I had said earlier in this thread that a trip and playing a game in the US was far from ideal timing but as long as everything was managed well, could not see a real problem. Bit of a break for the key players and some good team-bonding and experience for some youngsters and fringe players. 

Now I haven't seem ANY of the match, the pitch, the line up ............which player played how many minutes, but whoever thought it was an okay idea to allow an injury prone player like RLC to play.................they deserve their P45.  

7 minutes ago, WalterWhiteCFC said:

first for referring to her as a woman because to me her name isn’t worth mentioning

Get a grip

This is really bad news.

It was a daft idea from the beginning, it isn't even a case of being wise after the event - it made no sense whatsoever to play this match now.

Now he'll likely be replaced with Kovacic who has zero goal threat.

We won't advance until we have real football people on the board making decisions.

Is it me or do some posters seem almost pleased RLC got injured, as proof they were right all along by slamming Abramovich the club (and that would be Marina Granovskaia entirely on her own) for organizing this match?

Cue the indignant responses. Of course not!

Is this club being run be imbeciles ?

It's ok looks like Sarri will have to take the blame again.

I don't have any issue with us playing the game, I think it was good for match fitness with a 2 week break until the final. 

But having watched some highlights this morning the pitch looked awful, tearing up easily underfoot. Can't understand risking players before a final on such a poor surface. 

51 minutes ago, WalterWhiteCFC said:

Read what I wrote buddy, Roman arranged a charity match, he wouldn’t arrange dates and who has to get minutes and the contracts that’s marinas job.

? In all cases the club had to advise the owner when things aren’t in the clubs interest if they strongly advise against it I doubt he will be unreasonable and proceed anyway.

The duty falls ultimately to our director,  she is also the one who negotiates our contracts from sponsors to player aqusition so rest assured she dealt with the contracts not Roman 

No, it's Roman. Its a match organised by two jewish billionaires to raise awareness of anti semitism. Marina is a pawn in this situation. 

100% if Marina said its not a good idea (which she may well have done) he would have said, no we go ahead. 

Don't let your misogamy detract from what obviously happened.  

Sigh. RLC got injured and James and Chalobah got about 10 minutes. 

What a disaster. The only good that could have come from this was minutes for our young lads and we couldn't even get that right.

Goddammit!

1 hour ago, Valerie said:

Is it me or do some posters seem almost pleased RLC got injured, as proof they were right all along by slamming Abramovich the club (and that would be Marina Granovskaia entirely on her own) for organizing this match?

Cue the indignant responses. Of course not!

Its strange, loads of posters are seem very keen to have a go at 'the club' or 'the board', but there is a definate reluctance to call out Roman. 

Marina gets all the flack now Emanalo has gone, im not saying she is great at her job, but who really knows what that job is. Everyone speculates on how our club is run and who has power, and who doesnt. But the one thing we know for sure, is that Abramovich is the main man, and he has had a history of being very hands on. He turns up at training, he goes in the dressing room, he scouts and signs players he likes. 

Now it seems a lot fans think that because he cant enter the U.K. that he has somehow lost some this power, and marina and 'the board' are sinking the ship. I really dont buy it. When you read that David Luiz spoke with Roman last week to decide his future, surely that is indictation Roman is still the key man making all the big decisions. Is Pogba speaking to Joel Glazer about his future? I very much doubt it, because Ed woodward is the power man at United, and Roman is still the power man here. 

Im very grateful to everything Roman has done for club, but there are serious problems at the moment, and i dont see the point in blaming individuals that dont have the power to implement change, so my frustrations are with Roman Abramovich, and I'm hoping he starts making better decisions.

33 minutes ago, big blue said:

Its strange, loads of posters are seem very keen to have a go at 'the club' or 'the board', but there is a definate reluctance to call out Roman. 

Marina gets all the flack now Emanalo has gone, im not saying she is great at her job, but who really knows what that job is. Everyone speculates on how our club is run and who has power, and who doesnt. But the one thing we know for sure, is that Abramovich is the main man, and he has had a history of being very hands on. He turns up at training, he goes in the dressing room, he scouts and signs players he likes. 

