5 hours ago, charierre said:

Not so sure about that, Hazard was involved in 49% of our goals be it scoring or assisting. Sarri never really cut like a figure who wanted to be here and took the option of getting back to Italy prompto. Maybe it was the fans not being enamored with him or more likely he knew there was a transfer ban coupled with the loss of Hazard imminent and maybe he felt he had taken us as far as he could.

He said in a press conference that he was looking at loan players to bring back in the squad and identified three. Eddie Newton confirmed Mount was one and i assume James was another, not sure who would have been the third.

It got to the point at the end some were criticising him for the sake of it, take for example the EL semi vs Frankfurt, it was hardly a massive secret RLC hasn't the best stamina in the world so that combined with his injury record meant despite his form (which owed a lot to Sarri's coaching) it was a perfectly logical decision to take him off for some fresh legs with extra time looming but the crowd went absolutely nuts. Wouldn't surprise if around then he thought what's the point.

Edited April 27, 20233 yr by Argo

6 hours ago, enigma said:

To be honest, brutally honest, we won the title under Conte due to Liverpool and City being poor that season. Pep had just joined City and Liverpool were still newly together. A season or two later and we finish 5th with the same team under Conte, compounded by not buying good players to strengthen that summer, then look what happens - Liverpool and City go on to be the two most dominant domestic clubs up until now. As much as that league win under Conte was great, it was also during a period when things just worked out for us.

These are the realities and context of our trophy wins in recent seasons. The CL win was during covid lockdown, City/Pep bottled that final. We were fortunate to have not played the likes of Bayern or PSG too. I'm feeling angrier and frustrated today and finally need to air the real truths about our success in recent seasons because it's been like a sticking plaster over a wound that's been increasing in size for the last decade. We haven't looked as dominant or well put together domestically as Liverpool or City, not for a long time.

We need to realise we aren't a top club any longer, nor a serious title threat. We need to push back the ego and understand this is going to take far longer than a season to fix. Pochettino might not be the right guy, I've literally no idea at this point who would be. He might work out, he may not, but I'm honestly deflated by it all. Get in Pochettino, Enrique, Nagelsman, Mourinho, who the f**k cares at this point, it's not possible to know what will happen with this group of players and ownership. 

I hate this post so much. Deminishing our achievements because everybody else was bottling or rebuilding? such a load of crap. There were other clubs around, I didn't see them winning the trophies whilst the current big names were "bottling" it. We won those trophies because we were the best in those competitions at the time.

You say we need to push back the ego, but I think it's the exact opposite. A lot of Chelsea fans seem to have an inferiority complex. Almost like you're embarrassed to even expect your club to compete seriously.

Edited April 27, 20233 yr by Scott Harris

5 hours ago, enigma said:

An elite club challenge for the title every season. We have struggled to challenge for top four in the last 5 seasons. I stand by my comment mate. 

We struggled to challenge for the top 4? how did we struggle to challenge for top 4 when finished top 4 in 4 out of those 5 seasons? Maybe it's the way you have worded it and you meant that we struggled to get over the line to finish top 4, but at no point in 4 of those 5 seasons did we struggle to challenge for top 4. We were always right in the thick of it.

Last English team to win the CL

last English team to win the super cup/club world cup

Dominated ATM and RM to win the CL with best defensive records

Pretty sure when our wbs were fit we was top of the league... We was on to something but boehly came and messed everything up. Got rid of all the experts and bought rubbish players under inflated contracts, what happens if we stop winning now and the players turn out to be average? 

4 minutes ago, Conte said:

Last English team to win the CL

last English team to win the super cup/club world cup

Dominated ATM and RM to win the CL with best defensive records

Pretty sure when our wbs were fit we was top of the league... We was on to something but boehly came and messed everything up. Got rid of all the experts and bought rubbish players under inflated contracts, what happens if we stop winning now and the players turn out to be average? 

