11 hours ago, DannyVblue said:

We're a better team than the others - much better!!! We're the champions playing in our own back yard - we gave City way too much respect. I'd back us if we went toe-to-toe with them, especially at home with our fans behind us. And I still don't rate their defence. I love Conte but he got his tactics wrong. I don't think it was a personnel issue, more tactical. We were playing way too deep. An embarrasing thing for the champions to be doing at home.

We were playing way too deep as we didn't have the energy reserves to play higher up the pitch for 90 mins. Conte said as much after the game; i.e. if we had tried to press City non-stop, we'd have burned out after 30 mins. As such, we had to concede space for much of the game and attempt to hit them on the break. It was a conscious decision to give up posession because we didn't have the legs to get at them. Before Morata went off, you could see that he wasn't pressing City's defence. Same for Hazard when he took up that position. Whether that was because they were under instruction to save energy for counter attacks, or whether they simply couldn't do it, we won't know, but again, the crux of the matter is squad depth. Man for man, with similar recovery times, sure we could go toe-to-toe with City's first eleven. In terms of overall squad, they are miles ahead.

Azpi at WB has and will never work. Especially when we also have slow Alonso on the other side.
Wingbacks need to be able to peg our oppositions backs/wingbacks with pace and an offensive threat, he never will.

You just know it won't end well when you see Azpi playing RWB.
People keep saying they haven't seen Azpi had a bad game for us, go back and watch the League cup against West ham last season where Azpi played RWB, he was incredibly bad and we got eliminated!

Disagree except for Rudiger & Cahill, Cahill had a shocker in terms of passing but Rudiger still has some way to go, he really struggled today but wasn't an easy game for him by any means. 

Rudiger was our best player

Funny how we went from brilliant european title conteders (wednesday) to troubled champions who fell from the throne in matter of days (saturday). We were too tired and had too little to prepare for City and that is why we lost. City is also an elite team.

I'm not too worried. We trailed City by 8 points last season.

4 minutes ago, evissy said:

Funny how we went from brilliant european title conteders (wednesday) to troubled champions who fell from the throne in matter of days (saturday). We were too tired and had too little to prepare for City and that is why we lost. City is also an elite team.

I'm not too worried. We trailed City by 8 points last season.

Yup, one off game and unfortunate with the timing. I think City are a better side than us this season (as they should be) but same as how relegation teams plan for 42 points, Champions need to plan for 90 points. Beat the bottom 14 teams home and away and we have 84 points. That is where titles are won. 

We could have had Sandro/Alaba at LWB & Alves/Carvajal at RWB and it would have made no difference IMO. The centre of the park were gifting the ball to city time and time again, just a woeful performance from back to front.

Having Zapa or Moses playing RWB would have made much difference. Look at our starting line up once more and imagine you are Pep, we have only 3 offensive players out of f**king 11 starting, Morata, Hazard and Fabregas, same players that played against Athletico on Wednesday, they are already somewhat tired right? Don't you think one more attacking player on the wings would have made things more easier for the 3? Or are you still wondering why Pep and his team confidently attacked us throughout the game?

After watching the game again (you learn more from your defeats than your wins), the two things that really stood out was our inability to deal with the high press from citeh, and the way we allowed citeh to pass from left wing to center backs, to right wing....then back to center backs and left wing, always looking for the next phase pass into midfield.

This really throttled us, and kept the ball away from our three offensive players Morata Hazard and Cesc, and left Bakayoko and Kante running after shadows.

We could have stopped citeh moving the ball at the back by having 3 attacking players pressing high into the citeh back line, we have seen many times last season how Stones can fold under pressure from the high press and make mistakes. At the other end when our defence is under pressure and unable to hold the ball and pass it back to Tibo, he has three attacking players in the other half to target with long kicks, instead of him just pumping it back to citeh with no pressure. It was total recycling of the ball.

In hindsight we should of gone for their jugular with an attacking line up.

          Rudiger  Andreas  Cahill

Azpilcueta         Kante          Alonso

                        Willian

     Pedro          Morata         Hazard

 

1 hour ago, coco said:

 

In hindsight we should of gone for their jugular with an attacking line up.

          Rudiger  Andreas  Cahill

Azpilcueta         Kante          Alonso

                        Willian

     Pedro          Morata         Hazard

 

Not sure that's a realistic lineup tbh, but agree that perhaps we should have gone 3-4-3 with Pedro and Hazard supporting Morata. I do appreciate City played well on the day but to my mind we played with an inferiority complex. I would have preferred if we'd lost 3-0 if we'd at least given it a go.

