Probably I wasn’t watching properly but I thought Kante looked a bit lost most of the time he was there.

 

10 minutes ago, Sindre said:

Thought this was a great move myself. Ballsy but he allowed our second choice goalkeeper to get two games in a row, keeping two clean sheets in a row and regain just a littlebit of confidence. Which could be extremely valuable down the road if Mendy happens to be unavailble for some reason.

He came out straight after the game an unequivocally stated that Mendy is first choice. 

In which case it was change for the sake of change. Mendy had already sat out the Barnsley game so wasn't exactly in need of a rest. 

If Kepa was getting a genuine crack of establishing himself back in the team, I could understand but that wasn't the case... It was a strange selection given what Tuchel said after the match. He intentionally selected the inferior player. 

7 minutes ago, ozboy said:

Probably I wasn’t watching properly but I thought Kante looked a bit lost most of the time he was there.

 

He did, he had no position to play and I've no idea what he was supposed to be doing. Was a really odd sub.

15 minutes ago, dkw said:

The big problem with that attitude is if the opposition do nick a goal then its panic stations amongst our players. Then if they do get the equaliser the impetus is all with the opposition, our attitude is to defend what we have and its incredibly difficult to then try and change to attack. I just didnt see any reason whatsoever to suddenly go ridiculously defensive in a game we had total control over and were cruising in. It was just very odd.

Shoulda Woulda Coulda. Fact is it worked and we have kept yet another clean sheet. Being able to close out wins like this now will hopefully instill a belief and trust in the defence for games to come. Yes, if we had conceded 2/3 goals at the end we would have been a laughing stock but they only managed one shot on target in the last 20 minutes or so. Better teams will, of course, have more of a go and that's where out mettle will be tested but being able to see out 1 and 2 nil wins is crucial. It's what wins teams titles.

22 minutes ago, ozboy said:

Probably I wasn’t watching properly but I thought Kante looked a bit lost most of the time he was there.

 

He's looked lost in most appearances under Tuchel to be honest. Yesterday he wasn't asked to do anything special. He took over Kovacic's role basically and Kova pushed up a littlebit to take over for Mount.

More down to the player then the manager in my view.

This form could be the new manager bounce. Although it's good to see we aren't conceding. I'd be happy if we only win games by 1-0 if we aren't conceding. Right now I'd rather some boring, but safe games other than open and risky games. Forget the excitement right now. Top sides are dropping points left, right and centre and therefore we need to keep it consistent as possible, any means necessary. Short term boring for long term gain is fine by me. 

1 hour ago, ForeverCarefree said:

He came out straight after the game an unequivocally stated that Mendy is first choice. 

In which case it was change for the sake of change. Mendy had already sat out the Barnsley game so wasn't exactly in need of a rest. 

If Kepa was getting a genuine crack of establishing himself back in the team, I could understand but that wasn't the case... It was a strange selection given what Tuchel said after the match. He intentionally selected the inferior player. 

As I said, to give him confidence.

Everyone knows Mendy is superior but who knows what might happen later on in the season. If he gets injured and Kepa needs to step in for an extended period of time we may look back and say that the decision to give him two games in a row in February too give him some confidence was a masterstroke.

 

So far we have no idea if TT is the messiah or not, we’ve played some poor teams and 1 team massively out of form.

Changing the goalie for the sake of it, is a dumb move IMO and could have massively bitten us on the backside.

if we lose to both Atheltico and UTD will anything really have changed? Only time will tell.

1 hour ago, ForeverCarefree said:

He came out straight after the game an unequivocally stated that Mendy is first choice. 

In which case it was change for the sake of change. Mendy had already sat out the Barnsley game so wasn't exactly in need of a rest. 

I wouldn't be surprised if there's something being unsaid about mendy and Tuchel just wanted to give him a few games off. Lot of references to him needing a rest mentally. 

I see this narrative we only played poor teams so what has changed FFS🤦🏾

10 minutes ago, Brutos said:

I see this narrative we only played poor teams so what has changed FFS🤦🏾

I’m not saying that, just that so far it’s currently an unknown.

I will say that changing to his current formation really suits our squad.

I’d love to see James in for Dave once Silva is fit, so James, Silva, Rudiger/Zouma

1 hour ago, Sindre said:

He's looked lost in most appearances under Tuchel to be honest. Yesterday he wasn't asked to do anything special. He took over Kovacic's role basically and Kova pushed up a littlebit to take over for Mount.

More down to the player then the manager in my view.

I think we need to start accepting the bonafide WC Kante is gone. In 2021 Kovacic (his direct competition) is simply a better player.

He still has a role to play in the squad and there will be games/circumstances we'll need him to get over the line but the Kante who single handedly dominated games at Leicester and under Conte is long gone unfortunately.

