honest question. say conte gets the players he wants in the summer. do you really think we'll challenge next season? we've seen this season that with more teams challenging, he has shown to not have a plan b or c up until a week ago when he finally changed something. i honestly don't things changing next season. we are way too predicable to play against and it's obvious he loves that formation. i fear things will grow stale and next season won't turn out as people seem to think, with or without his targets. 

Great question. In my view this is at the core of our choice this summer. Beginning with the Bayern friendly in July, I have also observed that teams are predicting our trained movement patterns in the buildup and covering them. This means we haven't had stable possession and are vulnerable to counters.

I am still yet to see Conte find another way of combating that and I'm unsure that superior players will address that problem. I'd like to see him alter his strategy a bit more (Morata and Giroud together was a nice start). I think he'll need to do that to take us forward. I also think we'll need to strengthen our full backs and midfield at a minimum if he stays.

Problem is I'm not sure others can take us forward either. Simeone has shown the capacity to beat Pep at Bayern and compete with two much more expensively assembled squads in the League. But he isn't interested in leaving.

Allegri has done well with a much more expensively assembled Juve team. He is flexible in his tactics also. However Juve's startegy has been built primarily on older experienced players around Dybala. Very different from the approach we are taking here.

Enrique has some degree of flexibility and has also beaten Pep but again his success has largely been built around an incredible squad.

Sarri has never won a title and is very tactically rigid and reliant on a small group of players. In the Juve v Napoli game the commentator mentioned that 9 players have played nearly every game. That has been a criticism of Conte.

Others like Jardim and Conceicao play a more open style of football that has at times been exposed this season in big games. Although both have shown the ability to be flexible tactically and grow young players.

Point of all of that being that there is no perfect candidate to take us forward, in my view I'm not sure any of the candidates are significantly better than Conte.

7 hours ago, Spiller86 said:

 

 

Great question. In my view this is at the core of our choice this summer. Beginning with the Bayern friendly in July, I have also observed that teams are predicting our trained movement patterns in the buildup and covering them. This means we haven't had stable possession and are vulnerable to counters.

I am still yet to see Conte find another way of combating that and I'm unsure that superior players will address that problem. I'd like to see him alter his strategy a bit more (Morata and Giroud together was a nice start). I think he'll need to do that to take us forward. I also think we'll need to strengthen our full backs and midfield at a minimum if he stays.

Problem is I'm not sure others can take us forward either. Simeone has shown the capacity to beat Pep at Bayern and compete with two much more expensively assembled squads in the League. But he isn't interested in leaving.

Allegri has done well with a much more expensively assembled Juve team. He is flexible in his tactics also. However Juve's startegy has been built primarily on older experienced players around Dybala. Very different from the approach we are taking here.

Enrique has some degree of flexibility and has also beaten Pep but again his success has largely been built around an incredible squad.

Sarri has never won a title and is very tactically rigid and reliant on a small group of players. In the Juve v Napoli game the commentator mentioned that 9 players have played nearly every game. That has been a criticism of Conte.

Others like Jardim and Conceicao play a more open style of football that has at times been exposed this season in big games. Although both have shown the ability to be flexible tactically and grow young players.

Point of all of that being that there is no perfect candidate to take us forward, in my view I'm not sure any of the candidates are significantly better than Conte.

 

I agree with what you said about most of our attacking problems being those of methods rather then individual ability. The patterns with which we play and the structure of our attacks have been found out and we have lacked any purpose when on the ball. That's why we spend so much time passing around at the back because the space we were creating before is now gone and the moves we have practiced are not generating the effects they did before. It's why Conte looks so confused and not as animated as normal. He doesn't really know what to do to combat it. 

This is also why I want us to go after Enrique, Tuchel or Sarri. The range and diversity of their positional systems are much larger and more advanced then Conte's and in truth will not lead to us repeatedly being left with no clue how to combat teams offensively. One thing I hate seeing is a team without a clue what they are doing on the ball. We have seen this season with Conte that that's the case and going forwards we need a manager whose positional game is advanced enough for us not to be in that situation again.

