We definitely need to strengthen the squad to compete on all fronts next year. I don't think we need to hit the panic button just yet though. Our starting 11 is still a very good team, and I'd say that we have 4 players that would get into any starting 11 in the world - Courtois, Azpilicueta, Kante and Hazard. I also have very high hopes for Bakayoko and Morata. I'm not saying the rest of the team aren't up to it, but I'd class those 4/6 players as world class.

I'm more worried about our  lack of a plan 'B' when Hazard isn't playing. We still look solid at the back, but toothless up front. I'd like to see our formation tweaked in the coming season for matches when things aren't going our way, or when Hazard is missing.

agree with bits of the frustration on here, last season Chelsea got very lucky winning the league (a 13 game record streak was lucky) with the squad and nearly did the double, we all can agree it was down to the manager's coaching & tactics, not the over abundantly stellar squad he took over. 

Initially when I saw the clear out of players when the window opened I assumed it was part of a meticulous transfer plan - remove dead wood, those who wanted to leave could, prospects not up to it etc, but their replacements and the necessary additions needed to compete on 4 fronts haven't quite materialized = lots of players have been sold since Rambo went to China and a lot of cash has come in, other top clubs have been spending like drunken sailors, not our board = fans PANIC* 

Conte does seem a bit sulky, and IF 2 or 3 more players don't come in before the window closes it may well indeed time to start panicking.

 I expect Conte is a perfectionist and he had a vision that included Sandro flying down the left with good additions elsewhere and currently feels short-changed by this and annoyed by the Far East tour.

I expect some squad strengthening and then he will put his head to the task and get us playing well again. 

I do pick up on this gloom and doom yet still believe we will retain the title providing Conte puts the effort in.

I think we will probably sign Drinkwater, Candreva and even Bale!

The latter I think will spiritually lift the club and although he will likely miss matches we will get momentum and belief.

 

5 hours ago, Zola said:

From Conte himself

 

“I think now is not the right moment for Chelsea to spend so much money on one player because we need many players. It’s important to divide this amount of money to buy many players.

“I think only one player is not enough to improve our team, we need more players, not of top level like Neymar, but more players to improve our squad, our quality, and our numerical aspect, now we are a few players [short].”

Danny drinkwater it is! 

Well, we did get spanked by Arsenal and Liverpool in September last year...

2 hours ago, General said:

agree with bits of the frustration on here, last season Chelsea got very lucky winning the league (a 13 game record streak was lucky) with the squad and nearly did the double, we all can agree it was down to the manager's coaching & tactics, not the over abundantly stellar squad he took over. 

Initially when I saw the clear out of players when the window opened I assumed it was part of a meticulous transfer plan - remove dead wood, those who wanted to leave could, prospects not up to it etc, but their replacements and the necessary additions needed to compete on 4 fronts haven't quite materialized = lots of players have been sold since Rambo went to China and a lot of cash has come in, other top clubs have been spending like drunken sailors, not our board = fans PANIC* 

Conte does seem a bit sulky, and IF 2 or 3 more players don't come in before the window closes it may well indeed time to start panicking.

I agree with much of your post but not sure how you can describe our 13 game winning streak as lucky ?  It takes a heck of a lot more than luck to win 13 straight games in this league surely ?  I thought going on to win 30 games out of 38 was quite exceptional and something we can really be proud of.

That said, I agree some of our moves this summer have left me wondering what on earth is going on. I'm dissapointed that we have shipped out so many decent propects who might have been good squad players in times of need, and not as yet replaced them as far as I can see. Maybe we have, but not that I'm aware of as yet ?

Selling Matic to Man Utd just seems wrong. I get that many of our supporters didn't seem to rate him that much but I thought he was a useful player and by selling him we have strengthened a direct rivals squad. Why would we do that ?

Baffled and confused right now but not going to slate the club unlike some muppets on here.

I know I'm guilty of being a negative nancy but I think a lot of people are overreacting, at least for now.
I'm almost 100% that at least 2 more transfers will drop before September, plus Hazard and Bakayoko are injured.
Honestly, Conte teams don't typically do well in pre-season. 

1 minute ago, TomCFC85 said:

I know I'm guilty of being a negative nancy but I think a lot of people are overreacting, at least for now.
I'm almost 100% that at least 2 more transfers will drop before September, plus Hazard and Bakayoko are injured.
Honestly, Conte teams don't typically do well in pre-season. 

Didn't you say 2 or 3 new transfers coming in on a post elsewhere?  now you've gone down to just 2?  

 

 

DOOMSDAY IS UPON US!

 

 

A lot of short memories on here. 

I full expect a slow start, then I think Conte to learn fast and weave his magic. No one start last season with 3 at the back but a lot of teams ended up like that, you know what I mean :) 

My prediction a tough start, everyone to write us off, then come May-2018 am easy defence of our title.

i do think though we might find the Champions League tough, that just gut feel. 

 

How on earth can our title win last season be described as lucky? 

1 minute ago, dkw said:

How on earth can our title win last season be described as lucky? 

LSD, crack cocaine and scrumpy cider.

I am also worried about the season.  I don't think the team is good enough to go deep in the Champions League and don't see who we can realistically bring in to strengthen it. Also, the squad is very thin. However, I think Conte is a genius, and if the board listens to him and gets him some of the players he wants, we may still do well.

I don't expect us to challenge for the title, but neither do I expect us to be 2015/16 bad either. We should be able to make Top 4. 

3 hours ago, dkw said:

How on earth can our title win last season be described as lucky? 

