12 hours ago, JM7 said:

Matt Law reporting on what Sarri talked with the players about.

-Singled out Eden for playing how he wanted, instead of listening.

 

Not surprising. The amount of times I saw him ambling around next to Higuain.... And I barely saw him make a sprint.

Anyhoo, I'm sure no reasonable fan expected smooth sailing, especially when looking at the personnel he has available. No goals (club gambled on Morata). Lack of creativity throughout the team. Best fullbacks are a defensive right-back and one who can't defend on the left. No backup for Jorginho. Fans clamouring for youth when the seniors don't even know the system yet.

Conte tried a more aggressive 4-2-4 initially and we were in trouble. He fell back after it failed to work and he could do this because he had -  Terry at the club ; A world class striker in Costa ; a team full of experienced heads who could 'dig in' better than they could play expansive football.

People want Sarri to have a plan B but how radical could that change be with the current bench options? I really hope he gets the backing he deserves.

27 minutes ago, yorkleyblue said:

So Matt Law knows the details of a closed door meeting held in a football stadium dressing room?  Yep, that's all truly credible as well.

Depending on which end of the "Sarri management style and future job prospects" argument you stand any one of you could have written that load of made-up bollocks, or, equally, could have written the same amount of bollocks about how Sarri gave them all a good verbal kicking.

 

When will  we all start applying some sort of sensible cognitive reasoning to the sh*te that the press and sports media keep  feeding us?

I'm inclined to agree that Law couldn't be privy to an hour of discussion in a closed meeting n a changing room. However, based on my experiences of working at a company that employs 60 to 70 people, there is absolutely little or nothing that doesn't leak and spread rapidly around the whole building. Doesn't matter whether it's disciplinary, someones husband playing away, illness or even finding out that someone is being made redundant through a former colleague who clearly still keeps in touch with someone else here in the know. Then, having said that, football is perhaps the one industry that manages to keep some stuff out of public knowledge. Does anyone know even now why Ray Wilkins got the shove?

7 minutes ago, RIP Mourinho said:

Who else can he pick? The only one i have issue with him not playing is CHO. Seems like the perfect fit for Sarri's football. Outside of him, who else on our bench is going to improve our intensity? 

The slowest players on the ball are Azpi, Rudiger, Willian, Alonso/Emerson, Hazard. Who else can we realistically bring in for them? Hazard gets away with it because he's class but the others slow us down a hell of a lot.

Its going to take a couple of windows to give Sarri what he needs.

I’d change the entire system. Our opponents have figured it out and the main man in the entire system (Jorginho) has looked like a liability for a good while now.
You can’t succeed in this league without adapting and Sarri have not adapted yet.
Guardiola plays in a completely different way than he did with Barcelona and Bayern for example and Sarri needs to realize he can’t continue with his “Napoli-ways” here.
The entire concept is too slow for this league.

With this squad I’d like to see a 4-4-2 with Hazard behind Higuain up top and Pedro-Kante-Kovacic-CHO from midfield.

4 minutes ago, Sindre said:

I’d change the entire system. Our opponents have figured it out and the main man in the entire system (Jorginho) has looked like a liability for a good while now.
You can’t succeed in this league without adapting and Sarri have not adapted yet.
Guardiola plays in a completely different way than he did with Barcelona and Bayern for example and Sarri needs to realize he can’t continue with his “Napoli-ways” here.
The entire concept is too slow for this league.

 

With this squad I’d like to see a 4-4-2 with Hazard behind Higuain up top and Pedro-Kante-Kovacic-CHO from midfield.

The concept isn't slow, in fact its the complete opposite. Its the players that is slow.

Go and watch some Napoli games and try and say Sarrismo is slow.

4 minutes ago, RIP Mourinho said:

The concept isn't slow, in fact its the complete opposite. Its the players that is slow.

Go and watch some Napoli games and try and say Sarrismo is slow.

Serie A is entirely different though.
In fact i'd argue the biggest "culprit" of slowness currently is Jorginho who the entire system is built around.

