22 minutes ago, Deino said:

I never said it was you but it's pretty clear some people are already negative about the season and assuming we'll be crap before anything happened. 

Have to be fair Deino it is a common Chelsea trait to be pessimistic 

3 hours ago, Argo said:

Liverpool actually strengthen my argument as oppose to weaken it. A similar injury crisis to us and they quickly dive down from a late 90s point team to a top four challenger who needed a goal from their keeper to make it (and unlike with us Klopp ditched the cup competitions to ease the burden whereas we by comparison had 5 tournaments to juggle and went hell for leather at them all).

I get there's room for improvement in many areas and for that reason I think it may see off a title win (which is a shame as i feel Liverpool and City will regress in the short term atleast trying to shoehorn out and out number 9s into their system).

Fair enough but at the same time I do feel the close gap between us and the North London duo is a little artificial (and I don't feel either have signed players that get into our very best Xl).

We had an injury crisis and an unprecented ownership crisis and 5 tournaments to juggle while Arsenal were out of everything with just the league to focus on by the end of January and Tottenham not much later.

Of our main rivals I think Arsenal's issues will still fall around the manager Arteta, who so far hasn't looked like he can take them any further. Spurs started their improvement the second half of last season and their loan signing of Kulusevski was a good one. It remains to be seen how well the new signings will do this summer, and of course Conte has a track record of falling out with owners pretty quickly. So we can hope they fall away as the season unfolds ;). Man United should improve under Ten Hag as he already inherited a talented squad. They do have issues in defense but I think he will improve them this season.

1 hour ago, axman2526 said:

Have to be fair Deino it is a common Chelsea trait to be pessimistic 

No me, we’re going to win every game 14-0 with Mendy scoring in the 3rd minute every time. Don’t remember this though, it’ll give you an unfair advantage in Zeta’s Prediction game. 

1 hour ago, axman2526 said:

Have to be fair Deino it is a common Chelsea trait to be pessimistic 

I resent that @axman2526! I prefer to call it realistic, thank you very much, and I have been realistic before I'd even heard of Chelsea! I have merely found my natural habitat here, and some soulmates in the bargain 

Edited July 21, 20223 yr by Valerie

The way things are developing in the transfer market I would not at all be surprised if all of Colwill, Broja, Gallagher and perhaps even Ampadu stayed with us and got a lot of games between them this season.

If that happens it shall be interesting to see if some are prepared to show patience with the manager as well when results will wary significantly and a finish outside the Top 4 is not outside of the question.

21 minutes ago, Sindre said:

The way things are developing in the transfer market I would not at all be surprised if all of Colwill, Broja, Gallagher and perhaps even Ampadu stayed with us and got a lot of games between them this season.

If that happens it shall be interesting to see if some are prepared to show patience with the manager as well when results will wary significantly and a finish outside the Top 4 is not outside of the question.

some can't wait to sack Tuchel anyways and are hoping for it since his arrival.

59 minutes ago, Sindre said:

The way things are developing in the transfer market I would not at all be surprised if all of Colwill, Broja, Gallagher and perhaps even Ampadu stayed with us and got a lot of games between them this season.

If that happens it shall be interesting to see if some are prepared to show patience with the manager as well when results will wary significantly and a finish outside the Top 4 is not outside of the question.

As it stands, we have lost Rudiger, Christensen and Lukaku, and brought in Koulibaly and Sterling. It's not a huge overall difference, and I don't see why Ampadu or Colwill couldn't cover the minutes Christensen had without any significant loss of performance. Without last year's perfect storm of injuries, covid and sanctions we should be more than fine for top 4.

 

41 minutes ago, TheGermanOne said:

some can't wait to sack Tuchel anyways and are hoping for it since his arrival.

Don't need to sack him ....yet.   He just needs a kick up the arse and someone to tell him that his style of football, even with all the talent at his disposal, is boring many of us fans to death and likely his players too.  He needs to loosen the reigns and let the players play, rather than play 7-8 defensive players every game.  He bemoans the team dominating the first 80 yards and then crapping themselves in the final 20; well that's largely down to him as well as the players.  It wouldn't matter if was an 80yard pitch, he be moaning that we were good in the first 60 and still crap in the last 20.  It was the same last season, same excuses starting already this season. This season will be his team, so if he can't get it right and start playing forward thinking football then my name will be first on the list to wish him farewell. 

