It is as simple as that. We are no longer feared or respected by teams, especially the smaller sides. They come to SB and show no respect or fear and have a go at us. We used to be a feared team under Jose in his first stint here, mostly due to the players we had and the football we played, but now we have too many lightweights in the side and players without fight, hunger or desire. It seems that even the old guard have lost their passion, even Ivanovic and Terry when compared to a couple seasons ago. We have also lost the physically strong players we once had and replaced them with weak players.

 

On paper we should be fearful with the likes of Costa, Falcao, Hazard, Pedro, Fabregas, Oscar etc as our attacking options, but we are just not being given that respect and fear because we are too timid in both attack and defence. It is crazy how such an attacking team like Man City can have a better defensive record than a team like us who, last season and the season before were known for our defensive solidity. I can only put it down to the fact that like Barcelona, Real and Bayern, City have so much attacking prowess that teams are too fearful to actually go for it with intent against them, whereas against us they know they can just cut off hazard and costa's contributions and we are toothless in offense. 

 

What do you guys think, are we just not a side to be feared any more? 

Edited August 30, 20159 yr by enigma

Cue the abuse for my non-blue tinted glasses view, but honestly I think we were very lucky to win the league last year. We started brilliantly, but since Feburary we've been awful. We got lucky with some games, and with our rivals dropping points left right and centre. People here kept saying we were just doing what we needed to do, to see things out, but you don't make a conscious decision half way through a season to go from playing well to playing sh*t. What we are seeing now is a continuation of that form, but without any of the luck.

 

I also think we overrate a lot of our players.

 

Costa for example, had a great season last year in the league, but unless the ball drops to him in the box, he's really not very good at hold up play or linking up with teammates, all he seems interested in doing every game is picking fights and arguing with people. Compare him to someone like Augero who can score a goal out of nothing and rip defences to shreds, he's well behind. It will be interesting to see if Falcao can recover any of his old form, because peak Falcao is head and shoulders above peak Costa.

 

Willian is another example, although quite a lot of people are on the fence about him. I'm sure we can all see he's a tidy player, he's good at keeping the ball, good at quick, one-touch passing, but when you are in desperate need of a goal, he's pretty much the last player on the pitch you want the ball falling to. We've been saying for 3 years he needs to improve his final product, but it doesn't look like it's ever going to. And whilst he brings things to the team, like workrate, pace and covering his fullback (sometimes), ask yourself honestly if he'd get into the starting line up for a Man City, or even an Arsenal. I don't think he would. Certainly not a top side like Real or Barcelona. He'd be lucky to make the bench there, and that is the sort of club we are aiming to be isn't it?

 

And of course there are players like Ivanovic, Matic, Fabregas, Hazard, etc... who are just having a woeful time of it at the moment, though we know they can do much more.

 

What does it all come down to? Well, for me the blame has to rest with Jose. He ran these players into the ground last season with very little rotation. You could see as games went by how tired they were becoming, the prime example being that 2-2 draw with PSG. They were there for the taking and our players could barely run. This has created a situation where our "untouchables" as he likes to call them, know they are starting every week, regardless of how they are playing. Which means they don't have to keep pushing themselves to be better every week to make sure they get a place in the team. And our preparations this season were awful and clearly haven't helped. Going on a post-season tour, when the players were in desperate need of a rest, and then having barely a couple of weeks between starting pre-season and starting the season.

 

I also think the system we play isn't helping. We have 2 sitting midfielders, but only 1 of them does any real defensive work. Yesterday there were many examples where a simple switch of the play by Crystal Palace left them with acres of space in the middle, with Matic and Fabregas both nowhere to be seen. If we had 1 person sitting there, like we had with Makelele, knowing that is their only job, I think we'd do better with that shield, but with 2, they can pass responsibility onto the other and there always seems to be space outside our box to shoot. And I'm not even going to go into how bad Ivanovic is right now, because it's clear for all to see that he is targeted every game for a reason.

 

 

As they say though, the best form of defence is attack. That's why City have conceded 0 goals so far, that's why Man Utd always used to have one of the best defences when they kept winning the league, even when their personnel weren't the best, and Barcelona had a good defensive record despite again having not that great defenders. Because whilst you are causing havoc for the opposition defence and scaring the sh*t out of them, they aren't going to score. And we simply don't have that great an attacking force at the moment when compared to some of the other clubs we are competing with. Have a look back at the 0-3 defeat to City. From the opening second, they were ruthless, streaming forward at us with pace and determination and nearly scored inside 16 seconds I seem to recall. We are SO SLOW when it comes to attacking, we just f**k around passing it back and forth, side to side, probing for openings and 9 times out of 10 we lose the ball. It's easy to defend against, all you need to do is get players behind the ball and wait for one of our little passes to mess up and the opposition can counter attack. Back when we had the likes of Duff and Robben and Cole, we used to be like that, their pace and directness caused so many problems for teams, but all our attacking players now seem to want to stop and cut inside, pass it around a few hundred times before doing anything meaningful, which just gives the opposition time to get everyone behind the ball.

