9 minutes ago, Valerie said:

Burnout incoming.

At the risk of Spurs/United/Arsenal leapfrogging us, worth it. 

24 minutes ago, Valerie said:

Burnout incoming.

Maybe he just wants the distraction with all that’s going on personally for him. He deserves a rest though. 

Think we need to act quick. Get things sorted asap, then he can rest. 
 

Tuchel isn’t blameless for our stall in progress. I don’t know the ins and outs of the Lukaku deal, but it’s become evident Tuchel and the club both viewed that as a priority over Tchouameni. When us fans knew that would be a disaster, it almost becomes unforgivable. 

Edited May 22, 20224 yr by Sconnie Blue

He should take a sabbatical. This season has been a huge clusterf*ck for him and I'd be fine if he wants to take a year off from football to sort his sh*t.

If he continues to stay, I hope he goes back to the drawing board and rips this 343 boring style of play. 

Rest and restructure. Buy only what we need. No more 3rd choices or silly loans 

 

He is a good manager but I don't think he organises the attack well. He would benefit from a cheat code attacker like Hazard or any of the world class strikers. If he can get the defence back to what it was then we will always challenge for cups at least.

the players in the front aren't good enough

werner, zyiech and pulisic are top4 material and not title material

simple as that 

Such doom and gloom....we rebuilt a defense in 2004 and won the title breaking the Arsenal/Man It's duopoly in the process...Tuchel is the right man for the Job and seems loyal to the club and loves it here...with the right players in his preferred system we can achieve big things next season...maybe not win the league but it only takes a few injuries from the top two and us having a good season and who knows...look at the dippers last year without Van Dijk they were all ovr the place and losing home games left right and centre...our issues are not closing out games and conceding stupid goals...perhaps it's a good thing half this defense are on their way out...

 

 

Improving the attack is and will take time, but our defence standard has fallen dramatically in the past 6 months. We rarely looked like getting a clean sheet, even Watford and Norwich breached us this year. We have been making too many individual mistakes, either players are just exhausted, or some just lost that extra 10% with other things on their mind. Midfield is not covering the back 3, with or without Kante. There are lots need to be done in pre-season, if we need to keep our position, let alone challenge more next season.

7 hours ago, charierre said:

 My wish for Thomas would be to make us more pleasing to the eye and add excitement to our attacking play.

I am not sure that will happen. When you watch his interview, he kept talking about managing risk. Furthermore, he kept 3+1 at the back even when we needed goals, so I highly doubt we will see different football. The only way I can see us to be more entertaining is if we just sign more "entertaining" player. 

 

4 hours ago, Deino said:

He should take a sabbatical. This season has been a huge clusterf*ck for him and I'd be fine if he wants to take a year off from football to sort his sh*t.

If he continues to stay, I hope he goes back to the drawing board and rips this 343 boring style of play. 

Rest and restructure. Buy only what we need. No more 3rd choices or silly loans 

 

Tbf this year is a little unique in the sense he can take one mid season.

I think the city come back Is a perfect example of what we lack tactically.. their system means their extra man is in midfield who can time runs into the box and finish.. we have two players in mount and havertz who can do what gundogan did for city.. yet our extra man is in defence who can occasionally step up and take shorts from 30/40 yards like rudi did regularly.. hope like many others  on this forum we bin the back 3.. in his post match interview though he said the back 3 is what suits our players.. now with rudi , Alonso ?, Azpi  ?,AC gone hope we get in quicker defenders who can play in a back 4..

12 minutes ago, Jangz said:

I think the city come back Is a perfect example of what we lack tactically.. their system means their extra man is in midfield who can time runs into the box and finish.. we have two players in mount and havertz who can do what gundogan did for city.. yet our extra man is in defence who can occasionally step up and take shorts from 30/40 yards like rudi did regularly.. hope like many others  on this forum we bin the back 3.. in his post match interview though he said the back 3 is what suits our players.. now with rudi , Alonso ?, Azpi  ?,AC gone hope we get in quicker defenders who can play in a back 4..

I said that many times. I don't know why Tuchel doesn't see it. We sacrificing a midfielder for an extra defender which makes the attacking play extremely boring and predictable. 

