1 minute ago, axman2526 said:

Munkworth and @CaitlinCFCmake a great pair?

1 minute ago, Munkworth said:

Our midfield is 100% pure sh*t

2 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Our midfield is 100% pure sh*t

I would have taken the point before the match, but the way we capitulated in the end was pitiful, a relegation team would have kept those long balls out. Over the 90, we probably don't deserve 3 points, but sometime you ride your luck and you need to finish off the job. Unlike the Spurs game, there wasn't even hair pulling involved in the end.  United were out of ideas in the end, to not be able to defend hopeful long balls in the situation was not acceptable. I can't fault Kepa, if he was a feet taller he'd got that one easy, throughout the game he made good saves, unlike the GK at the other end who had literally no saves to made apart from the PK. I honestly don't see any real positives out of this game, apart from we didn't lose. Maybe Pullisic had a blinder of a cameo that I'm not aware of. I think we are long way from top 4 despite where we are, I don't mind lose some games, this kind of draw ( Spurs and 2 this week) will kill our aspirations.

6 hours ago, axman2526 said:

We are not going to beat any of the traditional "big 6" at home this season are we?

Last season we managed to beat Spurs but drew with United and Pool of lost to City and Arsenal. A terrible return.

Now we have draws against Spurs and United that we LET SLIP! In the dying embers and still have Pool, City and Arsenal to come.

oh dear...

The problem against tough team, I don't even know what to do. Back 5 is our most solid formation but it is too defensive without Reece and we can't press. Basic 433 = highway to kepa. Diamond = nobody play diamond as their main system, it is too easy to exploit before the game. 352? We have seen it agains west ham and brentford. It is sterile football. 

Any other idea? 

 

32 minutes ago, Bob stark said:

The problem against tough team, I don't even know what to do. Back 5 is our most solid formation but it is too defensive without Reece and we can't press. Basic 433 = highway to kepa. Diamond = nobody play diamond as their main system, it is too easy to exploit before the game. 352? We have seen it agains west ham and brentford. It is sterile football. 

Any other idea? 

 

 

 

4231

 

Kepa

 

Dave (later James)

Silva (later Fofana)

Koulibaly 

Chilwell

 

Chalobah

Kovacic (later Kante)

 

Pulisic 

Gallagher/Mount

Mount/Carney

 

Broja

Edited October 23, 20223 yr by axman2526

28 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

4231

 

Kepa

 

Dave (later James)

Silva (later Fofana)

Koulibaly 

Chilwell

 

Chalobah

Kovacic (later Kante)

 

Pulisic 

Gallagher/Mount

Mount/Carney

 

Broja

Chalo in the middle is an interesting idea. We need to see how he perform there though. We also need one of our winger to defend more in 4231.

 

 

Just now, Bob stark said:

Chalo in the middle is an interesting idea. We need to see how he perform there though. We also need one of our winger to defend more in 4231.

 

 

Trev played for 2 seasons as a DM for Ipswich and Llorent. He knows the position, he would just need time to adapt to it.

Or we sign a quality DM and have trev team with Wes or Koulibaly. Either or.

10 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Trev played for 2 seasons as a DM for Ipswich and Llorent. He knows the position, he would just need time to adapt to it.

Or we sign a quality DM and have trev team with Wes or Koulibaly. Either or.

We still need to see how he perform there. The fact we have to do this show how laughable our midfield situation is. 

I’ve supported Chelsea for a  little while now, and I recall the last time we were promoted. Arsenal beat Liverpool on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening to win the league and after the game I thought when is our time? I honestly thought we were gonna be a yo-yo team,because we had no money etc So what’s transpired since those and the intervening years has been miraculous. Don’t get me wrong like every other blue I want to see us be competitive, and I get the frustrations but we’re a World renowned club now,not like 1991  for example when holidaying in Italy we got talking to a few Italian lads who had never heard of Chelsea! So I’m still living the dream as a Chelsea supporter. 

When 6 minute highlights of the game show only Trevs header, bar the pen, and 3 quality Kepa saves plus Antony and Shaw narrowly missing, it shows what was very wrong about us for a home game.

Go further back and look at Milan away, Villa and Brentford and how many saves did their keepers have to make? Kepa probably made more saves verses Villa alone than those 3 keepers and De Gae combined did against us.

Edited October 23, 20223 yr by axman2526

Looks like Potter left his Magic at Brighton   needs to stop making sure everyone is happy and get us playing football again because all i see is a team that is afraid to lose with a few players who are seeing out their carriers  

12 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Anymore you mean?

I still call:

Nah he's still not great imo but he's definitely improving and a great team player. He also isn't Malang Sarr which is always good.

I can't see how GP can do much with the squad he's inherited over a few managers. Our midfield lacks creativity or the ability to score goals, we are always going to struggle until we look to replace Jorginho, Kovacic, Kante & RLC. 

Midfield is a huge area, even Liverpool are struggling now Henderson & Fabinho are declining. City are so strong due to their quality in the middle that dictates their style of play.

1 hour ago, Malcolm9 said:

I can't see how GP can do much with the squad he's inherited over a few managers. Our midfield lacks creativity or the ability to score goals, we are always going to struggle until we look to replace Jorginho, Kovacic, Kante & RLC. 

Midfield is a huge area, even Liverpool are struggling now Henderson & Fabinho are declining. City are so strong due to their quality in the middle that dictates their style 

We are never going to compete at the highest level with our current midfield and injuries we have. With Tuchel in charge we would have lost last night and probably against Villa/Palace as well. We are unbeaten since Potter took over, yes the football isn't great but let's just give it some time eh.

