15 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Sometimes we make some good buys in January, Brana for one.

With a net spending if 0 in the summer why not invest for TT? Can be sure City would if Pep asked them too.

Ones I remember are Cahill and Anelka.

9 hours ago, strider6004 said:

Ones I remember are Cahill and Anelka.

Anelka was a good signing for us in the end. But worth noting that he only managed 2 goals in 24 games the season he was signed in January. It was the season afterwards where he really started scoring for us. Likewise Brana Ivanovic (also signed in the same window) didn't play for us until the following season.

So while they both ultimately proved to be good signings they had limited impact in the short term.

14 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Sometimes we make some good buys in January, Brana for one.

With a net spending if 0 in the summer why not invest for TT? Can be sure City would if Pep asked them too.

Can’t remember Pep ever buying in Jan. Klopp did buy Kabak & some other small name players like season. Big teams just don’t tend to spend big in Jan. Digne on loan might be a shout if Everton sign a LB in Jan, and Chiwell hasn’t recovered.  

4 hours ago, ducavis said:

Can’t remember Pep ever buying in Jan. Klopp did buy Kabak & some other small name players like season. Big teams just don’t tend to spend big in Jan. Digne on loan might be a shout if Everton sign a LB in Jan, and Chiwell hasn’t recovered.  

Van Dijk was a January transfer

59 minutes ago, azpi28 said:

Van Dijk was a January transfer

Indeed. If the quality is there we should go and get them. 

if they are going to play without crowds again for a sustained period we might be able to benefit from the financial situation clubs are in, which might force them to sell or sell for less money 

Such ashame that we didn't even look at Kamara from Marseille, only 22yrs old. He would have fitted so well with the current system of Tuchel as he can play defence and defensive midfield. 

Either way I think Tuchel needs to be backed with defenders as potentially have 4 leaving at the end of the season. I hope they can play in a back 4 system too. 

Buying players is not the a solution here. Okay, we could replace the failed Saul-experiment but not sure if we need to buy a player to replace him. Barks is not playing that much. Not the best solution admittedly but he is good enough I think.

Chilly could be back in a couple of weeks. If football is put on hiatus we get back almost everyone at the time it resumes. 

 

On 20/12/2021 at 08:15, Scott Harris said:

If we sack Tuchel, then I give up. I am sick and tired of going through this same bullsh*t every season. We ain't getting a better coach than Tuchel, he's one of the best around. I was pissed when we sacked Lampard and I said we would be in the exact same position again with Tuchel, and here we are. It's starting to unravel just like it did for every other coach that has taken charge at this club. Eventually you need to start pointing your fingers somewhere else, because it's not the coach's fault every time. 

This club in the Roman era has always had players that turn it on when there is change or when things are going well, but they are also the types of players that start feeling sorry for themselves and stop playing when they hit a stumbling block. This has got to stop. I would rather we weed out that type of thing from our club instead of replacing the manager every season or two. 

Understand your sentiments, and I used to think like you as well.

However, we all know Roman isn't going to change his methods. I gave up thinking he would change his ways after Jose's second stint, and now I just take it as it comes with our coaches without becoming too much emotionally invested in them.

Roman can say his decisions have been vindicated over the years as the club has regularly won trophies in spite of the manager. However, I do think the frequency of managerial changes has also hurt our prospects in having a sustained run in the league and becoming annual contenders in the mould of City and Liverpool. It hasn't affected us in winning cup competitions though.

4 hours ago, evissy said:

Buying players is not the a solution here. Okay, we could replace the failed Saul-experiment but not sure if we need to buy a player to replace him. Barks is not playing that much. Not the best solution admittedly but he is good enough I think.

Chilly could be back in a couple of weeks. If football is put on hiatus we get back almost everyone at the time it resumes. 

 

Agree buying players isn’t the solution. What comes across in so many posts is that the Roman era has conditioned us to always be thinking two things, with varying degrees of intensity:

1) the manager is about to be sacked.

2) there’s no problem a new or a few new players can’t fix.

I’ve discussed 1) already and don’t want to flog a dead horse. In short, way too much panic imo.

As for 2), A few thoughts on this.
 

First - do we have collective amnesia? We’ve bought an awful lot of players last couple of seasons.

Secondly, we’ve got a pretty decent squad, owing in large part to said acquisitions, but I would argue even more to the investment in the academy bearing fruit (a huge positive!). We are underperforming because several key players are missing. Last season Liverpool had one key player missing and it cost them a top 2 finish. It probably means we wont challenge for the title but third place behind arguably the two best club sides on the planet right now wouldn’t be so bad, and it’s ours to lose imo.

