48 minutes ago, RMH said:

I'm amazed how kind some people remember Pochettino! He improved towards the end, mostly because he was forced to leave Enzo out of the starting eleven due to injury, but my god he was an awful coach for most of the season. Not only he served some god-awful performances on the pitch, played players out of position, spursy in the final and semifinal, but he wasn't capable of instilling any discipline and thus we saw players fighting over penalties multiple times. I was shocked by the way that he was dismissed by the board, especially given that he was picking up towards the end, but I do not wish that he was back.

Poch wasn't everyone's cup of tea and his time with us was up & down. But I would take that over the brand of football we are currently being dished up. Massive downgrade IMO.

44 minutes ago, RMH said:

I'm amazed how kind some people remember Pochettino! He improved towards the end, mostly because he was forced to leave Enzo out of the starting eleven due to injury, but my god he was an awful coach for most of the season. Not only he served some god-awful performances on the pitch, played players out of position, spursy in the final and semifinal, but he wasn't capable of instilling any discipline and thus we saw players fighting over penalties multiple times. I was shocked by the way that he was dismissed by the board, especially given that he was picking up towards the end, but I do not wish that he was back.

I'd take Poch over Maresca any day of the week on current trajectory. Didnt want him going given how we were starting to perform. Poch had us on the up and we were becoming an attacking force, and we're sinking under Maresca and playing anti-football when we started the season like a house on fire... My take is that was Poch's influence over the group and as the season has progressed we've regressed. It's awful football to watch and the players must be bored out their stupid little minds playing it.

7 minutes ago, Nibs said:

Poch wasn't everyone's cup of tea and his time with us was up & down. But I would take that over the brand of football we are currently being dished up. Massive downgrade IMO.

We can say that now, when we're absolutely playing dross, but the dross that Pochettino served us was the same level if not worse than what we're watching now. And, at the start of the season I was enjoying myself much more watching Chelsea than most of the time with Poch. Newcastle, Brighton, Aston Villa, we were playing good football. Now, I don't think Maresca is the coach to take us to the next level (nor 75% of the players are, either), but that doesn't make me miss Pochettino who was a sh*t coach for us.

37 minutes ago, RMH said:

We can say that now, when we're absolutely playing dross, but the dross that Pochettino served us was the same level if not worse than what we're watching now. And, at the start of the season I was enjoying myself much more watching Chelsea than most of the time with Poch. Newcastle, Brighton, Aston Villa, we were playing good football. Now, I don't think Maresca is the coach to take us to the next level (nor 75% of the players are, either), but that doesn't make me miss Pochettino who was a sh*t coach for us.

All about opinions but in my opinion not in a million years.

As I say, Poch was up & down but he had a lot more injuries to contend with and we get better as the season went on, with some very memorable games. Maresca started well but the football has now fallen off a cliff and is truly some of the worst football I have seen in my 50+ years of supporting CFC. He has somehow even turned Cole Palmer into an average looking footballer.

Interesting video with Matt Law on Maresca. He says a lot of what we’re thinking

7 hours ago, RMH said:

I'm amazed how kind some people remember Pochettino! He improved towards the end, mostly because he was forced to leave Enzo out of the starting eleven due to injury, but my god he was an awful coach for most of the season. Not only he served some god-awful performances on the pitch, played players out of position, spursy in the final and semifinal, but he wasn't capable of instilling any discipline and thus we saw players fighting over penalties multiple times. I was shocked by the way that he was dismissed by the board, especially given that he was picking up towards the end, but I do not wish that he was back.

It's as simple as this for me. I didn't rate Pochettino, I never wanted him as manager, I never had any problem with him leaving, but I still think he did a better job than Maresca. He had a much harder job than Maresca did, especially on the injury front and trying to create something out of the chaos the owners created. Maresca inherited a team and fanbase in better spirits, and mostly injury free too, but he's gradually sucked the life out of the team and now the fanbase are back to feeling the same way they did during Potter's time.

Maresca's football has taken us backwards and he's making our best players from last season worse. Pochettino's football had a lot of chaos ball, but he allowed the team to show off their individual talent too, especially when it came to Palmer. I feel like Maresca has taken the spark out of almost every player. Palmer has gone from a player I couldn't wait to watch play, to a player who looks like he has had the entertainment coached out of him. I don't find a single thing about our football entertaining anymore.

I think its a moot argument. Poch would of struggled as well.

Poch would of still had to deal with Lavia out for 70% of the season.

Gallagher gone.

Silva gone.

His favorite winger in Sterling gone.

Jackson yet again his only striker.