I really hope we sign a quality defender that can play in a back 4 and unleash mount, gallagher or both depending on the opposition from that midfield 3.

Our CF Lukaku or hopefully someone new will benefit tremendously from having 3 midfielders feeding him plus 2 wingers. 

Silva, james, chillwell can all play in the back 4 comfortably too so we just require another quality addition in there. 

People claiming it would make no difference if we had 4 or 5 defenders aren't watching closely.

Just how many times do we see the wide players, be it Alonso or James, having to constantly bring the ball backwards after the ball is played to them? Look at the middle of the pitch. There are no bodies. The two central midfielders either fail to position themselves more progressively (IE move forward) or they sit back and hold. We see more of the latter in fear of being countered on, so thus leaves the ball to constantly be recycled from one end to another. 

We have two central midfielders who fail to advance and a third CB. That's 5 players sitting when we need to advance the play. 

17 hours ago, Munkworth said:

Maybe he just wants the distraction with all that’s going on personally for him. He deserves a rest though. 

He should do a Klopp/Rodgers/Conte: glue on some new teeth, plug in some new hair, squirt some filler into his calfs, get a spray tan, and he'll get some arm candy in no time. Vacation companion sorted!

Seriously though, he has a very stressful job, not taking time off is a very bad idea. 

1 hour ago, Jangz said:

I think the city come back Is a perfect example of what we lack tactically.. their system means their extra man is in midfield who can time runs into the box and finish.. we have two players in mount and havertz who can do what gundogan did for city.. yet our extra man is in defence who can occasionally step up and take shorts from 30/40 yards like rudi did regularly.. hope like many others  on this forum we bin the back 3.. in his post match interview though he said the back 3 is what suits our players.. now with rudi , Alonso ?, Azpi  ?,AC gone hope we get in quicker defenders who can play in a back 4..

While my preference is 433 I think it can work but is it very wingback dependent. That period when James/Chilwell were on form we looked everybit as good as anyone (well bar the finishing aspect). The games in that period were very good to watch.

I know this is often scoffed at but against park the bus sides i really would like to see James at RCB and source an explosive right wingback. One of the advantages a back three can give is you can almost have two fullbacks in the build up. Many of Azpi's best attacking contributions were from that position, especially when Morata was here.

On the bright side, we don't have to worry about the November-December slump...

13 hours ago, Jangz said:

I think the city come back Is a perfect example of what we lack tactically.. their system means their extra man is in midfield who can time runs into the box and finish.. we have two players in mount and havertz who can do what gundogan did for city.. yet our extra man is in defence who can occasionally step up and take shorts from 30/40 yards like rudi did regularly.. hope like many others  on this forum we bin the back 3.. in his post match interview though he said the back 3 is what suits our players.. now with rudi , Alonso ?, Azpi  ?,AC gone hope we get in quicker defenders who can play in a back 4..

Rudi n ac are extremely fast. Our biggest problem is not cb, it is midfield. 

When Chilly and James were fit I thought we played it excellent with 3CB - and Rüdiger was also key here since he could press almost at the oppo's box and we didn't let them breath a second. If we don't have that fast n' aggressive CB we can't play a high backline - especially with Thiago in the mix. 

I understand why TT likes 3atb and when he has his first choice players especially the 2 wbs then it is a completely different story. 

What irks me though is TT will flirt with a back 4, play it for a few games we look more exciting going forward and then he bins it and it doesn't return for ages. We expected a manager that would be tactically fluid yet he's been quite rigid on many occasions.  

The ironic part for me is that, my own personal football philosophy actually coincides with 3atb since it allows for total football. Personally I prefer to play 4 natural defenders in a 3atb. With the 4th defender one of the wingbacks and the other wingback a natural winger or a forward winger who has great work rate.

TT has actually done this on many occasions yet Pulisic's preference for playing further forward and CHO'S injury meant this couldn't happen regularly enough this season especially if you add in James and Chilly injured for most of the season. Ziyech who I would never think to put there was outstanding vs Spurs and then we barely saw him there again. 

Moving forward if we do keep 3atb I don't want to see 5 defenders, TT is too good of a coach to rely on playing 5 out and out defenders in the EPL. I'm not criticising him he's for me one of the best 5 coaches in the world. Yet I feel whilst he can argue 3atb suited the squad before, now we're losing 4/5 defenders who it suited. 

