wishes. However, the club needs to decide on what it wants to be! Is Chelsea aiming to be in the top tier of elite clubs? In which case the boards need to start chasing the top tier players, regardless of cost. Is the club aiming to be self sufficient? That will only happen if the club is challenging on a regular basis for top biggest trophy's. Otherwise cash revenues start to dry up. The club might also want to start bringing through some of the amazing youth products that we have been producing other the past few years. But are the fans and the board ready to be patient and forgo winning the league and maybe not making the Champions League for a while?

1 hour ago, xXRuufioXx said:

One of Hazards biggest problems is simply that he is Eden Hazard! Most teams know at the moment that one step to stopping Chelsea play is to stop Hazard playing. If you do that effectively then you have a great chance of getting a result against us. To counter this you need other players to take up the slack left by teams marking Hazard out of the game, which simply isn't happening at the moment. Morata goes so far in giving us another target man, but when he's out of the team no-one else steps up. City are by far the best example this year in how to deal with this problem, by having so many talented players in midfield and up front, there is no way you can target one player to affect how they play. If you mark Jesus, Silva will be left free to do his bit. Mark Silva? Well Aguero will just smash 2 past you instead! 

 

So what's the answer? I think it's obvious what we do depending on what your expectations are. But I'll let you answer that yourselves. 

agree with a lot of this. It might be an unpopular opinion, but I think hazard was more exciting when had mata and Oscar with him. His numbers might not have been as good that season, but he played with alot of freedom. 

Moving from 4231 to 343, we are losing an attacker, so the front 3 have to be absolutely top drawer, or we can look a little blunt going forward. This is especially the case when fabregas isn't in the 2, which is probably going to be the way forward. 

Pedro was outstanding last season as well, but I think we need more quality in attack. We weren't really linked with any high calibre attackers in the summer which was disappointing. Everyone would love to see hazard, morata, and either greizmann or dybala, but I don't really see us being able to bring either player in. Maybe lemar, or werner, would be a good shout, but even those 2 would cost an absolute bomb. 

Hopefully hazard and morata can stay fit, because the 352 against Atlético was a great perfomance, and is maybe the route we will take when everyone is fit. 

2 hours ago, RIP Mourinho said:

We've never really had another world class player there to take the load off Hazard for an entire season whilst he's been at the club. Shame, Hazard really does deserve better. In City's team he'd be battling for that Balon D'or.

This. We have never went the extra mile to add another player of similar talent since we signed Eden. We have brought in the likes of Willian and Pedro who are good players but they are not at the level of the very best. We have had talents like De Bruyne but we let them go and develop into better players than we now currently have. 

With the new stadium and the seemingly lack of ambition from our board it looks increasingly likely Eden will be as good as it gets in terms of the level of footballer we bring in for the forceable. Hopefully we keep him because you take him out and we look a pretty average side compared to the top teams in Europe. 

Love Hazard. He is our Talisman and as we all know, on his day he is up there with the very best in the world. Without him we look average.

But he does still frustrate me at times. He came back from injury and looked on fire but then you see him play how he did against Palace and think Why? I know just about everyone had an off game that day but he IS our Star man and whilst Zaha and Townsend were causing havoc for Palace, Eden went missing and I'm sorry, when you're on the kind of big bucks he's on a week, it ain't good enough. We are too dependent on him and oh to still have the option of someone like De Bruyne (but lets not go back to that topic), but as our number one asset we need Eden to be more consistent.

I can't see it happening, but I would love us to go all out for Sanchez in January window. We could offload Willian and Batshuayi as Sanchez would be more useful than the two of them and some and looking at City, why in the f**k would they need him - that's just being downright greedy!

  

8 minutes ago, Nibs said:

Love Hazard. He is our Talisman and as we all know, on his day he is up there with the very best in the world. Without him we look average.

But he does still frustrate me at times. He came back from injury and looked on fire but then you see him play how he did against Palace and think Why? I know just about everyone had an off game that day but he IS our Star man and whilst Zaha and Townsend were causing havoc for Palace, Eden went missing and I'm sorry, when you're on the kind of big bucks he's on a week, it ain't good enough. We are too dependent on him and oh to still have the option of someone like De Bruyne (but lets not go back to that topic), but as our number one asset we need Eden to be more consistent.

