2 hours ago, PloKoon13 said:

've heard a fair bit of talk about the 'Sarri half time team talk' over the past couple of games,

This is outstanding work.

Four games away from the end of the league and we are 4 points of last seasons total, you would think/hope we will at the very worst match it. Add to the fact this season has been a massive culture shift in the club, most of the first team didn't arrive till 1 week before the league started and we have had Europa distractions all season (added to a league cup final run has meant a brutal schedule which has lead to high match turnover basically all season). Right now i think Sarri has should get the benefit of the doubt given what I've listed above.

That said there's some aspects he needs a big improvement on. His tactics on big and even 2nd tier away games, our results have not been good enough and the way we capitulate at times is beyond pale, his big game away results at Napoli were pretty good iirc so he needs to translate that to here because we can't have anymore humiliations. His squad management was a big concern of mine 2 months ago but recently he seems to have improved a lot on that score, only Azpi is really getting "flogged" to the level we feared our entire starting Xl would be at this stage, hopefully this is a sign he's learning to better utilize his squad.

All in all i want to see where giving him a second season alongside a proper pre season will take us, if we get to October and still no progress or worse we go backwards then okay bye bye, we won't be winning the league next season so it's worth a roll of the dice.

On ?17?/?04?/?2019 at 10:25, RIP Mourinho said:

Mental that our Youth Team knocked Ajax youth team consisting of De Ligt, Van De Beek, De Jong and Kluivert out of the European competition a few years ago. Shows what consistent game time for talented youngsters can achieve down the line. Glad we've got Sarri giving minutes to CHO and RLC now. If he must go, bring someone in to continue this trend.

De Jong was not playing that game. He is actually a product of Willem's academy. But, yeah good point. Not just CHO and RLC. Christensen as well. Progress is being made. We have had three members of the successful youth teams playing this season. All of them were on the pitch against Liverpool at the same time. Made a point in another thread, it would be interesting to see those Ajax players current position if they had swapped teams in that UEFA youth league game. Kasey Palmer outshone Kluivert in that competition that season and has been struggling to get in the first 11 for two different Championship teams this season. Kluivert, is playing for a heavyweight team in Serie A. How fortunes contrast is interesting. 

7 hours ago, PloKoon13 said:

I've heard a fair bit of talk about the 'Sarri half time team talk' over the past couple of games, and I was curious to see whether the stats actually backed this up, or whether it was one of those strange observational fallacies. I also remember a lot of talk in the first half of the season that we are/were particularly proficient at scoring late goals, so we may as well check that out too. Bear in mind that I've only gone through this quickly and am by no means a statistician. I've split the 90-minute match into 6 15-minute segments. So general consensus appears to be that:

- Chelsea score a higher proportion of their goals between the 76th and 90th minutes;

- Chelsea concede a higher proportion of their goals between the 46th and 60th minutes.

Considering our downswing in form since the New Year, I thought it may be useful to have a look at both halves in isolation. So for goals scored in the PL (pre-01/01/2019) (20 matches):

For a total of 38 goals in 20 games (1.9 goals per game)

 

And post-01/01/2019 (14 matches):

For a total of 18 goals in 14 games (1.28 goals per game).

On the surface, the general consensus appears to be correct. In both halves of the season, the final 15 minutes are our most lucrative scoring period, both featuring an almost identical percentage of total goals scored over the 90 minutes (with the caveat that we scored far fewer goals per game in the New Year.

I thought it would also be interesting to see how many of these goals were actually crucial to us winning points in any of these games (admittedly arbitrary - Luiz vs Man City and the Trippier own goal vs Tottenham for example don't count for this despite effectively securing the result):

11/08/2018     Pedro vs Huddersfield    3-0
18/08/2018    Alonso vs Arsenal    3-2
26/08/2018    Hazard vs Newcastle    1-1
26/08/2018    Own goal vs Newcastle    2-1
01/09/2018    Hazard vs Bournemouth    2-0
15/09/2018    Hazard vs Cardiff    3-1
15/09/2018    Willian vs Cardiff    4-1
07/10/2018    Morata vs Southampton    3-0
20/10/2018    Barkley vs Man Utd    2-2
28/10/2018    Loftus-Cheek vs Burnley    4-0
24/11/2018    Giroud vs Tottenham    1-3
02/12/2018    Loftus-Cheek vs Fulham    2-0
08/12/2018    Luiz vs Man City    2-0
-
02/02/2019    Luiz vs Huddersfield    5-0
27/02/2019    Own goal vs Tottenham    2-0
10/03/2019    Hazard vs Wolves    1-1
31/03/2019    Azpilicueta vs Cardiff    1-1
31/03/2019    Loftus-Cheek vs Cardiff    2-1
08/04/2019    Hazard vs West Ham    2-0

Only 4/13 from before the New Year, and 3/6 from after - 7/19 total. Only around 36.8%.

