6 hours ago, loz said:

Didn't see the post match stuff but, for me, I wish players and managers would stop moaning about fixture pile ups. Just get on with it, we have it every Xmas and yes COVID has thrown a new spanner in the works but manage the squad accordingly and we shouldn't be that reliant on one player to stop us looking shaky.

Tuchel didn’t complain about the fixtures. He complained about not having 5 subs. Think he has a fair point. 

The amount of runs Rom made and wasn't picked out was criminal. How we could with a more creative midfielder, a Fabregas type would have had a field day. Personally we should play Havertz in midfield when he's back.

I know Jorgy scored the second penalty, but can't we at least allow a striker to take one, Rom is pretty decent at them. He'll never get a decent crack as top scorer without them.

Edited December 27, 20214 yr by Malcolm9

7 hours ago, DidierDrogbalala said:

 

Both are big lost. We can replace silva with chris and lose just a bit but the drop off from kante to the other 3 cm are quite big.

10 hours ago, Sindre said:

Huge win.

Keeps us somewhat connected to City and level on points with Liverpool (who have a game in hand). A loss would have thrown us into the Top 4 fight again.

No need to elaborate on Lukaku's performance. Dragged us to this win almost single-handedly. Long may that continue.

Well said. Vital win in the context of the season.

I hope this is a sign of things to come for Lukaku. He can make a huge difference for us if he maintains that level of performance we saw yesterday.

11 hours ago, loz said:

Two main loints

 

1. God we have missed a player that defenders have to worry about. What a difference it makes. Until he came on it was looking like yet another day where we wouldn't score from open play and could easily have dropped more points.

2. How we crumble when Kante goes off. I know Tuchel is looking to manage his time but I felt 60th minute was too early especially as it was the third and final change. 

 

On 2 it’s funny how differently our biases can lead us to see things. Im talking about my pro Kova bias here as much as your pro Kante one (which is entirely reasonable - why wouldn’t one have a pro Kante bias?). I saw the introduction of Kova as a net positive - the assist he should have had came from a move that required him to first win the ball in a dangerous position for us with a great tackle, break the lines and put Lukaku through, then receive the ball again and unselfishly put it on a plate for CHO. I feel the narrative would have been very different if CHO had scored, with Kova a contender for deputy MOTM. I saw our weak spell as not being down to Kante coming off but poor distribution from the back, particularly Rudiger. 

10 hours ago, charierre said:

Our lucky charm 

I took my lad to this one to watch his first Chelsea game - he’s our lucky charm!

6 hours ago, ozboy said:

Tuchel didn’t complain about the fixtures. He complained about not having 5 subs. Think he has a fair point. 

Ok, no argument there. It should be consistent across all leagues given that teams then compete in the CL.  I'd prefer it as a rule if at at least two of the bench had to be selected from outside the normal first team squad and, if you use all five subs, at least one has to be one of those two. 

Important win against a tricky opponent I was a bit afraid of. Thought we played well and Lukaku did a great job.

On a side note it seems we've become the Liverpool of last season - we just can't catch a break with these bloody injuries. Oh and I forgot about Napoli this season - who would have thought they'd be out of the title race already when they we're making a mockery put of that league two months ago? But it all went south when their best players started falling injured one after another.

Personally I would love Chelsea to win the PL, but we have to be honest City looks so strong and have an injury free squad. Think we'd have gone toe to toe with them in this point of season if it wasn't for all our injuries and stupid goals we've conceded. 

UCL is back in March and we have a fairly accessible round ahead and hopefully we are inury free at that point. I would make that competition my main target, I truly believe Chelsea have a better chance of beating the likes of City and Liverpool over a two legged match rather than a long PL campaign where there is absolutely no room for error as those two, especially City, seem to very rarely loose points against lesser sides.

4 hours ago, Malcolm9 said:

The amount of runs Rom made and wasn't picked out was criminal. How we could with a more creative midfielder, a Fabregas type would have had a field day. Personally we should play Havertz in midfield when he's back.

I know Jorgy scored the second penalty, but can't we at least allow a striker to take one, Rom is pretty decent at them. He'll never get a decent crack as top scorer without them.