Unfortunately I didn't catch much of the 2nd half as I was in the middle of the 'drywall project' - However, the first half we were shocking and it evident when GP selected his team that we would be overrun in midfield, unfortunately it took him over 30 mins to realize that, but fair play he made the change.  What I did see of the 2nd half we looked a better team than the first half but once again woeful in midfield and any void of any attacking ideas.   This has been going on for several seasons now watching lack lustre football with no idea what to do once we get anywhere the opponents box.  Whether that's the players or managers, which we had in abundance over the last 4-5 years I'm not sure.  Is it the Board / owners selecting 'safe' managers, one's who would not lose but won't risk getting beat either and pray that somewhere during the game one piece of brilliance will win the day.   The players themselves when they get about 20-25 yard from goal, freeze and play safe options, backwards, sideways,  anyways, in fear that they may lose the ball. No penetrating passes only the odd piece of magic now and then rewards us with a goal.  

This turgid, stink the joint out football has to stop. If GP learned anything from the last 3 games it is that he can't pick a starting 11 out of this squad. While he may not have lost games, he's certainly got luck on his side and that for the most part he's generally got the starting line ups all wrong.   Why is Sterling still playing? He's been sh*te for the last 4 or 5 games and it clearer now why Pep was not bothered with him leaving.  God love Jorgi, but why does he play against teams that the manager knows will press him to death and only force him to go backwards.  The safe backward pass is being chosen by far too many players in this team, even Chillwell has caught the bug over the last few games while Dave has been doing it for the last couple of seasons, safe, safe, safe.  I just as well go down the local park and watch the U12's have more attacking options than our lot.   

While it may be early days for GP, I think we can see his thought patterns; Use every his Emotional Intelligence to keep changing the line up every game to keep everyone emotionally happy.   We clearly need a clear out in midfield, but we have been saying that since Fab left.  TB needs to be having another clear out and spending a whole lot of cash in January in the midfield and up front, or we will definitely be outside the top 4 with this squad. A surprising Arsenal and Man City will finish in the first 2 places, places 3 / 4 / 5 is a melee between about 5 clubs all of which can't seem to put 2 wins together.  My fear is that if TB consults GP we will be buying mediocre players that he is used to at Brighton and not world class players that we so desperately need.     

Let's hope we wrap up the CL final 16 spot on Tues.

So, teams single us out to park the bus , and we find it difficult to play break it down

But other teams don't park the bus, and we find that difficult too ?

It's called football.

and boasting about clean sheets when in fact the defence is sh*te and it's only Kepa keeping the ball out with world class performances is just really closing our eyes to reality.

mind you, wasn't as bad as I feared, and it's early days yet, and the early game result  was a tonic !

17 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Also worth noting that we started this week 8 points behind top 4 rivals Arsenal with a game in hand. Now of this writing we are 6 points behind them having played a game more.

They play useless Southampton on Sunday so likely 9 points behind on level games. And that sucks.

They were useless when we played them . 😅😅😅😅

1 hour ago, The Rising Sun said:

They were useless when we played them . 😅😅😅😅

They were, we were just much, much more useless...

Annoying. We weren't great tbh, especially first half. Improve second half. Auba should have come off for Broja imo earlier. He did not have much chances but he did not help with the press. Chalobah was brilliant though. Has been putting in consistent performances regularly now. Brilliant game he had. Happy that Arsenal dropped points finally. Made me a bit happier this wekend.

5 minutes ago, STATS said:

Annoying. We weren't great tbh, especially first half. Improve second half. Auba should have come off for Broja imo earlier. He did not have much chances but he did not help with the press. Chalobah was brilliant though. Has been putting in consistent performances regularly now. Brilliant game he had. Happy that Arsenal dropped points finally. Made me a bit happier this wekend.

United were the better side with far better chances. Result was harsh on them.

23 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Munkworth and @CaitlinCFCmake a great pair?

8 hours ago, CaitlinCFC said:

First game that I have attended this season and firstly the atmosphere was far better than I had expected after reading reports on here. singing was good, even in the East Upper which I haven't seen before, But, and it is a big but, 

The football was so damn poor. It was good to see Potter acknowledge that he had got his tactics badly wrong, taking off the woeful Cucarella and bringing on a far more dynamic Kova. We immediately started to play and in the second half, were by far the better team, although Auba was completely anonymous, RLC (who was good in the first half) went off the boil, Sterling had his worst game for Chelsea and when GP did eventually pull Auba, he didn't bring Broja on 😲 opting for Pulisic, who did very little. When he did bring Broja on for Sterling, you could tell the United back 4 were rattled and I am sure Ten Haag immediately brought McTominay on to deal with Armando, oh how that backfired 🤣

To throw the win away so late, felt like a defeat!! But in reality a draw was the correct result. But we still have the same old same old issues, NO real fire power, I don't include Broja in that as I don't think that he has been given enough of a chance to prove himself. I am CERTAIN that he will do a better job than Auba and will get more goals, just a bit worried it is taking GP so long to realise this. I am also certain that Pulisic is only getting on because Boehly wants him fit and ready to play for the USA in the World Cup, because he looks disinterested. Sterling as mentioned was bloody awful, not a patch on the player who scored regularly for City. Apart from the obvious lack of goals, a lack of creativity is going to hold us back. With Reece James out, we see ZERO decent crosses into the oppo box,  Kovacic tries to create with through balls or balls over the top, but in truth, he hasn't got the range or skill to get it right.  What is this passing every goal kick around the back four for about 5 minutes before passing the ball forwards, that is bollocks !! Corners are still sh*te, whoever takes them, more coaching needed from the set piece coaches here please.

So summing up, GP has a lot of work to do. This squad isn't good enough to challenge for honours this season. More signings are needed that will compliment or correct the issues above and those that you can no doubt can see for yourselves.

Overall 5/10 and MUST try harder

Edited October 24, 20223 yr by coombsie