So far we have got what we deserved. Bar the last two games, where we deserved to hold Porto to 0-0 and beat Real.

City? Cannot comment that they deserved it or not. Had no interest in watching them face piss easy draw after piss easy draw. No interest in watching PSG in general. Now have Bayern got through City would have had no hope of the final, Bayern shot themselves in the foot at home to Paris.

17 hours ago, Bob stark said:

Winning ucl is good but I usually don't rate manager from ucl.  Winning ucl involves tons of luck. We have quite an easier route this season.(I thought Atletico would have been very difficult but they were completely out of form before we played them) 

It is the reality this year, there are maybe 4 really good teams City, pool(before injury crisis), bayern (not as good as last season) and probably psg (still have neymar n mbappe). 

And so far we have avoided all of them

 

With all due respect this is the biggest load of nonsense I have ever read. I should of stopped reading after you wrote winning the UCL requires luck and you dont rate a manager for winning it. The biggest and hardest club competition to win.

And lets not forget we finished top of our league and still ended up with the worst possible tie in At Madrid. Porto was another hard match, and Real Madrid even harder. And if we make it through we face a killer tie against Man City or PSG. Guys acting like we playing relegation teams, not ones packed with world class players.

1 hour ago, Oli said:

With all due respect this is the biggest load of nonsense I have ever read. I should of stopped reading after you wrote winning the UCL requires luck and you dont rate a manager for winning it. The biggest and hardest club competition to win.

And lets not forget we finished top of our league and still ended up with the worst possible tie in At Madrid. Porto was another hard match, and Real Madrid even harder. And if we make it through we face a killer tie against Man City or PSG. Guys acting like we playing relegation teams, not ones packed with world class players.

Really? 

Do you realize our monster team under mou and Ancelotti never won ucl. Those team were absolutely dominant,yet how many ucl title did we win with those team?  

We won ucl instead with one of our worst team in years.

 

13 hours ago, Ernie_blue said:

All cup competitions require some degree of luck, Chelsea very unlucky to win there group and get AM in the last 16 which is normally still a poor part of the competition, it was good to get Porto in the quarters. For me Bayern and City are the best teams in the comp, Bayern was very unlucky as they demolished PSG in the first leg and with the amount of injuries they had was pretty bad plus no Lewandowski for either leg. I always thought it was going to be a chelsea vs psg final because of Tuchel but looks like I could be wrong.

That is the point. People don't want to accept it but cup competition has tons of luck involved. It is what it is. 

Does city has easy draw so far? Yes

Do we have decent draw so far? Yes

 

 

6 minutes ago, Bob stark said:

That is the point. People don't want to accept it but cup competition has tons of luck involved. It is what it is. 

Does city has easy draw so far? Yes

Do we have decent draw so far? Yes

 

 

Decent? Respectfully disagree there fella. We get the beat side of the second seeds who are only second seeds as they were in Bayerns group, a very competitive and dirty Porto team and a real madrid who knocked out our leagues champions. That is not decent, that is horrific.

4 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Decent? Respectfully disagree there fella. We get the beat side of the second seeds who are only second seeds as they were in Bayerns group, a very competitive and dirty Porto team and a real madrid who knocked out our leagues champions. That is not decent, that is horrific.

I thought Atletico would be very difficult. It was though, we pretty much won the tie in the 1st leg, wonderful goal by Giroud. 

Ater the qf draw we all knew we got easier route to final. The three most difficult team bayern, city and psg are at the other bracket. 

 

 

 

 

It is funny people try to defend Tuchel by praising just because we are in semi final in ucl.

For me that is disrespectful what Tuchel has done as a manager. You want to praise Tuchel, praise his improvement in our defense and how we look more organized and can control game much better right now. How he plan especially big games to take advantage of opponent weakness (ie. asking Kante to keep running behind against RM). By doing this, suddenly we are much harder to beat and as a consequence we are doing better in the league and cl. 

