1 hour ago, Sindre said:

Kovacic? I'd say most agree he's been our best player since Tuchel took over. I consider him to be our best midfielder by a distance and while he was off for the second half today you can't fault his performances lately.

He's at his best with Jorginho though. They have a great connection between them and Jorginho's short and quick passing is perfect for finding Kovacic with space to run into and set up our attacks. Playing him with Kante takes away a lot of that as he's not as quick or as good of a passer as Jorginho is.

Not saying Jorginho is a better player individually but for the team and the way we are playing he's the better fit.

None of what you said contradicts my view of him though. Is he a goal scoring threat? No. Is he a creative attacking outlet? Also no. How many goals/assists does he have to his name in his CFC career so far?

I agree that he was probably our best midfielder recently, but it's more of a proof of how unspectacular and weak our midfield has been rather than how effective a midfielder Kovacic is.

Awfull, awfull performance. Again. I can not think of anything or anone that I can say something positive. Mount on the second half was decent. Abraham, Rudiger why do our managers choose these players,? And Zouma what a lazy b...!

I knew it wasn't going to be easy and it seems like we did underestimate them. Not winning against a team that has been in a horrible form isn't anything new either.

1 hour ago, Scott Harris said:

Easy to dig out the youngsters. If Tuchel is consistent with it and does the same with the experienced players, then fair enough, but right now, my gut feeling is telling me he is just shifting the blame on to the youngster to take the focus off his own failings today.

Can't agree less with you...if CHO is to improve then he needs to given the hard word when needed...don't remember him once beating a man or putting in a telling cross...

Felt like we just handed Southampton a draw. We barely tested their keeper. I really hope things improve attacking wise. 

6 minutes ago, doctorblue said:

Can't agree less with you...if CHO is to improve then he needs to given the hard word when needed...don't remember him once beating a man or putting in a telling cross...

Doesn't need to be bollocked in public though. We've already seen this kids confidence fall apart just from an injury and a slight change in positioning. Would we really be surprised if his form started dropping off again now. Some things should maybe just stay in the dressing room.

1 hour ago, Malta Blue said:

Atletico first 

Even more oh bloody dear

10 minutes ago, doctorblue said:

Can't agree less with you...if CHO is to improve then he needs to given the hard word when needed...don't remember him once beating a man or putting in a telling cross...

So you honestly think the way to get the best out of a young player who has been one of your best players since arriving at a club, while being played out of position but has done everything you've asked so far, is to tale him off 20 minutes after being subbed 9n then slag him right off of TV? Ha ha, don't be so ridiculous. 

Just now, Mike Carefree said:

Even more oh bloody dear

Whats the worst that can happen?

1 minute ago, Malta Blue said:

Whats the worst that can happen?

Madrid losing 2-0, Liverpool losing 1-0...bet they hope their next fixtures are against a club who are known for helping teams get back on track.....

Need to drop the 3ATB formation 

Been struggling to score goals and create clear cut chances ever since Tuchel took over even if we have been on bad form prior. We end up playing a more defensive lineup and average players at the back in favour of more attacking threat. Yeah we are crap going forward but playing CHO in a more natural position and switching to a back 4 suits us more. We've grinded out results with 3ATB and have not looked convincing at all. Tuchel prefers a back 4 so I have no idea why he is persisting with this. 

8 minutes ago, dkw said:

Madrid losing 2-0, Liverpool losing 1-0...bet they hope their next fixtures are against a club who are known for helping teams get back on track.....

The issue I have with most of our players at the moment lies with the fact that each player should generally have 4 passing options. 1 - A longer, creative forward pass. 2 - A short punchy forward pass progressing the play. 3 -  A neutral sideways pass, passing on the creative responsibility to someone else. 4 - A negative easy pass backwards towards your own goal.

Most of our players and almost all of our defenders seem to only ever play the 3 and 4 passes. Passive or negative football passing the responsibility buck onto somebody else. Gutless football that is boring as hell to watch

32 minutes ago, dkw said:

So you honestly think the way to get the best out of a young player who has been one of your best players since arriving at a club, while being played out of position but has done everything you've asked so far, is to tale him off 20 minutes after being subbed 9n then slag him right off of TV? Ha ha, don't be so ridiculous. 

This 100%

Lots of things need to be kept in house.

If any other teams manager had done this to one of their players today, we’d all be laughing our socks off!

If fans had been in the ground today, their would have been chants of “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

4 hours ago, PloKoon13 said:

Pretty clear that the pressure of being above David Moyes' West Ham got to us.

We are going to get bent over and rogered by Atlético.

The more I read the bolded part the more I think strewth PloKoon you might have a point. How depressing is that ?

43 minutes ago, dkw said:

So you honestly think the way to get the best out of a young player who has been one of your best players since arriving at a club, while being played out of position but has done everything you've asked so far, is to tale him off 20 minutes after being subbed 9n then slag him right off of TV? Ha ha, don't be so ridiculous. 

Subbing a sub is never a good thing unless its due to injury. If TT has slagged him that makes it even worse. Does anyone have a link to what TT said please ?

3 minutes ago, WeatherMan said:

Subbing a sub is never a good thing unless its due to injury. If TT has slagged him that makes it even worse. Does anyone have a link to what TT said please ?

