26 minutes ago, JMaher94 said:

It's because of Mourinho.

He used to make such a big deal about being solid defensively. Selling KDB/Mata to accommodate a more defensive minded midfielder.

Kante played alongside Danny bloody Drinkwater last season in a two in midfield. Do we honestly believe that Drinkwater is that much better than Fabregas defensively? He is, but not by much. We are misusing Kante by playing him with Oscar and Matic and not players like Cesc.

What makes it worse is that Willian is also defensive minded. No wonder we struggle scoring goals when Hazard and Costa are our only attacking threats whereas you look at United, City, Liverpool and Arsenal who all have at least 3/4/5 on the pitch at one time whereas we have 2.

Football has evolved. Unless you're Diego Simeone who in my opinion is the best manager in the world for his style then I don't think it should be played.

Mourinho sets his teams up defensively but he can just say look at my trophy cabinet and it shows it works. Whether fans like it or not Mourinho and Simeone make it efficient and win trophies. So I don't blame Mourinho for all of it, I do blame Mourinho for not giving players a fair go like KDB, Cuadrado, Luis, Baba, Salah. However much fans rate these players they was never given a fair chance in my eyes.

Regarding Drinkwater I actually think he is very good player. Reminds me of Carrick and he was very underrated. I would actually take Drinkwater at Chelsea as his passing is excellent.

I fully agree with you. Look at Arsenal, Utd, City, Spurs, Liverpool and even Everton and they all don't need 4 defensive minded midfielders. Chelsea will always lack creativity with Oscar, Willian, Matic and Kante.

As a DM Kante is better than Fernandinho, Barry, Wanyama, Herrera, Henderson and Coquelin. I feel Chelsea can make it work but the manager needs to implement the changes and have some balls. 

He had a sh1t game, no doubt about it. He did nothing to relief the pressure when we tried to play the ball out, sometime he wasn't even in the picture. I'd like to see his heat map to find out where he was on the day, because I couldn't find him on my wide screen. I'm sure he got little reasons to be upset when he was taken off, but we got no one who could pass a ball once he's off.  Do I think he deserve another game this weekend? Definitely, probably over Matic as I don't see why we need Kante/Matic against a newly promoted team.

8 hours ago, JMaher94 said:

Mourinho has our fans thinking that the only way to win is to defend. Arsenal's midfield consisted of Coquelin and Cazorla. Cazorla is similar to Fabregas in the fact that's poor defensively. If Cazorla can survive in games against big teams then so can Fabregas.

Sums it up perfectly..

A better comparison would be city, fernandinho of all people? and as a lone defensive midfielder? not to mention players like silva, kdb and sterling in front of him? 

2 hours ago, bola said:

Sums it up perfectly..

A better comparison would be city, fernandinho of all people? and as a lone defensive midfielder? not to mention players like silva, kdb and sterling in front of him? 

I was just about to mention this. City play with just Fernandinho holding, something Kante can do to his level if not better. 

On 9/25/2016 at 11:46, the special one said:

Whether he's played in a 2 man midfield, 3 man midfield... for me it's irrelevant. Against top opposition like Arsenal there'll always be periods of the game when we need to defend collectively, in that situation Cesc just isn't up for it. He doesn't have the physique to impose himself and lacks natural aggression to 'get stuck in' without committing needless technical fouls. Fair play to Conte for giving him his chance but we may as well have played with ten men yesterday. In hindsight we missed Oscar's workrate, or perhaps Chalobah should have played as an extra DM.

I think Fabregas would be perfect in a 3-5-2 playing a similar role as Pirlo did in Juventus. He could be the one who dictates the play with Kante and Matic/Luiz backing him up defensively. He has the intelligence and ability to play that way. With Juventus it was Pirlo who played behind Marchisio and Vidal as a deep-lying playmaker while he was well in his 30's. 

 

Edited September 26, 20169 yr by dc19

Good to read in recent days that Jose has duped our fanbase into thinking there is only one approach to football and that he has ruined our chances for the next twenty years. It helps explain some things I didn't  understand before. 

 

 

Edited September 26, 20169 yr by g3.7

I think the reason why we have to play more defensive than most top teams, is because we have been set up to compensate for a lack of speed and mobility in defence. 