Otherwise, especially in cl one bad game you are out and suddenly you are bad manager and one lucky game suddenly you are good. 

 

34 minutes ago, Bob stark said:

I thought Atletico would be very difficult. It was though, we pretty much won the tie in the 1st leg, wonderful goal by Giroud. 

Ater the qf draw we all knew we got easier route to final. The three most difficult team bayern, city and psg are at the other bracket. 

 

 

 

 

Matter of opinion on that one for me. Think Real and Liverpool have the potential to be as good as City and both are better than PSG. 

However yes Bayern are the best team about and should not have lost to Paris.

1 hour ago, Bob stark said:

Really? 

Do you realize our monster team under mou and Ancelotti never won ucl. Those team were absolutely dominant,yet how many ucl title did we win with those team?  

We won ucl instead with one of our worst team in years.

 

Youve just completely proven my point and rubbished your own, so yet again I have no idea what you are talking about. The CL is the hardest competition to win and no matter how good our teams were in the past, we still fell short many times.

So to say you dont rate a manager for winning it because its down to luck, or that we have somehow had an eady route this year, or to dismiss the CL winning team as poor is nonsense.

1 hour ago, Oli said:

Youve just completely proven my point and rubbished your own, so yet again I have no idea what you are talking about. The CL is the hardest competition to win and no matter how good our teams were in the past, we still fell short many times.

So to say you dont rate a manager for winning it because its down to luck, or that we have somehow had an eady route this year, or to dismiss the CL winning team as poor is nonsense.

So by your definition RDM is by far better manager then Tuchel or pochettino. 

He won ucl, those never won it. You can even argue that RDM is the best manager because he won it with the least talent in recent years. 

 

 

1 hour ago, axman2526 said:

Matter of opinion on that one for me. Think Real and Liverpool have the potential to be as good as City and both are better than PSG. 

However yes Bayern are the best team about and should not have lost to Paris.

My point is this, cup competition involves tons of luck. You can do everything right and you lose and everyone think that you are stupid, you can do everything wrong, but you win and people think you are the great. 

I am really surprised that it is hard to accept this especially coming from Chelsea fans. 

In UCL, I enjoy the win but I usually don't bother too much with the losses unless they are stupid like losing to 10 man PSG. 

 

 

 

Yes, in cup competition there is some luck involved. More than in the league of course because of fever games and knock-out games and everything can happen in one game.

I personally don't like this attitude in football that often facts are twisted after games where only one team played and missed a whole bunch of chances and the opponent scored with just one shot on target. After such a game it is often said "a deserved win, they just did not take their chance". For me this is no sense, just pure luck for the winning team on one day.

Still if you are better you don't need luck because statistically you are gonna score at some point. Of course you can still go out early in the tournament with bad luck on two days. In my opinion it is quite rare to be the better team in two games and loose on aggregate.

To rate a coach just because he won UCL, makes not much sense. It is more the big picture, how you play, tactics,developing, long time stats..still to be at the very top of coaching you need to show that you can win big titles.  In my opinion Tuchel is already a world class coach, if he wins CL it will be recognized by more people. 

Di Matteo is one exception, this was pure luck at least in the final. That he was sacked short after was due to the fact that everybody that knew it was a lucky title. He has not proven since that he is a good manager. If you look at UCL winning coaches in the last 20 years all of the are world class coaches except maybe Benitez and Di Matteo.

 

1 hour ago, jony92 said:

Yes, in cup competition there is some luck involved. More than in the league of course because of fever games and knock-out games and everything can happen in one game.

I personally don't like this attitude in football that often facts are twisted after games where only one team played and missed a whole bunch of chances and the opponent scored with just one shot on target. After such a game it is often said "a deserved win, they just did not take their chance". For me this is no sense, just pure luck for the winning team on one day.

Still if you are better you don't need luck because statistically you are gonna score at some point. Of course you can still go out early in the tournament with bad luck on two days. In my opinion it is quite rare to be the better team in two games and loose on aggregate.