Tuchel on why he subbed CHO: "In a game that it is hard to create chances, you need to rely on counter-pressing to maybe force errors, to get a second ball and get an easy chance. For that, you need to be totally on and totally sharp. I didn't feel this from Callum today."

"He missed chances to counter-press, lost some easy balls. I had the feeling he was never really into the game. You know I trust him a lot because he plays every game for us but today I was close to him and I don't know, maybe it was unfair but I didn't get the feeling today that I normally get from him because he can be decisive. It was a hard decision but nothing that will stick between us or stick for long. Tomorrow it will be forgotten and we will prepare for Atletico."

"Everyone has to understand that I make decisions to win games and there is no problem that he (Hudson-Odoi) makes mistakes, has a bad game, or does a miss, but we can't lack energy even 10% or 5%. It's not possible.

"I know what he can give, it's why I trust him a lot. He knows exactly what I demand from him and when he doesn't reach this level, it means a hard decision like today. There is no need to think in old-fashioned terms that this is the worst thing that can ever happen, no"

"So it's on him to improve because we need him in some games from the bench, to hang in a different way. So now it's forgotten and he has to step up, learn from it, swallow it, and there's no problem."

 

1 hour ago, doctorblue said:

Can't agree less with you...if CHO is to improve then he needs to given the hard word when needed...don't remember him once beating a man or putting in a telling cross...

There were players on the pitch a lot longer than he was and did even less. Werner did f**k all all game, James and Alonso offered nothing going forward, Kovacic gave the ball away time and time again. Tuchel can't just single out Hudson-Odoi's performance when others were on longer and did worse than he did. Hudson-Odoi has been one of our best players in the past month or two as well, so criticising publically for an average 20 minutes is ridiculous. 

5 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

There were players on the pitch a lot longer than he was and did even less. Werner did f**k all all game, James and Alonso offered nothing going forward, Kovacic gave the ball away time and time again. Tuchel can't just single out Hudson-Odoi's performance when others were on longer and did worse than he did. Hudson-Odoi has been one of our best players in the past month or two as well, so criticising publically for an average 20 minutes is ridiculous. 

To be fair, he was asked specifically to explain that particular decision, for obvious reasons. He talked about other things too, it's not as if he spent his whole post match interview berating CHO.

Edited February 20, 20215 yr by abramovich

44 minutes ago, abramovich said:

Tuchel on why he subbed CHO: "In a game that it is hard to create chances [snip]

The last six teams that played them didn't have any problems creating chances, A half assed Man U side with one exceptional player put nine past them and made about 16 goal scoring chances.

Why don't we have shots on goal anymore? Zieych looks like he's forgotten what a football is. What on earth happened to these players?

We've gone from having great attacking potential to one of the worst teams to watch in the league.

Let's not forget that CHO was in Tuchel's arms almost after every game since he joined us, they seems to get along really well. In my view, Tuchel trust in Callum might be why Tuchel was so mad at his perfomance, because he knows and saw what CHO can do and was really counting on him to turn the game around, was there other players that could have gone out ? Sure, i thought Giroud should have gone in for Werner who was awful or maybe take out one of the central defenders but by doing that you take the chance of leaving our defence exposed, i get why he kept Alonso, he might not had a great game but he has a goal in him and its not like Chilwell in is great form neither.

i thought we were excellent beating Saints press but like TT said we were awful in the last 30 meters, this is where we seriously lack technical skills players a la Hazard who can do the unexpected, Werner is just awful at dribbling.

Obviously the shots on goal are a problem, but remember that TT likes to play like Pep's teams wich is a lot of tap ins and inside the box goals but when players are not making the right decisions or can't even beat one defender 1v1 all game its really hard to score goals. Really strange that with all our attacking signings we can't seem to be  dangerous in the final third.

Edited February 20, 20215 yr by DidierDrogbalala

1 minute ago, Luca Vialli said:

The last six teams that played them didn't have any problems creating chances, A half assed Man U side with one exceptional player put nine past them and made about 16 goal scoring chances.

Why don't we have shots on goal anymore? Zieych looks like he's forgotten what a football is. What on earth happened to these players?

We've gone from having great attacking potential to one of the worst teams to watch in the league.

I mean they took a red card in the 2nd minute of play...

Interesting to watch this game as an example of how some of the more tactical managers would approach playing us. They negated our attack well but I think likely also showed other teams how to pull apart our shape with their goal.

For their goal Alonso rushes out of position, so Kovacic sort of covers, Rudiger sort of covers as well leaving space in midfield and our backline is stretched across to one side. Alonso, as is to be expected, doesn't win the ball and space opens in the backline for a simple throughball. I think we might see teams try that again shortly.

On the whole it was a very weak performance. Alonso was awful, Werner not much better. Tammy non existent. Only Mount and James could really say they played well in my view. 

They did, But would you expect our eleven to take the onus with an extra player? At the moment I wouldn't.

Easy to knock the manager, our current or previous, but the players are 90% to blame. Being paid a fortune to play football once or twice a week, there attitude f**king stinks. Today apart from Kante and in parts Mount, what the f**k was up with the rest of them. The back line with out 37yrs old Silva at best are crap. Up front our home grown Abraham lauded by so many, overall is basically bang average. Pitiful. When we come up against a decent team we'll get f**king hammered, and deservedly so. Why does the manager always wear the blame? Can't a PROFESSIONAL footballer player adapt for f**k sake. Really pissed of with football lately.