8 minutes ago, Snedger said:

I'm inclined to agree that Law couldn't be privy to an hour of discussion in a closed meeting n a changing room. However, based on my experiences of working at a company that employs 60 to 70 people, there is absolutely little or nothing that doesn't leak and spread rapidly around the whole building. Doesn't matter whether it's disciplinary, someones husband playing away, illness or even finding out that someone is being made redundant through a former colleague who clearly still keeps in touch with someone else here in the know. Then, having said that, football is perhaps the one industry that manages to keep some stuff out of public knowledge. Does anyone know even now why Ray Wilkins got the shove?

Oh, that's true enough about how stuff spreads, but that article had a shedload of stuff in detail that only someone in the meeting and taking written minutes would know.  As only Sarri and the team were there, not even the back-room staff, it would have been a bit blatant if one of the team was sitting there with notepad and pen, or said at the start, "Hang on boss, while I start my phone recording"

In my place of work it's the same, gossip spreads  quickly, and usually changes from person to person, but only for  the odd things that you have listed.    

My view is that Matt Law is a chancer guesswork artist,  who puts so much stuff out there in his guise as a Chelsea insider that every now and again, he has to guess right.  It's still all guesswork and click-bait though

3 minutes ago, Sindre said:

Serie A is entirely different though.
In fact i'd argue the biggest "culprit" of slowness currently is Jorginho who the entire system is built around.

Serie A is known for its tough defenses and Sarri still managed to break them down and score a sh*t tonne of goals.

As for the slowness, i'll repeat my previous comment. Go watch Jorginho and Napoli and tell me if they were slow. Jorginho can only work with what he's got around him.

26 minutes ago, RIP Mourinho said:

The concept isn't slow, in fact its the complete opposite. Its the players that is slow.

Go and watch some Napoli games and try and say Sarrismo is slow.

But it's OK, that bloke has the straight-forward solution, just "change the entire system".  It's as simple as that.  I don't know why nobody else has noticed that.

18 minutes ago, yorkleyblue said:

Oh, that's true enough about how stuff spreads, but that article had a shedload of stuff in detail that only someone in the meeting and taking written minutes would know.

True, if he's claimed to have that much detail rather than a few bullet points then for sure he's letting his imagination run wild.

 

19 minutes ago, yorkleyblue said:

My view is that Matt Law is a chancer guesswork artist,  who puts so much stuff out there in his guise as a Chelsea insider that every now and again, he has to guess right.  It's still all guesswork and click-bait though

And I agree totally with this. This is pretty much how probably 90% of football journalism is conducted.

4 minutes ago, yorkleyblue said:

But it's OK, that bloke has the straight-forward solution, just "change the entire system".  It's as simple as that.  I don't know why nobody else has noticed that.

I haven’t said its as simply as that have I?

You are creating your own reality, again.
What I’ve said is that this isn’t working, teams have figured out that they nullify us if they press and crowd Jorginho and the manager have failed to do anything about it.

There is nothing wrong with changing the system, that is what won us our last league title in case you forgot.
The manager obviously have to find the system that suits the available players and this one gets the best out of very few in our squad.

1 minute ago, Sindre said:

I haven’t said its as simply as that have I?

You are creating your own reality, again.
What I’ve said is that this isn’t working, teams have figured out that they nullify us if they press and crowd Jorginho and the manager have failed to do anything about it.

There is nothing wrong with changing the system, that is what won us our last league title in case you forgot.
The manager obviously have to find the system that suits the available players and this one gets the best out of very few in our squad.

This whole narrative of 'Stop Jorginho and you stop Chelsea' is BS. The only game that applied to was Spurs away when we lost 3-1. He had so many touches and lots of the ball without pressure against Bournemouth. That argument is completely flawed in games such as Weds and Southampton 0-0 etc.

40 minutes ago, Sindre said:

I’d change the entire system. ..............................some other rambling nonsense...................................

