11 minutes ago, Kev56 said:

Not going to change, live with it or walk away. 

Come on, the alternative to being dissatisfied with the ownership isn't to " walk away" .

I don't like the ownership either, , no proper Chelsea fan gives up his support and love for the club ,  not ever. . . In fact, it's that loyalty, love and passion for Chelsea that means we can't be indifferent to what is happening at our club.

Anyway, have a good weekend mate.

Come on you BLUES !

With the amount of injuries we have, Wolves is a big game. Lose or draw and I reckon the team will be booed off with the atmosphere turning toxic. 

On 15/01/2025 at 01:51, Bob stark said:

Many question our squad quality to even challenge top 4. That I completely disagree. 

Contrary to last season insane squad, our squad this season is normal for top team. There are definitely some issues before we can genuinely challenge for title but top 4 more than good enough. 

 

 

On 15/01/2025 at 03:23, Bob stark said:

Not sure us getting top 4 this season is a guarantee. I think we will get it but the margin is tight 

Make your mind up. These 2 contradictory posts were just 92 minutes apart so which one is it to be ?

One thing I would like to ask Maresca is why, consistently, our team becomes tired after around 65 minutes?

They are mostly playing 1 game a week, they don't play the European games nor the league cup or FA Cup so far, yet they are spent so often after the 65th.

Why? When Pool and Arsenal are playing their best players in the CL and still are much fitter than us to last the 90 most games.

5 hours ago, Gol15 said:

I think it's reasonable to say that a manager does influence his players while managing the u23 team, they get along quite well so it would be a pretty bitter take to suggest that Maresca has had no kind of input on Palmer's development.

 

Nobody has said that he has had no influence or input but to make the link that Palmer's trajectory is solely as a result of a manager that would have worked with him for one season when he has been in the system for almost 15 years is a bit of a leap. In fact, if you look at the various clips Palmer has displayed a number of the traits that have grown with him into adulthood from a young age.

 

 

3 minutes ago, WhiteWall said:

Nobody has said that he has had no influence or input but to make the link that Palmer's trajectory is solely as a result of a manager that would have worked with him for one season when he has been in the system for almost 15 years is a bit of a leap. In fact, if you look at the various clips Palmer has displayed a number of the traits that have grown with him into adulthood from a young age.

 

Watching that ... quite unbelievable that Pep let him go so easily !

 

18 hours ago, Sexyfootball said:

Watching that ... quite unbelievable that Pep let him go so easily !

 

He wanted out to get game time. Pep is well known for letting go those who don't want to be at the club. Plus Palmer at MC in no way resembles the current version. He was a cog in the Pep machine and would never have been allowed the freedom he enjoys at Chelsea. In short, not a Pep player.

Him branding January a disaster can’t go down well with the higher-ups, can it? Although he’s 100% right, as can be said about every transfer window since our wonderful new ownership took charge. 
Actually had a very vivid dream last night Maresca was sacked so I guess I’ll change my nickname to Psychic Andy if he’s gone on Tuesday after a bad loss to Wolves 🙂

29 minutes ago, El regreso said:

We'd have been top last year LOL

It does say a lot when Tosin is our most seasoned veteran in the sport doesn't it?

Had no expectations of this coach at the start. Thought we had a special manager only a month ago and 5 games later I've lost all faith.

Nothing worse than having a strict manager who's tactics don't work.

32 minutes ago, KonaKai Blue said:

Thought we had a special manager only a month ago and 5 games later I've lost all faith.

That says more about you than it does about the manger.  But.  "Calm down" as a scouser might say.  The way we are playing is not so bad - not bad at all.  We have a team/squad/manager that plays some good football.

2 hours ago, El regreso said:

We have a young team/squad.  The youngest team in the league. I quite like that about our current team/squad. Although i would like us to have a grown up CB and grown up GK. The rest is good.

Just an FYI - But Maresca has managed 99 professional games at 3 clubs. His 100th game as a manager will be against Wolves.