You can make the case we'd look more exciting up front but it's entirely expected we would of conceded more as well.

Poch- ex Argy international, managed quite a few clubs including Soton, Spuds, PSG got Spuds to UCL final got us to ELC final last season.

Maresca - only managed 2 clubs before, sacked by Italian Div 2 team, won EPL Championship with Leicester.

even if your not a so called elite football club chairman or board member its not an easy decision is it ?

This Poch revisionist history is killing me. Even during the winning spell in the second half of the season we played like complete sh*t most games.

I always thought Poch was slightly over emotional and got the players too emotional. However, Maresca seems to be the opposite and his teams seem devoid of any passion and grit.

12 minutes ago, JM7 said:

I always thought Poch was slightly over emotional and got the players too emotional. However, Maresca seems to be the opposite and his teams seem devoid of any passion and grit.

Amazing what can happen when you have a group of the enthusiastic young players get told that they're not good enough to challenge for trophies.

On 18/02/2025 at 06:23, KonaKai Blue said:

I dont know because whatever it is, we clearly ain't seeing it work.

That's what the players are saying to each other....

11 hours ago, RMH said:

We can say that now, when we're absolutely playing dross, but the dross that Pochettino served us was the same level if not worse than what we're watching now. And, at the start of the season I was enjoying myself much more watching Chelsea than most of the time with Poch. Newcastle, Brighton, Aston Villa, we were playing good football. Now, I don't think Maresca is the coach to take us to the next level (nor 75% of the players are, either), but that doesn't make me miss Pochettino who was a sh*t coach for us.

He never served up just 2 wins in 9. Players may have squabbled over penalties but at least they seemed to give a sh*t.

12 hours ago, RMH said:

spursy in the final and semifina

Credit to Maresca, can't be acused of bottling finals and semi's if you get dumped out in the fourth round twice.

39 minutes ago, cfr95 said:

Credit to Maresca, can't be acused of bottling finals and semi's if you get dumped out in the fourth round twice.

That's another positive he didnt even mention during post game talk 😆

Most of us had the feeling something like this would happen, again referring to the Leicester's last season. My biggest is he's not getting much out of the players, I can't say anyone has really improved this season.

14 hours ago, icecoolguy22 said:

Most of us had the feeling something like this would happen, again referring to the Leicester's last season. My biggest is he's not getting much out of the players, I can't say anyone has really improved this season.

I think there's been a knock on effect on several players since Fofana and Lavia's injury.

Colwill, Gusto, Palmer & Caicedo are now having to do more work in their absence on top of Enzo Fernandez being bloody useless in comparison to Lavia.

Poch was able to turn it around so it's in Maresca's court, but that is aside the issue. Why are we yet again betting our entire season on 2 players who are so injury prone? 2 seasons in a row.

Poch was always too "spursy" - it was never going to work out for him at Chelsea. The issue with Enzo is his inexperience and his inability to change. Enzo has poor game management skills. He HAS to change. Things are not going right. How many shots on target in our last game did we have? We need change. The best managers know how to do this. His response to our recent poor form has not been good. He still has some time. We do have the players - we have the most creative player in the league - time to use him differently? Time to change things up.

If Poch was too Spursy, then what is Maresca?

He is a lovely man by all accounts, but is he cut out to lead us back to the glory lands that everyone insists Poch couldn't?

He has until the end of the season to show us he can actually get this side playing exciting football and turn it around. If we finish outside the top four as per the club and manager's expectation then he's more Spursy than the guy he replaced. Said it at the start of the season, we needed continuity, should have kept the manager we had and now we're all sucking it up looking at players who were confident look a shodow of their former selves.

The league is wide open this season; the weakest title race it has seen in years, City fell off a cliff, Liverpool only has Salah, then choose 4 from the rest. Top four should have been ours, a title push should have been on the cards until our own manager derailed it.

Why do we have to choose between Maresca and Spursy Poch? Why keep bringing up spurs-face into the conversation? And with all the revisionism in full fledge. He served us dog sh*te, just like Maresca. But, why do I have to choose between a championship level coach and a spurs coach? Can't we just bring into the conversation someone of real quality?

2 minutes ago, RMH said:

Why do we have to choose between Maresca and Spursy Poch? Why keep bringing up spurs-face into the conversation? And with all the revisionism in full fledge. He served us dog sh*te, just like Maresca. But, why do I have to choose between a championship level coach and a spurs coach? Can't we just bring into the conversation someone of real quality?

See, I just look at results, we were top four form wise under "spurs face"... I was prepared to give the guy benefit of doubt, he certainly didnt diss the club like the fat waiter, reckon this season would have been massively different as well.