 

5 minutes ago, Sindre said:

I haven’t said its as simply as that have I?

You are creating your own reality, again.

You have said it.  There it is, in bold, up above.  Simply put.  With no qualification, just "I'd change the entire system", full stop.  Simplistic as f**k.

So don't be trying to portray me as putting stupid things in your posts.  You do that quite adequately all by yourself.

2 minutes ago, jamie#8 said:

This whole narrative of 'Stop Jorginho and you stop Chelsea' is BS. The only game that applied to was Spurs away when we lost 3-1. He had so many touches and lots of the ball without pressure against Bournemouth. That argument is completely flawed in games such as Weds and Southampton 0-0 etc.

Of course it's nonsense. The way to stop us is by allowing us possession and territory, wee push them back into their final third, and we play 80% of the first half camped in trying to play pinball. Then the 2nd half we get even higher up the pitch in desperation, our CB's park up in the center circle, and then for the rest of the game we leave space in behind for them to attack. This has been happening in lots of games, even games we win or draw not just the losses, Cardiff, Leicester, Bournemouth, Arsenal, WH, Wolves, Spuds....,

3 minutes ago, yorkleyblue said:

 

You have said it.  There it is, in bold, up above.  Simply put.  With no qualification, just "I'd change the entire system", full stop.  Simplistic as f**k.

So don't be trying to portray me as putting stupid things in your posts.  You do that quite adequately all by yourself.

Oh sorry, didn't realize you'd have to post an entire thesis after sharing an opinion.

And i never said it was a simple solution you childish liar.

17 minutes ago, jamie#8 said:

This whole narrative of 'Stop Jorginho and you stop Chelsea' is BS. The only game that applied to was Spurs away when we lost 3-1. He had so many touches and lots of the ball without pressure against Bournemouth. That argument is completely flawed in games such as Weds and Southampton 0-0 etc.

It seems like one of the greatest tactical minds in football agrees with me though.

 

 

2 minutes ago, Sindre said:

It seems like one of the greatest tactical minds in football agrees with me though.

 

 

I certainly think there was an aspect of this against Tottenham and against bigger teams that press. But to simplify it as the main problem now is nonsense. We have struggled big time when he's had all the time in the world. Jose also points out that if you channel our possession to the right side (kante/azpi) our attacking options are very limited and i fully agree with that. Love Azpi but the amount of dangerous positions he wasted against Bournemouth was criminal.

The clamour around Chelsea is for change albeit, within the club at least, that does not extend to tinkering with the management.

There are no first-team delegations primed with complaints and queuing up outside Marina Granovskaia’s office just yet. While it is never wise to pre-suppose Roman Abramovich’s mood, the hierarchy are less inclined these days to fire a manager who has barely had time to reinstate ketchup on the menu at the training ground canteen.

Yet the sense is inescapable that Maurizio Sarri cannot simply plough on like this. There has to be an acknowledgment that something has to be done differently, primarily in terms of the side’s tactical approach. Chelsea and Abramovich knew they were hiring a manager whose faith in his philosophy was unswerving, born of a rise through Italian amateur football into Serie A with Empoli and Napoli, but a manager of any clout has to be able to adapt to a certain extent.

There is an art to improvisation. It cannot simply be a case of blindly repeating the same approach, and then, when the same problems duly flare up, issuing the same exclamations of astonishment in public.

The 4-0 thrashing at Bournemouth on Wednesday was, on the one hand, a shock to the system given Chelsea have not endured a dismissal so emphatic in the top flight since 1996. But, on the other hand, it was all so eminently predictable. Eddie Howe heaped praise post‑match on the efforts of David Brooks and Josh King in shutting down Jorginho, through whom Sarri’s team set their rhythm, but any opponents worth their salt have been doing that against Chelsea since Tottenham stifled the Italy midfielder at source in late autumn. Perceived lesser sides, those on whom the onus is not to pass their elite opponents off the pitch, have settled better into implementing the feverish industry which tends to close Chelsea down. They can be opened up too, at pace.