I can't see it happening, but I would love us to go all out for Sanchez in January window. We could offload Willian and Batshuayi as Sanchez would be more useful than the two of them and some and looking at City, why in the f**k would they need him - that's just being downright greedy!

  

I think the answer to that (BIB) is obvious, they have the ambition to be the best club in the world! How do you achieve that? By having the best players in the world. And by having the best back up players for those best players in the world. Now the reasons for Sanchez wanting to go to City...... Money and trophy's! With him there I'm sure they will achieve at least the league and come very close to the Champions League. And they will pay him handsomely for it too!

12 minutes ago, Nibs said:

Love Hazard. He is our Talisman and as we all know, on his day he is up there with the very best in the world. Without him we look average.

But he does still frustrate me at times. He came back from injury and looked on fire but then you see him play how he did against Palace and think Why? I know just about everyone had an off game that day but he IS our Star man and whilst Zaha and Townsend were causing havoc for Palace, Eden went missing and I'm sorry, when you're on the kind of big bucks he's on a week, it ain't good enough. We are too dependent on him and oh to still have the option of someone like De Bruyne (but lets not go back to that topic), but as our number one asset we need Eden to be more consistent.

I can't see it happening, but I would love us to go all out for Sanchez in January window. We could offload Willian and Batshuayi as Sanchez would be more useful than the two of them and some and looking at City, why in the f**k would they need him - that's just being downright greedy!

Agree with the Sanchez comment. That would leave us with ST options of Morata and Sanchez and wing options of Hazard and Sanchez with Pedro and Musonda ready when needed. - One can dream, aye.

I think there's more chance of Hazard joining Sanchez at City next season than of Sanchez joining Hazard at the Bridge. I do worry that Hazard himself will look to move this summer. I just think that we don't display the ambition as a club that will keep him here much longer when you've got the two huge Spanish giants and the incredible wealth and ambition of Abu Dhabi and Qatar in Manchester and Paris respectively.

Can't really fault the club's ambition.  We've sort trophies almost every other year and delivered as much.  We're a team and although I'm not saying having a Sanchez or another player of the same ilk as Hazard wouldn't be awesome, I don't think that means automatic success.

Man City don't even look like Man City and it's not even a given that they will win. Anything.

 

I can't argue with that, in the Roman era there has been ambition and it has been well rewarded. I guess I was just trying to put myself in the position of a young Belgian footballer who knows he's talented and knows that team and individual success and even greater financial rewards can be gained elsewhere. And of course, we are ambitious, but it's probably fair to say that whilst we are one of the wealthiest clubs in the world, we cannot now compete with the four sides I mentioned before.

Regarding City, it's a bit like throwing sh*t. If you throw enough, eventually some will stick. So if they keep spending on top class players, eventually they'll get it right and start winning things. I'd say so far, they are well under trophied for what they've spent, but I think in the last 12/18 months they've been spending bigger and better than before. I really just cannot see how they don't win the league this season.

They'll never get Hazard though, or at least unless he spends a season somewhere else in between.

people sh*t on spurs, but they've come a long way without having to spend big money like us, city or utd have. it shows you don't have to spend large sums to get anywhere, but trust in young players and buy players of high quality whom have high ceilings. we unfortunately hit and miss a lot with signings, when they come off it's fantastic, when it doesn't people harp on about how our board are incompetent and have lack of ambition. i believe our youth system is going to yield some top players in 2-3 years, especially the under 17's and i am excited for the future as along with new stadium, i feel positive we'll start bringing through more young players. 

Edited October 18, 20178 yr by enigma

14 minutes ago, enigma said:

people sh*t on spurs, but they've come a long way without having to spend big money like us, city or utd have. it shows you don't have to spend large sums to get anywhere, but trust in young players and buy players of high quality whom have high ceilings. we unfortunately hit and miss a lot with signings, when they come off it's fantastic, when it doesn't people harp on about how our board are incompetent and have lack of ambition. i believe our youth system is going to yield some top players in 2-3 years, especially the under 17's and i am excited for the future as along with new stadium, i feel positive we'll start bringing through more young players. 