No idea, i can accept people being worried but that is bullsh*t about us being lucky last season. We weren't lucky, we dominated the league when we changed formation. I have heard a lot of people say that without the 13 match win, we wouldn't have won it........well yeah, obviously, but we DID win those games and it wasn't luck that got us through them. We played some great football at times and dominated those games. Even after that 13 game win streak ended, we still dominated the league. As soon as we lost to Tottenham we bounced back and beat Leicester comfortably. Luck doesn't win you 30 league games in a single season, you don't score 85 goals with luck ( 12 more goals than our previous league title ) and luck doesn't get you 93 points ( two points off our record for league points in a Premier League season )

I remember people saying we were lucky when we won the title 2 years ago too, it's crazy.

The problem is, the players won't have the same hunger as they did last season since they already won the league. Which is why if we won't to avoid a disaster, we gotta buy WBs and a backup CM atleast. Especially players like Alonso, Fabregas, Willian and Moses are not at all the player they were last season. Even Cesar had been making some mistakes probably due to the fact he has to play every single minute(due to the lack of proper depth).

Edited August 8, 20178 yr by TheAwesomeGem

On 6/8/2560 at 22:41, BlueSky said:

Long season ahead, should be fun....

Exactly. It's going to be a long, hard, durable season ahead where we need to pace ourselves so, if we had come out firing on all cylinders, fit as fleas, I for one would have been worried. Another thing, Morata hasn't been here 5 minutes, give the lad a chance to at least get his feet under the table.

7 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

No idea, i can accept people being worried but that is bullsh*t about us being lucky last season. We weren't lucky, we dominated the league when we changed formation. I have heard a lot of people say that without the 13 match win, we wouldn't have won it........well yeah, obviously, but we DID win those games and it wasn't luck that got us through them. We played some great football at times and dominated those games. Even after that 13 game win streak ended, we still dominated the league. As soon as we lost to Tottenham we bounced back and beat Leicester comfortably. Luck doesn't win you 30 league games in a single season, you don't score 85 goals with luck ( 12 more goals than our previous league title ) and luck doesn't get you 93 points ( two points off our record for league points in a Premier League season )

I remember people saying we were lucky when we won the title 2 years ago too, it's crazy.

Its hilarious isn't it, if we hadn't scored all them goals and stopped the other team  scoring we just wouldn't have won, we were just so lucky. We have some weird fans who seem desperate to downplay everything we do and exaggerate what other teams do, it's almost as if they feel they have to be really hard on the club to prove how big a fan they are, they just care that much. I've never seen anything like it before, so odd.

How were we lucky last season? The system was working perfectly. Players were at top of their game. We were dominant especially our 13 win streak. Alonso and Moses were over-performing. Kante was a beast. Fabregas was the super-sub. Costa had the best performance first half of the season. Hazard was dancing around team's defense like it was nothing. Pedro was making intelligent runs behind the back and slotting it in. Luiz had the best season ever taking control of the defense. Azpi never dissapoints and gave his best performance every min of every matches. Courtois didn't make a lot of errors. Cahill started to improve and made last ditch tackles. We deserved to win the title easily. We outdid the Premier League. But the problem is, near the end of the season, we started to get tired and complacent. Hopefully the start of this season, we get our form back. We did pretty well against Arsenal 3-0 but we can't let complacency creep in. That's my only worry. We can easily rectify the complacency issue by buying more players and adding more depth to get some competition going for each position. Which we haven't done yet. That's the only thing that can replicate our horrible season of 2015/16.

Edited August 8, 20178 yr by TheAwesomeGem

On 8/7/2017 at 12:22, SydneyChelsea said:

To be clear, there is a world of difference between your frustration and the others who appear to be tipping us for imminent relegation.

 

On 8/7/2017 at 12:47, dkw said:

I think the majority of our fans feel this way, and its perfectly acceptable given our current situation. I`m not sure what the end game is here with our board, but if we do bring in 2 or 3 new players then things suddenly look a hell of a lot better. As Sydney says, the way you and most others put these fears across is good, the way some of the more erm..special fans are completely losing their minds is embarrassing.

Have a look at the articles by this guy on the 606 forums 

https://www.ja606.co.uk/users/viewAllArticles/19797/articles/1

Looks like Conte did not want to sell Matic and is unhappy about the deal.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/40857589

There's not a single quote from him in that article, just Ian Wright's opinion. And he's a f**king idiot.

Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth.

Curly Larry & Moe predicting us to finish outside top four. Time to make them eat their words.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-4779260/Redknapp-Keown-Sutton-preview-Premier-League.html

Trying to predict anything in the Prem now is pretty pointless, but I've yet to see any player or pundit not make City their favourites. They've got the manager, the players, the depth and even the facilities. United could trouble them though. Not spectacular but maybe Jose will get them grinding out wins like he did in his last title for us. I'm a bit concerned that all is not well at the Bridge and I know it's been done to death but it'll be a small miracle if our small squad avoids injury, suspension and fatigue to win the title with the extra game load this season. Really can't see us plummeting to 10th again though. Top four should be manageable.

Last year City and United were the favourites (Pep, Pogba etc.) and look what happened. Let's not lose this one before it even starts.

Unbelivealble, the season hasn't even started and some fans are already having meltdown! lets see where we are in 10 games and then we can all panic. I have full trust in Conte and the squad i admit it will be difficult to retain the title but if we can compete for the title and secure a top 4 finish and do well in the champions league i think most of us will be happy.