You're right, we won the UCL with an elite pressing, passing and interplaying system and thought adding Romelu Lukaku to it was a good idea.

48 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

I hate this post so much. Deminishing our achievements because everybody else was bottling or rebuilding? such a load of crap. There were other clubs around, I didn't see them winning the trophies whilst the current big names were "bottling" it. We won those trophies because we were the best in those competitions at the time.

You say we need to push back the ego, but I think it's the exact opposite. A lot of Chelsea fans seem to have an inferiority complex. Almost like you're embarrassed to even expect your club to compete seriously.

Totally agree with this we are one of the most successful clubs in Europe as our trophy haul proves. No one wants to go back to the poxy 80s I was at the Bridge for some of those 1st division games, some with less than 10,000 fans and believe me it was grim and all the talk of the atmosphere and  crowd noise being so much better is not how I remember it. We have moved on we are one of the elite clubs let's be proud of it and demand  we keep standards that go with  a club of this caliber. 

10 hours ago, Argo said:

What I mean by sustainable is it doesn't have that low a way to drop. Even at it's most boring it was getting decent results, controlling most games and even if he couldn't get the athestics right eventually (which I think he would have and he was showing signs of starting to do) he left the foundations of a modern system (controlling games, playing out under pressure) for another manager to build on.

 

But that's the problem we've had since Sarri came, we are good at controlling matches with possession but the output is barely there (Sure I'll pick that over this shambles of a season but take out this season as an anomaly, it doesn't look good). Ever since he came and introduced his football, the club stopped recruiting proper natural strikers like Drogba, Costa and even Anelka. Instead, we go for these false 9 types to suit the passing game and they end up flopping in the Premier League. It might work elsewhere but I still don't see the evidence that Sarriball was going to work here, in fact, it has made us worse since every manager after has followed some version of it. 

4 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

We struggled to challenge for the top 4? how did we struggle to challenge for top 4 when finished top 4 in 4 out of those 5 seasons? Maybe it's the way you have worded it and you meant that we struggled to get over the line to finish top 4, but at no point in 4 of those 5 seasons did we struggle to challenge for top 4. We were always right in the thick of it.

Spot on, we consistently made it into the top 4 in the last 5-10 years, whether it was done on the last day or a game to spare was irrelevant, there's always tough competitions for the spot. On occasions we failed to make it into the top 4, we won the league then the Europa league. How many English teams won the Europa league after us? The cool trend here is people blame Roman for the last 5-10 years for this season's fark up, and give Boehly a free pass because he got good intentions or he's here to build something. Let's not kid ourselves, we were never remotely close to this bad under Roman, especially not after 600M on transfer, and god knows how much to sack the managers

45 minutes ago, Frankie8Lampard said:

But that's the problem we've had since Sarri came, we are good at controlling matches with possession but the output is barely there (Sure I'll pick that over this shambles of a season but take out this season as an anomaly, it doesn't look good). Ever since he came and introduced his football, the club stopped recruiting proper natural strikers like Drogba, Costa and even Anelka. Instead, we go for these false 9 types to suit the passing game and they end up flopping in the Premier League. It might work elsewhere but I still don't see the evidence that Sarriball was going to work here, in fact, it has made us worse since every manager after has followed some version of it. 

Is that actually true? In the period after Costa, we've signed Morata, Higuain, Giroud, Werner, Lukaku, Aubameyang and promoted Abraham, none of which could seriously be contemplated as a "False 9". The closest thing we've signed is Havertz.

All of the above (bar Giroud and Abraham) failed at Chelsea because they simply weren't very good, not because they were tactically unsuitable. 

The real issue with Sarri was not "Sarriball" as much it was the meek nature of defeats, as exemplified by the Carabao and FA Cups and the 6-0 to Man City, and for all the media bluster he proved himself to be tactically inflexible if not outright inept in the way he persisted with stupid like-for-like substitutions.