Now it seems a lot fans think that because he cant enter the U.K. that he has somehow lost some this power, and marina and 'the board' are sinking the ship. I really dont buy it. When you read that David Luiz spoke with Roman last week to decide his future, surely that is indictation Roman is still the key man making all the big decisions. Is Pogba speaking to Joel Glazer about his future? I very much doubt it, because Ed woodward is the power man at United, and Roman is still the power man here. 

Im very grateful to everything Roman has done for club, but there are serious problems at the moment, and i dont see the point in blaming individuals that dont have the power to implement change, so my frustrations are with Roman Abramovich, and I'm hoping he starts making better decisions.

I actually think united and Chelsea are run similarly, aka badly. 

The owner sets the direction, marina / Woodward see out this direction. 

It's not marina and Woodward's responsibility to hire someone to undertake more football focused decisions. It's the top dogs. 

Liverpool is an example where their owners are fully focused on setting football driven decisions. City are an example of a club wanting to do everything and become an empire. 

Absolute classic Chelsea. Run by clowns. Even if we get the transfer ban postponed, you just know we'll sign another load of Zappacostas and Drinkwaters this summer.

Hardly a mention of the RLC injury on the club website and match write up ... so the club embarrassment factor is clearly extremely high ...

1 hour ago, bisright1 said:

The owner sets the direction, marina / Woodward see out this direction. 

It's not marina and Woodward's responsibility to hire someone to undertake more football focused decisions. It's the top dogs.

Unless the owners' direction to Marina/Woodward is "hire a DoF if you think you need one" ... but we will never know either way of course ?

Waiting for the club to announce something. How many months exactly he is expected to be out. I dont care about the EL final the worry is that lot of players never fully recover after such an injury. Worried if RLC will lose his physical ability and power in his strides. Same for CHO. Terrible injury to suffer. 

41 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

Hardly a mention of the RLC injury on the club website and match write up ... so the club embarrassment factor is clearly extremely high ...

I noticed this on the 5th Stand App also, there in so mention of it at all but instead a couple of videos of players saying how great they now feel going into the final on the back of this game.

Do me a favour.

It's a complete and utter farce of a situation, and we have potentially done massive damage to not only this season, but also next.

All for a pointless friendly, in a different continent, before our season has finished.

They should be f**king embarrassed.

Edited May 16, 20197 yr by mclovin83

Some sources reporting a ruptured achilles but has yet to be confirmed. Supposedly Sarri was strongly against this match, and it certainly looks like he was pressured to put out a strong team.

This sucks for Ruben most of all, for the club, and for us.   It sucks, but injuries happen.  You can't play a sport at this level and never suffer an injury.

It's easy to look back in hindsight now and say we shouldn't have played this game.  If there were not narrow minded people filled with hate an intolerance, then there would not have been any need for this.  But it was important to Roman.  So much so that he was in attendance.  Roman has earned the right with everything he's done for this club to be indulged a friendly match to support a cause that he believes in.

3 minutes ago, Boston Blue said:

This sucks for Ruben most of all, for the club, and for us.   It sucks, but injuries happen.  You can't play a sport at this level and never suffer an injury.

It's easy to look back in hindsight now and say we shouldn't have played this game.  If there were not narrow minded people filled with hate an intolerance, then there would not have been any need for this.  But it was important to Roman.  So much so that he was in attendance.  Roman has earned the right with everything he's done for this club to be indulged a friendly match to support a cause that he believes in.

Hindsight is not really a factor here; everyone had concern about this game before it happened and for good reason. Those fears have now been realised and we will be paying the price for some time.

As for the "need" for the game; there will unfortunately always be narrow minded people filled with hate and a friendly football match isn't going to change that. Notwithstanding this, I get that it is for a good cause, but it is the timing that is the issue here, not the game itself. There are also 101 other effective ways to raise awareness that wouldn't have risked injury to our players a fortnight before our biggest game of the season.

As much as I love Roman and everything he has done for us, it was f**king stupid and if it was his call (which it probably was) then this was one of his most stupid decisions whilst being owner of Chelsea and he too should be embarrassed.

