I don’t think today was the day to experiment by playing Werner through the middle and  bringing in Ziyech after an injury lay off. I’d personally have saved that one for Morecambe in the FA Cup. 

Despite the doom and gloom I think we can give Morecambe a really good game in the cup and at home we might sneak through. 

On a positive note, Morecambe might not be able to field a full strength team due to COVID. Lol

9 minutes ago, Lang7 said:

There’s a difference between “having fun” and being plain stupid, though. It’s fine playing open, expansive football against teams around you in the bottom half of the table. To do the same when you play the biggest teams, most of whom are more talented and have the ability to rip you apart if you play your usual style, is foolish. There’s no shame in grinding out a dull 0-0 against a Liverpool or City if it keeps you in the league at the end of the season.

None of the top managers have a bad word to say about Bielsa because they know they’re leaving with a win.

Bielsa only came to the PL and he knows that he will lose a lot of games but this is his system and by the looks of it if his squad doesn't get tired after so many games he will survive and stay in the PL.

We did grind out a 0:0 against Man United but most of the time when we wanted to play our game in order to win against a decent team we have failed to do so this season.

Bielsa is having fun for sure and he has the same amount of wins as we do and he's only 3 points behind us at the moment, it's pretty sad that we can even compare ourselves to the likes of Leeds but here we are...

 

51 minutes ago, Petworth Chelsea Fan said:

On a positive note, Morecambe might not be able to field a full strength team due to COVID. Lol

It's only him and Ernie.

Given the cracking save he made from the header in the second half, a strong hand, think Mendy will be a tad disappointed he did not save the first goal given he got a hand to it.

Getting beat at his near post for the second was disappointing too.

As for the third, we do get exposed a lot by leaving just Kante to be countered on his own from set plays. Never get why Kovacic or Jorginho, whoever plays, is not there with him. Not like either offers a goal threat.

8 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Given the cracking save he made from the header in the second half, a strong hand, think Mendy will be a tad disappointed he did not save the first goal given he got a hand to it.

Getting beat at his near post for the second was disappointing too.

As for the third, we do get exposed a lot by leaving just Kante to be countered on his own from set plays. Never get why Kovacic or Jorginho, whoever plays, is not there with him. Not like either offers a goal threat.

I think as a keeper he'll be more disappointed about the 2nd goal where he was beaten at his near post. 

Once again we've conceded 3 and all 3 were avoidable if we had done the basics well, all self inflicted damage. City actually created better openings which would've been more acceptable as a fan but mainly the 2nd and 3rd goals were just series of errors by our defense. 

1 hour ago, Petworth Chelsea Fan said:

On a positive note, Morecambe might not be able to field a full strength team due to COVID. Lol

Seeing how we've played against covid-weakened teams, are you sure that's a positive?

For Fulham I would like to see:

 

Mendy

 

James

Zouma

Silva

Chilwell

 

Gilmour

Mount

 

CHO

Havertz

Pulisic

 

Werner

4 hours ago, Socrates said:

I don’t think today was the day to experiment by playing Werner through the middle and  bringing in Ziyech after an injury lay off. I’d personally have saved that one for Morecambe in the FA Cup. 

Someone (don't remember who) commented about starting Werner centrally before the match began and was slaughtered for it.  We should have stuck with Giroud who is in good scoring form or Tammy if we wanted speed.  Maybe it's hindsight but given Werner's recent form, I don't think thrusting him into such a high pressure match was the right thing to do. 

No shame in losing to a side with Cities quality neither. There is shame in being out worked and out fought hy them.

8 hours ago, driller97 said:

Not racist, but he definitely has a bias towards young english players (mostly white)

Glad this moron was banned now, what a f**king stupid thing to come out with. 

15 minutes ago, Slojo said:

Glad this moron was banned now, what a f**king stupid thing to come out with. 

Regardless of our differing views on him as a manager accusing Frank of being a racist is disgraceful.

6 hours ago, Lang7 said:

There’s a difference between “having fun” and being plain stupid, though. It’s fine playing open, expansive football against teams around you in the bottom half of the table. To do the same when you play the biggest teams, most of whom are more talented and have the ability to rip you apart if you play your usual style, is foolish. There’s no shame in grinding out a dull 0-0 against a Liverpool or City if it keeps you in the league at the end of the season.

None of the top managers have a bad word to say about Bielsa because they know they’re leaving with a win.

But they also had a very entertaining 1-1 against City, they went toe to toe at Anfield and only lost due to a penalty. There's no question about keeping them in the league, they will stay up comfortably.

This idiot was looking to cause arguments before kick off. I think the sad muppet wanted a bit of attention.

1 hour ago, Malta Blue said:

This idiot was looking to cause arguments before kick off. I think the sad muppet wanted a bit of attention.