37 minutes ago, Sindre said:

As I said, to give him confidence.

Everyone knows Mendy is superior but who knows what might happen later on in the season. If he gets injured and Kepa needs to step in for an extended period of time we may look back and say that the decision to give him two games in a row in February too give him some confidence was a masterstroke.

 

I’m guessing he was told before that he’ll get two games but no matter how well he does Mendy is still ahead of him. Which must have been great for his confidence. 

10 hours ago, Deino said:

I can honestly say Tuchel has done well what's left is to keep up the consistency and improve our finishing.

The way we control games now is better especially against opponents that let us keep the ball. That much is certain. 

That being said, our attacking play needs to improve a lot. Our goals at the moment are fluky and comes from the sheer number of attacking movements, not because of skill and technique.

I agree, although yesterday was already better in this regard. The two Werner chances and Kovacic's through ball for Tammy were created through skill. We just didn't score frome them 😅

Also I think the people saying that we can't draw any conclusions because we've only played poor teams are only partially right. It's true we haven't really had a stern test yet, so we don't know how we fare under Tuchel against strong opposition.

But winning against the so called lesser teams is impressive on it's own. It's were you get most of the points from. In the first half of the season we only managed to get 10 points out of the corresponding fixtures, and that was before we were in the rut we've been in since Decembre. Now we've managed to get 13. And that maintaining consistency is everything but easy is further illustrated by the fact that we've climbed up 6 places in the table since TT has arrived, which shows that the teams in and around us have not managed to do that.

I think Tuchel has done as well as you can expect so far. He's already been able to implement some of his principles, while taking advantage of a relatively easy run of fixtures. I don't expect us to turn into world beaters over night and I expect us to drop out of the CL against Atletico, but if he can keep going what he's doing now, we should be able to get Top 4, which just 6 weeks ago didn't look likely at all. 

7 minutes ago, True Blue23 said:

In the first half of the season we only managed to get 10 points out of the corresponding fixtures, and that was before we were in the rut we've been in since Decembre. Now we've managed to get 13.

I think saying only 10 is a bit odd, 3 points down is hardly a huge difference.

24 minutes ago, dkw said:

I think saying only 10 is a bit odd, 3 points down is hardly a huge difference.

But compared to 13 points it's less and I meant it in a comparing way. Also getting 2 points per game from an "easy run of fixtures" isn't bad, but it's hardly anything special. A 2,6 points per game average on the other hand is what you would expect a top team to get out of those fixtures. 

I think a 3 points difference over 5 fixtures not being a lot is an odd thing to say. If you average it out over the season 2 points per game gets you 76 points, which is solid Top 4 form, whereas 2,6 points per game gets you 98 points, which is title winning form. And of course I'm aware that with harder fixtures the points average will drop, and also that a sample size of 5 games is way too small to draw any significant conclusions from, but I don't think a 3 points difference from 5 games is insignificant. These are the kind of games you need to get as many points as possible from, if you want to challenge for the title, which I hope we will next season.

Edited February 16, 20215 yr by True Blue23

2 minutes ago, True Blue23 said:

But compared to 13 points it's less and I meant it in a comparing way. Also getting 2 points per game from an "easy run of fixtures" isn't bad, but it's hardly anything special. A 2,6 points per game average on the other hand is what you would expect a top team to get out of those fixtures. 

 

Come off it, so you are saying Tuchel is doing so much better than Lampard did against the same teams because he got 3 more points from 15 available points? Your reaching there mate.

I honestly dont think TT could do much more, hes arrested our alarming drop in form, with a clear and defined style, too many still thinking, ‘But Frank could have’, unfortunately Frank didnt!, im sure the Kepa switch is justifiable to him.

9 minutes ago, dkw said:

Come off it, so you are saying Tuchel is doing so much better than Lampard did against the same teams because he got 3 more points from 15 available points? Your reaching there mate.

Over these 5 fixtures I think he's done substantially better. Whether he can sustain it or not is a different (and way more imprtant) question, but at the moment I don't have a bigger sample size.

I think the people who are claiming that we would have gotten the same points return without the manager change, are the ones who are reaching. Because we had been playing horrible football with just 7 points out of 7 games, and we didn't even manage to get the same points return from the corresponding fixtures when we were in form. As much as it hurts, because I love Lampard and what he has done for us, but at the moment it's looking like the change was the right decision.

11 hours ago, Deino said:

I can honestly say Tuchel has done well what's left is to keep up the consistency and improve our finishing.

The way we control games now is better especially against opponents that let us keep the ball. That much is certain. 

That being said, our attacking play needs to improve a lot. Our goals at the moment are fluky and comes from the sheer number of attacking movements, not because of skill and technique.

Maybe there is a real reason why teams in general don't want to play an open game against us, has that thought ever occurred to you?
It's almost like you're complaining and trying to make a hint to our opponents - hey guys don't let us keep the ball that much next time! 

