those fixtures 

12 minutes ago, Zeta said:

Reckon Messi is going to finally score against us. This team just doesn't have the spirit or the desire of previous teams.

Thats a bit harsh in fairness.

Alright, this season has been average so far but this team won the league with a great point-tally.

I think we can beat Barcelona. Let's go "english" on them on a cold february night at the Bridge and then take a good result back to Camp Nou where we'll need to hold on.

We can do it!

 

Looking forward to face them. I believe it's all up to Messi and Hazard but here is the catch - we've proven we can stop Messi in his best many times while at the same time their defense has never met someone like Hazard. If he shows up, which is exactly what I expect from him, because it's about god damn time, his damage is gonna bring us the victory. 

"We are chelsea, we can do anything" Eden Hazard 2017. Batman will score the winner at the nou camp in the lasrt minute you'll see !

Great fixture!  Love playing this lot, huge history, titanic struggles.

We are Chelsea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzLKkFOTwVM 
 

 

Just now, Londonisblue said:

"We are chelsea, we can do anything" Eden Hazard 2017. Batman will score the winner at the nou camp in the lasrt minute you'll see !

Haha just beat me to it.

Bring back the bus hehehe

Hey look at that it was not psg lol.

Good a glorious tie against a true heavyweight opponent. Over the years Chelsea vs Barcelona has become one of the true great cl ties that has seen some amazing wins and losses on both sides. Now we get to see the next chapter in the story.

If you don't want such ties then why do you want to be in the cl anyways? For exciting victories over qarabag? To use your influence to magically get easy draws against the Swiss or Portuguese no hopers?

No we should want barca and be thrilled we got them. Either a truly glorious win or defeat to a truly special team with a once in a lifetime talent in their ranks await us and that is what the cl should all be about.

Just now, axman2526 said:

Hey look at that it was not psg lol.

Good a glorious tie against a true heavyweight opponent. Over the years Chelsea vs Barcelona has become one of the true great cl ties that has seen some amazing wins and losses on both sides. Now we get to see the next chapter in the story.

If you don't want such ties then why do you want to be in the cl anyways? For exciting victories over qarabag? To use your influence to magically get easy draws against the Swiss or Portuguese no hopers?

No we should want barca and be thrilled we got them. Either a truly glorious win or defeat to a truly special team with a once in a lifetime talent in their ranks await us and that is what the cl should all be about.

. Plus, Morata will be hyped as sh*t to beat the catalans!

2 hours ago, Sindre said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFONy0KhKbY

Watch from 26.20 here. Wouldn't excactly be super hard for Alonso to keep an eye on "Barcelonas" ball here when there are only two and the other guy just holds them in the palm of his hands before dropping them into the bowl.
Not saying he did but Xabi could easily have picked Barcelona instead of Besiktas for us there if he wanted.

Yeah, I was thinking that as well.  Who ever is picking the teams in the final bowl shouldn't be able to look when the balls go into the bowl.  He knew which ball he was picking.  He did a token swirl and instantly picked the one with Barca.

It's all a conspiracy!

13 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Hey look at that it was not psg lol.

Good a glorious tie against a true heavyweight opponent. Over the years Chelsea vs Barcelona has become one of the true great cl ties that has seen some amazing wins and losses on both sides. Now we get to see the next chapter in the story.

If you don't want such ties then why do you want to be in the cl anyways? For exciting victories over qarabag? To use your influence to magically get easy draws against the Swiss or Portuguese no hopers?

No we should want barca and be thrilled we got them. Either a truly glorious win or defeat to a truly special team with a once in a lifetime talent in their ranks await us and that is what the cl should all be about.

Well said.

1 hour ago, MANoWAR said:

Chelsea will play Barcelona twice, Manchester United away and Manchester City away in the space of three weeks.

I don't care about PL anymore !! if we can beat barça, surely we can beat anyone and win the UCL!!! let the Citheh have their w**kfest while we conquer europe once again... something they'll never sing !

Anyone who seriously thinks Barca will be scared of us needs to put down the waccy baccy. This isn't 2007. We don't have a Terry, Lampard, Ballack, Drogba. We have a defence that leaks silly goals, a midfield that contains Bakayoko (and which is wholly reliant on Kante), and an attack which is largely dependant on Hazard, who they will surely double/triple mark.

On the positive side, it's very difficult to mark Hazard completely out of game for 90 mins, and Morata will know how to score against them (assuming he gets the service).

Edited December 11, 20178 yr by Elliott

2 hours ago, chi blue said:

Barca players will have just seen draw and thought, o no not that lot again!! They won't fancy coming to the bridge, then second leg, hazard in the wide open spaces of the nou camp, I fancy this one big time, not worried about Barca so much but the referring might be an issue, UEFA will not want either Barca or real Madrid not in 1/4 finals, chance neither could be

you know what they say... there's a first time for everything

5 minutes ago, Elliott said:

Anyone who seriously thinks Barca will be scared of us needs to put down the waccy baccy. This isn't 2007. We don't have a Terry, Lampard, Ballack, Drogba. We have a defence that leaks silly goals, a midfield that contains Bakayoko (and which is wholly reliant on Kante), and an attack which is largely dependant on Hazard, who they will surely double/triple mark.

On the positive side, it's very difficult to mark Hazard completely out of game for 90 mins, and Morata will know how to score against them (assuming he gets the service).

Exactly, it isn't 2007.  The same argument can be used again you bra.

They don't have Xavi, Puyol, prime Iniesta anymore.   There midfield has a Chinese Super League reject in it. They conceded a lot of goals away from home last year to Juve and PSG. They aren't the same team they were.