Sarri’s side still hog the ball. They had 68% of the possession against Bournemouth but there is little guile to any of it, their play a constant recycling of side to side or backwards touches. It can be tedious possession for possession’s sake. The excitement at the Vitality Stadium was all born of Bournemouth’s rapid counterattacks, slicing through a team hypnotised by their monopoly of the ball. They crave an alternative option, one that might shrug them out of their metronomic plod. But Sarri, aside from switching between target man and false No 9, will only countenance tweaking his formation, akin to shaking things up, once he feels his players are completely au fait with plan A.

“We haven’t even learned the most basic moves yet,” he offered to an Italian broadcaster on Wednesday when the question of Sarri‑ball cropped up. “We need to work on the basics, the primary foundations of my football. Only then will we try to change a few things. We had assumed we had learned a certain style of football but the truth is we never did learn it and are paying the consequences.”

That echoed his comments before the defeat at Arsenal in their previous Premier League fixture. “We are not ready to change at the moment,” he had said. “I can change when we are at 100% in what I want to see. If in 4-3-3 we are at the top, like in Naples last season, we can also play in a 4-2-3-1. But not at the moment.”

Sarri is desperate to have time on the training pitches, where he can monotonously drum home his principles in the hope they become second nature. He had endured relatively slow starts with Empoli and Napoli but the players eventually cottoned on. Yet the relentless nature of the schedule in the Premier League is denying him that same opportunity now. He must already be pining for a proper pre-season though, first, he has to reach the summer with his position intact.

The board knew what they were appointing and it is not in the regime’s nature to seek to force the manager to play a different way. But they will surely expect to see signs of an ability to adapt from the stubborn outlook, even if that threatens to push Sarri away from his underlying principles en route. They will seek evidence that the team’s approach does not always have to revolve entirely around Jorginho, Sarri’s crutch but a player who was always likely to need time to adapt to life in a far more frenetic division.

Chelsea need to inject pace, or natural width, or even raw aggression (Diego Costa’s snarl has never been more missed). Something, anything, to give opponents an unanticipated problem because, at present, everyone knows what they are going to confront when they play Chelsea. It is all too predictable. How Sarri must wish Gonzalo Higuaín was fully fit and firing. “But, at this moment, he is not in good shape, probably because he has played very little recently between transfer market distractions and back pain,” said Sarri of the striker. In truth, pinning hopes on a 31-year-old loanee enduring the toughest season of his career feels risky.

Even the reaction to failure is starting to feel tired. Sarri has questioned his players’ motivation and even reverted to Italian to add more punch to his message after the defeat at the Emirates Stadium. At Bournemouth he cast his coaching staff from the dressing room post‑match and spent an hour with his players attempting to pinpoint why this team’s performance can unravel so rapidly from a position of relative comfort.

César Azpilicueta claimed they had “spoken as men” through an honest post-mortem, though the suggestion is most of the talking came from Sarri with the squad in hushed silence for long periods. There were further talks as a group before practice back at the training ground on Thursday.

Sarri had travelled home from Bournemouth in a car driven by a member of his coaching staff so he could prepare the squad’s first session before the meeting with Huddersfield on Saturday.

Defeat is inconceivable, while victory against the division’s whipping boys will hardly prove Chelsea have turned a corner. But this boom and bust, from week to week, cannot continue. Something has to change.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/jan/31/maurizio-sarri-chelsea-hogging-ball-guile-change-fast 

Just now, jamie#8 said:

I certainly think there was an aspect of this against Tottenham and against bigger teams that press. But to simplify it as the main problem now is nonsense. We have struggled big time when he's had all the time in the world. Jose also points out that if you channel our possession to the right side (kante/azpi) our attacking options are very limited and i fully agree with that. Love Azpi but the amount of dangerous positions he wasted against Bournemouth was criminal.