So while the stats do very much back up the general consensus idea (hypothesis?) that we score a higher proportion of our late goals in the final 15 minutes, less than half were actually meaningful in result terms.

So... are we crap, or not....

Sarri has mentioned that if it would help the teams second half performances he wouldn't go in the dressing room at half time. It's getting more like a disfunctial boys under 9's team all the time. Maybe he could ask one of the players parents to do the half time team talk.

I do wonder what this bloke has to offer

Edited April 19, 20197 yr by chi blue

26 minutes ago, chi blue said:

Sarri has mentioned that if it would help the teams second half performances he wouldn't go in the dressing room at half time. It's getting more like a disfunctial boys under 9's team all the time. Maybe he could ask one of the players parents to do the half time team talk.

I do wonder what this bloke has to offer

I have read recently about JT kicking and throwing things around in the changing room in a rage, and JM used to let him do it.

Not sure that is the answer though it does makes you think.

32 minutes ago, chi blue said:

Sarri has mentioned that if it would help the teams second half performances he wouldn't go in the dressing room at half time. It's getting more like a disfunctial boys under 9's team all the time. Maybe he could ask one of the players parents to do the half time team talk.

I do wonder what this bloke has to offer

Nothing much at all, really cant picture Sarri giving any kind of effective team talk.

46 minutes ago, tmarmsi said:

Nothing much at all, really cant picture Sarri giving any kind of effective team talk.

"We played very well in the first half, but as usual in the last two months, we started very badly in the second half," said Sarri.

"Probably at the end of the first half we thought we had qualified and against this opponent it was not true."

"At half-time I told them to start with the same application as they started the first, but we didn't do it. It's not easy to understand."

"I could try without going in the dressing room at half-time if I could solve the problem ... "

How about we go out, drop Kante a little deeper, keep the full backs in their own half and stay compact for 10/15 minutes? 

I just don't understand why people think this. 
We were a pen shoot out from beating a team far superior to us. We could have won the game in 120 minutes. We beat Tottenham over two legs in the semis. We aren't sh*t! 
What is it about Emery and arsenal that makes everyone think they will be impossible to beat because Sarri is our manager. 
Emery isn't a magician because Sevilla won a couple of Europa leagues and Sarri isn't an idiot because pep beat him on penalties. A significant number of arsenal fans don't like Emery and a lot of people are questioning if Arsenal have actually improved this season. Personally I think Napoli will beat them, but if they don't I can see us beating Arsenal 2 or 3 nil in a final. I really don't rate arsenal as a team.

I really rate Emery as a better manager than Sarri, and I don't know how our board ignored him in the first place and then make Sarri there priority.
And any arsenal fan questioning if Arsenal have improve this season is probably a fool or a drunkard. They are having one of there best season in recent times. And they are favourites among us, Tothenham and United to make the top four. And yes, I won't want us to play Arsenal in the Europa league, I will much prefer Valencia. Emery isn't Sarri, he has watched us a lot this season and know what to do against us and he is much more better tactically than Sarri. And please, don't tell me we would also have beaten Napoli home away without them scoring us.

Well up for Frankfurt trip even though German cities are a bit boring. Texted a mate to see whether he’s gamei which he normally is. His response was “ I’m not wasting my time and money with that w....r in charge. The geysers our worst manager since Ian Porterfield”

No fence sitting there.

Edited April 19, 20197 yr by Ewell CFC

7 minutes ago, Ewell CFC said:

Well up for Frankfurt trip even though German cities are a bit boring. Texted a mate to see whether he’s gamei which he normally is. His response was “ I’m not wasting my time and money with that w....r in charge. The geysers our worst manager since Ian Porterfield”

No fence sitting there.

Haha, makes you wonder what his response will be if we get to the final...............

8 minutes ago, Ewell CFC said:

Well up for Frankfurt trip even though German cities are a bit boring. Texted a mate to see whether he’s gamei which he normally is. His response was “ I’m not wasting my time and money with that w....r in charge. The geysers our worst manager since Ian Porterfield”

No fence sitting there.