No one is calling for TT to go, what i'm saying is unless we sort out our attack with a couple of decent goal scorers  i don't think we'll make top 4. The teams around us have all invested in that department. The dippers scored 5 tonight looked like they were playing for fun, their new striker came on at half time and scored 4.Fed up of hearing the same old lame excuses We are tired, they need match practice, etc. etc. They are professional ridiculously, high paid footballers that play football. We look laboured just to get the ball into their half, let alone the goal. Call it depressing, but thats the way we are, negative and no buzz up front. I hope it changes but thats what i'm seeing, what ever the excuses are.

13 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Who is "sh*ting their pants"?

I just put forward the question of a simple if. If we missed out on top 4, which we have no divine right to make,  what would the new board do with TT. Cause we know the old one would sack him.

I go in to the season hopeful that with Koulibaly and Kounde to rebuild his defence TT will make the team "no one wants to play against" but also accepting we may end up being boring, waste chances and slide down the table.

TT is very much getting his signings so now we will see just how good a manager he is.

I want encourage people to not judging this team too much until we see 

Sterling - Kai - Mount 

Chil - Kova - Kante - james

Koulibaly - Silva - chalo

Edited July 22, 20223 yr by Bob stark

10 hours ago, CFCCAN said:

This season will be his team,

Will it? The way things are he will have been involved in bringing in excactly 1 out of God knows how many midfielders and attackers we have in the squad right now.

It won't be anything close to his team yet. We are going to need several windows to accomplish that.

12 hours ago, Kev56 said:

No one is calling for TT to go, what i'm saying is unless we sort out our attack with a couple of decent goal scorers  i don't think we'll make top 4. The teams around us have all invested in that department. The dippers scored 5 tonight looked like they were playing for fun, their new striker came on at half time and scored 4.Fed up of hearing the same old lame excuses We are tired, they need match practice, etc. etc. They are professional ridiculously, high paid footballers that play football. We look laboured just to get the ball into their half, let alone the goal. Call it depressing, but thats the way we are, negative and no buzz up front. I hope it changes but thats what i'm seeing, what ever the excuses are.

i meant i cant imagine what a traditional set-up like sterling and pulisic on the wings , haverts and mount in the middle - that would be so exciting .. with a shield of kante and a DM and a strong defensive 4 and some progressive football and lets c.. this is just depressing with a back 5.

3 hours ago, Sindre said:

Will it? The way things are he will have been involved in bringing in excactly 1 out of God knows how many midfielders and attackers we have in the squad right now.

It won't be anything close to his team yet. We are going to need several windows to accomplish that.

If what we are to believe what we've read, that he and Boehly have consulted on the players TT wants, then also in the same vein TT has also chosen to keep the players he wants.  If he wanted a clear out from the existing first XI then he hasn't shown any desire to do so.  Yes he's trying to get rid of the deadwood, but as a buying club I don't need your sloppy seconds I want players from your first team.  At the start of the season there may well be one of two players in the team that he has no choice to play because there is no one better.  But it also comes down to the way he sets the team up and tactics he employs, of which I am not a big fan of ATM. He has a bundle of talent in this squad, but IMO his tactics don't allow the players to play for the reasons we bought them for....but as much as I am a critic of his set up, if he proves me wrong and we see a far better style of football, I'll be one of the first to applaud him....the leopard doesn't change his spots. While he may get a few decent results, his football will be boring the pants out of most of us, and all the talent will be stifled all in the name of possession but going nowhere.  

6 minutes ago, CFCCAN said:

If he wanted a clear out from the existing first XI then he hasn't shown any desire to do so.  Yes he's trying to get rid of the deadwood, but as a buying club I don't need your sloppy seconds I want players from your first team

You are contradicting yourself here.

It's not Tuchel's fault that Granovskaia loaded the squad with dross on ridiculous wages. And definitly not his fault that Granovskaia left us with no defence which meant that Boehly & Tuchel had to start the rebuild project from there. We are clearly after more attackers (hence why we had a bit accepted for Raphinha) but it's going to take time to clear the dross out and bring in new and talented players.

22 minutes ago, Sindre said:

You are contradicting yourself here.

It's not Tuchel's fault that Granovskaia loaded the squad with dross on ridiculous wages. And definitly not his fault that Granovskaia left us with no defence which meant that Boehly & Tuchel had to start the rebuild project from there. We are clearly after more attackers (hence why we had a bit accepted for Raphinha) but it's going to take time to clear the dross out and bring in new and talented players.

When he came in we had just bought werner (pool was interested).. we had just bought havertz (entire europe wanted him) , Thiago (after playing a UCL final), Ben chilwell had just been bought and then we invested in Lukaku (who was scoring for fun).. hardly dross i would have said 18 months back when we signed them..

the truth is if you leave the UCL run - by and large his tactics have struggled to get the best out of our forward line.. i completely refuse to believe our offensive players are worse of then Arsenal/utd/spurs/leicester etc.. yet their numbers are much lower.. we barely have players scoring double digits.. 

