12 minutes ago, atomis said:

That sh*t was staight up voodoo craft.....

28 minutes ago, yorkleyblue said:

Did CHO actually touch the ball when he eventually came on?

It’s not easy for a young attacking player to come on and set the world on fire five minutes before the end of a match with the team are currently trying to see out a 1-0 win. 

He should be coming on instead of Willian and been given a chance to impose himself on the match, otherwise what’s the point? If BATE scored after that, we still have a Brazilian international on the bench...

Didn't play well but got the job done, qualified with 2 games to spare. Big game this weekend before the dreaded international break be nice to carry on the momentum. UTC.

35 minutes ago, yorkleyblue said:

 

Did CHO actually touch the ball when he eventually came on?

Now this is bollocks.  We scored more than they did, so we deserved to win.  Football is decided by goals scored, not some sort of opinion from people watching on a stream on their laptops

Come on, we were very average today. They hit post 3 times and missed another sitter because of our lazy defending. We got out of jail today, no question. 

 

4 hours ago, robdog said:

I didn't know that - I like him even more - I remember him playing for Inter & thinking what a talent - so happy that he is now playing for Chelsea - one more thing, I believe he likes Eden a lot - he is wearing Eden's old number & they seem to play well together - I remember on Sunday when Don Maurizio brought on the two vs CP, it brought a smile to my face cause I knew that would be the end of CP's threat

Just looked it up, it is indeed 5: Croatian, English, German, Italian, and Spanish.

He does link up well with Hazard, hopefully that will play a part in him staying permanently.

1 hour ago, robdog said:

No manure's win vs Juve was lucky

missed that one.

2 hours ago, yorkleyblue said:

 

Did CHO actually touch the ball when he eventually came on?

He did.  Dropped back into the middle a couple of times, and would play balls out wide and then push forward.  One stood out toward the end, where he was back in the mid and then passed out to Zappa (not Frank) before making a play into the box.  I think Davide tried to pass in and got a corner out of it.

32 minutes ago, mwblue10 said:

Just looked it up, it is indeed 5: Croatian, English, German, Italian, and Spanish.

He does link up well with Hazard, hopefully that will play a part in him staying permanently.

or Real Madrid is a being an evil genius & sent an emissary to indoctrinate Hazard to the ways of the Madridistas 

I mean, it wasn't pretty...or even enjoyable, or even worth watching...but hey, we won....

Nice for Giroud to get off the mark. MOTM the posts.

It was all about surviving this game. Kinda sloppy, but understandable regarding the conditions, performance. Wouldn't mind a draw or even a lose as long as everybody stays healthy. From that perspective I don't understand why Sarri should have played some key starters for so long, but I'm gonna leave my judgement for Sunday. 

Probably the least i've enjoyed watching Chelsea all season but with how far we had traveled and us qualifying its a good result in the end. Now we can give CHO and Ampadu serious minutes in the two remaining group games.

12 hours ago, dynamite said:

Come on, we were very average today. They hit post 3 times and missed another sitter because of our lazy defending. We got out of jail today, no question. 

I'm not arguing, it was a piss-poor performance against a piss-poor team who upped their game. My point was that some poster said we didn't deserve to win, but we scored more goals than they did, so we DID deserve to win.  It's a simple concept.

11 hours ago, mad_mac said:

He did.  Dropped back into the middle a couple of times, and would play balls out wide and then push forward.  One stood out toward the end, where he was back in the mid and then passed out to Zappa (not Frank) before making a play into the box.  I think Davide tried to pass in and got a corner out of it.

Yeah, sorry, my original post came out wrong.  I thought he should have been on earlier to get a chance to get into the match.

Still, it gave the Willian-bashers a bit more to whine about, eh?

Poorest performance of the season so far, hope it's just an one off. We didn't do much with the 75% possesion, plenty of side way passing and mucked it up the final deliveries. Defence is shaky every time they came forward, on another day one of those 3 shots on post would have bounced in, and a draw would be a fair result. I don't think Hazard was all that keen to play, but we had to give Willian a break, and Moses just didn't cut it in Sarri's mind. The 2 central defenders made no impression what so ever, Rudiger/Luiz won't be losing their spots anytime soon. Nice to see Giroud break his drought, other than that there wasn't much positives out of the game.

Pros:

Qualification means that we can take it easy in the remaining games and hopefully give some minutes to Hudson-Odoi and Ampadu. 

Giroud getting off the mark for the season. Been unlucky up to now, hopefully turns the tide a bit for him now. 

 

Cons:

Everything else. 

We need:

A left footed RW

A new centre back

A new LB

A new striker

Flaky as f**k but a win's a win. I don't actually think they played too badly individually but Barkley and RLC can't play in the same midfield for me, we lacked incision and left too much space in front of the back 4, Man City would have battered the team that played last night.

Edited November 9, 20187 yr by the special one

1 hour ago, enigma said:

We need:

A new LB

A new striker

Why? 

15 hours ago, Zeta said:

Again, not a single one of the squad players puts in anywhere near a performance to make Sarri sit up and think. They never take their chances.

I keep think(Ng palmeri would do ok. 

1 hour ago, enigma said:

We need:

A left footed RW

A new centre back

A new LB

A new striker

based on?

We were so bad. Had fun in Minsk, but the game itself was poor. Got lucky they hit the post\bar 3 times!

5 hours ago, enigma said:

We need:

A left footed RW

A new centre back

A new LB

A new striker

man, that is quite the list and i am not sure all are necessary.  Maybe the new CB.  I'm not sure about Andreas C.  Doesn't seem to handle not playing well and looks nervous a lot, and with Cahill on the way I think a new CB is a good shout.

LB with Palmieri and Alonso I think we are pretty well covered.

Striker seems fine with Giroud, Morata, and Mitchy.  But if one of them were to leave, sure.  But I doubt it is an area we are looking at in the January Transfer window.

Probably the most uninspired win I've seen for a long while (and yes that includes the Derby match), but I'll take an uninspired win over any other result, especially in conditions we have had problems with in the past (e.g. - Shakhtar 2012). 

It reminded me a bit of that match Chelsea played against Tromso in the snow when Vialli showed why he was named Lucky Luca with some inspired finishing to keep us the time.

Last night was misty and had a bumpy pitch, of course that does excuse lackadaisal movement on the pitch,