6 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

Lukaku has been really clinical, he doesn't need more than 2 chances to score. He's pure quality. This in turn shows that I was wrong when I said that there is something wrong with our current system. The problem still remains though, when you have to play Pulisic as a full-back things won't look as sharp but that's due to having so many injuries and not on Tuchel's tactic.

Brighton in all honesty and fairness had the ball twice in our box in the second half and scored from a cross, not much you can do about that.

Did he have to play a back 5 though? He had Azpi & James as options for fullbacks in a back 4. It was obvious from the 1st min that they were dominating our mid 2, he could have switched it in game. I feel he paid too much respect to Lamptey, and was more focused on stopping in. When they took him off in the 2nd half and brought on a midfielder, he still had the option of moving Pulisic further upfield but still kept him as a WB.

He is just way too rigid for my liking.

First time I’ve seen him flustered in an after match interview. Maybe he now has to play a formation to suit what he has available. Christmas has always been hard period, we now need to grit our teeth and grind results out.

TT has just given a cracking Mourinho impression in that post-match interview. That won't help galvanize the squad IMO.

3 minutes ago, ducavis said:

Did he have to play a back 5 though? He had Azpi & James as options for fullbacks in a back 4. It was obvious from the 1st min that they were dominating our mid 2, he could have switched it in game. I feel he paid too much respect to Lamptey, and was more focused on stopping in. When they took him off in the 2nd half and brought on a midfielder, he still had the option of moving Pulisic further upfield but still kept him as a WB.

He is just way too rigid for my liking.

He may be forced to move away from it now. Chilwell, James, Christensen, Silva, all injured. What is the point in sticking with the wing back formation if we don't have the wing backs available? Alonso can barely run and Pulisic is pure garbage as a wing back. If we are going to lose, I would rather we lost changing something than stick with what we have and watch us struggle to get out of our own half.

5 minutes ago, ducavis said:

Did he have to play a back 5 though? He had Azpi & James as options for fullbacks in a back 4. It was obvious from the 1st min that they were dominating our mid 2, he could have switched it in game. I feel he paid too much respect to Lamptey, and was more focused on stopping in. When they took him off in the 2nd half and brought on a midfielder, he still had the option of moving Pulisic further upfield but still kept him as a WB.

He is just way too rigid for my liking.

Brighton matched us with 352, if we switched to a 4231,they would have been all over us even more because Alonso and Azpi are both slow. 

 

That interview went well lol

Hard to put that one on Tuchel. The strategy and tactics was decent, not his fault that nobody chose to close down Cucurella and CHO made a waste of a pass 

I’m not going to fault Tuchel or the players too much at this stage. It’s obvious the players are exhausted and some are not fit. 
 

It’s annoying when other teams (United, Liverpool, Spurs) all get 2 weeks off to rest and Chelsea have to play through with injuries and tiredness. Lost 2 more players to injury tonight. Squad is thin bare and exhausted. 
 

Not looking forward to Sunday but after that, the fixture schedule looks lighter so I think that’s all.we can hope for now. 
 

I can’t really see the club signing players either and January players don’t usually make much of an impact. 

United got 3 games off for 4 covid cases

that says it all right there 

24 minutes ago, Andy2461 said:

United got 3 games off for 4 covid cases

that says it all right there 

We are the black sheep of the big PL teams. This is why we won't win the league.

1 hour ago, JM7 said:

I’m not going to fault Tuchel or the players too much at this stage. It’s obvious the players are exhausted and some are not fit. 
 

It’s annoying when other teams (United, Liverpool, Spurs) all get 2 weeks off to rest and Chelsea have to play through with injuries and tiredness. Lost 2 more players to injury tonight. Squad is thin bare and exhausted. 
 

Not looking forward to Sunday but after that, the fixture schedule looks lighter so I think that’s all.we can hope for now. 
 

I can’t really see the club signing players either and January players don’t usually make much of an impact. 

