1 hour ago, ross91690 said:

As mentioned already, the ball he didn’t come off his kind for yesterday really spoke to his lack of confidence and the team’s lack of confidence in him. What continues to baffle me is how he seemingly makes himself smaller on shots his way. 
 

I also still haven’t forgotten his disrespectful behavior towards Sarri last season. From attitude to performance, Kepa just doesn’t fit the bill for a UCL hopeful club. The back four remains top priority in the window, but keeper has to be addressed as well. 

We are okay for RB it seems. James and Azpi are enough for the time being, but its the 2 CB's, LB and GK thats a massive issue.

Even LB isn't that bad as Alonso is good in a back 5 as hes very attacking, but his defending is poor, but once we sign someone like Tagliafico, Alonso is more than good enough to play backup.

CB is our biggest issue because none of the 4 options we currently have are good enough and they all need to get replaced, bar Tomori. Between the sticks we need to sell Kepa asap and get Oblak

Edited July 23, 20205 yr by driller97

2 hours ago, Zeta said:

Don't know how he hasn't been banned yet. Such an obvious troll.

He is now, thank modness.

5 minutes ago, driller97 said:

We are okay for RB it seems. James and Azpi are enough for the time being, but its the 2 CB's, LB and GK thats a massive issue.

Even LB isn't that bad as Alonso is good in a back 5 as hes very attacking, but his defending is poor, but once we sign someone like Tagliafico, Alonso is more than good enough to play backup.

CB is our biggest issue because none of the 4 options we currently have are good enough and they all need to get replaced, bar Tomori. Between the sticks we need to sell Kepa asap and get Oblak

They are all good enough. Nonsense. 

Every one of them has delivered at the highest level. 

Trust me, with a better keeper, we wouldn't be thinking about replacing 3 central defenders. If any of those three were playing for another club, we would be wanting to buy them. 

Just now, bisright1 said:

They are all good enough. Nonsense. 

Every one of them has delivered at the highest level. 

Trust me, with a better keeper, we wouldn't be thinking about replacing 3 central defenders. If any of those three were playing for another club, we would be wanting to buy them. 

Maybe its down to the coaching then, because something is very wrong with our defensive system. We need to hire a specific top level defensive coach to sort these issues.

Despite saying that though, you can't blame it all on the coaching when each of Rudiger, Zouma and Christensen have made several calamitous errors which simply had nothing to do with the coaching. Christensen is also just weak as sh*t and gets bullied by physical forwards.

Hopefully biscuit wrists has played his last game for us

i wouldn’t even have him on the bench for the last games. Utterly pointless

our already frail defenders just don’t trust him

he has to go

30 minutes ago, driller97 said:

Maybe its down to the coaching then, because something is very wrong with our defensive system. We need to hire a specific top level defensive coach to sort these issues.

Despite saying that though, you can't blame it all on the coaching when each of Rudiger, Zouma and Christensen have made several calamitous errors which simply had nothing to do with the coaching. Christensen is also just weak as sh*t and gets bullied by physical forwards.

You notice errors more when 50-60% of all shots on goal are goals. 

I'd wait and see whether what we have now is good enough when you put a goalkeeper in-between the sticks before we spend 80m on someone. 

39 minutes ago, bisright1 said:

They are all good enough. Nonsense. 

Every one of them has delivered at the highest level. 

Trust me, with a better keeper, we wouldn't be thinking about replacing 3 central defenders. If any of those three were playing for another club, we would be wanting to buy them. 

Christensen appears a bit soft and lacks physique

Zouma probably our best defender though looks clumsy on the ball and does sometimes lack spatial awareness with the ball in the air

Rudiger seems to go under the radar but quite often is caught out of position

Tomori has youth and speed on his side, possibly will improve

Kepa has to go and I would get rid of Christensen and Rudiger along with Emerson. Alonso gets another season with him being a good system player. 

If we can't get decent money for Kepa and don't want to spend a lot on a keeper Pope from Burnley at least has size on his side or Foster from Watford who despite their position in the league has had a good season.

I used to have the perception that sh*t defense makes the keeper look better than they actually are as they have the opportunity to showcase there shot stopping abilities, Kepa has put an end to that theory the poor lad is just not up to the level required and only God knows how he is Spain's Number 1.

