12 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

I'm so happy we didn't get Guardiola or Klopp, i never wanted either of those two managing our club. Even with their past success, they are both managers with question marks over their heads.

Guardiola has never respected the defensive part of the game, he look's down on it, it's a very Barcelona thing to do. In this league, you need a good defence to win titles. If Guardiola's attitude doesn't change, then i'm not sure he will be a success in England. 

Klopp has many issues. He left Dortmund in a right mess, for half of his last season with them, it was looking like he was going to relegate them. Dortmund were a decent side under him but i'm starting to think he got lucky. Bayern were rebuilding and Dortmund were going through a purple patch. He's another that can't seem to get a defence right. I personally think Sakho is better than all of their CB's and he sold him. Also, he let's his passion take over too much. Conte is passionate, but he's under control, i don't see that with Klopp. Klopp is like an idiot on the sidelines with his face pulling and chest pumping. 

Mourinho........well, i don't know what has happened to him, but he's just a miserable sod these days. Even when his team wins he puts a negative spin on it. I loved what he achieved for us in his time here, but last season, even i got fed up with the rubbish he was coming out with. I was desperate for him to turn it around but it just seemed to get worse with every passing week. This season he seems to have gotten worse. It's just constant negativity with Mourinho now. He moans at his players all of the time, he moans at the fixtures he thinks people are out to get him. United fans will soon get bored of it if he continues like this, the players will also get fed up with being criticised publicly too.

Conte is the best manager in the league right now, he's the perfect fit for us. He likes a solid defence but he knows how to get his team to play good football too. He doesn't need to play mind games in his interviews and he just get's on with his job. He also changes things when it isn't going well. It didn't take him long to realise the 4-2-3-1 formation was dead for us. He sorted out the problems Mourinho couldn't sort out in the first few months of the season. Of the 4 big name managers in the league, Conte is proving to be the most balanced coach of the lot.

Good assessment. It just goes to prove, you don't need to be the highest profile or most expensive manager. 

Mourinho for me has lost his edge, and replaced it with an abundance of negativity, as you also stated. I am not sure that he knows how to handle the modern day footballer.

Mourinho is just getting old and cranky.  It will come to all of you, eventually.

Still think pep is slightly better than the rest when it comes to his philosophy and tactical nous. The current city squad are mediocre and aging, barring a small handful of their players. I expect pep to deliver soon, he's too good not to. Conte has done fantastic though and deserves to be spoke about as one of the top managers in world football today. 

19 minutes ago, yorkleyblue said:

Mourinho is just getting old and cranky.  It will come to all of you, eventually.

I'm only 28, i already feel old and cranky 

I think I was actually born a miserable old sod, but I'm getting worse :)

1 hour ago, Scott Harris said:

I'm only 28, i already feel old and cranky 

FYI it gets worse w/ age

1 hour ago, enigma said:

Still think pep is slightly better than the rest when it comes to his philosophy and tactical nous. 

When has he shown tactical nous, he has one style he relies on at every club, when he has changed it like Munich at home to Barcelona it has been disastrous.

If I had to say one bad thing, I don't like the card waving thing he does. I just don't agree with that.
But everyone has their faults and other than that he's a class act.

This is where English team's fail in international competition the "Dark Arts"

I don't see the issue Barcelona Real Madrid do it yearly and get to atleast semi final of UCL

Still think pep is slightly better than the rest when it comes to his philosophy and tactical nous. The current city squad are mediocre and aging, barring a small handful of their players. I expect pep to deliver soon, he's too good not to. Conte has done fantastic though and deserves to be spoke about as one of the top managers in world football today. 

Have you watched him get ruthless exposed time and time again his tactical knowledge is not do special in a competitive league and when ever he plays us h gets Found out

23 minutes ago, dkw said:

When has he shown tactical nous, he has one style he relies on at every club, when he has changed it like Munich at home to Barcelona it has been disastrous.

The thing is, despite the inconsistent results you can see the signs of it at City, even tho we beat them twice there were periods in both games we really really struggled. He is going to get a lot of money to spend this summer and a full "Pep" team will make mincemeat of teams 8 to 20. Luckily we have a manager also adept at flat track bullying so i do feel we can beat them to the title but it could be the first ever PL season a team get 90 or more yet still miss out.

I think he's marvelous, and can't add much more than what has been said.  Seeing him over applauding the Boro fans, and shaking hand with their team and staff; as one Boro fan on twitter said "our bald c*nt of a manager didn't even do that!"