During the game, someone blamed Pulisic for our performances. Said "It's a coincidence we're playing this badly since he's came back" even though we lost to Everton without him. And I didn't think that post was going to be topped, worst post of the season. Then just like that, I hear Frank is now racist towards his own players? Oh stfu. Glad the mods banned him, nothing but a troll. 

Flicking through the post match reports today and this para caught my eye:

 It is a manager’s job to devise systems and approaches that mask any deficiencies in their squads and accentuate the strengths. He surely realised within minutes that Manchester City were pressing only one of their centre-halves in possession, targeting Silva and leaving Zouma free as he is considerably worse on the ball. He must have noticed that De Bruyne was shadowing N’Golo Kante diligently, thus shutting down Chelsea’s other passing outlet from deep. He could not possibly have failed to see that his defence and midfield was little more than a mirage and any semblance of an attack essentially boiled down to letting Timo Werner or Christian Pulisic run with the ball for 30 yards with no support whatsoever before passing the ball to no-one.

These players should not escape criticism. Edouard Mendy has to do better. Kurt Zouma and Thiago Silva, too. A coach can only really do so much. At some stage Mateo Kovacic has to be expected to have basic positional awareness and Cesar Azpilicueta must know he is 427 years old and thus should not keep inviting players into races down his flank. That is not on the manager – or at least not completely.

Manchester City thrash Chelsea 3-1: 16 Conclusions on Lampard out and.. (football365.com)

Pre-match my thoughts were, should we go defensive for this or stick to the trusted 4-3-3 this time with Werner down the middle?

Clearly the second option did not work.

 

36 minutes ago, Strider6003 said:

Flicking through the post match reports today and this para caught my eye:

 It is a manager’s job to devise systems and approaches that mask any deficiencies in their squads and accentuate the strengths. He surely realised within minutes that Manchester City were pressing only one of their centre-halves in possession, targeting Silva and leaving Zouma free as he is considerably worse on the ball. He must have noticed that De Bruyne was shadowing N’Golo Kante diligently, thus shutting down Chelsea’s other passing outlet from deep. He could not possibly have failed to see that his defence and midfield was little more than a mirage and any semblance of an attack essentially boiled down to letting Timo Werner or Christian Pulisic run with the ball for 30 yards with no support whatsoever before passing the ball to no-one.

These players should not escape criticism. Edouard Mendy has to do better. Kurt Zouma and Thiago Silva, too. A coach can only really do so much. At some stage Mateo Kovacic has to be expected to have basic positional awareness and Cesar Azpilicueta must know he is 427 years old and thus should not keep inviting players into races down his flank. That is not on the manager – or at least not completely.

Manchester City thrash Chelsea 3-1: 16 Conclusions on Lampard out and.. (football365.com)

Pre-match my thoughts were, should we go defensive for this or stick to the trusted 4-3-3 this time with Werner down the middle?

Clearly the second option did not work.

 

As I have said numerous times, Frank fails to see what's going on in front of him and make tactical changes or player changes to counter the opposition as a manager he is not bold enough or experienced enough to have the balls to do it....he'd rather do nothing and hope the players try and sort it out. 

3 hours ago, Slojo said:

During the game, someone blamed Pulisic for our performances. Said "It's a coincidence we're playing this badly since he's came back" even though we lost to Everton without him. And I didn't think that post was going to be topped, worst post of the season. Then just like that, I hear Frank is now racist towards his own players? Oh stfu. Glad the mods banned him, nothing but a troll. 

Yeah I saw the comments about pulisic only being played to gain audiences in America. This is the worst spell the club has had since I joined the forum and it seems like loads of tossers have came out of the woodworks. Is this normal everytime we have a bad spell? I get emotions are running high but some of these people only seem to have a content of 20-30. So are they same people that only come on everytime we are playing sh*te or are they all new?

1 hour ago, Strider6003 said:

Flicking through the post match reports today and this para caught my eye:

 It is a manager’s job to devise systems and approaches that mask any deficiencies in their squads and accentuate the strengths. He surely realised within minutes that Manchester City were pressing only one of their centre-halves in possession, targeting Silva and leaving Zouma free as he is considerably worse on the ball. He must have noticed that De Bruyne was shadowing N’Golo Kante diligently, thus shutting down Chelsea’s other passing outlet from deep. He could not possibly have failed to see that his defence and midfield was little more than a mirage and any semblance of an attack essentially boiled down to letting Timo Werner or Christian Pulisic run with the ball for 30 yards with no support whatsoever before passing the ball to no-one.

These players should not escape criticism. Edouard Mendy has to do better. Kurt Zouma and Thiago Silva, too. A coach can only really do so much. At some stage Mateo Kovacic has to be expected to have basic positional awareness and Cesar Azpilicueta must know he is 427 years old and thus should not keep inviting players into races down his flank. That is not on the manager – or at least not completely.

Manchester City thrash Chelsea 3-1: 16 Conclusions on Lampard out and.. (football365.com)

Pre-match my thoughts were, should we go defensive for this or stick to the trusted 4-3-3 this time with Werner down the middle?

