I think the situation is a result of a long season last year combined with COVID and injuries to key players. It´s no coincidence the performances always seem to tail off in the last 20 minutes of games. The team gets tired and to be honest it´s unlikely to get better with the club World Cup competition and everything else. The games come thick and fast.

 

One thing I´ll say though is that the team (as currently available) seems to generate more chances in a 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 set-up.

It becomes obvious that the 3-4-3/3-5-2 was dependent on James/Chilwell and three workrate players up-front.  I´d also just take a chance and rotate more. Hall was the best player in the FA Cup. Sure the opposition was lower league, but he didn´t look like he´d have a meltdown, if he was covered by 10 senior players in a Premier League game against a poorer side.

Media has the 'Tottenham loss will get Thomas close to sacking' narrative. 

Really hoping Chelsea to put on a shift and having some much needed luck. A win would solidify our 3rd place nicely.

11 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Seems to be a fairly even split in the media and fans between  those who fe TT is a top manager who can build as Pep has done of supported but the board as Pep is by City but don't feel he will as the Chelsea board are not good enough to do so.

Then there are those that say our attacking is boring, we have gone backwards offensively under TT and all our troubles are on him and his tactics and he won't last the season.

Strikers union appear to be in the latter camp, Shearer, Agbonlahor and Wright to name a few.

It is clear that his tactic make it difficult for attacker to perform. That is fine,our system may be conservative but it fit our team.

The more interesting question is whether our approach to win now is the correct approach. I personally disagree. Winning that cl was brilliant but also a curse, It kinda force us to go for win now approach.

I prefer if we just rip this team apart. Do what klopp and pep did with pool n city which basically forget building team to hide your weakness, just build the best team. 

 

2 hours ago, evissy said:

Media has the 'Tottenham loss will get Thomas close to sacking' narrative. 

Really hoping Chelsea to put on a shift and having some much needed luck. A win would solidify our 3rd place nicely.

The media will build pressure on Tuchel if we lose, whether or not the board is even considering any action. That is what the media do. They always have to focus on a "Club in crisis"

If Tuchel was in even the slightest danger of losing his job the club would be briefing their mouthpieces like they did in the weeks leading up to Frank's sacking.

Nothing to see here.

9 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

The results may have levelled out for a bit, but the performances were dire. There was rarely any fluency to our game, it became a scrap and overreliance on individual brilliance from our players to get anything out the majority of our games. Once the individual brilliance dried up, it was back to dropping points which is exactly what happened in the final 5 games of the season. 

Were they really? 

Firstly two games before "those" final 5 games were excellent performances in comfortable wins against Brighton and West Ham.

Then if we look at those games in closer detail.

Liverpool (A) Probably the hardest away game in club football since they got VVD. They haven't lost a league game there with a crowd since 2017.

And even then we could have got something but for Eden turning into Morata when through on goal twice.

Burnley (H) Decent performance despite the dropped points, set pieces and as usual finishing were our downfall in that one.

United (A) Bad performance but it was a point that as good as sealed top four so can't really argue with it.

Watford (H) Convincing and sealed what was already looking highly likely.

Leicester (A) dead rubber, nothing riding on it.

So yes 1 in 5 looks bad put in a sensational headline but in reality 1 of them was effectively a friendly and in the 4 that actually mattered only in 1 did we seriously underachieve when scaling our quality and the opponents. It's not unheard off to get 1 point out of 6 from those two away games and we've had as little or less in those grounds under a lot better teams than that one (and against vastly inferior Liverpool teams).

Edited January 22, 20224 yr by Argo

I think that we will finish in champions league places. Win a cup or two this year. 

Moving on though next year I feel the squad needs trimming big time, especially the attackers. Attackers cant be rotated too often, they need to play together most of the times to gel, know each others moves/positions in their sleep.

I remember Gudjohnsen and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink had that telepathic relationship. 

I had high hopes of Pulisic and Odoi but sadly they have being very poor this year.

I still have very high hopes for Havertz and Mount. They could potentially be the best duo around once they find some consistency.

On top of that in an ideal scenario i would sell Loftus cheek, Barkley, Ziyech and Lukaku (i understand thats impossible). Bring back Broja and gallagher. Promote Harvey Vale and Bell. 

This only covers up until about 2 months ago just before things started to go wrong. It's clear the wbs are paramount to this system not only that, but Chillwell and James specifically had become the two most influential players in attack and transition. Add in the fact they are both exceptional defenders and you can see why we don't keep clean sheets anymore. 

Chalk this season down to bad luck this could have happened during our ucl run last season and we might not have been able to win the ucl cup so I'd rather take it happening now and look towards next season for any aspirations at winning the league. 

With all that said I personally believe if we get the right profile of left sided fb/wb in and James makes a full recovery soon we still have as good of a chance to win multiple trophies this year and can still make a good attempt at defending big ears.

Tomorrow's game we need a big reaction from the players we usually do when we play spurs, a win here steadies the ship a bit and keeps us on course for a 3rd place finish which I still believe we will get.

Think I saw a stat before the game that if we won Tuchel would be the first Chelsea manager to get five consecutive victories against Spuds. 
 

20 year contract please Roman. 

7 wins out of 7 against Spurs.

Proper Chels. 