 

So there are a lot of problems really, which because we managed to hold onto the league last year were papered over as "doing what we needed to do". But quite what (if anything) Jose will do to address any of them, I have no idea.

For the latter half of last season we'd score a goal then try to shut up shop, so teams had no reason to be scared of conceding more goals. Teams aren't scared of coming at good teams (and we were a very good team last season), they are scared of coming at good teams that will attempt to embarrass them if they throw bodies forward. City are an example of this and Arsenal are too. Not that Arsenal are a better team than us (far from it), but the way Arsenal play other teams know they'll continue to come at them. Of course this sometimes results in Arsenal getting done.

I want to believe that this form will end in our next game against Everton. We need kind of motivation from inside, in my opinion this is a psychological problem. Last year even if we played bad, we had players like Hazard who could us bring back, Fabregas who was an engine for Costa. We were really dangerous, we showed good football, especially good attacking football until we turned into a defensive team to defend the title. At the moment, we don't have someone who will change the game for us. Unfortunately Hazard is not in form and it really hurts us, we need him always in a form. 

 

If you look at the teams like Man City, their key players are doing an awesome job. David Silva is always in the game, creates chances, always active, same as Yaya Toure and Fernandinho. Bayern Munich like always, making Bundesliga look easy, their key players are in awesome form and especially their new player (Douglas Costa) who does only good for them. 

 

I'm not saying we should buy new players. I trust in our current squad who won us the title last year, but few changes immediately must happen. We've bought Baba Rahman not to sit on bench, he was the best left-back in Bundesliga with most tackles, now when we have a player that doesn't play well, we must make a change, even if he's Jose's favorite. Also, we have to play our youth more, we have players like RLC, Chalobah, Traore, Kenedy, who can surprise and do a good job, why not to give them a chance? In overall I think this form is temporary, Jose knows what he does and we will see an improvement soon. All I want to see is changes with players like Ivanovic, Fabregas, Willian who really don't deserve to play in the first team right now.

Edited August 30, 20159 yr by IliyaKrostin

People being so negative! We will be okay. We are just going through a blip and things will get better for us. No team playing brilliant at the moment, especially not Arsenal or Manchester Utd or Liverpool. All the fellow Chelsea fans need to be patient and relax because we will still be top in the league and win the CL We should be positive as we have amazing players and manager to pull us through. Barcelona started last season poorly and everyone said Messi was coming to Chelsea and Barca were in turmoil, but they went and won the league anyway. Keep faith!   

All teams suffer dips in form,at the moment its our turn,deal with it.We are 4 games into the season ffs.UP THE BLUES!

I agree with most of what Zeta said really, I've stated a number of times that last season were pretty lucky that all of the other challengers were rubbish, we were riding our luck in most of the games and since February Hazard dragged us to the title. Jose now seems to realise that we need a change and I hope that he goes through with the wholesale changes.

Agree with enigma, we're young new team compare to the above, that played very well last season, it's Jose briliant

 

 

However the main reason are the amount of hard fouls against us, (which we need to keep record)

 

Per 30 Aug (4 games)

 

(A) A clear foul (inside penalty box/counter attack) for us denied (3x in four games)

- Fernandinho (Man City) for the elbow on Diego

- Fernandinho (Man City) for the block on Fabregas as he was breaking from out penalty area 

- (Crystal Palace) Zouma jumped for the ball and could head it but his shirt was pulled evidently

 

(B) A clear penalty for us denied (1x in four games)

- Zouma vs Crystal Palace

 

© Soft penalty against us (1x in four games)

- Tibo vs Swansea

 

(D) Soft red card against us (2x in four games)

- Tibo vs Swansea

- JT vs West Brom

Edited August 30, 20159 yr by Diego Costa

Agree with enigma, we're young new team compare to the above, that played at the very best last season, it's Jose briliant

 

 

However the main reason are the amount of hard fouls agains us, (which we need to keep record)

 

Per 30 Aug (4 games)

 

(A) A clear foul (inside penalty box/counter attack) for us denied (3x in four games)

- Fernandinho (Man City) for the elbow on Diego

- Fernandinho (Man City) for the block on Fabregas as he was breaking from out penalty area 

- (Crystal Palace) Zouma jumped for the ball and could head it but his shirt was pulled evidently

 

(B) A clear penalty for us denied (1x in four games)

- Zouma vs Crystal Palace

 

© Soft penalty against us (1x in four games)

- Tibo vs Swansea

 

(D) Soft red card against us (2x in four games)

- Tibo vs Swansea

- JT vs West Brom

The fact you feel victimized by so many correct decisions and innocuous challenges leads me to believe you might actually be Diego Costa.