To rate a coach just because he won UCL, makes not much sense. It is more the big picture, how you play, tactics,developing, long time stats..still to be at the very top of coaching you need to show that you can win big titles.  In my opinion Tuchel is already a world class coach, if he wins CL it will be recognized by more people. 

Di Matteo is one exception, this was pure luck at least in the final. That he was sacked short after was due to the fact that everybody that knew it was a lucky title. He has not proven since that he is a good manager. If you look at UCL winning coaches in the last 20 years all of the are world class coaches except maybe Benitez and Di Matteo.

 

Di Matteo got sacked because the results were not good enough not because everyone knew that it was a lucky title, the players fought and won it's not a gambling game, tell to Cech that he was lucky to win and he will point out his great saves as his own ability that has nothing to do with luck.

11 hours ago, Bob stark said:

It is funny people try to defend Tuchel by praising just because we are in semi final in ucl.

For me that is disrespectful what Tuchel has done as a manager. You want to praise Tuchel, praise his improvement in our defense and how we look more organized and can control game much better right now. How he plan especially big games to take advantage of opponent weakness (ie. asking Kante to keep running behind against RM). By doing this, suddenly we are much harder to beat and as a consequence we are doing better in the league and cl. 

Otherwise, especially in cl one bad game you are out and suddenly you are bad manager and one lucky game suddenly you are good. 

 

I do agree with what you are saying in terms of praising someone based upon the fundamental improvements of the team however ultimately praise is based upon the end result. Us getting into the UCL semi final is a result of us being more organized and having the ability to control games. In addition the UCL is not like a normal cup competition, teams have to beat other elite teams across 2 legs which takes a lot of planning and strategy and not just sheer luck.

With an 18 month contract Tuchel didn't just need the intangibles of us looking better but he needed us to show the results and us being in the UCL Semi Final and the FA Cup Final is evidence that the fundamentals he has put in place are working. To say that lets not look at the end result and the evidence that his methods are working is insane because that is the result of the hardwork he has done and something you are pointing at for his praise.

Two things I just want to attempt to clear up. 

First the media chatting bs again. Yes we played as the better team and failed to capitalize but, we only had a few clear cut chances with 1 high profile miss from Werner. We also failed to play him in a couple of times I have no idea how that broke down it seems pretty simple to play a weighted ball for a fast fwd to run onto but both times we played it so hard he ran off the pitch to even catch on.

Their goal was a prime example of what a world class team looks like. For all our domination it took a world class goal for us to even score.

Rudiger's pass and Christian's control and finish both sublime. Take nothing away from that but Madrid's was just as good. We get criticised for conceeding 1 shot on target but those chances are very difficult to defend.

In practice you must always win the second ball, but they had so many tall players in the box winning the 1st and 2nd ball was not merely left up to chance as we had a miss match at the back post for the first chance almost like they planned it...

The second ball was more a 50/50 they did win it and Benzema being the fox in the box that he is only needed half a chance many many good players would fail to dispatch that but add to the fact one of their players was stood (onside) obstructing Mendy's view (he wouldn't save that most likely anyway who would?!).

As far as I'm concerned that was a game of few chances exactly how the managers wanted it, tight and the better team overall should advance over the two legs if the 2nd leg follows the trend of the first. 

Secondly TT's contract situation, Another Marina masterstroke again. Rather than let the guy have a free run at the rest of the season (which in theory he had regardless) she raised the anti and put him on edge. By only offering an 18 month contract with a year extension she dangled the carrot and boy did Thomas bite.

For me and I hope the rest of Chelsea fc regardless of what happens come the end of the season TT has done enough for me to earn the extension. I want a minimum of two full seasons plus what we've had for the second half of this season. He and his coaching team have earned a full 2 year contract.

Well if I am right on my gut feeling then our chances tomorrow look as good as Poch ever winning a major trophy.

With that said if TT delivers top 4 and the FA cup he has still had a great half a season. 