1 hour ago, Blaugrana said:

1 hour ago, TheChelsRVA said:

Was just coming here to post this.  Absolutely brutal 3 weeks.  

You guys will probably be able to rest key players ahead of our clashes as you already dropped out of title race.

This isn't la liga mate, top 4 isn't guaranteed. Maybe we will have to be resting players while we are playing you.

 

45 minutes ago, Zeta said:

Reckon Messi is going to finally score against us. This team just doesn't have the spirit or the desire of previous teams.

This. Think we could be in store with for a thrashing.

36 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Hey look at that it was not psg lol.

Good a glorious tie against a true heavyweight opponent. Over the years Chelsea vs Barcelona has become one of the true great cl ties that has seen some amazing wins and losses on both sides. Now we get to see the next chapter in the story.

If you don't want such ties then why do you want to be in the cl anyways? For exciting victories over qarabag? To use your influence to magically get easy draws against the Swiss or Portuguese no hopers?

No we should want barca and be thrilled we got them. Either a truly glorious win or defeat to a truly special team with a once in a lifetime talent in their ranks await us and that is what the cl should all be about.

Of course we want to play the big teams, it just seems we always get a favourite in the Round of 16.  A nice easier draw against Besiktas this round would have been nice and then we could of eased into the likes of Barca. :(

Don' think the Turks will be that easy. Will See how Bayern do against them.

Sadly though if we do manage to overcome barca the joy for me would be short lived. With 3 English sides handed a straight root through and spurs the weakest of the "difficult" draws chances are very, very high we would get an all English quater final. Probably Liverpool. How boring. I despise playing English sides in the euro games. We play these guys twice or more every year already.

No doubt we will get a red card.

12 minutes ago, Michael said:

Of course we want to play the big teams, it just seems we always get a favourite in the Round of 16.  A nice easier draw against Besiktas this round would have been nice and then we could of eased into the likes of Barca. :(

2005 - Barcelona
2006 - Barcelona
2007 - Porto (Valencia in the last 8 )
2008 - Olympiacos (Fenerbahce in the last 8 )
2009 - Juventus
2010 - Inter
2011 - Copenhagen (lol)
2012 - Napoli (benfica in the last 8)
2013 - Didn't qualify
2014 - Galatasaray
2015 - PSG
2016 - PSG
2017 - Didn't qualify

I don't think anything about that screams we always get the hardest draw.  Some of them are staggeringly easy.

2 hours ago, TomCFC85 said:

Fun fact: Messi has never scored against Thibaut 

Well that's certainly put the mockers on it now Tom aint it...

barça conceded four against PSG without Mbappé and Neymar ... they struggled agaisnt celta vigo, valencia and olympiakos this season. They don't have Neymar anymore, no more xavi, an ageing iniesta, messi mental block against us AND ... a thin squad too . their good form has passed now... they'll start losing in the liga eventually and are dropping more and more points now in la liga... We kinda always tend to gear up for the UCL and show up everytime however sh*tty we are in the PL ... Let's believe guys !!If Eden Hazard said we can do anything, you can be assured the rest of the team will follow suit in the UCL!! Believe in the chels !!

Edited December 11, 20178 yr by Londonisblue

We have to look at this in many ways.

We have one of the top 3 players in the world on our side with a point to prove to the best teams in Spain. We're worried about Messi, yes. But they should be massively worried about the threat of Hazard especially on their right side with Roberto & Pique (who's not been on form this season).

We have three players with points to prove (Pedro, Cesc) who were shipped out because they were deemed not good enough. Don't know about you but Cesc is lightyears ahead of Rakitic & Paulinho so that's proven to be a mistake and whilst Dembele may be better than Pedro, he's out injured for a while and their next down is Deolufeo who couldn't even get into an Everton team that finished in the bottom half. Morata is the third with a point to prove being a Madrid boy heading back to the Nou Camp, expect him to be well fired up.

Adding to that, we have one of the best central midfielders in the world in Kanté who has shown so far in the Champions League what he is all about. Was superb in both games against Atletico.

Iniesta is not the player he used to be whilst Suarez has struggled massively for form this season, I've even seen Barca fans say they're fed up of him and are solely reliant on Messi again.

We're unbeaten against Barcelona in 7 matches, two of the matches they've previously beaten us in we've had a player dubiously sent off. (Drogba and Del Horno)

No, we don't have the likes of JT, Drogba, Lampard, Ballack, Cole, Cech or Essien anymore. However, Barca don't have the likes of Xavi, Puyol, Dani Alves, Valdes, Iniesta not longer in his prime with their replacements bar Valdes being downgrades.

This is a new era of Chelsea vs Barcelona. The "great" Lionel Messi once said:

"There are players here who hate Chelsea more than Real Madrid," Messi told the News of the World. "I never thought I would hear myself say that.

"I also never thought I would see something worse than the Boca and River Plate rivalry or Brazil v Argentina - but this is.

"We would rather play Arsenal, Manchester United or anyone else than be on the pitch with Chelsea."

 

1 minute ago, Londonisblue said:

barça conceded four against PSG without Mbappé and Neymar ... they struggled agaisnt celta vigo, valencia and olympiakos this season. They don't have Neymar anymore, no more xavi, an ageing iniesta, messi mental block against us AND ... a thin squad too . their good form has passed now... they'll start losing in the liga eventually and are dropping more and more points now in la liga... We kinda always tend to gear up for the UCL and show up everytime however sh*tty we are in the PL ... Let's believe guys !!If Eden Hazard said we can do anything, you can be assured the rest of the team will follow suit in the UCL!! Believe in the chels !!

there's one thing though... they got refs

Edited December 11, 20178 yr by Londonisblue