Essentially, we're now shopping in the championship for managers... KDH transfer highlights the gulf in divisions and quality. So yeah, keep hoping Ancelotti comes back to us like the godfather... Outside of that. Might as well go down to the championship with Maresca and we can win promotion wth him because I am all out of ideas as to who comes to Chelsea.

7 minutes ago, RMH said:

Why do we have to choose between Maresca and Spursy Poch? Why keep bringing up spurs-face into the conversation? And with all the revisionism in full fledge. He served us dog sh*te, just like Maresca. But, why do I have to choose between a championship level coach and a spurs coach? Can't we just bring into the conversation someone of real quality?

And because we should be challenging for the title.

The league is wide open this season; the weakest title race it has seen in years, City fell off a cliff, Liverpool only has Salah, then choose 4 from the rest. Top four should have been ours, a title push should have been on the cards until our own manager derailed it.

Lets see if the stat gurus opta have called it right? suggest one point more than last season. Great improvement if true. I'll cheer that.

1 Liverpool (87.42)

2 Arsenal (80.44)

3 Manchester City (69.47)

4 Nottingham Forest (65.64)

5 Chelsea (64.20)

Edited February 20, 20251 yr by bluetrooper

On 19/02/2025 at 18:23, Sconnie Blue said:

I think its a moot argument. Poch would of struggled as well.

Poch would of still had to deal with Lavia out for 70% of the season.

Gallagher gone.

Silva gone.

His favorite winger in Sterling gone.

Jackson yet again his only striker.

You can make the case we'd look more exciting up front but it's entirely expected we would of conceded more as well.

Poch did deal with Lavia out for 90% of the season, someone he would've loved to have in the team.

People just don't want to accept it but his football was far better than Maresca's. You don't have to love him, but it's better than the absolute sh*te we watch now.

And I don't think Poch gets a lot of credit for the player he brought in Cole Palmer, Palmer hasn't looked that good in a while now. You're telling me he wouldn't have enjoyed options like Sancho and Neto to mix it up? I doubt that. We should've gave him another season or at the very least hired a better manager who would've actually wanted his team to not walk the ball into the box.

Lots of bad moments last season, but I always had confidence we can score goals, now, I'm not sure. We don't create as much chances like we used to. We should be improving this season, not going backwards. Maresca is taking us backwards and some on here can't deal with that. It's all fine rubbing it in our faces when the team was high flying, and I was more than happy to admit I was wrong about Maresca but there's still plenty of time to not get head of ourselves here. Yet... It's got even worse than I thought it would, I'm very confident he's going to get the sack very soon because this isn't going to change and we have hard games coming up.

6 minutes ago, Victor90 said:

Poch did deal with Lavia out for 90% of the season, someone he would've loved to have in the team.

People just don't want to accept it but his football was far better than Maresca's. You don't have to love him, but it's better than the absolute sh*te we watch now.

And I don't think Poch gets a lot of credit for the player he brought in Cole Palmer, Palmer hasn't looked that good in a while now. You're telling me he wouldn't have enjoyed options like Sancho and Neto to mix it up? I doubt that. We should've gave him another season or at the very least hired a better manager who would've actually wanted his team to not walk the ball into the box.

Lots of bad moments last season, but I always had confidence we can score goals, now, I'm not sure. We don't create as much chances like we used to. We should be improving this season, not going backwards. Maresca is taking us backwards and some on here can't deal with that. It's all fine rubbing it in our faces when the team was high flying, and I was more than happy to admit I was wrong about Maresca but there's still plenty of time to not get head of ourselves here. Yet... It's got even worse than I thought it would, I'm very confident he's going to get the sack very soon because this isn't going to change and we have hard games coming up.

Compaing apples to apples.

It's all well and fine saying Poch would of gotten better from our attack in comparison to Maresca, but the elephant in the room is the midfield and defence. Poch's weakest areas. We already had the worst defence in our Premier League history, with Tosin being a downgrade on Silva despite the latter's age. Our midfield was catestrophic under Poch. With Lavia being out the majority of the season on top of Poch losing arguably his most important player in Gallagher. That's two midfielder aggressors gone.

Bar this last game agaist Brighton, we haven't been ruthlessly outplayed by anyone in the league this season. In contrast to last season where trips to Anfield and Old Trafford we should of lost by 5 goals each game.

So Top 4 is a priority now 😂

Ownership reacting to the fan outrage.

20 minutes ago, Sconnie Blue said:

So Top 4 is a priority now 😂

Ownership reacting to the fan outrage.

And now looking even more idiotic LOL

P45 for whoever writes the PR script !