Tottenham forwad Lucas Moura has been named as the Premier League Player of the Month for August.

 

LOL WTF! and they say that east is/was corrupt.

On 04/09/2018 at 05:00, coco said:

Opposition managers can no longer ignore him, he's a flanking hammer that can smash the side of a defence open, the threat he offers is a defence in itself.

Doesn't hurt that we posses the ball 65-70% of the time now, which is also defense in itself. Can't give up goals if they don't have the ball 

2 hours ago, mojo said:

Tottenham forwad Lucas Moura has been named as the Premier League Player of the Month for August.

 

LOL WTF! and they say that east is/was corrupt.

I'm not really sure how anybody can say he deserved it over Alonso. Lucas Moura hasn't dominated games, he's largely been in and out of them and popped up to score a goal here and there. Alonso has been largely involved in everything we have done and has contributed massively to each of our 4 wins.

I thought that formation changing from 3 4 3 to 4 3 3 will affects Marcos negatively but he will be one of the best left backs in active players

What annoys me about the Alonso situation is that as soon as he has a bad game the usual culprits will be in here with "Told Ya So!" and telling us that he's not good enough, he has to keep on having 10/10 performances in order to not be criticised and rarely praised. 

He's always going to have defensive woes because of how we play him, not just because of his ability, he's instrumental to our attack, he's always the extra man that gets left unmarked and it's a nightmare for the opposition to deal with. Of course, that comes with its disadvantages, but hey just wait next time he has a bad game and you'll see what I mean. 

Interesting article discussing the prevalence of attacking left-backs over attacking right-backs:

http://www.espn.co.uk/football/english-premier-league/23/blog/post/3618643/attacking-left-backs-like-benjamin-mendy-and-marcos-alonso-revolutionising-the-premier-league

6 hours ago, Slojo said:

What annoys me about the Alonso situation is that as soon as he has a bad game the usual culprits will be in here with "Told Ya So!" and telling us that he's not good enough, he has to keep on having 10/10 performances in order to not be criticised and rarely praised. 

He's always going to have defensive woes because of how we play him, not just because of his ability, he's instrumental to our attack, he's always the extra man that gets left unmarked and it's a nightmare for the opposition to deal with. Of course, that comes with its disadvantages, but hey just wait next time he has a bad game and you'll see what I mean. 

Just @ me next time.

What annoys me is you coming on the Alonso thread claiming that me and other members are waiting for Alonso to have a bad game. After i replied to you last time saying that wasn't true, and no Chelsea fan wants a player to have a bad game, you quickly shut up. Of course if he costs us a game he's going to get called out for it, Alonso isn't immune to criticism. Cba with your holier than thou attitude. 

On 07/09/2018 at 16:27, mojo said:

Tottenham forwad Lucas Moura has been named as the Premier League Player of the Month for August.

 

LOL WTF! and they say that east is/was corrupt.

Ever since Ferguson retired, Scums has been the team of the FA and the media - the refs make the most mistakes in their favor, the media praised their boring-ass football like they are Barcelona, mediocre players like Ali and Dier are like Messi and Kroos if you are listening to the journalists. 

And yet, 0 trophies. 

1 hour ago, RIP Mourinho said:

Of course if he costs us a game he's going to get called out for it, Alonso isn't immune to criticism.

Yes, but 'called out' doesn't mean forgetting about his many positive performances, winning us loads of points from defence gives you a very big length of slack when he does mess up imo.

 

34 minutes ago, coco said:

Yes, but 'called out' doesn't mean forgetting about his many positive performances, winning us loads of points from defence gives you a very big length of slack when he does mess up imo.

 

If Kante has a bad game nobody is going to scapegoat him for it, people are harsher with Alonso than they are with many other players. Maybe I'm looking at Twitter too much but he's basically the new Gary Cahill when it comes to scapegoating. 

1 hour ago, coco said:

Yes, but 'called out' doesn't mean forgetting about his many positive performances, winning us loads of points from defence gives you a very big length of slack when he does mess up imo.

 

Absolutely 100% agree, Much like if Hazard cost us a game i'd expect him to be able to be called out. Same with any player on the team. Gods gift, Slojo, seems to take personal offence at these things though.

1 hour ago, Slojo said:

If Kante has a bad game nobody is going to scapegoat him for it, people are harsher with Alonso than they are with many other players. Maybe I'm looking at Twitter too much but he's basically the new Gary Cahill when it comes to scapegoating. 

If Kante has a bad game, yes people would call him out for it. 

1 hour ago, Slojo said:

If Kante has a bad game nobody is going to scapegoat him for it, people are harsher with Alonso than they are with many other players. Maybe I'm looking at Twitter too much but he's basically the new Gary Cahill when it comes to scapegoating. 