In hindsight I think we should have gone with;

                     Courtois
       Azpi - Christensen - Rudiger
Zappacosta - Kante - Bakayoko - Alonso
         Pedro - Morata - Hazard

As someone said a few days ago we made Delph look a world class CB.

17 hours ago, Slojo said:

Fantastic analysis, Bakayoko was more at fault than Fabregas for that goal and was very off this game, his concentration levels don't look top tier, he can be too rash in dangerous areas which are very costly and his distribution needs to improve. 

Whats funny is after teh atleti game we were being held back y the police and everyone was signing teh new bakayoko never gives the ball away song, geezer next to me said we are going to look f**king silly when he gives the ball away against city...

another anaylsis here of the zonal marking. 

http://www.zonalmarking.net/2017/10/02/chelsea-0-1-manchester-city-guardiola-uses-his-full-backs-wingers-to-get-de-bruyne-into-space/

4 hours ago, Elliott said:

We were playing way too deep as we didn't have the energy reserves to play higher up the pitch for 90 mins. Conte said as much after the game; i.e. if we had tried to press City non-stop, we'd have burned out after 30 mins. As such, we had to concede space for much of the game and attempt to hit them on the break. It was a conscious decision to give up posession because we didn't have the legs to get at them. Before Morata went off, you could see that he wasn't pressing City's defence. Same for Hazard when he took up that position. Whether that was because they were under instruction to save energy for counter attacks, or whether they simply couldn't do it, we won't know, but again, the crux of the matter is squad depth. Man for man, with similar recovery times, sure we could go toe-to-toe with City's first eleven. In terms of overall squad, they are miles ahead.

I don't know if I can have 'fatigue' as an excuse. These guys are professional athletes and it's not as if we're coming towards the end of a long season - we're only just at the beginning. Granted, we had a very physically demanding game on Wednesday, but being so early in the season, having private jets, top notch facilities, and sports scientists/physios etc to help them recover, I'd hazard a guess that most of the team would have been fully fit and raring to go on Saturday. We also had the benefit of being at home, but we didn't use this to our advantage at all as our negative approach wasn't exactly giving the fans anything to get excited about. Imagine the atmosphere in the stadium if we'd really gone at City in that first half and pressed them, it'd have given the players a huge lift and would have scared the life out of Otamendi and Stones. Instead we sat back and gave their defense probably their easiest game of the season. 

I know hindsight is a great thing, but I'm just frustrated because they looked a level above us on Saturday and I honestly don't think they are. I believe in our team and definitely think we can get back into the title race. Love Antonio, but he got it wrong on this occasion in my opinion.  We need to start playing better against the top teams.

1 hour ago, DonAntonio said:

Whats funny is after teh atleti game we were being held back y the police and everyone was signing teh new bakayoko never gives the ball away song, geezer next to me said we are going to look f**king silly when he gives the ball away against city...

I felt sorry for our midfield on Saturday. They were playing so deep, and every time they received the ball they had 3-4 City players buzzing around them - and no obvious pass up the pitch as we only had Eddie up there.

48 minutes ago, DannyVblue said:

I don't know if I can have 'fatigue' as an excuse. These guys are professional athletes and it's not as if we're coming towards the end of a long season - we're only just at the beginning. Granted, we had a very physically demanding game on Wednesday, but being so early in the season, having private jets, top notch facilities, and sports scientists/physios etc to help them recover, I'd hazard a guess that most of the team would have been fully fit and raring to go on Saturday. We also had the benefit of being at home, but we didn't use this to our advantage at all as our negative approach wasn't exactly giving the fans anything to get excited about. Imagine the atmosphere in the stadium if we'd really gone at City in that first half and pressed them, it'd have given the players a huge lift and would have scared the life out of Otamendi and Stones. Instead we sat back and gave their defense probably their easiest game of the season. 

I know hindsight is a great thing, but I'm just frustrated because they looked a level above us on Saturday and I honestly don't think they are. I believe in our team and definitely think we can get back into the title race. Love Antonio, but he got it wrong on this occasion in my opinion.  We need to start playing better against the top teams.

Dan, maybe this is an agree to disagree. I am absolutely with you on the point of being made to look inferior, as that's certainly how it played out, but for me, it's not an excuse - our schedule was certainly a factor, which shouldn't be ignored. Asking the same eleven (bar Moses) to play two high intensity games against two top sides in a few days (including travelling) is a massive ask, and I think it showed.