Lighter? Are you forgetting the League Cup semis against Spurs on Jan 5th/12th?

1 hour ago, Scott Harris said:

It's hard to predict where we will end up this season. The poor winter performances are destroying our season again, but this time we have more injuries on top than ever, so it's making it worse. 

I just can't see a way out of this mess right now. I don't see how we get anything out of the League cup semi finals and league games against Man City, Liverpool and Tottenham. We could very much be in a situation where sh*te like Arsenal and United overtake us. What a miserable season this is turning out to be after our most promising start in years.

I don't think we are good enough to challenge for the title with this team. Hopefully we can finish a little closer to City than last season though. With the key players fit we are capable of making a run in the cup competitions, so I would see that as our best chance of success.

Cant wait for a back four on Sunday with Azpi at RB and Alonso at LB and Jorginho as a DM. Im really looking forward to that.

Injuries, COVID or not let's not pretend that struggling to or failing to beat lesser sides in the Premier League hasn't been a Tuchel for the duration of his time at the club.

Damn so within a few weeks we’ve had our 3 best midfielders injured at the same time and now they’re back we’ve got 4 out of our 5 usual back 5 injured. Can’t say Tuchel has been on the right side of good luck this season. Not to mention for a couple of months we had both of our number 9s injured.

Edited December 30, 20214 yr by timetowaste

3 hours ago, just said:

TT has just given a cracking Mourinho impression in that post-match interview. That won't help galvanize the squad IMO.

Oh dear...that bad eh?

57 minutes ago, ForeverCarefree said:

Injuries, COVID or not let's not pretend that struggling to or failing to beat lesser sides in the Premier League hasn't been a Tuchel for the duration of his time at the club.

We have struggled a lot at home against sides we are expected to beat.

3 hours ago, ducavis said:

Did he have to play a back 5 though? He had Azpi & James as options for fullbacks in a back 4. It was obvious from the 1st min that they were dominating our mid 2, he could have switched it in game. I feel he paid too much respect to Lamptey, and was more focused on stopping in. When they took him off in the 2nd half and brought on a midfielder, he still had the option of moving Pulisic further upfield but still kept him as a WB.

He is just way too rigid for my liking.

Back 4 without kante ?

Unless we drop out the top 4 (we are too good to go that low) I will stand by Tuchel. Similar to my feelings with Lampard. 

14 minutes ago, KonaKai Blue said:

Unless we drop out the top 4 (we are too good to go that low) I will stand by Tuchel. Similar to my feelings with Lampard. 

And we know how that ended. I have no doubts Roman is already considering his options. He does not accept failure or excuses, we know that.

I think TT is doing well considering everything. However I expect Roman expected at least a strong title challange after signing Lukaku.

Thomas Tuchel has ruled us out of the title race. The priority is protecting his squad.

"

We have seven Covid cases, we have four or five key players out for six or more weeks," he said. "How should we compete in a title race?

"Everyone else who has a full squad, and everybody in training every day, has the full power to come through this league.

"We would be stupid to think we can do it out of Covid and injuries and just play, and everybody would be stupid to do it without 23 fit players."

Asked whether he felt the integrity of the Premier League season had been lost, he added: "This is the reality, this is where we are and we have to adapt to the demands of the situation which you are in.

"I competed very hard for the win at Brighton at home. I don't know what I can expect from my players in terms of physicality, intensity or minutes. Nobody knows any more because we have never done something like this. We play trial and error and see what we can do.

"I will protect my team. We can play better but we need the full squad over weeks and weeks."

Taken from: https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11668/12505793/chelsea-boss-thomas-tuchel-fumes-at-refereeing-decisions-as-brighton-equaliser-dents-title-hopes

4 hours ago, just said:

TT has just given a cracking Mourinho impression in that post-match interview. That won't help galvanize the squad IMO.

