This...

12 hours ago, Strider6003 said:

It is not looking good now as we have Europa on Thursday and our form has just dropped for the 2nd consecutive match.

Sarri does not have a clear week to work on the team now until at least Jan is out.

I agree we probably lack a motivational presence in the dressing room to fire up the players pre-match, really for Spurs we need a born and bred Londoner yet don't see any in the squad with this quality and the motivational presence.

I don't have a problem with Sarris subs today yet hope he has made up his mind on Morata. When your team is struggling you need your striker to be on form and that rarely seems to be the case. 

We have been hammered before by Spurs. 5-1 in the league cup in 2002 we can bounce back from this. 

Spurs seemed to now how to break us down as did Everton and a couple of times we've had to change formations with preceding managers midseason, last season Azpi's crosses to Morata were stopped, Fabregas was pushed to the bench. Now it is Sarri's turn to work out what needs to change.

 

Spot on. As others have already stated we lack a leadership figure. It’s possible having a home grown player would address this. Certainly more passion from the Spuds yesterday and that hurt. I do think though the subs needed to come on earlier. It appears to be a trend now that managers don’t make changes at half time which we clearly needed yesterday.

The one thing I struggle with in this formation is three midfielders who don’t score goals and aren’t near the defence on breakaways. Also when we lose possession around midfield we dont seem to have bodies goal side.

We've certainly regressed from our form and approach earlier in the season. What we saw today was shapeless and pointless,, fairly gutless by the players.

Below is taken from another Chels site:

We've been extremely fortunate to ride our defensive luck all season, and right now it looks like that luck has finally run out. This sort of a belting has been on the cards for awhile now and it comes as no real surprise that it happened in this fixture.

This game highlighted everything I dislike with playing a back four with this group - the fit just isn't there and we're not maximising the strengths of our players effectively. Sarri taken arguably our best defender over the last few seasons in Azpilicueta who seemed to find a new level as a CB in a back three, then pushed him back out to fullback where he's never really made much of a contribution and has since struggled. He's put David Luiz back into the heart of a back four and it's the same old story with him being defensively inept. While he's reduced Alonso's strengths by playing him as a fullback and nullifying the impact he has in the final third - this is a player who had scored 13 league goals in the previous two seasons and now currently has 1. Rudiger is the only player who hasn't really seen his game massively dip so far.

On top of that it's also negatively impacted Cahill and Christensen in the process because of their marginal roles and could likely now see us lose both players sooner or later. 

What really irks me the most though is how this system has impacted one of the finest defensive midfielders in the league with Kante, and reduced his influence on games tenfold to where he virtually has no real defining impact on games and looks more lost than anything else in his new role. 

While whoever's idea it was to still persist with Morata needs to be held accountable. It's been clear as day for YEARS that he's not a reliable CF and never has or will be. He needs to go, plain and simple. With all our other struggles it's often like playing with ten men on the pitch when Morata is upfront and merely compounds matters further.

We should have seen this sort of hammering at the hands of Arsenal earlier in the season. That should have raised warning signs, even with the win, and instead we've papered over some substantial cracks all season by knicking results in games we didn't really deserve much from, but alas nothing. Even the last 4 or so games have highlighted our slow, laboured, unimaginative and dull play. Sarri has shown absolutely zero intuition to change anything - as was the case at Napoli. 

This is why high possession and passing stats mean absolutely nothing to me. Unless you've got the cream of the crop in players, winning takes hard work, grit and some heart. None of which we've shown and desperately lack across the pitch. We used to have that in spades across the pitch, now we're lucky to have two or three players in the entire squad with that sort of drive and leadership.

While the players are equally accountable for not executing some of the basics well enough, particularly the ones who've blown hot and cold for years. Players like Luiz, Morata and Willian have been around long enough to have gotten their **** together by now. While the likes of Barkley, Jorginho and Kovacic etc need a real wake-up call. 

Hopefully this serves as a reminder to everyone that if they are serious about making the top 4 this season, a vast amount of improvement is needed to make that happen. 

What an absolute ****-show.

23 hours ago, Munkworth said:

Why ask the question if you don’t care for the answer? Wait don’t reply because I literally couldn’t care less about what you have to whinge about. 

It was a rhetorical question. I’ll reply to who I want to and when I want to, thank you. If you don’t like that then don’t respond to me again. 

Edited November 25, 20187 yr by Floyd25

Thursday doesn't really matter as we have already qualified. Maybe time to give Christiansen a second chance, bring back Fab (I know!) and move Kante to his old position.

8 minutes ago, EmeraldBlue said:

Thursday doesn't really matter as we have already qualified. Maybe time to give Christiansen a second chance, bring back Fab (I know!) and move Kante to his old position.

Fat chance Kante gets thrown back where he belongs........even in a meaningless game. Lets hope the team puts these past 4-5 games behind them and kick on.

Losing to Spurs is the worst thing as a Chelsea fan. That’s the main thing here for me, the passion and aggressiveness from the players was non-existent. Kovacic had an awful game, doing that Rabona being 2-0 down made me nearly throw a chair at the TV. Surely RLC needed to play knowing he’s from the academy and how important the rivalry is but I guess Sarri doesn’t know the importance of it yet either. We cannot blame Kepa, yes we started bad because of one of his mistakes but his distribution is a huge asset and it could of been 6 or 7-1 if it wasn’t for him. Let’s face it though, a loss was coming but it’s so s**t losing against them. The next two league games we NEED 6 points before the City game.

Losing to Spurs, when I’m heading to LHR tomorrow morning, and my cab driver is a Spud.