I agree Jorgh suits it too yet we finished in top 4 twice with 4atb and he was prominent in both seasons, same with Kova and Kante. If ever there was a chance to change shape its this summer. I'm fine with sticking with 3atb if as others have mentioned James is one of the 3 and we have an explosive winger on the right. No more 5 defenders it kills the teams attack more often than not.

I'd say the biggest reason why we played that way was a) it fit most of our players profile and b) defensive patterns are taught/trained very fast in comparison to attacking ones so when TT took over there was just no time to implement a more "attacking" system. We needed stability asap and so there was good reason to do so. Also, imho, Chelsea are known for its aggressive defending since Mou so it played into that narrative as well.

Now that we have to sort out our defense and eventually our midfield (+attack as well since it didn't click with almost all of our strikers) + we got some prep time now I hope the club could set itself up it bit better - no easy task though + the new ownership could drag this process a bit as well until everything sorted out. 

Edited May 24, 20224 yr by weetee

I personally think we cannot have a better manager at this very moment than Tommy. I predicted there is a meltdown but so far there hasn't been.

With the new owners coming in and their people the risk is there. I think if they don't meddle with Tommy's area which is football I think things will go nicely. Boehly isn't a micro managing leader. He trusts people to do their work. 

I have said multiple times the injuries and Lukaku failure did our season in. It doesn't take much more than that. Liverpool "failed miserably" last term when their main players (mainly VDV) were injured. You can see how they are doing now.

 

Edit: Rumour Kounde has signed but not official yet, I may have jumped the gun. Either way TTs going to need more reinforcements after this is announced.

Edited May 24, 20224 yr by LongtimerLurker

He tried back 4 in certain games and never looked convincing. I suppose if we had a fit Chiwell, could have played more with back 4. It's definitely something we need to try more in pre-season and going forward, need the extra attacking player to break down the bus. Unless we are playing attacking wingers as wingbacks, which is a problem on it's own.

 

despite how bad our attack looks, he does manage to get the majority of the squad to chip in goals. Apparently we had 21 different goal scorers this season which is a new record!

Beating the previous record from 15/16 which tells you all you need to know. Having loads of different goalscorers is great, but not when you don't have a consistent regular scorer it just highlights a reliance on the whole squad rather than one or two key elite individuals.

Now if we can get some elite goal scores, plus defenders imagine what this squad can do.  

16 hours ago, LongtimerLurker said:

I understand why TT likes 3atb and when he has his first choice players especially the 2 wbs then it is a completely different story. 

What irks me though is TT will flirt with a back 4, play it for a few games we look more exciting going forward and then he bins it and it doesn't return for ages. We expected a manager that would be tactically fluid yet he's been quite rigid on many occasions.  

The ironic part for me is that, my own personal football philosophy actually coincides with 3atb since it allows for total football. Personally I prefer to play 4 natural defenders in a 3atb. With the 4th defender one of the wingbacks and the other wingback a natural winger or a forward winger who has great work rate.

TT has actually done this on many occasions yet Pulisic's preference for playing further forward and CHO'S injury meant this couldn't happen regularly enough this season especially if you add in James and Chilly injured for most of the season. Ziyech who I would never think to put there was outstanding vs Spurs and then we barely saw him there again. 

Moving forward if we do keep 3atb I don't want to see 5 defenders, TT is too good of a coach to rely on playing 5 out and out defenders in the EPL. I'm not criticising him he's for me one of the best 5 coaches in the world. Yet I feel whilst he can argue 3atb suited the squad before, now we're losing 4/5 defenders who it suited. 

I agree Jorgh suits it too yet we finished in top 4 twice with 4atb and he was prominent in both seasons, same with Kova and Kante. If ever there was a chance to change shape its this summer. I'm fine with sticking with 3atb if as others have mentioned James is one of the 3 and we have an explosive winger on the right. No more 5 defenders it kills the teams attack more often than not.

How do you want us to line up and keep the same defensive solidity as this year if we play back 4 ? 

Edited May 25, 20224 yr by Bob stark