It then made me reflect on Jose.  He loved going to the crowd, but always his own crowd to pump his chest and give it a lot of the whole "i am."

Its great to see a manager be so humble when he's obviously achieving great things.  Something Jose never had was humility.  It was always something else: a player, pitch conditions, the refs, fixtures, etc.  I watched the post match press debrief yesterday, and one of the pundits was an ex Boro player.  He had just seen his team relegated, and talked about how it hurts, and is the worst thing he ever experienced in his professional career.  All understandable.  Then, he talked about how magnificent it was for Conte to be over there acknowledging the fans, that it wasn't just this one game, and that it may give them the spark to come back next season.

There's no way on earth Jose would have done that.  And i think Cointe is a reason, well certainly an integral part, of Chelsea not being painted in a negative light by the press this season.  Jose was a lightning rod for controversy.  It was always claimed that he did it to protect his players; nonsense.  He was an antagonist, is still an antagonist, and with that comes the press looking for the dirt.  Jose would react to that dirt, Conte doesn't.  Even in the Costa episode this winter, he stayed focused.  He's never drawn into futile talks about his players, transfers, other managers.  It's all just to wonderful.

I hope that Conte is offered the players he wants, and a contract extension.  I hope he's our manager for a long time.  However, I am resigned to the fact he'll probably only be here for another 3 years, and then will take off to something new.

 

3 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

I'm so happy we didn't get Guardiola or Klopp, i never wanted either of those two managing our club. Even with their past success, they are both managers with question marks over their heads.

Guardiola has never respected the defensive part of the game, he look's down on it, it's a very Barcelona thing to do. In this league, you need a good defence to win titles. If Guardiola's attitude doesn't change, then i'm not sure he will be a success in England. 

Klopp has many issues. He left Dortmund in a right mess, for half of his last season with them, it was looking like he was going to relegate them. Dortmund were a decent side under him but i'm starting to think he got lucky. Bayern were rebuilding and Dortmund were going through a purple patch. He's another that can't seem to get a defence right. I personally think Sakho is better than all of their CB's and he sold him. Also, he let's his passion take over too much. Conte is passionate, but he's under control, i don't see that with Klopp. Klopp is like an idiot on the sidelines with his face pulling and chest pumping. 

Mourinho........well, i don't know what has happened to him, but he's just a miserable sod these days. Even when his team wins he puts a negative spin on it. I loved what he achieved for us in his time here, but last season, even i got fed up with the rubbish he was coming out with. I was desperate for him to turn it around but it just seemed to get worse with every passing week. This season he seems to have gotten worse. It's just constant negativity with Mourinho now. He moans at his players all of the time, he moans at the fixtures he thinks people are out to get him. United fans will soon get bored of it if he continues like this, the players will also get fed up with being criticised publicly too.

Conte is the best manager in the league right now, he's the perfect fit for us. He likes a solid defence but he knows how to get his team to play good football too. He doesn't need to play mind games in his interviews and he just get's on with his job. He also changes things when it isn't going well. It didn't take him long to realise the 4-2-3-1 formation was dead for us. He sorted out the problems Mourinho couldn't sort out in the first few months of the season. Of the 4 big name managers in the league, Conte is proving to be the most balanced coach of the lot.

Agree. The constant negativity from Jose is just overwhelming. You just don't get a chance to be carefree.

He cannot last at United with this attitude. 

I guess the thing with Jose is that all his success has come as an underdog or with a clearly superior team. Last season and this season with United, the pressure of expectations is high but the team is not better than the rest. He just doesn't know how to handle such a situation.

Back to Conte, he has ensured such an enjoyable smooth ride this season. Hope he stays for years (unlikely of course)... We really needed his calming genuine passion.

2 hours ago, Argo said:

The thing is, despite the inconsistent results you can see the signs of it at City, even tho we beat them twice there were periods in both games we really really struggled. He is going to get a lot of money to spend this summer and a full "Pep" team will make mincemeat of teams 8 to 20. Luckily we have a manager also adept at flat track bullying so i do feel we can beat them to the title but it could be the first ever PL season a team get 90 or more yet still miss out.