While i believe TT has been great for the club but if also needs to accept some blame and fix his tactics which arent getting the job done..

 

 

Are we at "its not his team" already 😅

13 minutes ago, dkw said:

Are we at "its not his team" already 😅

Not yet, we are still at "it's Granovskaia's fault" 

@Sindre Moving this here, as the talk is about TT and not Conor.

You asked for some examples of TT tactical cock ups. Here is a few that spring to mind:

1) WHU 3 v Chelsea 2 (Dec 2021): Our 2 man midfield of Jorgi and RLC completely overrun by the pikeys. TT did nothing to change it.

2) Everton 1 v Chelsea 1 (Dec 2021): Failing to beat badly struggling everton, TT picks Barkley, Saul and RLC. Disaster. Sticks with back 5 despite Everton sitting back.

3) Brighton 1 v Chelsea 1 (Jan 2022):  a result which saw us remain with 1 win from our last 5 league games ( mostly against teams in the lower half of the table). It was one of TTs signature turgid displays where in the end the lack of creativity cost us.

4) FA cup vs Plymouth - win after extra time: Struggled to beat plymouth. Azpi had more shots than any other player. 5 at the back against lower league chancers. Relied on a kepa pen save to get the win.

5) FA cup vs Luton. 3v2 win:  Another turgid performance, with TT sticking with the script of 5 at the back.

6) Chelsea 1, Brentford 4: We were 1v0 ahead. and then threw it away. Little snippet from match day thread: I don't get why people are blaming the players, this is on Tuchel. He had the wrong tactical set up and decided to start with players who travelled and played internationals. It was laughable to hear him say the players were tired especially Tiago Silva who is 37 and was probably jet lagged. We had Sarr , chalobah , Christensen, Saul and Lukaku stay back during internationals and non of them started. Also Loftus cheek is not a freaking DM and Alonso can play wingback but should never play in a back 4.

7) Chelsea 2, Arsenal 4: A chance to seal 3rd place against a sh*t arsenal team but we handed it to them on a plate. Hadn't seen Sarr in an age & this was not the game to give him a start. The defence looked like a train wreck .  Another snippet from match day thread: TT has to own this and admit he made an error with team selection.

8. Chelsea 2 Watford 1: Narrow victory, again, boring turgid football. Little snippit from matchday thread: If he persists with a back 3 come defensive 5, his ridiculous pressers about, lack of quality and direction, down to you squire, frankly I'm bored rigid watching it, and his mindset of we won't give up possession, saw him field the same culprits, with no sign of some youthful adventure, i hope Todd tells him up your game plan, or f**k off.....

The style of play is on Tuchel

The slow build up is on Tuchel

The excess of defenders against lesser opposition is on Tuchel.

The continued selection of players that he claims do not have "precision" is on Tuchel.

 

You asked for a couple of occasions for when TT should have done better.....here they are. There are more, but I think you get the drift.

 

 

 

The slow build up is something I've heard from Tuchel time and time again. "We tried to be patient with our play to look for openings"

It amazes me that if he is looking for more precision in the final third, he doesn't improve on the midfield. Jorginho has his many flaws but its a trade off. He provides slow football but we control the game much better as opposed to Kante+Kova, who at this rate are both injury prone. 

29 minutes ago, nonotnowjim said:

@Sindre Moving this here, as the talk is about TT and not Conor.

You asked for some examples of TT tactical cock ups. Here is a few that spring to mind:

1) WHU 3 v Chelsea 2 (Dec 2021): Our 2 man midfield of Jorgi and RLC completely overrun by the pikeys. TT did nothing to change it.

2) Everton 1 v Chelsea 1 (Dec 2021): Failing to beat badly struggling everton, TT picks Barkley, Saul and RLC. Disaster. Sticks with back 5 despite Everton sitting back.

3) Brighton 1 v Chelsea 1 (Jan 2022):  a result which saw us remain with 1 win from our last 5 league games ( mostly against teams in the lower half of the table). It was one of TTs signature turgid displays where in the end the lack of creativity cost us.

4) FA cup vs Plymouth - win after extra time: Struggled to beat plymouth. Azpi had more shots than any other player. 5 at the back against lower league chancers. Relied on a kepa pen save to get the win.

5) FA cup vs Luton. 3v2 win:  Another turgid performance, with TT sticking with the script of 5 at the back.

