He timed his rise to prominence ridiculously well from our perspective.

Had he still been a loanee we wouldn't have a snowball in hell's chance of keeping him.

42 minutes ago, Argo said:

He timed his rise to prominence ridiculously well from our perspective.

Had he still been a loanee we wouldn't have a snowball in hell's chance of keeping him.

Real have to be a bit disappointed, for sure.

I hope soon he starts getting the appreciation in the media he deserves.

7 hours ago, mwblue10 said:

Real have to be a bit disappointed, for sure.

I'm sure our hearts bleed for Real 😇

5 hours ago, Valerie said:

I'm sure our hearts bleed for Real 😇

🎻🎻🎻

As good a midfield performance as you could hope to see. This boy has everything. A couple of sublime passes that could have led to goals, a magnificent goal, covering, tackling, dribbling, vision, and skill like you can't believe. He's genuinely world class, as I've said many times. I don't know what happened at Real Madrid but boy are we lucky to have him. Maybe with Kroos, Modric etc in the picture he never really got a run in the side, but now that he has a manager that believes in him and now that he's found his feet in the Prem we can see what a player he is. He walks into any side in the world in my view.

 

Yes, got caught a couple of times trying to dribble out from the back in the second-half, but we were chasing the game and he was the driving force, and it's a sign of the confidence he has in his own ability, though he has to learn not to over-elaborate at times.

 

Lastly, his temperament, he was getting kicked a lot by a very energetic and physical side, and he just gets up and gets on with it, he's tough as old boots, hard as nails. There are one or two on these boards who still think it's a toss-up between him and Jorginho for a place in the side. Kovacic is completely untouchable. Jorginho is now fighting with Kante, not with this guy, if we play with a 2. There is an argument for playing with all three, but if it's two we're playing with, it's this guy and one other.

 

His performance was amazing today. The best player in our squad, no question.

Would have been nice if his good run of form coincided with the team playing well.

 

6 minutes ago, Deino said:

Would have been nice if his good run of form coincided with the team playing well.

 

 

Agreed. We were like a one man band today at times. Kante was poor, Willian and Mount faded badly in that second half, to the point where you hardly noticed them. Kovacic was having to do it all on his own. He was working so hard I wondered if he'd finish the game. The boy has some stamina.

The only player that has maintained his form since the international break, if anything, he has gotten even better. 

1 minute ago, Davey Baby said:

 

Agreed. We were like a one man band today at times. Kante was poor, Willian and Mount faded badly in that second half, to the point where you hardly noticed them. Kovacic was having to do it all on his own. He was working so hard I wondered if he'd finish the game. The boy has some stamina.

I think our offensive game depends too much on him and Jorginho to start the play. Kovacic is not a playmaker yet but he adds so much dynamism to the team offensive-wise that the front 4 waits for them instead of looking for space or coming to collect the ball themselves

He's my POTY so far.

29 minutes ago, Davey Baby said:

As good a midfield performance as you could hope to see. This boy has everything. A couple of sublime passes that could have led to goals, a magnificent goal, covering, tackling, dribbling, vision, and skill like you can't believe. He's genuinely world class, as I've said many times. I don't know what happened at Real Madrid but boy are we lucky to have him. Maybe with Kroos, Modric etc in the picture he never really got a run in the side, but now that he has a manager that believes in him and now that he's found his feet in the Prem we can see what a player he is. He walks into any side in the world in my view.

 

Yes, got caught a couple of times trying to dribble out from the back in the second-half, but we were chasing the game and he was the driving force, and it's a sign of the confidence he has in his own ability, though he has to learn not to over-elaborate at times.

 

Lastly, his temperament, he was getting kicked a lot by a very energetic and physical side, and he just gets up and gets on with it, he's tough as old boots, hard as nails. There are one or two on these boards who still think it's a toss-up between him and Jorginho for a place in the side. Kovacic is completely untouchable. Jorginho is now fighting with Kante, not with this guy, if we play with a 2. There is an argument for playing with all three, but if it's two we're playing with, it's this guy and one other.

 

His performance was amazing today. The best player in our squad, no question.

But you do concede now that we are no more solid with Kovacic and Kante as we are with Jorginho right ? 
 

because we just got licked up 3-1 at Everton so just wondering who your going to blame it on been as there was no Jorginho and Kante was where you want him to be in our best midfield pairing “ that our coach finally agrees with you about “ so what’s going on ? Is it Jorginho why we get played through week after week still or has your opinion changed now you’ve seen it happens no matter who we play in CM

His performances have given Frank a real headache in midfield. I think Frank was expecting to to be Jorginho, Kante and Mount most games but Kovacic performances have made it impossible to drop him. Now he doesn't know who to pick or what his best midfield is.

But this guy is brilliant, a bargain too.

1 minute ago, I Am Gay 4 Diegod said:

But you do concede now that we are no more solid with Kovacic and Kante as we are with Jorginho right ? 
 

because we just got licked up 3-1 at Everton so just wondering who your going to blame it on been as there was no Jorginho and Kante was where you want him to be in our best midfield pairing “ that our coach finally agrees with you about “ so what’s going on ? Is it Jorginho why we get played through week after week still or has your opinion changed now you’ve seen it happens no matter who we play in CM

To be fair, none of the goals came from the midfield not protecting the defense, we weren't giving them a lot of chances from those areas either. It was poor mistakes from the CB's that cost us again. I don't think Kante had a good game, but it's not like Everton were playing one pass through our midfield and running 1v1 at our CB's.