12 hours ago, Imran_CFC said:

I do agree with what you are saying in terms of praising someone based upon the fundamental improvements of the team however ultimately praise is based upon the end result. Us getting into the UCL semi final is a result of us being more organized and having the ability to control games. In addition the UCL is not like a normal cup competition, teams have to beat other elite teams across 2 legs which takes a lot of planning and strategy and not just sheer luck.

With an 18 month contract Tuchel didn't just need the intangibles of us looking better but he needed us to show the results and us being in the UCL Semi Final and the FA Cup Final is evidence that the fundamentals he has put in place are working. To say that lets not look at the end result and the evidence that his methods are working is insane because that is the result of the hardwork he has done and something you are pointing at for his praise.

I have never said result isn't important. @Gol15said

"if Tuchel won cl he is untouchable"

and i said 

Winning ucl is good but I usually don't rate manager from ucl.  Winning ucl involves tons of luck. 

Result is of course important, without result all your work become almost irrelevant but using just short term result to judge manager especially ucl is also insane.

Let say we got Bayern instead of Porto and we lost, now should we rate Tuchel lower than if he bring us to final.

 

22 hours ago, Bob stark said:

So by your definition RDM is by far better manager then Tuchel or pochettino. 

He won ucl, those never won it. You can even argue that RDM is the best manager because he won it with the least talent in recent years. 

 

 

 

I can tell English isnt your first language, judging by your recent posts, so I can see where you getting completely confused. Never once did i say whoever wins it is better than a manager who doesnt. Tuchel will have had a great season up to now no matter how the CL plays out, although we still need top 4 and perhaps the FA Cup too.

However dont ever say things like winning the CL is based on luck, the team worked damn hard to win beating Bayern in their home ground or keep talking about the lack of talent in our team at the time and suggesting we fluked it. Also Di Matteo deserves so much praise for turning that season around and winning us the FA Cup too, and his tactics game by game were spot on.

He has to get his to get his tactics right for this one, I hope he does fingers crossed. I assume stick to the game plan, our style of football which is possession suffocation and resolute defending.

I like our squad I think it fits with the football he's playing. It's also good because we have many options to disrupt our opponent's game plan for us. Thomas has the ability to choose several different players as 'strikers' and multiple variations of a front 3 and 2. Guessing who plays will be tricky and throwing a curve ball at them may be what's needed to catch Zidane off guard again like the first leg.

7 hours ago, Bob stark said:

I have never said result isn't important. @Gol15said

"if Tuchel won cl he is untouchable"

and i said 

Winning ucl is good but I usually don't rate manager from ucl.  Winning ucl involves tons of luck. 

Result is of course important, without result all your work become almost irrelevant but using just short term result to judge manager especially ucl is also insane.

Let say we got Bayern instead of Porto and we lost, now should we rate Tuchel lower than if he bring us to final.

 

Considering the average term of a manager under Roman is 18 months we don't have a choice but to judge a manager by short term results and the reason why UCL is used as a barometer of success is due to the nature of the tournament 9 times out of 10 the better team progresses across 2 legs. 

If you are talking about the luck of the draw then once again I don't think the fixtures are too disproportionate, for arguments sake lets say we progress to the final to play City our path would've been Athletico Madrid, Porto & Real Madrid whereas City would've played Borussia Monchengladbach, Dortmund & PSG. In my view their fixtures were slightly favorable in comparison however if they beat us in the final then their results eclipse ours and therefore deserve being champions. The only team that has had a tough run this season in the CL and have a right to complain is probably PSG because they had to overcome a group which included United and RB Leipzig and in the knockout rounds got past Barca, Bayern and finally ran out of steam against City but that almost balances out last season where they had a favorable run in to the final. 

In regards to your point about Bayern, what better way to judge a team and Manager then a playing a 2 legged tie against the best team in the world especially if you have already played them a year before and have a comparison point.  

