All keepers struggle when there's a dodgy defence in front of them. The defence is a unit who should be able to communicate and anticipate what each other is doing. 

4 minutes ago, sonic90 said:

It's not easy to just go and replace a keeper especially considering his price tag, he might need some competition from someone better than Willy. That being said quite a few top keepers are having problems like Tibo and DDG, Kepa was better than this last season so we should try and improve him and return him to form first.

Ye you're right, I just think he'll be ok for a while. If we want to kick on I dont think he has potential to be a premier league winning keeper.

 

I'll just clarify this by saying that I made the original comment just after his penalty save which was brilliant.

Not having a go at Kepa because I think he's ok.

Should've saved it for a different thread...

Edited November 27, 20196 yr by DP2

2 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

We beat Lille, we are on 11pts. 

Ajax win tonights game and draw against Valencia, they are on 11pts. Valencia would finish with 9pts.

So we would go through.

And most importantly we will finish first in the group in that scenario due to our head to head with ajax

33 minutes ago, DP2 said:

This is not a reaction to tonight, so maybe it goes in another thread?.

Frank must have plans to replace Kepa.

Most people will agree on a Centre Back and Full Back so this might be the most difficult decision for him?

 

I feel Willian was the worse player today.

His dead ball delivery was garbage

His shots were terrible

His passes missed the targets too often, especially the final balls

He holds onto the ball too long instead of releasing to another attacker in motion; which killed several good attacking chances

With Pedro most likely gone, and Willian very inconsistent; Lamp might want to look for another winger also. CHO still need a few years to further develop his raw skills.

Firstly, we got the result we needed and almost snatched the win. Given we were 1-0 down to come back and almost win showed great character. 
 

My other comment is thats Lamps has to find a way to shut games down rather making ourselves so open. He needs to learn to kill games by not just attacking. It was the same against City. Gave away soft goals. We need to be more ruthless. 
 

Generally great result and puts us in a good position to qualify. 

Lucky their finishing was so poor. Saying that, we missed a few good chances ourselves.

Our defending was pretty bleak. Not sure what’s going on, but we’re way too open. We could easily have conceded four or five. 

Unlucky to lose Abraham at HT. Bats was a bit of a liability when he came on. 

Pulisic was our most threatening player. Willian our least effective after Bats. Not sure about taking Jorginho off for Emerson. Hardly shored things up and James had run out of energy. Strange one from Frank. 

We were hanging on at the end, players looked dead on their feet, so I was happy to take the draw.

 

3 hours ago, Spiller86 said:

Don't we ever. We need his physicality and most importantly his organisational/leadership skills in defence. 

Have to say watching Parejo for Valencia tonight that real midfield general who directs the team and controls the tempo in the big moments, it is so valuable. Once Jorginho went off (understandable given the booking) we were a bit like headless chooks. 

I must say i admired Valencia’s game. Something savvy about it, while we were naive. They’re really good on the counter and economical with it too, and frankly they probably should have won but for their disastrous finishing. Not going to complain of course, and no time for all their diving and ref-gaming. But tonight is a wake up call in terms of where we are. There are MUCH better sides than Valencia in the CL. We need to manage our expectations. If we don’t sort out the defending, we could get punished badly by those top teams. Referencing all the comments on the ref, the reality is all the refs in Europe are going to be stricter and award more free kicks. It’s another reason why our defending needs to be a lot better. Sort it out SFL, we know you can!

There was me happily waiting for 7:45/8pm kick off. Went on my phone at around 7 to check which other games would be on and I see it's 61mins already on the clock and Valencia 1 Chelsea 2(!).

I watched the game from 61 minutes and what I saw was probably the most bizarre game of top level football I'd seen in a long time. 

It was quite shockingly amateur in all honesty. Players all over the place... Huge gaps everywhere, mistakes from players on the ball and bad defending galore... End to end like there was no midfield in either side.

The only player I was impressed by was Jose Gaya. He was terrorising the Chelsea players on that left flank and causing havoc with his crossing and link up. 

I don't know how good his defending is but that there looks like a left back who can cause damage going forward.

 

 

2 hours ago, haviet1 said:

 

I feel Willian was the worse player today.

His dead ball delivery was garbage

His shots were terrible

His passes missed the targets too often, especially the final balls

He holds onto the ball too long instead of releasing to another attacker in motion; which killed several good attacking chances

With Pedro most likely gone, and Willian very inconsistent; Lamp might want to look for another winger also. CHO still need a few years to further develop his raw skills.

He’s garbage. How many attacking opportunities does he waste? We will continue to not win/scrape games playing players like Willian. 

Ajax win means we must beat Lille to get into Round 2 or rely on Ajax beating Valencia.

Should have Valencia won? You bet. Swap the roles and that is Tammy, pulisic and CHO missing those 3 sitters, Jorginho having a pen saved and the ref giving us every single call he could and we would all be furious with a draw.

 

Should have we beat them at the Bridge? You bet. They did nothing, we wasted many attacks, missed a pen and they scored with the only chance they created. We were furious.

 

Football, is a funny old game. But for a fluke we win.

Credit to the Valencia keeper. 2 cracking saves.