6) Chelsea 1, Brentford 4: We were 1v0 ahead. and then threw it away. Little snippet from match day thread: I don't get why people are blaming the players, this is on Tuchel. He had the wrong tactical set up and decided to start with players who travelled and played internationals. It was laughable to hear him say the players were tired especially Tiago Silva who is 37 and was probably jet lagged. We had Sarr , chalobah , Christensen, Saul and Lukaku stay back during internationals and non of them started. Also Loftus cheek is not a freaking DM and Alonso can play wingback but should never play in a back 4.

7) Chelsea 2, Arsenal 4: A chance to seal 3rd place against a sh*t arsenal team but we handed it to them on a plate. Hadn't seen Sarr in an age & this was not the game to give him a start. The defence looked like a train wreck .  Another snippet from match day thread: TT has to own this and admit he made an error with team selection.

8. Chelsea 2 Watford 1: Narrow victory, again, boring turgid football. Little snippit from matchday thread: If he persists with a back 3 come defensive 5, his ridiculous pressers about, lack of quality and direction, down to you squire, frankly I'm bored rigid watching it, and his mindset of we won't give up possession, saw him field the same culprits, with no sign of some youthful adventure, i hope Todd tells him up your game plan, or f**k off.....

The style of play is on Tuchel

The slow build up is on Tuchel

The excess of defenders against lesser opposition is on Tuchel.

The continued selection of players that he claims do not have "precision" is on Tuchel.

 

You asked for a couple of occasions for when TT should have done better.....here they are. There are more, but I think you get the drift.

 

 

 

Just to counter some of these points - whilst I am not saying Tuchel is entirely blameless there are some other factors at play here.

The Everton game you mentioned, this was one of the games we had a strong case to have postponed for Covid. I think it was this and Wolves a few days before or after where we had about 8 or 9 players out. His hands were kind of tied here with who he could and couldn't pick.

The Plymouth game - yes we should have swept them away a bit easier, you mention Azpi having more shots than any other Chelsea player (he also scored) but that can happen sometimes in a system where you play attacking wingbacks. James or Chilwell at one point this season was our top scorer (That doesn't cover the attack in glory) but when your wing backs have license to get forward them having plenty of shots isn't an issue, in my opinion anyway.

The Luton game - tbh we were pretty poor but this was a 'proper old school cup tie' plus I think this was the day or the day after the sanctions were announced so its understandable that the players and managers mind would have been elsewhere.

The Arsenal and Brentford games, should Sarr be playing or not? One post implies Sarr should have started whilst the other implies he should be nowhere near the team. 

The Watford game, very little to play for and had already secured top 4, understandable that the performance was not to a high standard.

As I said, I am not absolving Tuchel of all the blame  and I do think we should be a bit more aggressive at times but I think there are other contributing factors in some of the games you mentioned. I dont think we have a creative midfielder, we could have done alot worse than taking a punt on Eriksen this season. Unless Mount drops into midfield more regularly I still think we will have that issue this season, unless we make a big signing in that area.

I would add some of the games we played this season was some of the best we have played for years:
Real away - 3-0 up in the Bernabeu and undone by an individual mistake and a bit of magic from Modric
Norwich - 7-0 - yes only Norwich but we genuinely looked like scoring everytime we went forward and we looked really good
Saints -6-0 pretty similar to above to be honest.
United away - I know we drew 1-1 but on another day could have had 5 or 6 but for bad finishing
The League cup final - yes we lost on pens but again played really well and unlucky not to win. I don't include the FA cup final in this as thought Liverpool were the better team on that day.
Arsenal - 2-0 At the Emirates. Pretty much bullied them from start to finish.
Liverpool 2-2 at the bridge - done really well to get back into that game and probably unlucky not to go on and win it. 
Pretty much any time we played Tottenham this season was good as well. 

Those are just a few examples of games I enjoyed this season, and there are probably more if I think more about it. I am hoping if we can keep James and Chilwell fit more often this season that we can bit a bit more dynamic and aggressive in attack, as we were before they both got injured.

I think the problem with our system is that it demands near perfection for it to function properly. 

 

9 minutes ago, drjonesy1994 said:

Just to counter some of these points - whilst I am not saying Tuchel is entirely blameless there are some other factors at play here.

The Everton game you mentioned, this was one of the games we had a strong case to have postponed for Covid. I think it was this and Wolves a few days before or after where we had about 8 or 9 players out. His hands were kind of tied here with who he could and couldn't pick.

The Plymouth game - yes we should have swept them away a bit easier, you mention Azpi having more shots than any other Chelsea player (he also scored) but that can happen sometimes in a system where you play attacking wingbacks. James or Chilwell at one point this season was our top scorer (That doesn't cover the attack in glory) but when your wing backs have license to get forward them having plenty of shots isn't an issue, in my opinion anyway.