I totally agree with you re: spurs, proves that faith in youth and quality, high ceiling young players bought in. I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here regarding our own youth though; we've been winning everything at youth level for around a decade now, but what has the senior team yielded from it? Very little, a few benchwarmers and some tidy profits. What is it that makes you think we can now start integrating players into the first team that has been absent for the past number of years? And are we, as fans ready to accept an inevitable marginal decline in the number of trophies we win for a few seasons as we do attempt to integrate these young players? (Not trying to argue or anything, just interested in your opinion)

44 minutes ago, RMCM said:

I totally agree with you re: spurs, proves that faith in youth and quality, high ceiling young players bought in. I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here regarding our own youth though; we've been winning everything at youth level for around a decade now, but what has the senior team yielded from it? Very little, a few benchwarmers and some tidy profits. What is it that makes you think we can now start integrating players into the first team that has been absent for the past number of years? And are we, as fans ready to accept an inevitable marginal decline in the number of trophies we win for a few seasons as we do attempt to integrate these young players? (Not trying to argue or anything, just interested in your opinion)

There may not have been youth players in the first team through the years of success however I think the overall success of the club has had a profound effect on the youth and vice versa, our senior players get pushed hard by our own products coming through and I think (all from chelsea TV) there is a great connection between the youth and senior players WITHOUT having them necessarily in the first team.

We are a winning club.  We might not look as pretty as the girl next door, we might not spend as much on shiny things like the popular girl, we might not even have youth on our side like the up and coming girl, but we win.

We count on you tonight Eden !!! This is the perfect game for launch his season and score for Chelsea 

15 hours ago, Van Butsen said:

Can't really fault the club's ambition.  We've sort trophies almost every other year and delivered as much.  We're a team and although I'm not saying having a Sanchez or another player of the same ilk as Hazard wouldn't be awesome, I don't think that means automatic success.

Man City don't even look like Man City and it's not even a given that they will win. Anything.

 

What does that even mean?!!!

I'm totally agree, our system works well, because each years we win, except in 15/17, but i think that for to have a good team, no need to spend an awful lot money, just have a good headcoach, and good players. We have a good players and we have a good headcoach. Our youngs (Abraham, Christensen, RLC) have lot of talent, and i think that in the next years we will see more youngs play for us. 

2 hours ago, Nibs said:

What does that even mean?!!!

They don't look like the club that I grew up knowing.  They don't really have an identity.  They just look like a team compiled on FIFA.

30 minutes ago, Van Butsen said:

They don't look like the club that I grew up knowing.  They don't really have an identity.  They just look like a team compiled on FIFA.

I'd say they're one of the only teams in the league that do have an identity. They're known for going out and attacking teams and playing beautiful football, that certainly is an identity. Its teams like us and Utd that don't really have a specific 'identity'. 

26 minutes ago, Van Butsen said:

They don't look like the club that I grew up knowing.  They don't really have an identity.  They just look like a team compiled on FIFA.

I get what you're saying, but many label City and ourselves the same - until the foreign money came in we were a million miles away from winning the league.

City have just done what we did when Roman took over back in 2003. They have spent sh*t loads of money on quality players and got a manager they are confident will win them trophies. Of course the way the market has gone means that players are now in region of £100m rather than the smaller millions we spent on the likes of Crespo, Veron, Duff, Robben etc but City have no more lost their identity than any other club striving to be successful in football today. And it's great - it's what annoys Liverpool and Arsenal fans all the more!

 

49 minutes ago, Van Butsen said:

They don't look like the club that I grew up knowing.  They don't really have an identity.  They just look like a team compiled on FIFA.

Only Aguero stands out to me as a real 'City' player, without Kompany playing they really don't have character. That said they're absolutely crushing teams, so if i were a city fan I wouldnt be complaining