Have to agree that at times we struggled against City this season. We should have been 2 down before we equalised at the Etihad

5 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

Guardiola has never respected the defensive part of the game, he look's down on it, it's a very Barcelona thing to do. In this league, you need a good defence to win titles. If Guardiola's attitude doesn't change, then i'm not sure he will be a success in England. 

this is obviously not true. the best defensive national team in the history of our game was built strictly on guardiolas principles - if you have the ball you can't concede. the problem is that you need some of the best midfield players in the modern era to do it effectively. and for that reason, i'm glad we have conte instead of guardiola.

we should model our team after juventus (a team that is still deeply ingrained in contes roots), not real madrid or barcelona. they have too much pulling power in terms of super stars and resources needed to play super expansive football and still be successful.

Edited May 9, 20179 yr by opinionsarelike

11 hours ago, Osgood is Good said:

Good assessment. It just goes to prove, you don't need to be the highest profile or most expensive manager. 

Mourinho for me has lost his edge, and replaced it with an abundance of negativity, as you also stated. I am not sure that he knows how to handle the modern day footballer.

Pep will deliver. He's far too good to continue this way, he's adaptive as Conte. Count me in on the people who thought he was never going to revilutionize the league and take it by storm. However he knows you adapt or die and though he may have been a bit naive this season its too early to write him off. If you've seen his training manual you know he's not focused on traditional methods, its just a different world with him the players haven't adapted to yet

Edited May 10, 20179 yr by TheChelseaBlues

"Antonio Conte is desperate to bring Real Madrid star Gareth Bale to Chelsea, according to reports in Spain."

Funny some of these reports. Conte and desperate doesn't really fit in any sentence.
[emoji5]️

We're quite fond of our Italian managers at the Chels. 

Antonio with another fine player.

And one we were linked with many years ago.

tbf we were being linked with literally everyone many years ago

13 hours ago, opinionsarelike said:

this is obviously not true. the best defensive national team in the history of our game was built strictly on guardiolas principles - if you have the ball you can't concede. the problem is that you need some of the best midfield players in the modern era to do it effectively. and for that reason, i'm glad we have conte instead of guardiola.

 

It was nowhere near the best defensive side in history, the entire game plan was based on other teams not getting the ball to attack the defence, tedious percentage football with very little risk. 

1 hour ago, dkw said:

It was nowhere near the best defensive side in history, the entire game plan was based on other teams not getting the ball to attack the defence, tedious percentage football with very little risk. 

so, who's the only team that can concede goals or even chances, the team with the ball or the team without? i think it's boring too, but scott harris said that guardiola doesn't care about defence, when one of the main reasons for having possession is that you can't concede in the period of time you have the ball.

i tell you what, guardiolas barcelona conceded 35, 24, 21 and 29 goals in 38 games pr season.

in bundesliga, guardiolas team conceded 23, 18 and 17 goals in 34 games pr season.

how anyone can look at those numbers and say that guardiola neglects defence is beyond me, and that was my point.

 

oh and yes, i think conte is a better manager and plays more entertaining football, but that was besides my point which you quoted.

1 hour ago, dkw said:

It was nowhere near the best defensive side in history, the entire game plan was based on other teams not getting the ball to attack the defence, tedious percentage football with very little risk. 

Its not as straight forward as that, what made Pep's Barca so special is they were so difficult to get the ball off and when you did get it, keep it. They started the high pressing era and did it better than any team could ever dream off. 

Don't get me wrong, i am more than happy with Conte and wouldn't change him for the world, but i don't get this desperation to play down Pep's accomplishment's.

What I like about Conte (and I am hopeful it doesn't go pear shaped like others) is that he focuses on defense without compromising on attack. With Jose, everyone had to defend and only a few had the liberty to attack. With Conte, we work as a team in defense and attack. He also seems to have a clear game plan in attack. Everyone understands their roles and where they should be and what to expect.

I like that we attack vertically without letting the other team get back in position which really infuriated me during Jose's last season.

He also seems adaptable and has different ideas. He may get found out in his 2nd season but I really hope he stays for years to come.

Its not as straight forward as that, what made Pep's Barca so special is they were so difficult to get the ball off and when you did get it, keep it. They started the high pressing era and did it better than any team could ever dream off. 
Don't get me wrong, i am more than happy with Conte and wouldn't change him for the world, but i don't get this desperation to play down Pep's accomplishment's.

I've played enough Fifa to know that even I could win the league with Barca and Bayern
This was his first real test and you must say he's not doing so well obviously next season is crucial for him but looking like a bullet dodged at the mo