To think people are  thinking he will get sacked is ridiculous. 
 

he has has only been here for 1 year now and already has got us the champions league and European super cup( yes it’s still a trophy). I think next season will be his year of whether he goes or not. But this season, he definitely stays plus he has been unfortunate with some crucial injuries when your two main wing backs are out it’s always going to be difficult.

I just hope the board back him more in the summer as deep down I truly believe he is one of the best out there along with pep and klopp.

 

3 games with a back 4, 2 wins and a draw.

4 hours ago, Jezq8 said:

I just hope the board back him more in the summer as deep down I truly believe he is one of the best out there along with pep and klopp.

 

I hope they do not. I hope they say: here are your new signings Hall, Gallagher, Gilmour, Broja and Livramento. Congratulations.

Tuchel is not great with transfers, just bring back the kids and let him sort it out. That´s assuming all the defenders stay on board. Otherwise obviously replacements are needed.

3 hours ago, Gol15 said:

3 games with a back 4, 2 wins and a draw.

we looked so much more fluent & dangerous, created enough and absolutely dominated.. hope the back 3 is dumped for good now.

3 hours ago, Jangz said:

we looked so much more fluent & dangerous, created enough and absolutely dominated.. hope the back 3 is dumped for good now.

When we get Reece and Chilly back we should absolutely play 3 at back.

Timely reminder that TT does, after all, know quite a bit more about the game in general and more specifically our situation - which players are on form, which aren’t etc - than any of us. Last couple of games, Ziyech has shown himself to be our most in-form attacker. Prior to that many of us (I don’t claim to be any better here) were lambasting TT for selecting him. Vs City we all just “knew” we were in trouble when we saw Ziyech’s name on the team sheet. But it looks like he was a better option than Havertz or Werner. It didn’t work out on the day but what works in training often doesn’t quite come off on match day. we only get to see a fraction of all the football they play, and it’s laughable that we think we know better. 
 

Extending the argument to Lukaku, I’ve been as vocal a critic as anyone and am not a fan at all. Wish we never got him. I prefer watching us without him in the team. But I have to ask myself - if he’s getting selected, maybe there’s a bona fide football-related reason for it that isn’t just some fantasy I’ve concocted in my head, read in the papers or seen on here about the board, Roman’s son or whatever. Maybe there’s a plan, something TT sees in training that hasn’t worked out on match days… yet. We shall see.

1 hour ago, evissy said:

When we get Reece and Chilly back we should absolutely play 3 at back.

No thanks, they can be just as effective offensively as normal full-backs. 

Tuchel has said formation itself gets too much focus. It is for outsiders to have something to talk about. 

1 hour ago, evissy said:

Tuchel has said formation itself gets too much focus. It is for outsiders to have something to talk about. 

I didn't know that but I have been saying for months that we should try a back 4 formation while others were skeptical saying that we simply can't even play that anymore. Now that it worked a few times with good results it's safe to say that we're not bound by the back 3 anymore, we have a plan B that can be a plan A against smaller teams like Spurs!

12 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

I didn't know that but I have been saying for months that we should try a back 4 formation while others were skeptical saying that we simply can't even play that anymore. Now that it worked a few times with good results it's safe to say that we're not bound by the back 3 anymore, we have a plan B that can be a plan A against smaller teams like Spurs!

It has worked now and why wouldn't it work. We have implemented it simply because we haven't had the personnel to field 5 defenders. Tuchel has said this in 3-4 pressers already.

He said 4 at back is fine but they prefer 3 at back because everyone is more comfortable in it. When you don't have days to prepare it is smart to do what you always do.

I think we will kick on from here now.

It was incredibly obvious that the little break we got between Brighton and Tottenham made a world of difference for us. Now we got another little break before Plymouth and the CWC.

Performance have been suffering the last while. But before yesterdays game we had to play Tottenham, Manchester City and Brighton, all away in the span of six days. That's insanity and any team in the world would suffer with that kind of schedule. And we've especially suffered as we've been missing a whole host of key players.

But Tuchel have done extremely well to guide us through it so far. You always worry that a manager can lose the squad or worse, lose his mind when we go on the kind of run we've been on lately. But yesterday proved everyone is still behind the manager and that we can still be a very, very good football team with just a littlebit of rest. We have a favourable run-in compared to most of our Top 4 rivals so let's just make sure we end in third place and then have a real go in the cups. I still maintain that no team wants to face us in the Champions League this season, we can beat anyone.

On 24/01/2022 at 05:52, evissy said:

When we get Reece and Chilly back we should absolutely play 3 at back.

Or just play them at left back and right back respectively.

2 hours ago, Malcolm9 said:

Or just play them at left back and right back respectively.

No.

On 24/01/2022 at 10:49, Gol15 said:

No thanks, they can be just as effective offensively as normal full-backs. 

Maybe so.

but I personally feel with them two in a 3-4-3 we looked very very strong.

it’s not coincidence that we started to have a blip when they both got injured. Or was it ? 

46 minutes ago, Jezq8 said:

Maybe so.

but I personally feel with them two in a 3-4-3 we looked very very strong.

it’s not coincidence that we started to have a blip when they both got injured. Or was it ? 

No it's not a coincidence that happen but at the same time it showed how that formation depends maybe too much on them. We started in a 3-4-2-1 last season with a draw and 2 wins, the same result as we had now with the 4-2-2-2/4-1-4-1 so we're good in both formations but the question is do we really need the 3 at the back against most teams?