Tuchel 613
Potter 468
Lampard 206
Pochettino 653

 

AND there is our problem imho. We have a young team - the youngest team - with very little experience and very little knowledge on game management and we have a manager who also is a newbie. Any stats on who is the most inexperienced manager in the premier league?  The manager who has managed the least amount of professional football games. I would imagine Enzo is high on the list.  That will make him overly cautious at times is my guess.

 

On 17/01/2025 at 21:55, Gol15 said:

Roman wouldn't invest so much on youngsters to begin with, he made our academy good enough for some young players to come out of it but for the rest we were spending on already established talent out there so Roman wouldn't have splashed the cash for he likes of a fairly unknown Mudryk or for an injury-prone Lavia and so on...

The new ownership made it very clear, out with the old and in with the new so their philosophy is quite different from Roman's.

Lucky for us, the old regime didn't splash out to take a chance on hyped-up, under-23 young talents like

Glen Johnson
Joe Cole
Arjen Robben
Mateja Kezman
Damien Duff
Adrian Mutu
Thibaut Courtois
Cesar Azpilicueta
Khalid Boulahrouz
Nemanja Matic
Romelu Lukaku
Tiemoue Bakayoko
Ramires
Kurt Zouma
Oscar
Kevin de Bruyne
Mohammed Salah
Andre Schurrle
Eden Hazard
Timo Werner
Kai Havertz
Asier Del Horno
Baba 'On Loan' Rahman
Lucas 'On Loan' Piazon

In all seriousness it was Emenalo (aided by Granovskaia) who shifted the board's attention from targeting high-profile players to signing younger players with good re-sale value, and the creation of the 'loan army'. Since this change in strategy we have the highest total transfer revenue of any EPL club since 2003.  

However, we have obviously oscillated away from that overall strategy with mixed results. 2014-15 was a perfect transfer window in some regards, but we failed to repeat the same trick for both Conte and Sarri, and returned to that strategy with Werner/Havertz/Ziyech in 2020-21 only to Lukaku it up by signing Romelu Lukaku in 2021-22. 

Clearlake have adopted the same basic strategy, though having been burned by Boehly's early spending spree, have seemingly decided against any sort to established signing.

If there are differences in strategy, they are minor tweaks. The ones that come to mind are:
 

• Focus on quantity rather than qualities wanted by a particular manager: The aim is to have a good number of different players with different attributes and qualities. This is more in line with Emenalo's original vision (the Marko Marin era, as some would call it) where any manager has available to them a great pool of players, but rarely of their own specific choice. The club wholly dictates transfer strategy, not a manager's tactical preferences. Unpopular opinion time: this is the way it should be.
   
• High transfer fees, low wages: Transfer fees are amortizable but wages are not, which makes it more flexible for FFP/PSR purposes. The club clearly adopted this strategy around Sarri's time only to break the policy for the likes of Lukaku (ugh), Koulibaly (ahhh) and Sterling (stop it he's dead already!). When FFP/PSR first came out, the opposite remained popular as transfer fee costs persist after the player is sold/loaned at a loss whereas wage costs are removed instantly. Post-Neymar, it seems this model is more popular for FFP purposes.
   
• No experienced players under any circumstances: In 2020-21 we made an exception to sign Thiago Silva on a free, but I don't think there has been such a clear and obvious signing available on the market since. Given the market over the last ~3 years, in absolute fairness to Clearlake, of the 'established' players available there is far more likelihood of another expensive Lukaku than a Thiago Silva. 

 

19 minutes ago, TheCeleryKing said:

We have a young team/squad.  The youngest team in the league. I quite like that about our current team/squad. Although i would like us to have a grown up CB and grown up GK. The rest is good.

Just an FYI - But Maresca has managed 99 professional games at 3 clubs. His 100th game as a manager will be against Wolves.