6 hours ago, Oli said:

I can tell English isnt your first language, judging by your recent posts, so I can see where you getting completely confused. Never once did i say whoever wins it is better than a manager who doesnt. Tuchel will have had a great season up to now no matter how the CL plays out, although we still need top 4 and perhaps the FA Cup too.

However dont ever say things like winning the CL is based on luck, the team worked damn hard to win beating Bayern in their home ground or keep talking about the lack of talent in our team at the time and suggesting we fluked it. Also Di Matteo deserves so much praise for turning that season around and winning us the FA Cup too, and his tactics game by game were spot on.

You are right English isn't my first language but I understand your post completely. You said winning cl doesn't involve luck, so I can safely infer that not winning cl has nothing to do with luck either.

You can give compelling arguments that this PSG teams are one of the best teams in Europe. The fact that Tuchel and Pochettino didn't win cl with this PSG mean that RDM is the better manager. RDM won it with Mata plus bunch of old superstars that were in their last leg. Mata was good but not neymar, Mbappe good. 

Let's also imagine the situation in 2012 against Bayern/Barca was flipped. So instead of us being dominated, we were the one who created tons of chances, conceded nothing, but we didn't score and the other team scored from their only corner. So should we say that it wasn't bad luck , instead Bayern worked harder, had more talent and simply better? 

For me rather than denying that we were lucky in 2012. I much rather said that it was overdue title especially for our old guard (lamp, terry, cech, drog, cole). We had bunch of winner who fought brilliantly every year, we were unlucky so many times in cl (ovrebo, Iniesta wonder goal, terry slip, luis Garcia phantom goal), it was simply our time. 

In 2012

Were we very lucky? Hell yeah

Did we play well? Nope

Do I care? Nope

Oops totally forget, in term of RDM.  If we won 2012 cl more convincingly (we limited barca/bayern chances more and we created more), there is good argument that RDM is a very2 good but those games were simply too one sided to make good argument for RDM case.

I feel the “is it luck that wins you CL” debate hasn’t lasted long enough, so gonna add another dimension (apologies if this has come up and I missed it).
 

Some years CL is just harder than others. A few years back PSG and Bayern were roughly same level, while all of Barca, Real, Juve were much stronger. This year is just an easy year. 🙂

Which is not to downplay Tuchel’s achievement - I am pretty much ready to have his children already.

I do believe in the concept of luck though we have to be careful we don't overstate it.

Teams come into good form and just as easily fall out of form,

Official makes strange decisions at times.

Sometimes good players have personal crisises happening off the pitch we don't know about, like relationship breakdowns or death of a parent.

I think we had luck in the 2012 UCL path to victory yet RDM still had to make the players train and believe. 

 

I didn't really know where to post this and I don't like starting new threads for sh*tty hot takes so it's going here, but...

I'm not convinced Tuchel has us sorted tactically just set. I think we have a glaring weakness that teams have exploited in part, but any average Joe video analyst will be banging down the door about.

Teams often make two mistakes - pressing us too hard/early, or sitting back and conceding possession. Both are tempting fate, but there is a middle ground. I was reminded of my coach yelling at me for pressing too high up the pitch (and me wondering why that was a problem) and I think I understand that better now.

We're at our weakest when teams do a partial press - specifically, pressing everyone except for Mendy. The reason is simple - it forces either of these players to go for a long-ball, which we simply don't have the personnel to deal with. We have little height in attack or midfield and when Jorginho players we don't have two players in the middle who are good at contesting second balls.

I think this is something we can rectify in the transfer market but also tactically. We've seen Tuchel scream at the defenders to ensure the high-line is nice and high, and I suspect this is one of the reasons as if we're playing too deep the long passes become both more frequent and more risky. We also need to ensure our fullbacks are coming deep to make an extra outlet in midfield/defence, which means that Alonso and possibly Azpilicueta's days are numbered there.

 

 

 

He deserves all the plaudits coming his way.

Lost for superlatives but just to say..............