(I do love me some Diego though)

Agree with enigma, we're young new team compare to the above, that played at the very best last season, it's Jose briliant

However the main reason are the amount of hard fouls agains us, (which we need to keep record)

Per 30 Aug (4 games)

(A) A clear foul (inside penalty box/counter attack) for us denied (3x in four games)

- Fernandinho (Man City) for the elbow on Diego

- Fernandinho (Man City) for the block on Fabregas as he was breaking from out penalty area

- (Crystal Palace) Zouma jumped for the ball and could head it but his shirt was pulled evidently

(B) A clear penalty for us denied (1x in four games)

- Zouma vs Crystal Palace

© Soft penalty against us (1x in four games)

- Tibo vs Swansea

(D) Soft red card against us (2x in four games)

- Tibo vs Swansea

- JT vs West Brom

Get over it. What's your excuse for the sh*t defending

Edited August 30, 20159 yr by bluegraham

don't get me wrong, i still think we'll finish at least 2nd place in the league. the other rivals (barring city) are in a similar situation. of course things will improve, but we just need some consistency from our best players. 

It's not even September yet, FGS!  There's a long way to go, before getting despondent!

I don't think we were lucky to win the league, we were the best team in the league and deserved to win it. That said, I do acknowledge that City should really have caught us up and made it more difficult for us.

Some good points here. At least when you have problems you are obliged to address them. The international break is coming at a good time. And of course, when we pull out of this slump we will appreciate it all the more, which will be a nice change. Let's get that fighting spirit going!

I don't think we were lucky to win the league, we were the best team in the league and deserved to win it. That said, I do acknowledge that City should really have caught us up and made it more difficult for us.

Agree with this.

There is a big difference between being lucky, and being the best of bad bunch. Which on reflection the premier league was last year - just look at the CL performances. Would we have won the league last year had City been better? Maybe, maybe not.

This year, teams are playing us as the Champions, we are there to be shot at, and teams are having a go. They are also exploiting weaknesses. Add to that our players aren't on great form, so we are dropping points to lesser teams.

I'd like to add there is so much TV money in this league now, the pushover wins just aren't there anymore.

yeah i don't agree we didn't deserve the league. can we say the same if city win it this year? we can all say we started the season poorly and we should have done better to challenge city. we were clearly the most consistent team over the season. you could probably say the same with every team that wins the league, the other teams always making it less of a challenge by dropping points. we should have won the league season before last, but city won it due to us losing points against teams we shouldn't have, liverpool should have won it but lost to us at home and drew to palace away - see, it can be said for any time a team loses the league to a rival. 

Edited August 30, 20159 yr by enigma

It's not even September yet, FGS!  There's a long way to go, before getting despondent

 

absolutely! i just feel the maybe the smaller teams aren't coming to SB with respect. weirdly, i find we perform better away from home which shouldn't be the case at all. 

I may be completely wrong, but it seems like we don't even work on our attacking play in training. Whilst we might not reach Barca-esque levels of passing and ball retention, it puzzles me why with the personnel we have that we don't attack with the same potency that Real/PSG and others do.

Seems to me Jose has reneged on his belief that if you can't win, you do not lose.

There are still 34 games left and as much as I admire everyone's enthusiasm to turn this ship around it isn't going to happen overnight.   Regardless of whether City go into a season slump or not; if they continue to steamroll over teams as we did at the start of last season, while we continue to try and put things right ,and that maybe another 5 or 6 games, they will be long gone over the horizon, slump or no slump leaving our best hope of picking up a CL spot, which we cannot afford to lose.

 

If we can all see all the problems I am sure Jose can too and it is his job to put things right; getting the players ready mentally and tactically.  Maybe the loss to Palace was a wake up call to him that he cannot rely on the 'old guard' any longer.   There is no doubt that the competition for places is not that strong as our bench looks decidedly weaker than City's, and they are only getting stronger; their only problem will be keeping the players happy and going deep into the CL.

 

I am sure we could spend all day debating what's wrong with the team and how it should be fixed, however the only people that can control the situation is the Manager / Coaches and players.  With the world class players we have in this team we should not be languishing in the bottom half of the table with 4 points from 4 games given the opposition that we have played against so far, hardly a tough start to the season...on paper at least.   I am afraid we will see more of the same for several weeks to come but once we string two or three good wins together then the ship will be back on course and hopefully we can start climbing the table.  However, the longer the slump goes on the bigger question will be whether or not the owner and the Board will want to continue with the Manager.   We are not there yet, but if it looks like we are going to miss a CL spot the financial loss to the club will be hard to take and no doubt the axe will be swung. 