10 hours ago, Frankie8Lampard said:

But that's the problem we've had since Sarri came, we are good at controlling matches with possession but the output is barely there (Sure I'll pick that over this shambles of a season but take out this season as an anomaly, it doesn't look good). Ever since he came and introduced his football, the club stopped recruiting proper natural strikers like Drogba, Costa and even Anelka. Instead, we go for these false 9 types to suit the passing game and they end up flopping in the Premier League. It might work elsewhere but I still don't see the evidence that Sarriball was going to work here, in fact, it has made us worse since every manager after has followed some version of it. 

Lampard at the start when he told the players to express themselves with Sarriball still in the mind of the players we some fantastic football, we were even showing signs of getting grips with it in the end of Sarri's reign. I think Tuchel had the formula right of it's best bits combined with the extreme chance creation but then ruined it by signing you know who.

12 hours ago, Frankie8Lampard said:

But that's the problem we've had since Sarri came, we are good at controlling matches with possession but the output is barely there (Sure I'll pick that over this shambles of a season but take out this season as an anomaly, it doesn't look good). Ever since he came and introduced his football, the club stopped recruiting proper natural strikers like Drogba, Costa and even Anelka. Instead, we go for these false 9 types to suit the passing game and they end up flopping in the Premier League. It might work elsewhere but I still don't see the evidence that Sarriball was going to work here, in fact, it has made us worse since every manager after has followed some version of it. 

As @SydneyChelsea said we don't realIy play false 9.  

In term of tippy tappy football, it is not that important. You can win playing tippy tappy ball or direct ball. 

The more important question is how do you want to score. For city, this season is easy, get the ball to Haaland in the box ,done.

For us, it is more difficult. Since we have no st, we can't just get the ball into the box. We have no goal scoring winger so we can't just give him the ball and let him do his thing (sterling is more of tap in winger). We can do what lamp/arsenal did which is overload the wing and flood the box with players but your midfield need to be able to defend which has been a problem for us for a while now.

I honestly have no clue how to fix our offense other than signing better attacker and get kante healthy so we can attack more.

 

There are lots of ways to score goals yet you have to mix it up or the opposition will be wise to it.

Set pieces always offer chances and we seem very poor at converting, the last goal like that I remember was a header when Fofana first played for us. Part of it is the delivery and the other part is reading the flight of the ball.

Crosses, crosses from James often provided chances and occasionally with other players like CHO. This would need the right sided layer to break the defensive line and look up before crossing. Can also happen on the left side too.

Other moves with vertical passes and running midfielders to break the lines and create shooting opportunities or one-twos to get into the box. 

Of course effective pressing can cause the opposition to lose the ball in dangerous areas offering chances.

Lastly a forward player on the shoulder of the last defender waiting for the right ball over the top.

 

 

 One more piece of evidence of Boehly's mistakes. 

Boehly said he thinks Europeans are 15 years behind in terms of sports to Americans. Sometimes I wonder if that is only the commercial side of it. In Europe values are many times beyond money and commercial efforts. 

City is owned by Saudi's and run by spaniards. MU is owned by Americans and run by them. The other is one of the best clubs in the world, the other one is Manchester United.

Reports in Germany Chelsea are in talks with Allianz about taking over as the next shirt sponsor. 

1 hour ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Reports in Germany Chelsea are in talks with Allianz about taking over as the next shirt sponsor. 

Ubiquitous Twitter mock up 🙂 

Looks good to me. Much better than the sh*te Three logo anyway. Sign them up Todd ! 

2 hours ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Reports in Germany Chelsea are in talks with Allianz about taking over as the next shirt sponsor. 

The name sponsors of Bayerns stadium? Wonder how Bayern would feel about that...or is this there first step to renaming the rebuilt Sramford Bridge? The Allianz Bridge?

5 hours ago, axman2526 said:

The name sponsors of Bayerns stadium? Wonder how Bayern would feel about that...or is this there first step to renaming the rebuilt Sramford Bridge? The Allianz Bridge?