I wouldn't say this is Mourinho's fault, he is one of the best managers ever, and like all good managers, you have work with what you have, and hide your teams weaknesses. 

Our weaknesses were exposed badly last season, and it is very difficult to change the mentality of the players, when they know how vulnerable the team is. 

Hopefully zouma, and alonso can step up sooner rather than later, so we can start to build some confidence back in the defence, and maybe in a few months time, we will be more of a cohesive unit at both ends of the pitch.

One way to help out the defenders is to keep the ball better. Look at the way City play out of their area, or even f* Arsneal for that matter, they weren't too concerned being pressed high. Our players ( especially defenders and DMs) get panicked every time when opposition pressed hard on them. Now, instead of getting more defensive players who can't keep or pass a ball, how about 1 or 2 who could keep and use the ball. Cesc has that ability, of course he didn't help in the last game, but I'd cut him some slack considering how many chances Matic/Ivanovic/Oscar got.

Its hard for me to blame Cesc or Kante when Cahill and Ivan destroyed any chance we had in the first 15 minutes.

This squad was built and moulded by Jose and its a pile of horse dung. Talk about short term thinking.

Sometimes I get this incredibly powerful sensation of talking to a brick wall. 

33 minutes ago, g3.7 said:

Sometimes I get this incredibly powerful sensation of talking to a brick wall. 

you cant play all out attacking football with defenders who are slow as sh*t. If your gonna play like that you want your defenders to move up to the midway line the way germany played in the euros with their 2 CB on the halfway line the only players on their own half. Now imagine what would happen with Terry, Luiz, Ivanovic and Cahill. 

I'm going to be positive here and say that I think Luiz has been very good in his first few games for us this season, as has Dave, but they've really been let down by the other two chimps playing on the right hand side of them. Cahill needs to be dropped, Brana needs to be our 5th choice CB and 147th choice right back. With those two out of the team I think we could accommodate Fabregas, he's too good to be rotting on the bench when we're crying out for creativity, but we really aren't playing to his strengths by having a back 4 that watches snails do wheelies past them, it means he has to drop deeper and defend more, whereas if we had some pace at the back, we can play higher up the pitch meaning Cesc needn't cover as much ground. To be honest, with JT on his last legs, I'd like to see our backline line up like this in future, just so we can cope with life after Terry;    Dave - Zouma - Luiz - Alonso. Zouma is a physical specimen, assuming he comes back the same player, and hopefully Conte can help to drill out the youthful rashness in his game and mould him into a tactical defender to complement his physical assets, Luiz is quality on the ball, guilty of the odd lapse, but I think he gets unfairly scapegoated by people, If Luiz had f**ked up like Cahill has the last couple of games, he'd be absolutely slaughtered by the media, but much less has been said about Gary. We just need to evolve, we're stuck playing an older style of football that brought us success in the past but seem to be resisting the change to a more 'modern' style of play in favour of backs to the wall, last ditch defending and counter attack, which really doesn't suit the squad we have

1 hour ago, RMCM said:

I'm going to be positive here and say that I think Luiz has been very good in his first few games for us this season, as has Dave, but they've really been let down by the other two chimps playing on the right hand side of them. Cahill needs to be dropped, Brana needs to be our 5th choice CB and 147th choice right back. With those two out of the team I think we could accommodate Fabregas, he's too good to be rotting on the bench when we're crying out for creativity, but we really aren't playing to his strengths by having a back 4 that watches snails do wheelies past them, it means he has to drop deeper and defend more, whereas if we had some pace at the back, we can play higher up the pitch meaning Cesc needn't cover as much ground. To be honest, with JT on his last legs, I'd like to see our backline line up like this in future, just so we can cope with life after Terry;    Dave - Zouma - Luiz - Alonso. Zouma is a physical specimen, assuming he comes back the same player, and hopefully Conte can help to drill out the youthful rashness in his game and mould him into a tactical defender to complement his physical assets, Luiz is quality on the ball, guilty of the odd lapse, but I think he gets unfairly scapegoated by people, If Luiz had f**ked up like Cahill has the last couple of games, he'd be absolutely slaughtered by the media, but much less has been said about Gary. We just need to evolve, we're stuck playing an older style of football that brought us success in the past but seem to be resisting the change to a more 'modern' style of play in favour of backs to the wall, last ditch defending and counter attack, which really doesn't suit the squad we have

Not sure which Azpi you have been watching.