I may be completely wrong, but it seems like we don't even work on our attacking play in training. Whilst we might not reach Barca-esque levels of passing and ball retention, it puzzles me why with the personnel we have that we don't attack with the same potency that Real/PSG and others do.

 

It's been interesting watching the new players come in and show more threat in attack than the rest of our offence. Pedro and Kenedy are more interested in going forward, passing forward, looking forward even, then you get the likes of Fabergas and Willian who have a quick look forward then 9 times out of ten go sideways or backwards, but they never try to beat a player with the ball at feet. Hazard (who does like to beat players) has been our only threat in midfield for 6-7 months now, but now other teams just concentrate on marking Eden out of the game, I hope he don't get pissed off and leave tbh.

I may be completely wrong, but it seems like we don't even work on our attacking play in training. Whilst we might not reach Barca-esque levels of passing and ball retention, it puzzles me why with the personnel we have that we don't attack with the same potency that Real/PSG and others do.

 

That's an interesting point. It does often look, when you watch Mourinho's Chelsea, that we're clueless going forward. The build up is too slow and predictable. It took us 70 minutes to create a goal scoring chance against City. I may be wrong, but we created next to nothing against Palace until the last few minutes of the first half. Why are we so slow and ponderous on the ball is a mystery to me.

 

I have a feeling that when it comes to working on attacking movements in training Jose relies far more on individual quality of the players he's got than he does when organizing our defense. It just boggles the mind why we look so out of ideas with so much attacking talent in the team.

Edited August 30, 20159 yr by abramovich

We are so boring going forward. Jose needs to change his mindset or get out. We get up 2-1 and he constantly brings on defenders to lock up shop. Just go for the kill! We have the quality to be a lot more deadly up front. Jose just doesn't know how to do it. He manages this team like we have mid table talent.

It is as simple as that. We are no longer feared or respected by teams, especially the smaller sides. They come to SB and show no respect or fear and have a go at us. We used to be a feared team under Jose in his first stint here, mostly due to the players we had and the football we played, but now we have too many lightweights in the side and players without fight, hunger or desire. It seems that even the old guard have lost their passion, even Ivanovic and Terry when compared to a couple seasons ago. We have also lost the physically strong players we once had and replaced them with weak players.

 

On paper we should be fearful with the likes of Costa, Falcao, Hazard, Pedro, Fabregas, Oscar etc as our attacking options, but we are just not being given that respect and fear because we are too timid in both attack and defence. It is crazy how such an attacking team like Man City can have a better defensive record than a team like us who, last season and the season before were known for our defensive solidity. I can only put it down to the fact that like Barcelona, Real and Bayern, City have so much attacking prowess that teams are too fearful to actually go for it with intent against them, whereas against us they know they can just cut off hazard and costa's contributions and we are toothless in offense. 

 

What do you guys think, are we just not a side to be feared any more? 

I think it's clear that we're not to be feared because for one reason and another, we're simply not playing very well. We didn't look ready for the Charity Shield, and four games into the season we look if anything, even less prepared.

 

Hazard isn't currently having the impact he once was, What was once the meanest defence in the league now looks anything but solid. With rare exceptions, we've been unable to perform our trademark quick breakaways.In short we look to be a team in disarray. Having said that, I have no doubt (ok make that not a lot of doubt) that we'll improve as the season progresses.

 

Having already had two players sent off hasn't helped. This isn't an excuse, but the often fine margin between success and failure means that playing two out of four matches with a man short will have an effect. Would we have gone on to beat Swansea with eleven players on the pitch? Would Courtois have done better than Begovic? Maybe, maybe not. Either way it's pure conjencture. What's true is that those two sendings off have disrupted our early season plans.

 

Before yesterday's match, Mourinho hmself has hinted that this slow start has been deliberate. Last season we got off to a flyer but looked burnt out towards the end of the season. Maybe the club are looking at the long haul, aiming to peak later in the season, possibly with the Champions League in mind. Could it be that this season the club have made the Champions League their overwhelming priority, I wonder.

 

If this is the case, and if the delayed preparation is in any way deliberate, then I have to say I have my doubts. While it's true that the league is a marathon not a sprint, surely it's far better to get off to a flyer, with the points already in the bag, as we did last season, as Man City are doing this season, than to start off slowly and play catch up.

 

Slow and steady doesn't always win the race.

Edited August 30, 20159 yr by fuqqueue

If anything Swansea are probably regretting not going for it more in the first game.