I recently watched a compilation of the saves he has made with us and even those are not the greatest, the number of times he makes a save and puts the ball right back in the danger area is unreal.

11 minutes ago, charierre said:

Christensen appears a bit soft and lacks physique

Zouma probably our best defender though looks clumsy on the ball and does sometimes lack spatial awareness with the ball in the air

Rudiger seems to go under the radar but quite often is caught out of position

Tomori has youth and speed on his side, possibly will improve

Kepa has to go and I would get rid of Christensen and Rudiger along with Emerson. Alonso gets another season with him being a good system player. 

If we can't get decent money for Kepa and don't want to spend a lot on a keeper Pope from Burnley at least has size on his side or Foster from Watford who despite their position in the league has had a good season.

Zouma has a pass percentage of nearly 90%. He looks clumsy but he isn't actually. Rudiger is a talented player, so is Christensen. We'd be wasting time and energy trying to replace them when we could just focus on the clear problem. Our lack of a goalkeeper and lack of a left back.

Genuinely, there are 10-15 keepers in Europe who would make our defenders look better for less than 40m, probably more.

Liverpool have conceded 32 goals this season with their "world class" defence and I seriously think we would have conceded less than 40 goals this season with prime Cech in goal. Its hard to overstate how damaging Kepa is to our team. With Cech in goal, we go in 1-0 up against Liverpool last night. All three of those goals I think aren't scored if Cech is in goal, we've forgotten what a goalkeeper who saves shots looks like. We think if a shot is powerful and in the middle of the goal, it goes in. We think if a free kick is on target from 35 yards and not in the top corner, it goes in. We think a keeper who stands on his line at every corner and doesn't intimidate any defenders is normal.

Get a new keeper, wait a year. You then won't want to sell all our defenders

Its always so easy. Just replace one player

We had the same defence last year as this year. Same goalkeepers. This year we ship a ton more goals. The only difference?

David Luiz. The not defender.

 

7 minutes ago, Stim said:

Its always so easy. Just replace one player

We had the same defence last year as this year. Same goalkeepers. This year we ship a ton more goals. The only difference?

David Luiz. The not defender.

 

The difference is tactical, Sarri decided to tone down on the attacking asthetics and focus on retaining possession, we traded the exciting football to play keep ball and in turn protect our defense/Kepa.

Lampard has scrapped that and gone all in on making us a more entertaining team but it's come at the expense of solidarity.

Usually i would agree that it's not as simple as replacing one player but in this case it will make a huge huge difference in my opinion.

7 minutes ago, Argo said:

The difference is tactical

It's the actual answer but its the harder truth to accept. Imagine we just got the draw at West Ham instead of everyone pushing forward.

Whoever we get it won't matter if the defence is bad. And before anyone comes out with a better goalkeeper will do some sh*t like give them confidence and then they'll magically remember how to defend, we should all live our lives with such optimism.

12 minutes ago, Argo said:

The difference is tactical, Sarri decided to tone down on the attacking asthetics and focus on retaining possession, we traded the exciting football to play keep ball and in turn protect our defense/Kepa.

Lampard has scrapped that and gone all in on making us a more entertaining team but it's come at the expense of solidarity.

Usually i would agree that it's not as simple as replacing one player but in this case it will make a huge huge difference in my opinion.

Not sure what you mean with solidarity, but we are also a possession based team and try to press with Mount and William high up the pitch, just have to look at the stats of most of the games. But we are conceding more goals, even in those games that we control possession-wise. I'm not sure why, though, if I knew I'd be onto Lamps' managerial job!

17 minutes ago, Argo said:

The difference is tactical, Sarri decided to tone down on the attacking asthetics and focus on retaining possession, we traded the exciting football to play keep ball and in turn protect our defense/Kepa.

Lampard has scrapped that and gone all in on making us a more entertaining team but it's come at the expense of solidarity.

ahhh...this explains my elevated heart level now when I watch Chelsea play

8 minutes ago, Stim said:

Whoever we get it won't matter if the defence is bad

That's one of the stupidest things i've ever heard. 