In fairness he has every right to. The way we've been treated with covid fixture schedules compared to the teams like united is a disgrace

3 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Thomas Tuchel has ruled us out of the title race. The priority is protecting his squad.

"

We have seven Covid cases, we have four or five key players out for six or more weeks," he said. "How should we compete in a title race?

"Everyone else who has a full squad, and everybody in training every day, has the full power to come through this league.

"We would be stupid to think we can do it out of Covid and injuries and just play, and everybody would be stupid to do it without 23 fit players."

Asked whether he felt the integrity of the Premier League season had been lost, he added: "This is the reality, this is where we are and we have to adapt to the demands of the situation which you are in.

"I competed very hard for the win at Brighton at home. I don't know what I can expect from my players in terms of physicality, intensity or minutes. Nobody knows any more because we have never done something like this. We play trial and error and see what we can do.

"I will protect my team. We can play better but we need the full squad over weeks and weeks."

Taken from: https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11668/12505793/chelsea-boss-thomas-tuchel-fumes-at-refereeing-decisions-as-brighton-equaliser-dents-title-hopes

Fine, let's win the Club World Cup title now 

3 hours ago, timetowaste said:

Damn so within a few weeks we’ve had our 3 best midfielders injured at the same time and now they’re back we’ve got 4 out of our 5 usual back 5 injured. Can’t say Tuchel has been on the right side of good luck this season. Not to mention for a couple of months we had both of our number 9s injured.

You just couldn't make it up could you? Unbelievably unlucky

59 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Thomas Tuchel has ruled us out of the title race. The priority is protecting his squad.

 

I think currently we have a squad good enough to win the champions league but not the Premier league and I do expect us to do better in the UCL than the league and it was always there in the back of my mind. This squad is simply better suited for KO round football than league.

Add in the factor of injuries we're just better equipped for one of games than long leagues where we need to compete with numerous teams at once. I'd argue City or Liverpool would be in the exact same position as us if they lost as many players as we did this season. Just look at what losing VVD did last season to Liverpool.

Defensively we could win the league assuming everyone is fit but not offensively. Because the difference between us, City & Liverpool is that we don't have enough Elite goal scorers.

Goals are the premium currency of football as are clean sheets but the difference between goals and cleansheets is one only guarantees you can't lose whereas the other guarantees you can win. 

We're great at defending but not scoring at least not consistently enough. My main point is aside from Lukaku this squad doesn't have any other elite goal scorers. One just isn't enough at this level it really isn't not to win a league.

Our players just can't chip in througgout a season like City's can for some reason at least not on a consistent basis at least

That's why I say we're more likely to do better in the UCL, you need lethal consistent finishers to win a league. For a KO tournament having a large squad where anyone can turn up and they're all above average footballers means we have an unpredictability factor no coach can truly deal with. 

From Werner, Mount, CHO, Ziyech, Havertz and Lukaku there are so many different characteristics and variations its impossible to truly predict how best to handle us and thats just our attack. 

I wouldn't count us out of the league just yet but TT is right and a lot of us are quite understanding of the current injury situation anyway not even factoring in the squads limitations.

It's hard enough to win a league vs City or Liverpool it's near impossible to do it with the injuries and absences we've had. Yes the squad is large but the level doesn't remain the same throughout.

54 minutes ago, LongtimerLurker said:

 

I wouldn't count us out of the league just yet but TT is right and a lot of us are quite understanding of the current injury situation anyway not even factoring in the squads limitations.

It's hard enough to win a league vs City or Liverpool it's near impossible to do it with the injuries and absences we've had. Yes the squad is large but the level doesn't remain the same throughout.

In the main we are, but is Roman? Just 12 months ago he did not like what he saw from his expensive new signings under Frank, sacked him and his replacement won the CL.

He broke the club record signing for TT and has seen us fail to win back to back league games for over 2 months. 

Will he even let TT get to Lille if we fail to beat City,  Spurs and Pool and get knocked out by Spurs?

Edited December 30, 20214 yr by axman2526