It's because they latch on to how uncomfortable he looks without the ball (and ignore the game with the ball), then they invest into the criticism with posts on their twatter like "he's going to cost us soon, be warned", then they are committed, waiting for him to make the inevitable mistake, then when it comes they exclaim their prediction, and get high on the Endorphins.

On 25/10/2016 at 18:08, Davey Baby said:

I thought Alonso was poor on his debut against Leicester away, but against Leicester at home, on his home debut, he was impressive, although he didn't have to do a lot of defending.

 

Sunday was a different matter. He was completely out of his depth. It was a pretty shocking performance IMO.

 

Yes, he gives us balance on the left, and he knows the position and he appears to have good stamina, and it's nice to have a left-footer there, BUT ..

 

Jesus Christ how many times did Valencia get past him in that first-half?

 

Utd had 3 very good opportunities in the first-half arise from Valencia getting to the byline and crossing it. Now, Valencia may be fast and direct, in fact he'd make a very good wing-back, but he's not a great attacking talent by any stretch, yet he had Alonso completely on the ropes, he would just push the ball past him and Alonso was powerless, he was neither fast or aggressive enough, I'm afraid Alonso was sh*tting it every time Valencia got the ball. Everything Utd did came down his flank.

 

Second-half, Conte sorted it out by making sure Alonso wasn't left exposed against Valencia, which is why we often saw Hazard or Costa helping him out. Valencia simply wasn't allowed to get a run on Alonso, as it appeared to be their main tactic. They had definitely identified our weakness there and they won't be the last. Alonso will need to up his game but no doubt Conte feels there's enough there for him to work with and improve. Let's hope so.

 

He got booked second-half, dragging Pogba down, down by the corner flag as Pogba skipped past him, again he was helped out by a teammate and he wasn't left exposed, which was clearly an instruction from Conte. On that occasion I was at least glad he showed a bit of aggression. 

 

On the hour mark we could easily have conceded, making it 2-1. I'm posting a very bad video, which gives you an idea of Alonso's negligence. Zlatan finds himself a bit of space in front of goal, the cross comes in and if it's an inch lower it's a free header. However we get lucky.

 

What the video doesn't show you is that there's no-one behind Alonso, he's looking at the play, and he sees Zlatan and he HAS to get in front of him, but he simply stands behind him and gets lucky. Passive defending and a worryingly passive performance for me. Yes, we won comfortably, yes it's early days for him, but for me he looked hopelessly out of his depth, given the quality on show.

 

Going forward he did nothing either, apart from give us balance, which I appreciate is important in its own right. Moses on the other flank was far more impressive for me, going forward and defensively.

 

On 31/10/2016 at 16:53, Davey Baby said:

I think that first 5 minutes yesterday will probably go down as the worst 5 minutes of any player in the Prem since records began.

 

He doesn't do an awful lot going forward, though he looks a decent crosser.

 

If he's ever exposed at the back, we're in trouble. I guess the beauty of this system is he will seldom be exposed.

 

If we were playing a flat back 4, he would probably be the worst LB in the league, given what I've seen in the last 2 games.

 

Luckily Hazard predominantly operates from the left, whereas Pedro or Willian operate largely from the right. With Hazard playing ahead of you you're never going to have to do too much going forward. Moses on the other side looks infinitely better, from a defensive and attacking viewpoint.

 

Sunderland are bottom of the table. I believe Van Aanholt scored 5 for them last season and already has 1 this season. He'd give us more going forward and he'd be better defensively. I dare say if we worked our way up the league we'd find we could say the same about every team's LB.

 

Conte appears to like his foot soldiers who follow orders and whom he feels he can improve. In that sense Alonso may end up holding his own, but I doubt very much he'll ever be considered a top player.

 

He probably can't believe he's playing for Chelsea.

 

On 03/12/2016 at 21:26, Davey Baby said:

Alonso looked way out of his depth today, and he and Cahill were all over the place, and City had a lot of joy down their side, but City are a good side with amazing players and they're good at exploiting any weaknesses. Against opposition of that quality Alonso looked distinctly average. On another day we'd have been punished.

 

On 04/12/2016 at 09:50, Davey Baby said:

 

Kenedy is back now and he may get a chance when Alonso misses out for any reason, and it will be interesting to see how he does.

 

Still not rate him Davey ? 

Thankfully you aren't the boss.

I did have concerns about our "wing-backs" from the Conte era going into this season. Have never been totally convinced by either, but fair play to both, they did well and deserved selection.