I thought so many people wanted Mason Mount to play as the midfielder. I think it's a no-brainer that Havertz should be the one playing behind Lukaku to give him passes. I think we should have known that Mount is more of a physical player. He is very good at playing shots but I don't think he's that very intelligent to give good passes to a striker. And because of that we can have both players on the pitch, I mean Havertz and Mount, but Havertz should be playing the creative role while Mount can play on the left wing, cut inside and play shots. In any case, both players can be swapping positions on the pitch.

I don't like the 343 formation that Tuchel is using. First we can easily conceed goal because of Jorginho who is playing in front of the defense. Then two, we do not have many players up front, I think we only have three players in attack, James and who ever is playing at LWB at times join them, but has it been very effective? Then three, I think we have a very strong player in Reece James and we should make very good use of him to help the team. I think he's a strong player who can really help the team. 

We may have good attackers, but if there is no body who can get the ball from the defenders to the attackers, then how can we score. I want us to be playing Reece JAMES as a defensive midfielder.

Personally, I love a 4231 formation like this.

Mendy

Aspi, Silva, Rudiger, Chillwell

James, Kante

Ziyech, Havertz, Mount

Lukaku.

We should work on Havertz more especially his physical strength. Then by that, we can get more services to Lukaku. Then on Ziyech, if Ziyech is not doing very well in the right wing, then we may have to buy another left legged right winger maybe during the next transfer window.

The major three players who I believe will make good impact as substitutes are Kovacic, Hudson Odoi and Barkley. And we can bring them into this team.

6 hours ago, Malcolm9 said:

The amount of runs Rom made and wasn't picked out was criminal. How we could with a more creative midfielder, a Fabregas type would have had a field day. Personally we should play Havertz in midfield when he's back.

I know Jorgy scored the second penalty, but can't we at least allow a striker to take one, Rom is pretty decent at them. He'll never get a decent crack as top scorer without them.

He constantly points where he wants the ball and no-one delivers it; you would have thought that since he's joined we would have changed our style of play to suit him and the runs he makes....but oh no, we'll just keep pissing around the edge of the box for 5 minutes until we lose it. 

15 hours ago, Munkworth said:

The referee must have deemed he’d made a genuine attempt for the ball (penalty & yellow card) rather than just dragging Rom down to stop him scoring (penalty & red card). I think the angle to goal and the keepers position might have helped with influencing the decision too. 

Not really relevant

The only question that needed to be answered was did he make a genuine attempt to play the ball and no matter how you view it I just can’t see any attempt to do anything other than bring Lukaku down

 

Where a player commits an offence against an opponent within their own penalty area which denies an opponent an obvious goal-scoring opportunity and the referee awards a penalty kick, the offending player is cautioned if the offence was an attempt to play the ball; in all other circumstances (e.g. holding, pulling, pushing, no possibility to play the ball etc.) the offending player must be sent off.

1 hour ago, terraloon said:

Not really relevant

The only question that needed to be answered was did he make a genuine attempt to play the ball and no matter how you view it I just can’t see any attempt to do anything other than bring Lukaku down

 

Where a player commits an offence against an opponent within their own penalty area which denies an opponent an obvious goal-scoring opportunity and the referee awards a penalty kick, the offending player is cautioned if the offence was an attempt to play the ball; in all other circumstances (e.g. holding, pulling, pushing, no possibility to play the ball etc.) the offending player must be sent off.

That’s exactly what I’ve said. The referee must have though he’d made a genuine attempt to play the ball. Unfortunately the decisions are still down to the opinion/interpretation of an inept useless bastard!

Finally got around to watching a re-run but I've got to say we just need wins right now in this period. Fixture pile ups is just the course we have to grit through when we are chasing for every title available. 

Sucks that we lose our best CM again 

7 hours ago, loz said:

Ok, no argument there. It should be consistent across all leagues given that teams then compete in the CL.  I'd prefer it as a rule if at at least two of the bench had to be selected from outside the normal first team squad and, if you use all five subs, at least one has to be one of those two. 

The Villa coaching team agreed with Tuchel in post-match comments. The Premier League allowed 5 subs when they initially returned after Covid. Why not now when it is actually decimating squads?

15 hours ago, ozboy said:

Tuchel didn’t complain about the fixtures. He complained about not having 5 subs. Think he has a fair point. 

That’s right. He also eluded to the fact that we played through this period with a COVID ravaged team while others were getting games postponed. It was also then impacting on players who were not quite ready. Don’t blame him for being angry.