Frank wanted to not lose the game so there is that.

On one hand a win at home to Lille (not assured as we have drawn 1 and lost 1 of our other 2 home CL games) would guarantee us a place in the next round.

However now we are also left hoping, in addition to the win for us, that Valencia and ajax draw otherwise we would be finishing second and sure to draw a very hard top seed.

6 hours ago, goose said:

Thought he struggled when we went 3 at the back but just unsure of his role I think.

I'm really impressed with his crossing. He doesn’t take the easy option of just floating a cross in but mixes it up well with high, low, floated, stingers, pull backs and front and near post crosses. Clever player I think, and look forward to him cementing his place in the team.

I think he got tired aswell tbh, he was bombing down the flank up and down all match, even in the 90+ minute, I saw him walking a lot inbetween when Valencia had the ball, seemed out of it. 

Still he was superb this match despite the last 10 minutes. 

3 hours ago, rtwelch said:

He’s garbage. How many attacking opportunities does he waste? We will continue to not win/scrape games playing players like Willian. 

Two crap games from Willian in a row now since the international break, it's just like him to play like that once CHO gets injured and there's nobody to replace him. I'm not going to completely write him off this season but if that is indeed is purple patch I'll gladly see the back of him in January, we'vs seen it before where he only performs for a certain month in the season and goes to sleep for the rest of it. 

Man if we do get to the next round our options are either Juve and sarri, Barca, PSG, Bayern or RB Leipzig. Defend like that again them and we will be the ones letting in 7.

1 hour ago, Slojo said:

Two crap games from Willian in a row now since the international break, it's just like him to play like that once CHO gets injured and there's nobody to replace him. I'm not going to completely write him off this season but if that is indeed is purple patch I'll gladly see the back of him in January, we'vs seen it before where he only performs for a certain month in the season and goes to sleep for the rest of it. 

Honestly, Willian isn't that good. He has great lungs, and a very good work rate when he puts in the efforts. He adds nothing of value to the attack besides the occasional goal/assist. For a top 4 team with aspiration for the title, he does not belong.

1 hour ago, axman2526 said:

Man if we do get to the next round our options are either Juve and sarri, Barca, PSG, Bayern or RB Leipzig. Defend like that again them and we will be the ones letting in 7.

No doubts. Frank has to shore up this defense. I thought it was getting better, but this game exposed it again.

 

 

Just watched the recorded game again. 

Willian back to his awful best, really piss poor. Why the f**k does he take  free kicks and corners. Why is he still at Chelsea.

Kepa needs to sort himself out, £75,000,000 tch.

The defence....... dear oh dear.

Batman, never going to be good enough for us.

Too much picking on Willian for me. He’s had a good season on aggregate. Two bad games in a row is still a blip in that trend and not a new trend, so we should reserve judgment. He adds poise to our attack, is really good on the ball (our best according to Tammy, and let’s not forget that flick on for the goal v Palace) and has a great engine. The squandered opportunities and poor final balls are frustrating but it’s his engine/work rate that get him in those positions in the first place more than the average player of his type, exposing him to more criticism than most players. He is at the very least a really important squad member, has earned a starting place, now in doubt admittedly, but either way we should definitely hang on to him till end of the season. 

Edited November 28, 20196 yr by Dean

Should have won that game, in the end lucky not to lose it. I reckon fatigue has kicked in, we were just not that fast and energetic like we were a month ago, despite some rotations. We didn't have the maturity to close off the game, when we were trying to close out the game we get caught time and time at counters, the players need time to learn and adapt to game situations. Kepa had a mixed game, great save but let another cross pop over his head, the least you'd expect was a finger tip over the bar. For the first goal, he got a hand on it again, but wasn't strong enough to palm it away. I reckon we got a good GK, but he needs some parts of his game sorted as early as possible. Still, if we can't beat the bottom team at home to qualify, we don't belong in the competition, so I'm still confident we will do it

I don't think Willian needs dropping I think Frank needs to make a decision in midfield so that we have two rather than three allowing us to have Mount back in.

Kepa worth a mention, made some good saves yesterday.

Thought James could have cut out the cross for the first, he didn't read the ball flight correctly after Christensen mis-timed his jump.

This is the first match I've come away from thinking Frank didn't have a good game. We looked naïve towards the end. If we make defensive substitutions we need to make sure the players know how to implement the new  plan. We were left open much too much late in the game. Glenda also identified that there was a problem in front of the back 5.

In fairness to Frank he identified this very issue in the post match interview. It would be a problem if he didn't, but he did, and I'm sure he and Jody will sit down together and work out how to avoid this in the future. Frank is new to managing at this level and he's smart enough to learn from this. It's all good if you can still get results while playing badly.

Nevertheless it was a good result under a terrible ref and we rode our luck.

COYB!

 

 

 

Very frustrating they were there for the taking. Frank said before the game we got to cut out little mistakes... well we need to cut them out a lot. I also think he was wrong to say before the game to say we cannot lose (or words to that effect)

The bigger picture is good though,  it was always a tough group and I didn't expect us to be that competitive in the CL this year, so beat Lille and it is a big bonus to me.