Momentum is keeping the team wide eyed and alert, the save at the death from Tibo last night is some proof of this. A draw at Palace would only be two points dropped, but momentum would also be lost.

12 minutes ago, Chelsbear said:

CL place is what I am looking for, anything above that is a bonus still for me. This league is so tough and unpredictable that I'm not even thinking about a title yet. If we get to Feb/March in this position that obviously changes but I wont be going overboard
 

I know what you mean. Trying to not think of the title myself but when we are on such a roll and are opening up significant gaps over our competition its hard to not think about it.

This is on paper by far the hardest game we have left in december and if we get out of this one with a win aswell we should have every chance of extending our win streak to 13 against Bournemouth and Stoke. Then we should have all kinds on momentum behind us going into the second half of the season.
And we should have the quality to win here, especially in the form we are in.

 

Edited December 15, 20169 yr by Sindre

Palace are there for the taking with all due respect. Their defence is shambolic and with Hazard fresh, I expect their defence to be overawed.

City playing Arsenal and Pool playing everton, a massive oppurtunity to open a massive gap with the chasing pack. Come on chelsea.

10 minutes ago, Chelsbear said:

I'm not so worried about the likes of Spuds and Arsenal as those are the sides that will leave gaps and attack us which suits our style down to a tee. It's against the likes of Palace, West Brom and the sort who will look to stifle us and make it hard to implement our football.

Judging from what I saw yesterday in their match against Utd, I don't expect Palace to play like WBA or Sunderland, parking the bus and expecting to get a goal on a break. Yesterday they played attacking football and controlled the game for long periods of time during the second half. They left some spaces in their defence as they were trying to go forward, so I think we can exploit those to our advantage, and Pedro, Hazard and Costa are lethal in those situations. It is going to be tough game for sure, and there will be periods where we'll be defending.

Palace's defence has more holes than colander, if we don't score against this lot I'd be very surprised. 

Hopefully Hazard is back for this one. 

Will be interesting to see if Fabregas retains his place after a solid performance against Sunderland. 

Think we need to bring back the Matic kante midfield partnership and then perhaps bring on Fabregas if we still need a goal. Willian should replace pedro for me and hopefully Hazard will be okay. 

Palace concedes far too many in my opinion, only two teams conceded more goals than them. We on the other hand get goals and defend very well, winning this one will be huge. We then have two home games everything is going as well as it can. Hazard will probably return for this one, and Mati? will probably start ahead off Fabregas.

Palace are no mugs, they had opportunities against Mugchester last night and were unlucky, really can't see them being pushovers, especially being at home, they may have shipped in 31 so far this season but they have also scored 28, 1 more than the Spuds and 6 more than Mugchester.

Am a great believer in 'if it aint broke don't fix it', however a few of our players are looking a little fatigued, plus we have a heavy schedule in the next couple of weeks, with a difficult January and February after that, so we may need to make a couple or three changes just to freshen things up.

We can now post our ten greens!!!!

 

2 hours ago, Chelsbear said:

It's always important to win, every club is the same in that sense. No one goes into a game expecting anything less.

I'm not so worried about the likes of Spuds and Arsenal as those are the sides that will leave gaps and attack us which suits our style down to a tee. It's against the likes of Palace, West Brom and the sort who will look to stifle us and make it hard to implement our football.

CL place is what I am looking for, anything above that is a bonus still for me. This league is so tough and unpredictable that I'm not even thinking about a title yet. If we get to Feb/March in this position that obviously changes but I wont be going overboard
 

6 points clear at this stage is pretty big, not significant but more than enough to get past the stage of we should only accept a CL place, this in my opinion is a huge huge chance for us to add the 5th PL title and 6th overall title in the clubs trophy room. It's easy to get in the habit of top 4 is enough (look at Arsenal and even United post Moyes) and merely accept it every season. Furthermore it's only a matter of time until Pep gets players to suit his system, Klopp signs some proper defenders and we all know Jose has a 100% title ratio in his second season, right now two have been caught with their pants down and the other is struggling for consistency in his backline, we should 100% be looking at cashing in on that. That's what Fergie use to do in "best of bad bunch season's", none of you lads want this? ok ill have it, he would have had last season sown up by March latest if he was still United manager.

Edited December 15, 20169 yr by Argo

1 hour ago, Ivanov87 said:

Think we need to bring back the Matic kante midfield partnership and then perhaps bring on Fabregas if we still need a goal. Willian should replace pedro for me and hopefully Hazard will be okay. 

I agree with the Kante - Matic partnership for this one, but I think that Pedro is better suited than William to exploit the gaps that Palace's defensive line leaves. He can break to receive the ball behind the defenders much better than William. Having said this, maybe playing Fabregas to supply passes through the gaps behind the defenders could work very well.