18 hours ago, enigma said:

honest question. say conte gets the players he wants in the summer. do you really think we'll challenge next season? we've seen this season that with more teams challenging, he has shown to not have a plan b or c up until a week ago when he finally changed something. i honestly don't things changing next season. we are way too predicable to play against and it's obvious he loves that formation. i fear things will grow stale and next season won't turn out as people seem to think, with or without his targets. 

Not at all. If it was down to Conte we would have spent all of our money on A.Sandro (average season), Morata (poor season), Naingollan (looked awful against 'pool), Llorente (awful) and maybe Bonucci (old). I think Conte is better working with what the board gives him than trying to pick his own targets. 

9 minutes ago, RIP Mourinho said:

Not at all. If it was down to Conte we would have spent all of our money on A.Sandro (average season), Morata (poor season), Naingollan (looked awful against 'pool), Llorente (awful) and maybe Bonucci (old). I think Conte is better working with what the board gives him than trying to pick his own targets. 

this is the thing. people will sh*t on our board, but don't give credit for the excellent players they've brought in. it is always the coach that picked those players when they play well, when the players fail and look poor, it's always the board. 

I honestly don't see him staying. And I think him leaving has more to do with the strained relationship between him and the board rather than performances.

I think even if we win the FA Cup, it wont be enough as it seems the relationship between him and the board is far from the best. Conte wants a say in signings etc and he is not getting the support he wants. 

I think hes off in the summer.

1 hour ago, mourad91 said:

I think even if we win the FA Cup, it wont be enough as it seems the relationship between him and the board is far from the best. Conte wants a say in signings etc and he is not getting the support he wants. 

I think hes off in the summer.

Agree, he wants out IMO and the board also want him out and when you can't even sell your allocation in the semis of the greatest cup competition it's time for the parties to separate and start again with a clean slate.

12 hours ago, RIP Mourinho said:

Not at all. If it was down to Conte we would have spent all of our money on A.Sandro (average season), Morata (poor season), Naingollan (looked awful against 'pool), Llorente (awful) and maybe Bonucci (old). I think Conte is better working with what the board gives him than trying to pick his own targets. 

I thought he was one of their best players. I could see why Conte wanted him.

11 hours ago, Strider6003 said:

Agree, he wants out IMO and the board also want him out and when you can't even sell your allocation in the semis of the greatest cup competition it's time for the parties to separate and start again with a clean slate.

I thought we did sell out.  Was posted in here that we did, with what appeared to be a sigh of relief.

Regardless of who is in charge of the first team, I hope it's still Conte, Chelsea need to look at who they are bringing in and who they are letting leave with a little more scrutiny. Letting the likes of Chalobah and Ake leave and then signing someone like Drinkwater for 40 million just didn't make sense to me. I've read that with the success of Salah and De Bruyne, the club is more reluctant to sell Morata and Bakayoko. I would hope that they wouldn't sell them immediately. The PL is not like Germany, France, Spain, or Italy. To me its pretty obvious that most players need a year to adjust to the league and I think we will see a lot of improvement from those two next season, especially Bakayoko. The club also needs to stop selling players to rivals within the league. I don't follow the logic with it. I understand why the sold Cech to Arsenal but directly improving a rival like Matic to United is baffling to me. Why do those clubs a favor? 

Those are just my ramblings for the day. 

On 26/04/2018 at 10:00, yorkleyblue said:

I thought we did sell out.  Was posted in here that we did, with what appeared to be a sigh of relief.

Not saying you are wrong just that a blogger here said with a week to go we had only sold 33k and he was buying tickets for the neighbours kids to try and get more numbers there. Perhaps a last minute spurt of buying occured.

12 hours ago, Strider6003 said:

Not saying you are wrong just that a blogger here said with a week to go we had only sold 33k and he was buying tickets for the neighbours kids to try and get more numbers there. Perhaps a last minute spurt of buying occured.

I couldn't get tickets. I think we were sold out.

12 hours ago, Strider6003 said:

Not saying you are wrong just that a blogger here said with a week to go we had only sold 33k and he was buying tickets for the neighbours kids to try and get more numbers there. Perhaps a last minute spurt of buying occured.