Anyway, our goals are a results of a good tactic first and foremost.
Watch the first goal - both Kovacic and Jorginho have a man marking them, Christensen because of it was free to take the ball forward first and he can pass it so he made great forward pass to Werner. Werner in turn can have a 1v1 with a Newcastle defender because Alonso is cutting inside and taking a player with him, that was all intentional.

I can't see how you can complain about us having a good number of chances and attacking movement, Man City has that too and just like they could score more goals nobody is telling to them that it's a bad thing.
First people complain about how we don't create much at all - now the complaint is that we have too much of attacking movement? Damned no matter how we play?

1 minute ago, True Blue23 said:

Over these 5 fixtures I think he's done substantially better. Whether he can sustain it or not is a different (and way more imprtant) question, but at the moment I don't have a bigger sample size.

I think the people who are claiming that we would have gotten the same points return without the manager change, are the ones who are reaching. Because we had been playing horrible football with just 7 points out of 7 games, and we didn't even manage to get the same points return from the corresponding fixtures when we were in form. As much as it hurts, because I love Lampard and what he has done for us, but at the moment it's looking like the change was the right decision.

Apart from Wolves fixture by fixture comparisons can't really be fairly done at this point because as you said all but one of the corresponding fixtures were played when things were looking rosy, if that was sustained Lampard would still be here.

When you change managers the only comparison you can fairly make is between the new period and the period that caused his predecessor to be fired. For example, Hiddink 1.0 was a vast improvement on Scolari i think we can all agree on that, but if we compared Hiddink's against the Big Phil period before the wheels came off instead of the period that caused us to turn to Guus you'd think there was no real difference if not a regression.

6 minutes ago, Ballack & Blu said:

I honestly dont think TT could do much more, hes arrested our alarming drop in form, with a clear and defined style, too many still thinking, ‘But Frank could have’, unfortunately Frank didnt!, im sure the Kepa switch is justifiable to him.

Spot on here, It's so jarring reading all this woulda clouda shoulda trying to undermine the manager who's been in the job what one month new league, where the players weren't performing, the confidence was gone and he had to come in and address all of that. Lampard tried and couldn't stop the rot performance wasn't getting better it was getting worst confidence was shot and it looked like the players didn't have a scooby doo what they were supposed to do on the pitch. His lack of tactical awareness and footballing brain got ruthlessly exposed.

There is no easy game in the PL so to say every game was easy is just nonsensical.

United found that out, Liverpool found that out same with City, Leicester and US.

 

 

14 minutes ago, True Blue23 said:

Over these 5 fixtures I think he's done substantially better. Whether he can sustain it or not is a different (and way more imprtant) question, but at the moment I don't have a bigger sample size.

I think the people who are claiming that we would have gotten the same points return without the manager change, are the ones who are reaching. Because we had been playing horrible football with just 7 points out of 7 games, and we didn't even manage to get the same points return from the corresponding fixtures when we were in form. As much as it hurts, because I love Lampard and what he has done for us, but at the moment it's looking like the change was the right decision.

you keep using terms like substantially and much better, that simply isnt true. Like for like results are almost the same, not that you can really compare them due to so many variables this season. Tuchel has us winning games against lesser teams, thats how things were last season and early this season in the main. All some people are saying, me included, is its been a nice run of games to bed in, and one we would always have expected to have won the majority of. The next 5 or 6 games will show us where we are in reality, and my worry is we are still seeing many of the same failings as we were under Frank. Were not generally creating much, we still seem to be on the verge of sh*tting ourselves in defence any time a team actually does have a go at us (especially without Silva).

Certain members seem to be hell bent on making this a Lampard vs Tuchel argument just to prove that the decision to sack Lampard was the correct one. I've seen people put forward the sentiment that Tuchel has had a relatively comfortable start to life as Chelsea Manager from a fixture standpoint, in my view that is fairly accurate and not really a dig at Tuchel because personally I think he has done an excellent job so far. My view is still the same when it comes to Frank because I believe that Frank was the right fit for us long term, in my view we would've finished top 4 with Frank and if we didn't the option was available to review the season in totality.

With Tuchel I don't think its a case that we haven't played or done well against a top team because we dominated Tottenham away and were the deserved winners but I don't think the team has been challenged as yet. We have not fallen behind and had to chase a game yet and on 2 occasions when teams have looked to press us high and looked to bully us we have looked somewhat vulnerable. Tuchel has done exceedingly well so far and we seem to be very professional and well structured when we take the lead but I think we are still to see how Tuchel changes the shape when we start chasing games or when teams with quality look to press us higher up the pitch. The hope is that we don't fall behind all season but I think we will learn a lot more about Tuchel in the next run of fixtures.