Finally, listen to yourselves! Do you wanna be THAT Chelsea fan who’s always begging Roman to just spend more money. I feel this vindicates the negative stance of many neutrals vis-a-vis Chelsea. Just don’t go there. It’s not realistic in any case. 

One thing that has declined is the intensity in our play. We’ve lost momentum probably due to a number of factors - injuries, confidence and tiredness. Once we get the players back, we really need to rediscover that intensity. We came out of the blocks quickly this season and we’ve dipped massively. 
 

The games against City and Juventus shocked me massively. I do fear that Juventus at home will be our peak. 

2 hours ago, Jezz said:

Understand your sentiments, and I used to think like you as well.

However, we all know Roman isn't going to change his methods. I gave up thinking he would change his ways after Jose's second stint, and now I just take it as it comes with our coaches without becoming too much emotionally invested in them.

Roman can say his decisions have been vindicated over the years as the club has regularly won trophies in spite of the manager. However, I do think the frequency of managerial changes has also hurt our prospects in having a sustained run in the league and becoming annual contenders in the mould of City and Liverpool. It hasn't affected us in winning cup competitions though.

You could be right in the sense we may have not picked the right one but in terms of who we've sacked I'm not really sure any of them could have been that one to get us what City and Liverpool are doing.

Ancelotti was and still is totally unproven with building squads, Conte simply doesn't have the temperament for it, Lampard unfortunently wasn't good enough for that final step and if we kept Mou they'd have been more chance of us ending up in the lower divisions. Even Mou the first time I'm unsure about in hindsight, we were stagnating at the end but we all just assumed he'd have found a way because he's Mourinho.

Ironically, the two that might have been able to pull it off in time were AVB and Sarri. Can't say I regret the former for obvious reasons but I am curious about what would have happened with 2 or 3 season's of the latter.

A semi-final against those perennial under-achievers and our most hated rivals in all the universe, Tottenham.

A semi-final against a side renewed and inspired by Antonio Conte.

Let's be honest. On paper we are a farking shoe-in for a result against these mega-melts. 

Could this be, for Roman, Tuchel's stay or go moment?

11 hours ago, Argo said:

You could be right in the sense we may have not picked the right one but in terms of who we've sacked I'm not really sure any of them could have been that one to get us what City and Liverpool are doing.

Ancelotti was and still is totally unproven with building squads, Conte simply doesn't have the temperament for it, Lampard unfortunently wasn't good enough for that final step and if we kept Mou they'd have been more chance of us ending up in the lower divisions. Even Mou the first time I'm unsure about in hindsight, we were stagnating at the end but we all just assumed he'd have found a way because he's Mourinho.

Ironically, the two that might have been able to pull it off in time were AVB and Sarri. Can't say I regret the former for obvious reasons but I am curious about what would have happened with 2 or 3 season's of the latter.

Hypothetical scenarios.

A wonderfull thing. In the mind of the beholder.

19 minutes ago, just said:

A semi-final against those perennial under-achievers and our most hated rivals in all the universe, Tottenham.

A semi-final against a side renewed and inspired by Antonio Conte.

Let's be honest. On paper we are a farking shoe-in for a result against these mega-melts. 

Could this be, for Roman, Tuchel's stay or go moment?

To be fair Tottenham could easily turn up against us and then bottle the final.

I do believe Roman is casting an even closer eye on TT, although I don't believe the league cup, whatever we do from this point on, will influence his choice on TT future one way or another. 

That will be down to how well we make third place secure or not and at a minimum make the CL quarter finals after drawing Lille. 

6 hours ago, just said:

Hypothetical scenarios.

A wonderfull thing. In the mind of the beholder.

On the same basis saying Drinkwater wouldn't have turned his Chelsea career around if given the chance is a hypothetical scenario, maybe if you go down the technicality route but in reality he wouldn't have, he's since proved it on multiple occasions.

It would technically be hypothetical to say we wouldn't play good/possesion football if we appointed Neil Warnock or Tony Pulis, but it would be pretty obvious that we wouldn't.

Ancelotti has never successfully done the type of rebuild we needed in 2011 (nor lasted longer than two years anywhere since us), Jose has shown nothing since leaving us to suggest he would have turned that all time collapse around and come the end Lampard come the end wasn't even giving us the two things we thought we could bank on with him (youth and good football).

None have yet shown we were wrong not to go all in on a long term project with them, quite the opposite infact.

AVB was the one that was purely hypothetical I'll grant you that, the rest of them was an opinion shaped on data in one way or another (in Lampard's case how we went from going toe to toe with Pep and Klopp to playing like a Pulis side in a year despite improving our squad and the others based on how they've got on in the context of long term building at other jobs). Lampard I could be proved wrong with on the long term, the others are little too long in the tooth to change so drastically.