The Luton game - tbh we were pretty poor but this was a 'proper old school cup tie' plus I think this was the day or the day after the sanctions were announced so its understandable that the players and managers mind would have been elsewhere.

The Arsenal and Brentford games, should Sarr be playing or not? One post implies Sarr should have started whilst the other implies he should be nowhere near the team. 

The Watford game, very little to play for and had already secured top 4, understandable that the performance was not to a high standard.

As I said, I am not absolving Tuchel of all the blame  and I do think we should be a bit more aggressive at times but I think there are other contributing factors in some of the games you mentioned. I dont think we have a creative midfielder, we could have done alot worse than taking a punt on Eriksen this season. Unless Mount drops into midfield more regularly I still think we will have that issue this season, unless we make a big signing in that area.

I would add some of the games we played this season was some of the best we have played for years:
Real away - 3-0 up in the Bernabeu and undone by an individual mistake and a bit of magic from Modric
Norwich - 7-0 - yes only Norwich but we genuinely looked like scoring everytime we went forward and we looked really good
Saints -6-0 pretty similar to above to be honest.
United away - I know we drew 1-1 but on another day could have had 5 or 6 but for bad finishing
The League cup final - yes we lost on pens but again played really well and unlucky not to win. I don't include the FA cup final in this as thought Liverpool were the better team on that day.
Arsenal - 2-0 At the Emirates. Pretty much bullied them from start to finish.
Liverpool 2-2 at the bridge - done really well to get back into that game and probably unlucky not to go on and win it. 
Pretty much any time we played Tottenham this season was good as well. 

Those are just a few examples of games I enjoyed this season, and there are probably more if I think more about it. I am hoping if we can keep James and Chilwell fit more often this season that we can bit a bit more dynamic and aggressive in attack, as we were before they both got injured.

Of course, as ever with these things there is never (or rarely) only 1 issue, and things are always more complex.

But the buck has to stop with TT as the manager.  There have been far far far too many dour, slow, sideways, negative performances (some - but far from all outlined above), and the fact is that TT continues to put the team out in the same system with the same, slow, stagnant build up play, without any significant changes.

That has worked well at times, when against more progressive teams we have been able to control the play and exceed expectations. Real, Juve, Champions league final, Arsenal, Liverpool etc. The issue is that when it fails, it fails badly, and TT has shown an inabilty to find an alternative.. Just look at our continued regular struggles with deep defending teams. It is shameful that we line up with so many negative players in such a negative system when at home against a team that isnt interested crossing the halfway line.  For that, Tuchel needs to take the blame. He has, so far, been unable to find solutions.

1 hour ago, nonotnowjim said:

 

You asked for a couple of occasions for when TT should have done better.....here they are. There are more, but I think you get the drift.

Didn't realize you were thinking about individual games. Of course there will have been multiple occassions where Tuchel could have done better there, as is the case with any manager.

Do feel like some of your examples are a bit odd as well if i'm honest. Plymouth and Everton we had about 60 attempts in total in those two games. If anything they were perfect examples of the lack of quality in the players up front.

And as Jonesy added there are just as many examples of games were we really, really performed as those you brought up. We were hammered by injuries and we were hammered by Covid last season. Until our injury crisis struck we were flying, top of the league and very few (apart from those with agendas) had any complaints about style of play or anything like that.

34 minutes ago, Sindre said:

Didn't realize you were thinking about individual games. Of course there will have been multiple occassions where Tuchel could have done better there, as is the case with any manager.

Do feel like some of your examples are a bit odd as well if i'm honest. Plymouth and Everton we had about 60 attempts in total in those two games. If anything they were perfect examples of the lack of quality in the players up front.

And as Jonesy added there are just as many examples of games were we really, really performed as those you brought up. We were hammered by injuries and we were hammered by Covid last season. Until our injury crisis struck we were flying, top of the league and very few (apart from those with agendas) had any complaints about style of play or anything like that.

Take away individual games then - do you genuinely believe that the slow, sideways, insipid and boring football that we play most of the time is good enough?

If the answer is yes, then I would find that odd.

If the answer is no, then that is on TT, as it is him who picks the team, system and instructs them.

We can argue about precision or players ability until the cows come home....but simply if the players are not good enough to flourish in TTs preferred system, then he needs to find alternatives.

Doing the same thing over and over again is the definition of madness. Choosing the same players, playing the same system and playing the same slow style over and over again, and expecting something different is also madness.

Edited July 22, 20223 yr by nonotnowjim