Tuchel 613
Potter 468
Lampard 206
Pochettino 653

 

AND there is our problem imho. We have a young team - the youngest team - with very little experience and very little knowledge on game management and we have a manager who also is a newbie. Any stats on who is the most inexperienced manager in the premier league?  The manager who has managed the least amount of professional football games. I would imagine Enzo is high on the list.  That will make him overly cautious at times is my guess.

 

Most inexperienced manager in the PL, slightly behind RVN

Full list (data from Wikipedia)

Edited January 20, 20251 yr by Sexyfootball

Out biggest problem has been game management. We can be totally in control of a game and playing some decent stuff, quality football, but all of a sudden we are fighting hard to get a draw.  The players are just too young to have that experience and ability to control a game. They look to the manager and he doesn't have much of it either.  Enzo the Elder is slow to make substitutions and/or change tactics and formation during a game. To be fair he is getting slightly better at it. I do see this as the reason for our 'glitch' - our run of poor results recently - we haven't played badly and yet we haven't managed to get the results.  Maybe Enzo needs a senior advisor of some sort?

4 hours ago, TheCeleryKing said:

Maybe Enzo needs a senior advisor of some sort?

This only works if its a director of football on the same page as the manager. 

I think Enzo will be as frustrated as some of us with the shenanigans going on with players coming in and out. It just cant be easy trying to develop a squad when them upstairs add/remove players on the basis of profit. the talent at the club's disposal is staggering really. 

 

6 hours ago, TheCeleryKing said:

 Maybe Enzo needs a senior advisor of some sort?

It won't make much difference. There is a surefire way to make manager better, give him better player and give him variety. 

On 17/01/2025 at 17:23, Sexyfootball said:

Watching that ... quite unbelievable that Pep let him go so easily !

 

I just thought exactly the same thing. How could a coach supposedly as good as Pep, see what Palmer was doing but let him go? Astonishing, but something we'll always be grateful for!

Edited January 20, 20251 yr by Nibs

On 17/01/2025 at 17:30, JM7 said:

With the amount of injuries we have, Wolves is a big game. Lose or draw and I reckon the team will be booed off with the atmosphere turning toxic. 

The team will feel pressure over it I am sure. And they should. Not because they need to win per say, they want to win to keep their inner adjusted targets alive for the season. 

As you hopefully all remember the team doesn't have an official target even to reach CL spot. Maresca's always told we are not ready to challenge the bigger teams fot the title as we have now seen. 

I think Maresca looks pretty relaxed because he knows where the sqaud is atm.

We create enough but don't put the chances away. With Jackson we get to all these good spots but he just cannot put the balls in the net. If he did we'd have 8-10 more points at this point. 

Hopefully we are relaxed about it and don't make any reactionary buys as we would have done in the past. 

I'm just getting tired of this newwave of managers who have a "philosophy" and refuse to ever change it. Look at Maresca, look at Postecoglu who says he won't ever change his approach, look now at Amorim who says he'll never change. It's like they design a system and then are incapable of thinking outside of it. WHatever happened to just, good managers, who adapted to what suited the players best, or what the right approach for a particular game was? 

12 hours ago, El regreso said:

 

I'd be curious to see what the stats are per club for total career games/minutes played across the squad. 

Anyone got the spare time/database for that?

55 minutes ago, PloKoon13 said:

 

I'd be curious to see what the stats are per club for total career games/minutes played across the squad. 

Anyone got the spare time/database for that?

As a starter for 10, Transfermarkt have this table :

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/jumplist/erfahrung/verein/631/wettbewerbAuswahl/GB1 

You can click the Matches numbers (via link above) and it takes you through to actual player names, minutes, goals etc etc

Edited January 20, 20251 yr by Sexyfootball

OK I had a few minutes spare, so I've compiled a table from the data referenced at link above : 

Also included the squad average age, # internationals, # overseas players., as that data was also there so thought I might as well include it 🙂 

Table sorted in reverse order of average number of minutes played in the PL per player in the squad.