That's what I'm wondering too, might be a deal involving the new stadium too.

5 hours ago, axman2526 said:

The name sponsors of Bayerns stadium? Wonder how Bayern would feel about that...or is this there first step to renaming the rebuilt Sramford Bridge? The Allianz Bridge?

They've been sharing the sponsor with Juve since 2017, i highly doubt they'll give a toss.

Edited April 28, 20233 yr by Argo

11 minutes ago, Argo said:

They've been sharing the sponsor with Juve since 2017, i highly doubt they'll give a toss.

Fair point mate, did not know that.

On 27/04/2023 at 18:00, Scott Harris said:

I hate this post so much. Deminishing our achievements because everybody else was bottling or rebuilding? such a load of crap. There were other clubs around, I didn't see them winning the trophies whilst the current big names were "bottling" it. We won those trophies because we were the best in those competitions at the time.

You say we need to push back the ego, but I think it's the exact opposite. A lot of Chelsea fans seem to have an inferiority complex. Almost like you're embarrassed to even expect your club to compete seriously.

I'm a vintage fan,  not expecting much was a part of supporting our club.

But we've moved on from those times, Roman's money elevated us to an elite club. And no way do I want to relive those awful times .

But we've been through something no other club has ever had to deal with ...ever.

Now new owners spending tons of  money and we're useless !  We need football people making decision and not American baseball owners, it's that simple I reckon.

Btw the owners better shoulder responsibility for  the drop in income, their decisions caused it, nothing to do with us , they better not sting us on ticket prices to pay for their mess.

Edited April 28, 20233 yr by The Rising Sun
Info

11 hours ago, evissy said:

 One more piece of evidence of Boehly's mistakes. 

Boehly said he thinks Europeans are 15 years behind in terms of sports to Americans. Sometimes I wonder if that is only the commercial side of it. In Europe values are many times beyond money and commercial efforts. 

City is owned by Saudi's and run by spaniards. MU is owned by Americans and run by them. The other is one of the best clubs in the world, the other one is Manchester United.

If European values mean more than than just money and commerce , then City wouldn't be owned by Saudis 

1 hour ago, The Rising Sun said:

But we've been through something no other club has ever had to deal with ...ever.

Now new owners spending tons of  money and we're useless !  We need football people making decision and not American baseball owners, it's that simple I reckon.

Took some undoubted risks, some haven't worked out. The time constraints of the takeover, restructuring and FFP regulations have really killed us. It's clear the owners want the best people in the right positions. Yes, it would have been nice for things to have gone smoother, but I think they'll get us to where we need to be. Can't wait to erase this sh*tshow from my memory. 

Members of Parliament are, on record, as saying a deal needed to happen quickly and to their liking otherwise our club would have gone out of business.

The Raine Group are on record as stating a deal of this magnitude being done so quickly was historic and it should take far longer.

Do you think proper due process was done by the government, the PL, Roman and his people and the Raine Group? I don't.

All the UK government cared about was Roman being out, him getting not a penny from the sale, and avoiding being called on their threat and facing the Rath of Chelsea "hooligans" imo.

We are beginning to see the effects of what that means for our club, and what having the wrong people in charge looks like.

All this, close to relegation, and we have not even been hit by FFP breaches...yet...

This may prove our best season under Boehly Clearlake....scary thought...

8 hours ago, The Rising Sun said:

If European values mean more than than just money and commerce , then City wouldn't be owned by Saudis 

At least it seems the owners don't get too involved in the football side of it. 

5 hours ago, axman2526 said:

We are beginning to see the effects of what that means for our club, and what having the wrong people in charge looks like.

All this, close to relegation, and we have not even been hit by FFP breaches...yet...

This may prove our best season under Boehly Clearlake....scary thought...

Sorry axman but @Dean was right. I am prescribing another course of "positivity" therapy for you to start immediately.

If you continue any further down the grim, dark path you are continually seeing in your head we are all worried you will live up to your username and become an ax murderer.