24 minutes ago, Argo said:

 

6 points clear at this stage is pretty big, not significant but more than enough to get past the stage of we should only accept a CL place, this in my opinion is a huge huge chance for us to add the 5th PL title and 6th overall title in the clubs trophy room. It's easy to get in the habit of top 4 is enough (look at Arsenal and even United post Moyes) and merely accept it every season. Furthermore it's only a matter of time until Pep gets players to suit his system, Klopp signs some proper defenders and we all know Jose has a 100% title ratio in his second season, right now two have been caught with their pants down and the other is struggling for consistency in his backline, we should 100% be looking at cashing in on that. That's what Fergie use to do in "best of bad bunch season's", none of you lads want this? ok ill have it, he would have had last season sown up by March latest if he was still United manager.

We should be in it to win it at this point. Finishing top 4 wouldn't be a failure since it IS only December but at this point we have the best chance of any other club in the league at winning the title and as such, expectations should rise. Our form has been great so far and I think in pretty much any season we would be top or 2nd.

When United walked away with the league in 12'-13' they had 39 points thru 16 matches and a 6 point lead on 2nd. Sounds familiar. It's too early to write us in, but we sure are looking good eh?

1 minute ago, TheChelseaBlues said:

We should be in it to win it at this point. Finishing top 4 wouldn't be a failure since it IS only December but at this point we have the best chance of any other club in the league at winning the title and as such, expectations should rise. Our form has been great so far and I think in pretty much any season we would be top or 2nd.

When United walked away with the league in 12'-13' they had 39 points thru 16 matches and a 6 point lead on 2nd. Sounds familiar. It's too early to write us in, but we sure are looking good eh?

While we are on the topic of United and Fergie, Tevez said Conte is similar to Fergie, of course i'm not expecting 26 years and 13 titles out of Antonio but how great would it be if he sets a similar mentality at this club?

3 hours ago, Chelsbear said:

lol.

Would it be that bad?

We have a tough run of games coming up and are playing again in 2 days. No many teams goes through the festive period with maximum points no matter the form.

I of course would love to win but we cant win every single game, not realistic.

We are?  Last I checked our next fixture after palace was on boxing day... 

Oh and city are without their suspended duo from our game plus kompany and now the former Dortmund midfielder who's name I won't try and spell. So that is basically a banker arsenal win. We need to points here to keep them at arms length. 

Edited December 15, 20169 yr by axman2526

looking forward to this one will be attending myself. always a good atmosphere. friend is a palace season ticket holder and thinks they might set up how sunderland did and lumping balls into the box but thats just how palace play these days anyway. i would take a 1-0

6 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

We are?  Last I checked our next fixture after palace was on boxing day... 

Oh and city are without their suspended duo from our game plus kompany and now the former Dortmund midfielder who's name I won't try and spell. So that is basically a banker arsenal win. We need to points here to keep them at arms length. 

Erm yes after last night it's 2 days...........

The Christmas period and afterwards is notoriously difficult.

I'm not fussed about City or whoever else, only ourselves.

1 minute ago, Argo said:

While we are on the topic of United and Fergie, Tevez said Conte is similar to Fergie, of course i'm not expecting 26 years and 13 titles out of Antonio but how great would it be if he sets a similar mentality at this club?

Funny you should mention that. Watching United v Palace highlights, it donned on me that Fergie is gone and United aren't going to go on a run of 1 league title every 2 seasons anymore.  

I've read of couple of Fergie books, I'm far from an expert of course , and Conte does present the same sort of professional and positive mentality when he speaks in public. No throwing players or other teams under the bus, no complaining about decisions (granted not much has gone wrong atm) very in control during the interviews or press conferences and always wanting more work and more improvement. They two obviously have a much different demeanor on the sideline and as for training we don't really know how the compare but I don't think its too hard to see them both treating things very professionally, nothing is personal and the team comes first. 

38 minutes ago, RMH said:

I agree with the Kante - Matic partnership for this one, but I think that Pedro is better suited than William to exploit the gaps that Palace's defensive line leaves. He can break to receive the ball behind the defenders much better than William. Having said this, maybe playing Fabregas to supply passes through the gaps behind the defenders could work very well.

I agree with the pedro one, but theyre very good attacking wise and will certainly be raising their game against us. I think stopping them from scoring should be our main priority and then hopefully our attackers will be enough to get us the win.