Clearly the second option did not work.

 

I don't agree that we should be blaming Mendy and Kovacic:

1. Mendy couldn't really do anything in 2/3 goals, the argument would be that at the first goal he could have reacted better but in the end of the day it's Gundogan acting as a striker, turning around our CB ( I think it was T.Silva) and shooting from a position from which most players should be able to score a goal, I would then blame T.Silva there instead.

2. Kovacic does have basic positional awareness, everyone that watched him for 2 seasons knows this, Lampard knew what he was getting, basic isn't good enough in this league. So it's not Kovacic's fault that he simply can't keep up with the flow of the game, it's mainly the fault of Lampard for once again putting him in the startling lineup when it hasn't been working out and when Kovacic hasn't been playing well. He started against Arsenal and we lost the midfield and the game in the first 45 minutes and the same thing basically happened against City, I don't see why would Lampard expect anything else to happen other than just a repeated history episode.
Lampard expects to forcefully make him have a good form, that didn't happen with Werner and Mount so why should it happen with Kovacic?
My counter-argument would be then, if Lampard was fine with starting Ziyech and taking a slight risk since he was throwing him into the fire after he hasn't played for a long time, why couldn't he take a smaller risk and start Gilmour instead of Kovacic that has already showed that he can do a decent job with the ball this season.

For the rest, I can totally see that it's not Lampard's fault that T.Silva had a poor game, Zouma and Azpilicueta as well.

40 minutes ago, Malta Blue said:

Yeah I saw the comments about pulisic only being played to gain audiences in America. This is the worst spell the club has had since I joined the forum and it seems like loads of tossers have came out of the woodworks. Is this normal everytime we have a bad spell? I get emotions are running high but some of these people only seem to have a content of 20-30. So are they same people that only come on everytime we are playing sh*te or are they all new?

Absolutely and this happened on both ends. When we were winning X matches in a row, many of these people were hailing Frank as the second coming of Christ.
Now they are acting as if Frank's dismissal is the only thing stopping us from winning a treble.

1 hour ago, Gol15 said:

I don't agree that we should be blaming Mendy and Kovacic:

1. Mendy couldn't really do anything in 2/3 goals, the argument would be that at the first goal he could have reacted better but in the end of the day it's Gundogan acting as a striker, turning around our CB ( I think it was T.Silva) and shooting from a position from which most players should be able to score a goal, I would then blame T.Silva there instead.

2. Kovacic does have basic positional awareness, everyone that watched him for 2 seasons knows this, Lampard knew what he was getting, basic isn't good enough in this league. So it's not Kovacic's fault that he simply can't keep up with the flow of the game, it's mainly the fault of Lampard for once again putting him in the startling lineup when it hasn't been working out and when Kovacic hasn't been playing well. He started against Arsenal and we lost the midfield and the game in the first 45 minutes and the same thing basically happened against City, I don't see why would Lampard expect anything else to happen other than just a repeated history episode.
Lampard expects to forcefully make him have a good form, that didn't happen with Werner and Mount so why should it happen with Kovacic?
My counter-argument would be then, if Lampard was fine with starting Ziyech and taking a slight risk since he was throwing him into the fire after he hasn't played for a long time, why couldn't he take a smaller risk and start Gilmour instead of Kovacic that has already showed that he can do a decent job with the ball this season.

For the rest, I can totally see that it's not Lampard's fault that T.Silva had a poor game, Zouma and Azpilicueta as well.

Gilmour defensively is as slow as Jorginho, I don't think he will make us stronger.

I haven't seen him playing through balls to the forwards either, are we grabbing at straws with Gilmour?

 

 

8 hours ago, Slojo said:

Glad this moron was banned now, what a f**king stupid thing to come out with. 

He’s the only person I’ve ever bothered to put on ignore which says a lot about the prick. Liked to throw ‘racism’ around in an attempt to win arguments with random people on the internet over nothing, completely devaluing actual racism in the process and showing what a absolute knobhead he really was.

2 hours ago, Malta Blue said:

Yeah I saw the comments about pulisic only being played to gain audiences in America. This is the worst spell the club has had since I joined the forum and it seems like loads of tossers have came out of the woodworks. Is this normal everytime we have a bad spell? I get emotions are running high but some of these people only seem to have a content of 20-30. So are they same people that only come on everytime we are playing sh*te or are they all new?

Yeah, some trolls come out of their caves when we are down to shout "Frank/Sarri/Conte or whoever out!" and get the f**k back to the sewers when things work out. Some are maybe other teams' trolls, but some have been here for a while and have been banned before (like that bloke driller97 who, I believe, was banned already once under the name of snoopy or something like that).

35 minutes ago, Strider6003 said:

Gilmour defensively is as slow as Jorginho, I don't think he will make us stronger.

I haven't seen him playing through balls to the forwards either, are we grabbing at straws with Gilmour?

 

 

Could be.