As it was so eloquently presented on twitter. Roman wants beautiful attacking football but wants to keep hiring defensive coaches and then gets pissed when we arent putting goals in. Need to decide what we want to be. Stick with it and provide the players to make it work.
It is ok to want beautiful, attacking football but you can't win with it unless you outspend everyone. Man city can do it because they literally have 2 players worth at least £30m at every position except maybe fullback. Chelsea realistically have 2 top 4 defenders let alone real backups. Conte wanted to play an attacking 4-2-4. Not his fault that the defense he inherited is such shit that he had to switch to a 4-3-3 and use Kante as a shield to protect out shitty defense if we want any chance of top 4.
Looks like 4-4-2 with RLC as an off striker. Obviously kante plays in this formation in a premier league game but I think it will be interesting to see how this defense works with the formation. Sadly with zouma out this is our most athletic defensive 4
Chalobah makes his Chelsea debut 2,190 days after being named on the bench for the first time. Holy fucking shit
Who would you like to see start against arsenal? This is who i want. I will assume terry is out but put terry in instead of Cahill if he is fit GK courtois RB Azpi CB Cahill CB Luis LB Alonso DM kante CM matic CM cesc RW Moses ST costa LW hazard Alonso is still untested but Ivanovic is proven to suck. Would rather the unknown. Cesc over Oscar would be a big call but cesc has played well against arsenal and Oscar is starting to look content and lazy like he always does if he starts 5 games in a row and isn't being pushed. I don't think Willian has been bad but Moses is a more natural winger which can help with spacing. I expect Willian to start but I think Moses deserves his shot now or very soon.
We need to get Zouma to that Romanian lady that rubs goat placenta on injured limbs, we need that m'fer in the team.
After we give up a goal we should just foul for 3 straight minutes so we can spend some time getting our heads out of our asses.
The Liverpool game was bad, but this is terrifyingly bad. Our press is comical, we're just watching them. Being outclassed in every aspect. Somebody needs to fucking do Cahill in like Ole Yeller, he looks like he's gonna concede every time he's allowed to have the ball at his feet for a few seconds.
Sir Alex with 5 champions league winning managers as assistants couldn't win with the league with this defense. Doesn't matter how much we pay for these players they suck
They can fire another manager but the bottom line is 3 managers in a row said our defense sucks eventually they will blame the players. I like to think after mourinho they would think like that if there were issues this quick
It has to be true. I can't imagine he is going to keep trotting them out after what's transpired so far.
After watching mourinho and now conte, 2 of what I would say the top 5 defensive minded coaches in the world, continue to play these guys I am not so sure it is there decision. I really wonder if roman and the board is saying certain players have to play. Ola Aina can't be worse than Ivanovic. Heck tomori can't be worse than Cahill. These guys are historically bad for a bottom of the table side. A lot of people blamed mourinho (and I won't pretend he has no blame) but the awful players on defense making awful plays and sucking the life out of the fans and the attacking players are what has Chelsea in this tailspin. If it was up to the board the only defensive move they wanted to make was to let John terry go and move forward with Cahill and Ivanovic leading the unit with little depth behind them.