Clubs who voted AGAINST 5 subs in Dec 2020: A Villa, Burnley, C Palace, Fulham Leicester C, Leeds U, Newcastle U, Sheffield U, West Ham U, Wolverhampton W

It needed majority of 14. It was a split 10/10. Have the vote today and 2 of those relegated, w**k Ham would and I suspect Villa would now vote for it. 

9 hours ago, Dean said:

On 2 it’s funny how differently our biases can lead us to see things. Im talking about my pro Kova bias here as much as your pro Kante one (which is entirely reasonable - why wouldn’t one have a pro Kante bias?). I saw the introduction of Kova as a net positive - the assist he should have had came from a move that required him to first win the ball in a dangerous position for us with a great tackle, break the lines and put Lukaku through, then receive the ball again and unselfishly put it on a plate for CHO. I feel the narrative would have been very different if CHO had scored, with Kova a contender for deputy MOTM. I saw our weak spell as not being down to Kante coming off but poor distribution from the back, particularly Rudiger. 

I think the way a match works is that often a team spends a lot of energy and effort to push their way, this is what we did as soon as the second half started. But then when a team scores a goal it can happen that the pressure and mentality drops and some players as a unit stop the high intensity that was present before the goal came and that can last a bit.

So it's a swing of momentum that can be seen, we had 80% possession at some point in the second half and then we scored so given the circumstances it's also possible that after we scored a goal we needed to slow down and also that goal made Villa more eager to try and do something about it and then it resulted in Villa having possession and trying to attack for the next 10 minutes or so.

The high level of intensity is hard to maintain throughout the game but once the initial energy that was dropped got picked up again, and the high post-goal pressure from Villa stopped, we had more of the ball again and that can happen regardless if Kante is still playing or getting subbed off.

41 minutes ago, Petworth Chelsea Fan said:

Clubs who voted AGAINST 5 subs in Dec 2020: A Villa, Burnley, C Palace, Fulham Leicester C, Leeds U, Newcastle U, Sheffield U, West Ham U, Wolverhampton W

It needed majority of 14. It was a split 10/10. Have the vote today and 2 of those relegated, w**k Ham would and I suspect Villa would now vote for it. 

You can see why the smaller teams would in all fairness. Clubs like us, City, Liverpool etc have much stronger squads when not decimated by COVID. It does play into the bigger teams hands if they can bring on 5 players who are all valued north of say £30m whilst the smaller teams need to rely on Martial and Jones.

2 hours ago, forbzy said:

The Villa coaching team agreed with Tuchel in post-match comments. The Premier League allowed 5 subs when they initially returned after Covid. Why not now when it is actually decimating squads?

Because many of the British managers lower down the league have raging inferiority complex's when it comes to the bigger clubs. They are quite visibly triggered by/in denial about the fact foreign managers are better at their job than they are.

12 hours ago, forbzy said:

The Villa coaching team agreed with Tuchel in post-match comments. The Premier League allowed 5 subs when they initially returned after Covid. Why not now when it is actually decimating squads?

In normal situation I kinda agree that 5 sub is bad but when Covid is raging like this, 5 sub is good for everyone

Tbh having 5 subs is good even in normal conditions. You actually give plenty of players down the pyramid a chance to do their jobs. 

You can say on paper it benefits clubs like City but they are already dominating matches anyway for it to matter much. 

Poorer clubs would also be able to avoid injuries ravaging their teams. 

On 27/12/2021 at 17:43, Gol15 said:

I think the way a match works is that often a team spends a lot of energy and effort to push their way, this is what we did as soon as the second half started. But then when a team scores a goal it can happen that the pressure and mentality drops and some players as a unit stop the high intensity that was present before the goal came and that can last a bit.

So it's a swing of momentum that can be seen, we had 80% possession at some point in the second half and then we scored so given the circumstances it's also possible that after we scored a goal we needed to slow down and also that goal made Villa more eager to try and do something about it and then it resulted in Villa having possession and trying to attack for the next 10 minutes or so.

The high level of intensity is hard to maintain throughout the game but once the initial energy that was dropped got picked up again, and the high post-goal pressure from Villa stopped, we had more of the ball again and that can happen regardless if Kante is still playing or getting subbed off.

These are some very good points. What happened to the Gol of a couple of seasons back?;)

14 hours ago, Dean said:

These are some very good points. What happened to the Gol of a couple of seasons back?;)