On 22/12/2021 at 13:57, evissy said:

Buying players is not the a solution here. Okay, we could replace the failed Saul-experiment but not sure if we need to buy a player to replace him. Barks is not playing that much. Not the best solution admittedly but he is good enough I think.

Chilly could be back in a couple of weeks. If football is put on hiatus we get back almost everyone at the time it resumes. 

 

Dm is our only need even that is not an urgent thing.

3 hours ago, Bob stark said:

Dm is our only need even that is not an urgent thing.

Tying down our CBs to new contracts?

On 22/12/2021 at 09:44, Jezz said:

Understand your sentiments, and I used to think like you as well.

However, we all know Roman isn't going to change his methods. I gave up thinking he would change his ways after Jose's second stint, and now I just take it as it comes with our coaches without becoming too much emotionally invested in them.

Roman can say his decisions have been vindicated over the years as the club has regularly won trophies in spite of the manager. However, I do think the frequency of managerial changes has also hurt our prospects in having a sustained run in the league and becoming annual contenders in the mould of City and Liverpool. It hasn't affected us in winning cup competitions though.

Roman hasn't sacked a manager that deserved more time for a long time. 

Jose had to go. 

Tuchel wont be going anywhere unless things really go south. He's the perfect balance of being a club man and having a plan which I can't think of when we had before. We will maybe limp to 3rd or 4th but that will get him another season. 

19 hours ago, Backbiter said:

Tying down our CBs to new contracts?

That really depend on whether we want to play back 4 or back 5.

Christensen and Azpilicueta are probably easy. Matt Law says he heard whispers of Rudiger going to Real Madrid. We would not match their offer. 

On 22/12/2021 at 23:04, Argo said:

You could be right in the sense we may have not picked the right one but in terms of who we've sacked I'm not really sure any of them could have been that one to get us what City and Liverpool are doing.

Ancelotti was and still is totally unproven with building squads, Conte simply doesn't have the temperament for it, Lampard unfortunently wasn't good enough for that final step and if we kept Mou they'd have been more chance of us ending up in the lower divisions. Even Mou the first time I'm unsure about in hindsight, we were stagnating at the end but we all just assumed he'd have found a way because he's Mourinho.

Ironically, the two that might have been able to pull it off in time were AVB and Sarri. Can't say I regret the former for obvious reasons but I am curious about what would have happened with 2 or 3 season's of the latter.

You raise good points.

I think Mourinho MK1 still had more to give as he was still at the top of his game at this stage as his tenure at Inter proved. The reason for his departure was because his relationship with Roman had broken down rather than to do with deteriorating on-field performance.

I wish Conte could got some more time as well as he won trophies in both seasons he was there, but his volatile personality always meant he would be cut loose in the end.

 

On 24/12/2021 at 01:55, bisright1 said:

Roman hasn't sacked a manager that deserved more time for a long time. 

Jose had to go. 

Tuchel wont be going anywhere unless things really go south. He's the perfect balance of being a club man and having a plan which I can't think of when we had before. We will maybe limp to 3rd or 4th but that will get him another season. 

Fair points.

I think you're right about Tuchel's future prospects at the club.

3 hours ago, Jezz said:

You raise good points.

I think Mourinho MK1 still had more to give as he was still at the top of his game at this stage as his tenure at Inter proved. The reason for his departure was because his relationship with Roman had broken down rather than to do with deteriorating on-field performance.

I wish Conte could got some more time as well as he won trophies in both seasons he was there, but his volatile personality always meant he would be cut loose in the end.

 

Fair points.

I think you're right about Tuchel's future prospects at the club.

Speaking personally Conte was actually my biggest u turn with a manager.

Up until THAT City game I was well and truly of the mindset of give him next season to turn things around but he instantly lost me beyond repair with those tactics at The Ethiad. I've never gone from A to Z with a manager on one game before (usually I find the idea of it total insanity but that game was beyond a humiliation and it was completely self inflicted by him and only him) usually it's after a decent period of being on the fence/annoyed a lot first.

Edit:Double post 

Edited December 26, 20214 yr by Argo

1 hour ago, Argo said:

Speaking personally Conte was actually my biggest u turn with a manager.

Up until THAT City game I was well and truly of the mindset of give him next season to turn things around but he instantly lost me beyond repair with those tactics at The Ethiad. I've never gone from A to Z with a manager on one game before (usually I find the idea of it total insanity but that game was beyond a humiliation and it was completely self inflicted by him and only him) usually it's after a decent period of being on the fence/annoyed a lot first.

In fairness we tried to play offensively against City the next season and got smashed 6-0, so he wasn't wrong.

 

One of the things I like most about Tuchel's reign is that we've been able to take on the best teams in Europe successfully without having to park the bus