Okay so it's not only "Spurs away" then was it?
You changed pretty quick from one game too "against bigger teams"

Mourinho literally said you create great difficulties if you stop Jorginho which is my entire point. But it only me and Jose Mourinho share that opinion i can live with that.

7 minutes ago, Sindre said:

Oh sorry, didn't realize you'd have to post an entire thesis after sharing an opinion.

And i never said it was a simple solution you childish liar.

Obviously you don't understand the difference between "simplistic" and "simple".  Perhaps  English isn't your first language, so I won't go on.  All you ever seem to  post is a series of negative cliches, that mostly appear to be cut and pasted from randomnonsense.com.

 

4 minutes ago, Sindre said:

Okay so it's not only "Spurs away" then was it?
You changed pretty quick from one game too "against bigger teams"

Mourinho literally said you create great difficulties if you stop Jorginho which is my entire point. But it only me and Jose Mourinho share that opinion i can live with that.

I genuinely think the only game that has applied to is Spurs but that's not to say it cannot happen again. But relaying that narrative after the defeat at Arsenal & Bournemouth, the draw against Southampton and the poor effort against Newcastle is for me lazy. I cannot remember him being dispossessed in the week and the problems are far more complex than 'get around Jorginho'.

1 hour ago, Brutos said:

Some of you really need to get a bloody grip

Soon as a few dark clouds appear on the horizon, they fall to pieces.

You wouldn’t want them next to you in a trench.

 

12 minutes ago, yorkleyblue said:

Obviously you don't understand the difference between "simplistic" and "simple".  Perhaps  English isn't your first language, so I won't go on.  All you ever seem to  post is a series of negative cliches, that mostly appear to be cut and pasted from randomnonsense.com.

 

Fair enough.
Only thing i'd appreciate from you is some respect for opinions that differs from yours.

If i think changing the system would make us better then surely i am allowed to share that opinion? I don't even see why it's so controversial.
Managers change systems all the time but if i share an opinion that i would like Sarri to change his then that is some major deal?

24 minutes ago, jamie#8 said:

I genuinely think the only game that has applied to is Spurs but that's not to say it cannot happen again. But relaying that narrative after the defeat at Arsenal & Bournemouth, the draw against Southampton and the poor effort against Newcastle is for me lazy. I cannot remember him being dispossessed in the week and the problems are far more complex than 'get around Jorginho'.

Mourinho brought up just what Arsenal did though. They took him out with Aaron Ramsay.
That's why they discussed the issue post-match.
If you re-watched that game i am convinced you would see it as well.

This video highlights what Arsenal did to stop Jorginho. From 2.25 onwards.

Edited February 1, 20197 yr by Sindre

8 hours ago, brownindian said:

Fair enough, the point i was trying to make was that we did not lead the aggregate. We advanced on penalties and that too thankfully cos this year the rules were amended and Away goals don't count anymore.

And the reason why i am trying to highlight that point is not to argue with you on technicalities but rather to say that although it was good to get a win against the Spurs it is not like our team is brilliant one minute and crap the next, we have been bland for a while. So to all the folks saying hey we were terrible then we were fantastic and motivated for the Spurs and became terrible again, that is not the case.

The Spurs weren't weakened for the first game. I think Chelsea outplayed them on both legs, but definitely on the second, a game they won.

My point was that the weakened Spurs that we beat were probably on par with a Bournemouth team that beat the daylights out of us. There was a big swing in those performances. We weren't brilliant against Spurs, but we did go from an Average performance where a flawed squad did get a win against a weakened one, to an awful performance, where a flawed squad threw in the towel.

54 minutes ago, Sindre said:

Mourinho brought up just what Arsenal did though. They took him out with Aaron Ramsay.
That's why they discussed the issue post-match.
If you re-watched that game i am convinced you would see it as well.

This video highlights what Arsenal did to stop Jorginho. From 2.25 onwards.

For me thats showing a team working hard and pressing our deep lying midfielder. This isn't genius or anything new. It's a simple press to stop us playing out easy all over the pitch.