 

48 minutes ago, Argo said:

 

6 points clear at this stage is pretty big, not significant but more than enough to get past the stage of we should only accept a CL place, this in my opinion is a huge huge chance for us to add the 5th PL title and 6th overall title in the clubs trophy room. It's easy to get in the habit of top 4 is enough (look at Arsenal and even United post Moyes) and merely accept it every season. Furthermore it's only a matter of time until Pep gets players to suit his system, Klopp signs some proper defenders and we all know Jose has a 100% title ratio in his second season, right now two have been caught with their pants down and the other is struggling for consistency in his backline, we should 100% be looking at cashing in on that. That's what Fergie use to do in "best of bad bunch season's", none of you lads want this? ok ill have it, he would have had last season sown up by March latest if he was still United manager.

I agree entirely. We won the league two years ago and only struggled last season because of you know who but we're good enough to win the title and should be confident enough to say so. Don't want to fall into the Arsenal trap where 4th is okay and the manger can keep making up excuses as to why we're not challenging. Anyway I doubt Roman will be happy with that so nothing to worry about. 

This home fixture finish 2 - 2 the away fixture we won by a big 0 - 1, belive this will be 0 - 3, will do nicely. COYB

This talk about anything than CL place is a bonus is taking the piss.. Take everything into consideration, we're clearly a strong canditate for the title..  I don't know how much more do I need to emphasize the fact that chelsea are 1 of the strongest teams in the world..  In fact, apart from barca & real, I don't think any other club have better team than ours overall.. It's well expected for a club with chelsea's resources to be at the very least challenging for the title..

 

If some people just want to play down the title talk just for the sake of it, defying logic in the process then fine, their choice albeit weird one but I have to say it's sad.. (Bring that keanu sad meme for some imagination)

 

 

After the Swansea draw, then losses against the Dippers and FC Woolwich Bottlers, most supporters am sure would have said that top 4 looked a pipe dream.

Am no 'glass half empty man' but 11 games ago, I looked at Woolwich, Dippers, Citeh and Spuds and thought they were nailed on top 4, with us possibly competing against Mugchester for the Europa spot and possibly a cup if we were fortunate enough.

Now we are sitting top, 6 points clear, 10 wins in a row. No one and I mean no one could have believed it or dreamt it.

This has been an astonishing run and may it continue but lets keep our feet on the ground here, we have a lot of hard work ahead of us. Anything could happen; injuries, suspensions, dips in form, poor decisions against us, etc, so lets not set our expectations too high, otherwise it's all the more hurtful if things don't go our way.

40 minutes ago, bola said:

This talk about anything than CL place is a bonus is taking the piss.. Take everything into consideration, we're clearly a strong canditate for the title..  I don't know how much more do I need to emphasize the fact that chelsea are 1 of the strongest teams in the world..  In fact, apart from barca & real, I don't think any other club have better team than ours overall.. It's well expected for a club with chelsea's resources to be at the very least challenging for the title..

 

If some people just want to play down the title talk just for the sake of it, defying logic in the process then fine, their choice albeit weird one but I have to say it's sad.. (Bring that keanu sad meme for some imagination)

 

 

It was understandable at the start of the season because of the mess made last season and i don't think even Conte himself envisioned such a quick turnaround and after Arsenal i think even our version of Ty couldn't have talked up anything more than 4th at best. However now you are correct, with ten wins in a row and 6 point lead, would be a massive anti climax if we end up mere top 4 and potless.

For anyone who has sky and no sky sports, this game is available free on Sky Sports Mix (407). 

17 hours ago, Zeta Orionis said:

Players looked a bit tired today, might be worth making a few changes. We don't want them run into the ground over this busy Christmas period.

You say busy Christmas period but it really isn't that bad this year. After Palace we have over a weeks break until we play Bournemouth at home on Boxing Day. After that we have another home game against Stoke on the 31/12 and then Spurs on Wednesday 4th Jan. So our games are nicely spread out and we won't have to travel outside of London whereas a number of other teams do have to play twice in a couple of days. Well Done The FA!!

Palace away will be tricky so I wouldn't be looking to rest anyone and hope Hazard is fit to return.

2 minutes ago, Nibs said:

You say busy Christmas period but it really isn't that bad this year. After Palace we have over a weeks break until we play Bournemouth at home on Boxing Day. After that we have another home game against Stoke on the 31/12 and then Spurs on Wednesday 4th Jan. So our games are nicely spread out and we won't have to travel outside of London whereas a number of other teams do have to play twice in a couple of days. Well Done The FA!!

Palace away will be tricky so I wouldn't be looking to rest anyone and hope Hazard is fit to return.

And after Spurs we have over a week till Hull, im working on the assumption Luiz, Kante will get the day off in the FA Cup and Hazard and Costa will be on the bench only to be brought on if we are in the sh*t with 20 to go.

Plenty of time for rest coming up which as you've alluded too is unusual this time of year.