Yes as far as I'm aware we sold out, as website said sold out on the Thursday before. 

On 24/04/2018 at 10:12, Spiller86 said:

He won the season before. I mean we have never dismissed a manager at the end of a season they have won a trophy.

I know people try to pretend it never happened but while we didn’t dismiss Rafa we didn’t renew his contract either. 

Talking about Rafa, me my brother and the friend that invited me to Chelsea when I was 19 all wanted Rafa to stay another season with a full summers training behind him. 

We played some great football during his short tenure yet of course a section of fans strongly objected to him because of a remark he made when at Liverpool.

 

On 29/04/2018 at 23:59, Strider6003 said:

Talking about Rafa, me my brother and the friend that invited me to Chelsea when I was 19 all wanted Rafa to stay another season with a full summers training behind him. 

We played some great football during his short tenure yet of course a section of fans strongly objected to him because of a remark he made when at Liverpool.

 

No we didn't. We were always set up not to lose rather than to win. Benitez was great at turning wins into draws, he loved bringing on a RB too when we should have been pushing for a win.

Also, one remark wasn't the only reason why we didn't want him at the club. He criticised the club, the fans and our success, many many times when we came up against his Liverpool team. Seriously, there were digs almost every time the two clubs came up against each other during his time with Liverpool. A lot of the ill feeling between us and Liverpool was at it's highest during this period. Liverpool fans would have been exactly the same if Mourinho was to manage them.

Benitez only took the Chelsea job because he was desperate. He would have taken anybody over us, but his reputation was so poor at the time that no top team would touch him.

 

We played terrible football under the f**kwit, he had no idea how to change a game and was embarrassingly predictable with his subs (right back for right back on 70 minutes.....). 

2 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

Benitez only took the Chelsea job because he was desperate. He would have taken anybody over us, but his reputation was so poor at the time that no top team would touch him.

Agree and the same with the Newcastle job for me.

Why was his reputation so poor, I recall he went to Madrid for a bit and didn't last long, was that it or was it that JM succeeded him and did well?

8 hours ago, Strider6003 said:

Agree and the same with the Newcastle job for me.

Why was his reputation so poor, I recall he went to Madrid for a bit and didn't last long, was that it or was it that JM succeeded him and did well?

He was quite poor for RM. JM gave RM some balls and to be honest, RM were in ascendancy while Barca were in a bit of a decline having lost puyol and aging xavi and iniesta. Yet, they got beat 4-0 mainly due to really poor tactics from Benitez. I remember the El classico and dont think he even played with a proper DM in that game. 

Moreover, after that came the Denis Cheryshev fiasco. He was suspended/ineligible and yet benitez started him which ended with madrid getting disqualified from copa del ray. I think he was sacked a month or less after. Cant say it has been a wrong decision. 

11 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

No we didn't. We were always set up not to lose rather than to win. Benitez was great at turning wins into draws, he loved bringing on a RB too when we should have been pushing for a win.

Also, one remark wasn't the only reason why we didn't want him at the club. He criticised the club, the fans and our success, many many times when we came up against his Liverpool team. Seriously, there were digs almost every time the two clubs came up against each other during his time with Liverpool. A lot of the ill feeling between us and Liverpool was at it's highest during this period. Liverpool fans would have been exactly the same if Mourinho was to manage them.

Benitez only took the Chelsea job because he was desperate. He would have taken anybody over us, but his reputation was so poor at the time that no top team would touch him.

 

We were both desperate, it was the ultimate marriage of convenience.

It’s about time we started to back the manager, it’s getting boring wasting vast amounts of cash paying them off.

On 22/04/2018 at 08:06, enigma said:

The board apparently want to go in a different direction next season. They want a different style of football and for youth to be integrated. 

This is where the Europa League can really benefit us. There are all those extra games and if we qualify early we could give the youth players a good run out in it. The fact that our youth players are consistently so successful proves they should be getting chances. Also this may be wishful thinking but (and I hate to bring them up) but look at how lucky Spurs got with Harry Kane. He showed his talent in that competition forcing his way into the Spurs first team. How great would it be for one or two of our youth players to burst onto the scene like that.