Lol. We really don't like managers who get us to Europa League semis do we 

11 hours ago, PloKoon13 said:

 

I've heard a fair bit of talk about the 'Sarri half time team talk' over the past couple of games, and I was curious to see whether the stats actually backed this up, or whether it was one of those strange observational fallacies. I also remember a lot of talk in the first half of the season that we are/were particularly proficient at scoring late goals, so we may as well check that out too. Bear in mind that I've only gone through this quickly and am by no means a statistician. I've split the 90-minute match into 6 15-minute segments. So general consensus appears to be that:

- Chelsea score a higher proportion of their goals between the 76th and 90th minutes;

- Chelsea concede a higher proportion of their goals between the 46th and 60th minutes.

Considering our downswing in form since the New Year, I thought it may be useful to have a look at both halves in isolation. So for goals scored in the PL (pre-01/01/2019) (20 matches):

For a total of 38 goals in 20 games (1.9 goals per game)

 

And post-01/01/2019 (14 matches):

For a total of 18 goals in 14 games (1.28 goals per game).

On the surface, the general consensus appears to be correct. In both halves of the season, the final 15 minutes are our most lucrative scoring period, both featuring an almost identical percentage of total goals scored over the 90 minutes (with the caveat that we scored far fewer goals per game in the New Year.

I thought it would also be interesting to see how many of these goals were actually crucial to us winning points in any of these games (admittedly arbitrary - Luiz vs Man City and the Trippier own goal vs Tottenham for example don't count for this despite effectively securing the result):

11/08/2018     Pedro vs Huddersfield    3-0
18/08/2018    Alonso vs Arsenal    3-2
26/08/2018    Hazard vs Newcastle    1-1
26/08/2018    Own goal vs Newcastle    2-1
01/09/2018    Hazard vs Bournemouth    2-0
15/09/2018    Hazard vs Cardiff    3-1
15/09/2018    Willian vs Cardiff    4-1
07/10/2018    Morata vs Southampton    3-0
20/10/2018    Barkley vs Man Utd    2-2
28/10/2018    Loftus-Cheek vs Burnley    4-0
24/11/2018    Giroud vs Tottenham    1-3
02/12/2018    Loftus-Cheek vs Fulham    2-0
08/12/2018    Luiz vs Man City    2-0
-
02/02/2019    Luiz vs Huddersfield    5-0
27/02/2019    Own goal vs Tottenham    2-0
10/03/2019    Hazard vs Wolves    1-1
31/03/2019    Azpilicueta vs Cardiff    1-1
31/03/2019    Loftus-Cheek vs Cardiff    2-1
08/04/2019    Hazard vs West Ham    2-0

Only 4/13 from before the New Year, and 3/6 from after - 7/19 total. Only around 36.8%.

So while the stats do very much back up the general consensus idea (hypothesis?) that we score a higher proportion of our late goals in the final 15 minutes, less than half were actually meaningful in result terms.

Part 2:

So we've had a look at the first statement:

- Chelsea score a higher proportion of their goals between the 76th and 90th minutes;

We saw that the stats do back this up, but that less than half of these goals are actually meaningful to the result. Now let's look at:

- Chelsea concede a higher proportion of their goals between the 46th and 60th minutes.

Once again I've divided the statistics into two distinct periods - before and after the New Year. Before the New Year we conceded 16 goals in 20 games (0.8 goals per game):

 

Iin the second half we conceded 20 goals in 14 games (1.43 goals per game):

While the timings are overall quite similar, I was initially surprised to see just how stark the contrast is between the two time periods in terms of goals conceded per game. However, it is worth noting that the stats for the second half of the season are skewed quite significantly as half of the 20 goals conceded in the most recent 14 matches came in just two outlier games, the 4-0 defeat to Bournemouth and the 6-0 against Man City. Remove those and we have conceded 10 goals in 12 games (0.83 goals per game), fairly similar. Interestingly (in a purely statistical sense), the goals in those two games were very evenly spread out, without a bias towards the 46-60 period demonstrated over the rest of the season:

If we remove these goals from the post-New Year stats (showing us the 0.83 gpg over 12 games), the evidence is far more damning; exactly half of the goals conceded in these ten games were conceded between the 46th and 60th minutes:

So overall, as with the goals scored, the surface stats seem to show that we do indeed concede more goals immediately after half time than in any other time period, both before and after the New Year. 12 out of the 36 goals conceded overall were conceded between the 46th and 60th minutes (a third of all our goals conceded in only one sixth of the length of a match).

Of course an analysis as basic as this can only go into the 'what' rather than the 'why'. The statistics back up the general consensus that we a) score a higher proportion of our goals in the final 15 minutes, and that we b) concede a higher proportion of our goals in the 15 minutes immediately after half-time. What they cannot do is tell us why that is.