2 hours ago, Sexyfootball said:

Hardly a mention of the RLC injury on the club website and match write up ... so the club embarrassment factor is clearly extremely high ...

Probably because they haven't properly examined him yet. I'm sure they'll make some kind of announcement when the extent of the damage is known.

1 hour ago, Boston Blue said:

This sucks for Ruben most of all, for the club, and for us.   It sucks, but injuries happen.  You can't play a sport at this level and never suffer an injury.

It's easy to look back in hindsight now and say we shouldn't have played this game.  If there were not narrow minded people filled with hate an intolerance, then there would not have been any need for this.  But it was important to Roman.  So much so that he was in attendance.  Roman has earned the right with everything he's done for this club to be indulged a friendly match to support a cause that he believes in.

I didn't care about the match beforehand but I assumed 1) the pitch would be at a great standard and 2) our first team wouldn't play more than 30-40 minutes (and Ruben would barely feature!)

Edited May 16, 20197 yr by bisright1

1 hour ago, mclovin83 said:

Hindsight is not really a factor here; everyone had concern about this game before it happened and for good reason. Those fears have now been realised and we will be paying the price for some time.

As for the "need" for the game; there will unfortunately always be narrow minded people filled with hate and a friendly football match isn't going to change that. Notwithstanding this, I get that it is for a good cause, but it is the timing that is the issue here, not the game itself. There are also 101 other effective ways to raise awareness that wouldn't have risked injury to our players a fortnight before our biggest game of the season.

As much as I love Roman and everything he has done for us, it was f**king stupid and if it was his call (which it probably was) then this was one of his most stupid decisions whilst being owner of Chelsea and he too should be embarrassed.

$4 million was raised for the organizations that were identified to benefit.  That's a rather hefty haul for what was essentially a 3 day tour and glorified run out.  The Revs weren't tough, aggressive competition.  

I'm happy to be supporting a club with a conscience - one that looks to do good things for people. 

I realize everyone's upset.  It's disappointing.  But a hundred posts in this thread saying "I told you so" don't help.  Short of wrapping each player in bubble wrap for the 2 weeks between last league match and EL final, there was always a risk of injury.  

14 hours ago, Boston Blue said:

Hazard

 

I am also from Boston and was at the stadium with my wife 

17 minutes ago, bisright1 said:

I didn't care about the match beforehand but I assumed 1) the pitch would be at a great standard and 2) our first team wouldn't play more than 30-40 minutes (and Ruben would barely feature!)

The pitch was atrocious.  An embarrassment.  I noticed the seams in the sod immediately.  The Revs normally play on an artificial surface, so the grass was laid over the plastic pitch.  

I was surprised that Pedro and Jorghino, played the whole match.  Strong first team and start subbing at halftime made sense.  Again, the competition wasn't fierce by any means, and the Revs seemed more interested in giving their entire squad a chance to play against us.  

3 minutes ago, Boston Blue said:

$4 million was raised for the organizations that were identified to benefit.  That's a rather hefty haul for what was essentially a 3 day tour and glorified run out.  The Revs weren't tough, aggressive competition.  

I'm happy to be supporting a club with a conscience - one that looks to do good things for people. 

I realize everyone's upset.  It's disappointing.  But a hundred posts in this thread saying "I told you so" don't help.  Short of wrapping each player in bubble wrap for the 2 weeks between last league match and EL final, there was always a risk of injury.  

I would like my football club to put football first, and we didn't.

Either way, there are plenty of ways we could have made a difference (financial or otherwise) without compromising the most important game of the season, and probably next season.

However you try and spin it, it was a ridiculous thing to arrange before our season had finished, and we will now pay the price. There is a reason why Sarri himself, as well as the fans, were complaining about it prior to it happening. If you play any  match friendly or otherwise  (on a sh*t pitch) then  you increase the chances of injury by a considerable rate.

It was f**king stupid, no two ways about it, and now RLC will miss the final and potentially a large chunk of next season.

On the positive side, at least world peace has now been achieved as a result of a friendly match of football in front of 27,000 fans.