Of course a better goalkeeper will make a difference. How many times haven't good goalkeepers bailed their defence out? Cech and Courtois did that time and time again when we had the best defence in the league.

No one is going to tell me that we wouldn't have conceded 15-20 goals less in the league alone this if we had Oblak in goal instead of Kepa. And we'd be on summer vacation already having sealed top 4 a long time ago.

12 minutes ago, RMH said:

Not sure what you mean with solidarity, but we are also a possession based team and try to press with Mount and William high up the pitch, just have to look at the stats of most of the games. But we are conceding more goals, even in those games that we control possession-wise. I'm not sure why, though, if I knew I'd be onto Lamps' managerial job!

Difference is Sarri stopped taking risk's, culled the off the ball movement (as Cesc himself confirmed) and had us playing more safe passes. Lampard wants us to make off the ball runs and be a bit more adventurous in possession which brings more defensive risks.

They both made different trade off's to roughly the same result.  

14 minutes ago, Argo said:

Difference is Sarri stopped taking risk's, culled the off the ball movement (as Cesc himself confirmed) and had us playing more safe passes. Lampard wants us to make off the ball runs and be a bit more adventurous in possession which brings more defensive risks.

They both made different trade off's to roughly the same result.  

I agree that we became more static with Sarri in the league, but I don't think that explains the whole picture. We have been able to play well and limit the number of goals to a reasonable number in some games like City, Pool at home in the FA Cup or Everton. But then we are embarrasingly defending in other games. Is that tactics, tiredness or just the defensive line not good enough? As i said, I don't have an answer but it is aprobably al those.

6 minutes ago, Argo said:

They both made different trade off's to roughly the same result.  

Same results, different entertainment, like polar different.,

According to the stats, we're in the top 3 for 'least shots allowed' and in the bottom 2 for shots saved vs shots scored. Kepa is making our defence look worse than it is because almost every mistake ends up a goal, whereas a good goalkeeper covers for the mistakes and they're forgotten about

He stands in the wrong place, plants his feet and does half hearted twitch to these shots so he can say "I couldn't have got to that, what were my defence doing?" The stats don't lie. Relegation tier sides don't all suddenly get wonder strikers when they play us.

4 minutes ago, abigsmurf said:

According to the stats, we're in the top 3 for 'least shots allowed' and in the bottom 2 for shots saved vs shots scored. Kepa is making our defence look worse than it is because almost every mistake ends up a goal, whereas a good goalkeeper covers for the mistakes and they're forgotten about

He stands in the wrong place, plants his feet and does half hearted twitch to these shots so he can say "I couldn't have got to that, what were my defence doing?" The stats don't lie. Relegation tier sides don't all suddenly get wonder strikers when they play us.

Bingo. Kepa saves about 50% of every shot the opposition gets on goals against us. One goes in for everyone he saves. People need to realize how brutally bad that is.

Like the second worst in the league is at 63%. Kepa is in the low 50s.

imagine taking 70 mil (whatever the hell it was) and just casually setting it on fire.

kudos to bilbao.

Our defense needs a lot of fixing, but we should really start at Kepa here because he was supposed to be this epic talent, he was super expensive and hasn't shown he's worth half of the money we invested for him as the long term solution.

Our defense wasn't the best before Kepa either we still have the same players mostly but Kepa has flopped massively, maybe our biggest mistake signing and biggest flop ever.

We do need a new keeper and a new LB, without those two we have so many holes, Azpilicueta can't play LB till he retires even if he's having a good season all things considered.

56 minutes ago, Stim said:

Whoever we get it won't matter if the defence is bad.

I'd challenge you to watch this video and rethink if a great goalkeeper would make a difference:

How many would Kepa get to of the 100s of saves in that video? Maybe a handful?

It's actually a little sad watching it. Courtois was a proper goalkeeper.

 

11 minutes ago, Mummy said:

imagine taking 70 mil (whatever the hell it was) and just casually setting it on fire.

kudos to bilbao.

He's on insane wages with a massive long contract.

He could sit on the bench for 5 years. No one will come close to what we're paying him,

 

he's like a glitched fifa player or soemthing