At least we now know we're not working with inaccurate information!

 

Edited April 19, 20197 yr by PloKoon13

7 minutes ago, PloKoon13 said:

 

Of course an analysis as basic as this can only go into the 'what' rather than the 'why'. The statistics back up the general consensus that we a) score a higher proportion of our goals in the final 15 minutes, and that we b) concede a higher proportion of our goals in the 15 minutes immediately after half-time. What they cannot do is tell us why that is.

At least we now know we're not working with inaccurate information!

 

 

Well done pal, good work, my guess...

a) We score a higher proportion of our goals in the final 15 minutes because our high possession percentage tires teams out after 75 minutes of chasing the ball. The last 15 minutes is when energy levels and concentration levels drop.

b) We concede a higher proportion of our goals in the 15 minutes immediately after half-time because the players fall asleep listening to Sarri and come back out a bit dozy..

1 minute ago, coco said:

 

Well done pal, good work, my guess...

a) We score a higher proportion of our goals in the final 15 minutes because our high possession percentage tires teams out after 75 minutes of chasing the ball. The last 15 minutes is when energy levels and concentration levels drop.

b) We concede a higher proportion of our goals in the 15 minutes immediately after half-time because the players fall asleep listening to Sarri and come back out a bit dozy..

Maybe we need to replace Zola with Terry for next season. They'd be awake then. 

2 hours ago, bisright1 said:

Maybe we need to replace Zola with Terry for next season. They'd be awake then. 

This is exactly what i was thinking. Sarri and Zola both seem more like father figures. We need a Terry to Drogba in that changing room to lift spirits and shout at players if need be. 

Lampard and Terry with Morris as well for me, can't wait for Sarri to go it's been more than embarrassing at times this season.

2 hours ago, RIP Mourinho said:

This is exactly what i was thinking. Sarri and Zola both seem more like father figures. We need a Terry to Drogba in that changing room to lift spirits and shout at players if need be. 

We should just buy players that dont need to be shouted out and can be relied upon to get themselves up for every game, like SFL and JT did for 90 mins every game.

2 hours ago, RIP Mourinho said:

This is exactly what i was thinking. Sarri and Zola both seem more like father figures. We need a Terry to Drogba in that changing room to lift spirits and shout at players if need be. 

We should just buy players that dont need to be shouted out and can be relied upon to get themselves up for every game, like SFL and JT did for 90 mins every game.

5 hours ago, Ewell CFC said:

Well up for Frankfurt trip even though German cities are a bit boring. Texted a mate to see whether he’s gamei which he normally is. His response was “ I’m not wasting my time and money with that w....r in charge. The geysers our worst manager since Ian Porterfield”

No fence sitting there.

He's got a point, this bloke stumbles from one issue to another, when we finish 6th and lose to Arsenal in Europa final, if we get there, maybe Sarri fans will take stock.

5 hours ago, bisright1 said:

Maybe we need to replace Zola with Terry for next season. They'd be awake then.

JT a born winner and then there's Sarri!! It wouldn't work, can just imagine what JT would think of Sarri's bumbling antics

7 hours ago, Strider6003 said:

I have read recently about JT kicking and throwing things around in the changing room in a rage, and JM used to let him do it.

Not sure that is the answer though it does makes you think.

Some of our players would have a fit, they like to be called petal or sweet heart, asking a player "to pull his f**king weight," and not to be "such a lazy c**t" would have them in tears these days.

Just now, chi blue said:

Some of our players would have a fit, they like to be called petal or sweet heart, asking a player "to pull his f**king weight," and not to be "such a lazy c**t" would have them in tears these days.

We don’t know the workings of a changing room but Zola just seems too nice a bloke for a management. No doubt he can throw a few f...s in where necessary, and on the touch line he puts on his football poker face, but we all know his natural face is smily which is why everyone, everywhere loves the fella.

Too nice, just as Pat Jennings as a goalkeeping coach was too Irish and laid back

Ian Walker let’s one in through his legs.

PJ “ Don’t worry about it son. I’ll introduce to some gadgees from the old country and we’ll have the craic”

 

 

1 hour ago, chi blue said:

He's got a point, this bloke stumbles from one issue to another, when we finish 6th and lose to Arsenal in Europa final, if we get there, maybe Sarri fans will take stock.

Yeah, he does not come across as a guy who is in charge.  The visuals are that he talks a lot, gives instructions and directions, but the players just go do what they want.