Moses does look like he will be one of the casualties under Sarri and the new formation and style. Alonso however is making himself hard to drop and has become a bit of a crowd favourite. He continues to surprise me and long may that continue but I do still worry when he's up against a quick and skillful wide man as defensively he can be found wanting.

2 hours ago, coco said:

 

 

 

 

Still not rate him Davey ? 

Thankfully you aren't the boss.

TBF, it is easy to look foolish with hindsight. 

That said, I didn't think Alonso was as bad during that time as he clearly thought. It was just that he didn't start to become a real threat going forward until after New Year's Day 2017. 

48 minutes ago, DaRick said:

TBF, it is easy to look foolish with hindsight. 

That said, I didn't think Alonso was as bad during that time as he clearly thought. It was just that he didn't start to become a real threat going forward until after New Year's Day 2017. 

Whenever anyone critics a player, but never comes back and follows up with credit to that player when they turn out to be wrong, they always leave themselves open to looking a bit stupid. I would of been at risk of that myself had Morata turned into even a half decent striker. 

 

3 hours ago, coco said:

Still not rate him Davey ? 

Thankfully you aren't the boss.

Tbf to Davey most of his concerns back then were valid, all be it with a couple of exaggerations (worst LB in the league for one). However if he played in a back four back then he would have been Bosingwa level in my opinion and i think Conte knew it hence why even a heavily declined Ivanovic was still favoured over him pre the switch. 

He's improved massively since then and proved a lot of people wrong, me included (he was probably the only one in the squad that improved form after our record breaking winning run came to an end) but for the first few months he looked every bit the necessary stop gap we needed to revert to a back 3.

10 hours ago, Argo said:

Tbf to Davey most of his concerns back then were valid, all be it with a couple of exaggerations (worst LB in the league for one). However if he played in a back four back then he would have been Bosingwa level in my opinion and i think Conte knew it hence why even a heavily declined Ivanovic was still favoured over him pre the switch. 

He's improved massively since then and proved a lot of people wrong, me included (he was probably the only one in the squad that improved form after our record breaking winning run came to an end) but for the first few months he looked every bit the necessary stop gap we needed to revert to a back 3.

Not at all, he's never been a bad player for us, he was in team of the year last season, and in his first season he did remarkably well, nobody really knew who he was and it was a gamble buying him for 20 odd million. But he's definitely surpassed expectations. 

People will always look at the negatives more than the positives when it comes to Alonso, I don't know if that's because of personal issues or what. For this odd reason opposition fans seem to highly rate Alonso, including pundits, but most of the criticism comes from our own fans. 

3 hours ago, Slojo said:

 

People will always look at the negatives more than the positives when it comes to Alonso, I don't know if that's because of personal issues or what. For this odd reason opposition fans seem to highly rate Alonso, including pundits, but most of the criticism comes from our own fans. 

That is often the case though. Opposition fans will often only see brief highlights, which will include his goals and assists. Chelsea supporters will see the whole game which will include the bits where he gets left for dead by a winger, or makes a defensive howler. Don't get me wrong, he has surpassed expectations and merits his place in the team but I can understand why there are still a few comments about some aspects of his game.

25 minutes ago, Nibs said:

That is often the case though. Opposition fans will often only see brief highlights, which will include his goals and assists. Chelsea supporters will see the whole game which will include the bits where he gets left for dead by a winger, or makes a defensive howler. Don't get me wrong, he has surpassed expectations and merits his place in the team but I can understand why there are still a few comments about some aspects of his game.

His defensive howlers are far exaggerated, people were scapegoating him in the Arsenal game and he wasn't at fault for any of those chances, Jorginho was actually at fault for half of them for not covering and not many people pointed that out. He gets more criticism than he should do imo. 

Another assist today for Willian’s goal. 

51 minutes ago, Munkworth said:

Another assist today for Willian’s goal. 

Criminally I don’t think he’s been awarded the the assist (yet).

He was questioning it on Twitter after the game.

13 hours ago, ForeverCarefree said:

Criminally I don’t think he’s been awarded the the assist (yet).

He was questioning it on Twitter after the game.

Ball hit the defender first, so technically not an assist.  And it looked like he was passing to Barkley anyways.  Good run by him anyways though.

56 minutes ago, mwblue10 said:

Ball hit the defender first, so technically not an assist.  And it looked like he was passing to Barkley anyways.  Good run by him anyways though.

Just watched it again, either you’re right or Alonso is infact a Jedi and can change the direction of the ball with his mind. 

3 hours ago, Munkworth said:

Just watched it again, either you’re right or Alonso is infact a Jedi and can change the direction of the ball with his mind. 

Jedi it is.