Can't argue any of that. Especially with our complete failure to address the issue other than a mistake panic buy of Luiz. But I just don't see Conte letting Cahill/Ivanovic risk his job and success 1st year given his attitude
Article from the daily mail talking about andreas Christensen and I agree 100%. They are also floating that we will have a wholesale clear out on defense which I am much more skeptical about but I really think Christensen and zouma is the answer at CB. No reason to spend big on someone like keane from burnley when we have 2 CBs who are younger and better. If roman finally believes in the problem we can fix it next summer and transform like we did in mourinho's second season but I'm starting to doubt we can make champions league. 8th place and all of our wins have been late heroics. Some are blaming kante but there is only so much he can do. I would like to see chalobah play with him. Kante is better moving upfield than he gets credit so get someone to share defensively with him. Luiz has been shit but it takes an elite defender not to look like shit when Ivanovic and Cahill are in defense. If Alonso can be average I will be interested to see luiz play with terry. Hopefully that becomes an improvement. If it isn't, then luiz needs to be transitioned into midfield where his skills can shine without his faults being devestatingly exposed. Left back to me is the perfect example of the new Chelsea. Azpi is the starter and we are offered the best young LB in football in Luke Shaw. English and future LB of the national team who grew up a Chelsea fan. We scoff at the price being outrageous (which it was but still) and sign Felipe Luis. Sell Luis back at a bit of a loss and buy Rahman. He sucks so loan him and buy Alonso. Now we have an average 25 year old LB and a loaned out 22 year old LB who both mourinho and conte don't like instead of Luke Shaw and still trot out a right footed LB most games. That is the epitome of Chelsea trying to be cheap and instead spending more on continually replacing average instead of just fixing problems the right way
I need to stop reading the British papers. They are now saying the kante was conte's only signing. 10th place finish and we get a new coach and give him one fucking player he asks for before wasting £55m on signing day. Chelsea had a great youth policy signing promising players but they sold them all cheap and now just buy shitty players. At least we know Chelsea aren't taking bribes because we willingly sign whatever players agents want us to
I'm glad we made the panic buy, the situation was dangerous with the little depth we had at CB. De Laurentiis made us look like fools, and we paid the price. It became clear we weren't getting KK, Maksimovic would've been a decent second option, but oh wait Napoli signed him while they strung us along. We'd definitely be up shit creek right now if we had only signed Alonso, I fucking reel in horror thinking about an Iva/Cahill CB pairing. Plus, despite his occasional bouts of cataclysmic mental weakness, I still have a soft spot for the Geezer.
Saw on twitter that the last Chelsea manager to drop Ivanovic (injury aside) for a PL game was AVB!? That can't be right is it? Hope conte makes the brave call and drops him and then Cahill once terry comes back. Been saying it for months but give me aina over Ivanovic. I hope roman cares more about potentially being in the champions league next year then he does his friendship with Ivanovic.
Ivanovic, Oscar and cesc all dropped! Looks like a 4-4-2 with hazard playing as an off striker. Moses comes in to play wing with Willian. Officially VERY excited for the game now
So what does everyone think of the 3-4-3? Obviously hull isn't good. I don't think we really looked comfortable in the formation. I think playing that formation requires a truly dominant CM to play alongside kante. Someone like kroos (not saying we get him just an example of that type of player). Will be interesting to see if this formation was a one off of we use it moving forward. Alonso at £25m is laughable but he looks very comfortable as a defensive winger. Not really comfortable with the team but he understood his role and I expect him to lock down that position if we continue to play 3-4-3. Azpi played RCB today but I think he could be play in the RM in this formation against a better team when the RM isn't spending as much time in the oppositions have of the field. Moses needs to play though. Been saying it the last 2 preseasons. He is a very good player when he has talent around him. Willian was very wasteful but made up it with the great goal. The 3-4-3 seemed to take some of the defensive responsibility away from hazard which seemed to really work for him. I expect terry in the middle of Azpi and luiz against weaker teams and Cahill over Azpi with Azpi in the RM role against stronger teams. Will be interested to see if we keep the formation.
Rumors that roman and conte had a sitdown and roman finally believes it is the players and not the coaches. Saying he will sanction a £60m bid for Leonardo bonucci. Even at that price I am not sure why juve would sell him. He is 29 years old but would be worth every penny to us. If conte wants to play 3 at the back he could use bonucci in the middle with terry and then zouma/luiz and next year add Christensen to the mix. I also think getting a truly elite CB who isn't on his last leg like terry will open up kante a bit and make the whole team better. Telegraph saying we go after him in January. I doubt we get a player like that in the winter window. He also has a 2 year old son who is very ill and he doesn't want to uproot his family while his son is ill (very understandable) so I think any move would rely on his son getting better and bonucci feeling comfortable moving to London. They said rival managers and agents are getting the sense chelsea will be spending very big though so hopefully they are right.