15 minutes ago, JMaher94 said:

He's my POTY so far.

Absolutely. To think so many people didn’t want him after his poor start last season.  It’s nice that, every so often, we find these gems.

3 minutes ago, I Am Gay 4 Diegod said:

But you do concede now that we are no more solid with Kovacic and Kante as we are with Jorginho right ? 
 

because we just got licked up 3-1 at Everton so just wondering who your going to blame it on been as there was no Jorginho and Kante was where you want him to be in our best midfield pairing “ that our coach finally agrees with you about “ so what’s going on ? Is it Jorginho why we get played through week after week still or has your opinion changed now you’ve seen it happens no matter who we play in CM

The mistakes have been from defence though? Teams generally avoid going through the center when they play us..

2 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

To be fair, none of the goals came from the midfield not protecting the defense, we weren't giving them a lot of chances from those areas either. It was poor mistakes from the CB's that cost us again. I don't think Kante had a good game, but it's not like Everton were playing one pass through our midfield and running 1v1 at our CB's.

Agree with this. Very hard for our midfielders to do anything when the ball comes in from a long ball or a set piece.

1 minute ago, jack_super_class said:

His performances have given Frank a real headache in midfield. I think Frank was expecting to to be Jorginho, Kante and Mount most games but Kovacic performances have made it impossible to drop him. Now he doesn't know who to pick or what his best midfield is.

But this guy is brilliant, a bargain too.

Frank chose to highlight 1 player for the sake of the wellbeing of the whole team. Kovacic scored in two games after not scoring for 3-4 years, that's great but in both those games the team didn't win. Kovacic doesn't win us games, even when he plays the very best he can. I prefer to see the team winning instead of Kovacic scoring goals.

Just now, Gol15 said:

Frank chose to highlight 1 player for the sake of the wellbeing of the whole team. Kovacic scored in two games after not scoring for 3-4 years, that's great but in both those games the team didn't win. Kovacic doesn't win us games, even when he plays the very best he can. I prefer to see the team winning instead of Kovacic scoring goals.

This is very harsh. In no way does Kovacic hindered the team today

1 minute ago, Gol15 said:

Frank chose to highlight 1 player for the sake of the wellbeing of the whole team. Kovacic scored in two games after not scoring for 3-4 years, that's great but in both those games the team didn't win. Kovacic doesn't win us games, even when he plays the very best he can. I prefer to see the team winning instead of Kovacic scoring goals.

One we drew and today it was our first goal after being 2-0 down so not exactly unimportant goals!

1 minute ago, I Am Gay 4 Diegod said:

But you do concede now that we are no more solid with Kovacic and Kante as we are with Jorginho right ? 
 

because we just got licked up 3-1 at Everton so just wondering who your going to blame it on been as there was no Jorginho and Kante was where you want him to be in our best midfield pairing “ that our coach finally agrees with you about “ so what’s going on ? Is it Jorginho why we get played through week after week still or has your opinion changed now you’ve seen it happens no matter who we play in CM

 

Well yes, Frank has clearly come round to my way of thinking, but as I said in my post, there's an argument for playing all three, though personally I think our best midfield was on show today, and we completely won the midfield battle, though Mount faded badly second-half.

 

We conceded three terrible goals, the second two from terrible individual errors, that's not something you can pin on the midfield. First-half, we may not have created much but we were completely dominant and weren't half as open as we normally are. Second half starts calamitously and we're chasing the game with the clock ticking, so obviously we're going to be more open, but we still only conceded the third due to a farcical error.

 

By the way, I never blamed Jorginho solely for us being open, that's just a narrative that you spun for reasons best known to yourself. I just said we looked less open without him. That doesn't mean it's solely down to him. In fact I've praised him this season. I've said he's a good player, he just doesn't get into my best XI. 

 

That's my opinion. You're going to have to get over it. Maybe start obsessing about somebody else's posts.

One of the greatest midfielders I’ve seen at Chelsea. Has everything to his game, now he’s just added scoring to his game! 2 goals recently, I wonder if he will keep it up?

37 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

Frank chose to highlight 1 player for the sake of the wellbeing of the whole team. Kovacic scored in two games after not scoring for 3-4 years, that's great but in both those games the team didn't win. Kovacic doesn't win us games, even when he plays the very best he can. I prefer to see the team winning instead of Kovacic scoring goals.

no correlation between Kovacic playing/scoring and us losing though. Stupid comment.

30 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

Frank chose to highlight 1 player for the sake of the wellbeing of the whole team. Kovacic scored in two games after not scoring for 3-4 years, that's great but in both those games the team didn't win. Kovacic doesn't win us games, even when he plays the very best he can. I prefer to see the team winning instead of Kovacic scoring goals.

For the love of god, just stop. This is terrible data mining. With each post on this thread, you dig a deeper hole for yourself as a result of this inexplicable obsession of yours. I don’t know what it is (an unhappy romance with a Croat, a run-in with the Croatian police? Are you Serbian? [I am both by the way]) but you’d be well advised to avoid this thread altogether until you get over it. 

4 minutes ago, RIP Mourinho said:

no correlation between Kovacic playing/scoring and us losing though. Stupid comment.

No? OK lets see how we do next game then, I will wait how long it will take for you to see it, my honest guess if this continues it won't be long at all, as the main guy in midfield he isn't actually controling the game, even Grealish made our midfield look like sh*t in the first half...Frank played now the same lineup two games, lets see if anything changes in the next one.