23 hours ago, big blue said:

I think the reason why we have to play more defensive than most top teams, is because we have been set up to compensate for a lack of speed and mobility in defence. 

I wouldn't say this is Mourinho's fault, he is one of the best managers ever, and like all good managers, you have work with what you have, and hide your teams weaknesses. 

Our weaknesses were exposed badly last season, and it is very difficult to change the mentality of the players, when they know how vulnerable the team is. 

Hopefully zouma, and alonso can step up sooner rather than later, so we can start to build some confidence back in the defence, and maybe in a few months time, we will be more of a cohesive unit at both ends of the pitch.

 

having a defence that you need to protect?  I have no idea how can you give him credit for 'hiding' the weakness while the most logical thing to do is to get rid of the weakness..

2 hours ago, didierforever said:

Not sure which Azpi you have been watching.

I think it's the one who plays for us. Not certain though

Just now, RMCM said:

I think it's the one who plays for us. Not certain though

Not a big fan of Luiz, but I would agree with you, but Azpi has been as bad as Iva/GC. Watch him in the 3rd goal we conceded. and even worse was his performance as a RB. his one goal in leaguecup should not change how sh*t he has veen overall. 

4 hours ago, dc19 said:

you cant play all out attacking football with defenders who are slow as sh*t. If your gonna play like that you want your defenders to move up to the midway line the way germany played in the euros with their 2 CB on the halfway line the only players on their own half. Now imagine what would happen with Terry, Luiz, Ivanovic and Cahill. 

I don't know what the relationship between what you've quoted and this response is. 

I also don't understand the term "all out attacking football" and don't know what that would look like. Is it how Germany played at the euros? 

4 minutes ago, g3.7 said:

I also don't understand the term "all out attacking football" and don't know what that would look like.

Currently without a club if I'm not mistaken

21 minutes ago, g3.7 said:

I also don't understand the term "all out attacking football" and don't know what that would look like. 

When you see two goalkeepers in the same penalty area.

4 minutes ago, coco said:

When you see two goalkeepers in the same penalty area.

Chamberlain and Szczesny?

30 minutes ago, g3.7 said:

I don't know what the relationship between what you've quoted and this response is. 

I also don't understand the term "all out attacking football" and don't know what that would look like. Is it how Germany played at the euros? 

Well i assume it means playing the way most top teams are playing these days. 

Both fullbacks pushing up high and wide allowing the wingers to tuck inside and roam into pockets of space (overloading the central areas), having CM's behind the ball that can pick a pass and be creative on the ball, having CB's that are able to play out from the back and play a high line.

 

1 hour ago, didierforever said:

Not a big fan of Luiz, but I would agree with you, but Azpi has been as bad as Iva/GC. Watch him in the 3rd goal we conceded. and even worse was his performance as a RB. his one goal in leaguecup should not change how sh*t he has veen overall. 

He's not been his usual self, but have a word.

 

As bad as Ivan or Cahill? You're surely at the wind up with that?

 

I think Dave has been fine, naturally a 2 man defence carrying two sacks of potatoes instead of a right centre half and right back won't look great.

1 hour ago, EdinburghBlue said:

He's not been his usual self, but have a word.

 

As bad as Ivan or Cahill? You're surely at the wind up with that?

 

Fair enough. But if the only criteria of being "poor" these days is being as bad as Ivan/GC then we might as well call ourselves a mid-table club and call it a day.

1 hour ago, Hazard10 said:

Well i assume it means playing the way most top teams are playing these days. 

Both fullbacks pushing up high and wide allowing the wingers to tuck inside and roam into pockets of space (overloading the central areas), having CM's behind the ball that can pick a pass and be creative on the ball, having CB's that are able to play out from the back and play a high line.

 

I appreciate the answer but I don't agree that most top teams play in any one specific way.  At least it doesn't appear to be the case to me. 

Also that description could equally be used to describe a team set up to play defensive football. Although I'm not completely sure what that means either.