Going to get a whole hour of how great they are.

 

”Champions of Europe, you’ll never win that”

 

On 24/11/2018 at 19:55, ducavis said:

Nailed it with the first statement, I disagree with the criticism of Jorginho though. Kante for me is the biggest problem in that midfield, and it will be interesting to see how Sarri fixes the issue long term. I have seen the Allan comparison floated around, but he is so far off Allan as a player. Stick your Eriksen or Isco next to Kovacic & Jorginho, and instantly we look a different side. For all his criticism Pep wanted Jorginho, and he would have played him next to Silva & De Bruyne which is very scary.

it would be a fairer comparison if it was Allen 2017/18, to kante this season, since ancelotti uses Allen differently to how sarri did.

What a woeful performance & not knee jerk the blame lies solely with the manager. When playing away from home against the top teams you have to adjust your system & his arrogance didn’t allow him to do that.

We allowed Spurs to dominate us, by virtually giving them the midfield before kick off, it was a game crying out for Kante to be central & breaking up play, we were desperate for his & Barclays energy against what we know is a very fit, athletic & well drilled spurs side. We had Jorginho & Kovacic, I’m betting the spurs dressing room was over the moon when they saw that! 

Sarri has to learn from this, has to learn to adapt, to make substitutions earlier to change formations when they’re not working. Otherwise he won’t be around for very long at all.

finally, what does Kovacic bring to this team, genuinely I was excited when we signed him, but now I can see why Madrid let him go.

Sarri has a system but not quite the players to make it work. The three big problems are Luiz, who is a mistake ridden defender, Kanye out of position=ion and the lack of consistent goals from anyone other than hazard. 

There is no answer to luiz being unreliable, except to use his ball playing skills going forward, or scrap him and play Dave there. Christensen is not the answer and Cahill is too old. Ampadu might be the answer but has to get over injuries and it won’t be this season. 

Regarding Kante he has to be in the team, he passes well, runs well and is kante, but he isn’t frank lampard. 

If we scored three every game the defensive problems wouldn’t matter so much. Kovacic isn’t the answer for this team because he can’t shoot, worse than kante  RLC just two goals for palace in 24 games, Ross Barkley has 12 goals in one season for Everton in allcomps and 8 in the league  it’s not 20 but it’s double or triple the other  midfielders  I think he has to play  

 

Spurs are more physical than us in midfield 

Scunnered !

Sorry, I still don't do losing to them well in any shape or form.

Again, the most experienced referee deny us another penalty. This time there was nothing obstruct his view, still not give a sh*. Penalty call changes the momentum of the game, we will get back into the game, their confident will be dented, it's a big f* deal. Spurs did a good job pressing us, but referee let them got away with  many 50-50 challenges. The first goal resulted from a dive from Kane, if that was a Chelsea player it's a yellow card for diving.

I hope this game used up all the bad luck we have this month.

Sarri was right,an all round bad team performance.Of course made worse because its them.Best to put it behind us and move on,UP THE CHELS !

Points thrown away through having the wrong attitude.

Thought Spurs played OK - nothing amazing, just did the basics well. Hassled, closed down, won first and second balls.

Chelsea didn't turn up and made it so easy for them. Play like that against anyone in the league and you'll get punished.

Why wasn't the attitude there? Performance levels have dropped recently. Have the players already started to turn against Sarri's ways?

Edited November 26, 20187 yr by Elliott

15 hours ago, EmeraldBlue said:

Thursday doesn't really matter as we have already qualified. Maybe time to give Christiansen a second chance, bring back Fab (I know!) and move Kante to his old position.

Please elaborate? What old position? 

1 hour ago, RIP Mourinho said:

Please elaborate? What old position? 

I think that would be the position where he became the first footballer to win back to back premier titles with different clubs.

1 hour ago, WhiteWall said:

I think that would be the position where he became the first footballer to win back to back premier titles with different clubs.

Oh you mean playing as a box to box midfielder like now? So keep him in the same position? Got ya.

I don't buy into the view that Kante is playing in the 'wrong' position, as it all depends on how the manager wants us to play.

Sarri clearly wants an energetic, ball playing midfielder with a top ability (vision) to pick passes. He wants his teams to dictate play and dominate the ball. Kante is the best ball-winner in world football, but I wouldn't say he's an amazing passer. His strength is driving forward with the ball (having won it), and starting counter-attacks (Conte's Chelsea) which is exactly the style that Sarri wants to move away from. 

Sarri's style relies on the whole team pressing at high tempo, and we were nowhere near doing that versus Spurs. The defeat was due to a collective underperformance rather than bad performances in specific positions.

The problem we are now finding is that teams have worked us out, and we don't really have a plan B. You stop Chelsea from playing by nullifying Hazard (as best as possible) and by putting pressure on Jorginho. This is now Sarri's challenge and personally, I'd like to see more flexibility from the manager in these situations rather than us trying to play the same way at all costs.

Waited until it had calmed down on here before I looked in. But ouch! There is only three teams that I care about losing to in the League, Arsenal, Liverpool and f**king Tottenham! Got to admit, our first loss of the season being to that lot stings a bit. Onward and upward though. Lets aim for top 4 and see where we end up.

We need to take a deep breath and regroup

4 hours ago, Old Shaggy said:

Waited until it had calmed down on here before I looked in. But ouch! There is only three teams that I care about losing to in the League, Arsenal, Liverpool and f**king Tottenham! Got to admit, our first loss of the season being to that lot stings a bit. Onward and upward though. Lets aim for top 4 and see where we end up.

I'd like to add Man U to your list ...