The alternative would be to 'go at them' from the start, but then what happens just after half time when players are flagging? We bring on three subs and eventually City's squad depth would tell against tired legs. I don't think that's being harsh on our squad, I just think that's where we are at the moment. They have top quality back-up in every position, whereas right now, we don't. 

It's all hypothetical of course, but my point is, even if we played a high tempo game from the start, in the end, I'm not sure it would've made a difference. Yes we are at the beggining of a season and these are athletes, but I really don't see what more we could've done under the circumstances. Each player will have different individual levels of fitness, and they will all have their limitations.

We got what we deserved, nothing, we were 2nd best for the entire game, the only positive is that sh*tty only scored once ( great goal it was to) but 1 game don't make a season, a very long way to go yet

http://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/861455/Alvaro-Morata-Chelsea-striker-injured-two-months-news

 

 

we are officially f**kED. 

Not good but we are far from a one man team and bats should get better with a few consecutive games under his belt. If not come January we need to buy again.

1. We were knackered. I saw Azpi with his hands on his hips. Kante looked out of gas too. In the last 20 minutes, Alonso looked like he just might fall down at any moment. The stoke and ATM games took a lot out of us.

2. Conte gave them too much respect. To be fair, all of us wanted a 3 man mid with most of the attacking onus on hazard and morata. Well, it blew up in our faces. Specially since our mid looked so bad, we were toothless in getting the ball back or pressing them even in our own half.

3. Pep out thought conte. 3-6-1 in attack and completely over running the mid. 4-5-1 as soon as they got the ball. We got a couple of good attacks in the first 10 minutes, but after that they pressed the sh*t out of kante and cesc.

4. City were better. They had more energy, a better game plan, a day's rest more. Deserved the win.

PS - For once, cesc can hold his head up high as he was not the absolute WORST player on the pitch. On saturday, it was Kante. But take nothing away from cesc,he still was sh*t.

6 hours ago, didierforever said:

 

PS - For once, cesc can hold his head up high as he was not the absolute WORST player on the pitch. On saturday, it was Kante. But take nothing away from cesc,he still was sh*t.

for Once? Yeah, Cesc is almost always our worst player isnt he.....such hyperbole.

5 hours ago, dkw said:

for Once? Yeah, Cesc is almost always our worst player isnt he.....such hyperbole.

Cant think of any that I can say has been as poor as him this season. Please enlighten me with your non-hyperbole knowledge of who would it be??

This was perhaps our worst game under Conte performance wise, still only one game out of 38 we will bounce back.

6 hours ago, TrueBlueBIH said:

This was perhaps our worst game under Conte performance wise, still only one game out of 38 we will bounce back.

The saving grace was that we had our best  away european performance against a big team 3 days prior so fatigue def crept in. Hopefully it teaches Conte a lesson in squad rotation especially with Moratas Injury. I agree with you we will def bounce back

I can't remember one PL game since Robinho scored where we dominated and looked superior to City. They always seem far stronger than us.

52 minutes ago, KonaKai Blue said:

I can't remember one PL game since Robinho scored where we dominated and looked superior to City. They always seem far stronger than us.

We smashed them twice in 2013/2014 season, over both games we comfortably dominated them, especially at home when Torres had the best game of his career, and Matic had an unbelievable away debut at the Etihad that season. 

On October 1, 2017 at 20:24, Slojo said:

And we've played harder games this season than we did that season, people need to stop overreacting.

I'll admit I'm concerned with the player fitness whenever we play midweek games, we seem to be a completely different team, other sides cope in Europe well, why aren't we? 

Against Arsenal it was more down to a mix of a bad lineup and Arsenal having their random big away game masterclass they pull out once every few year's, like they did at City that time. Qarabag was Tuesday and Arsenal and Qarabag was at home_

Against City it was always going to be a big ask 3 days after playing Leti away. any team would stuggle with that.

9 hours ago, Argo said:

Against Arsenal it was more down to a mix of a bad lineup and Arsenal having their random big away game masterclass they pull out once every few year's, like they did at City that time. Qarabag was Tuesday and Arsenal and Qarabag was at home_

Against City it was always going to be a big ask 3 days after playing Leti away. any team would stuggle with that.

Very true, I'll concede on that one although I thought we did look slower than we usually are. 

Arsenal was more of the tactics and lineup than it was fitness or quality, we changed our usual set up against Arsenal that's been crushing them for years, no idea why.