I would have paid money to watch this game with a small manager cam in the top left and top right corner constantly on conte and simeone the whole time. Very few managers are more fun to watch on the touchline than those 2.
This after the DUI. I wonder if Burnley can terminate the loan and then if Chelsea have any grounds to terminate his contract. This tweet doesn’t tell the whole story. He’s got plenty of blame for repeatedly trying to take a guys girlfriend home while blackout drunk and causing problems.
People are claiming it’s signed today. I’m going to need a video of him signing it next to marina before I believe it again.
I’m hoping Reece is fit enough to start the league cup match at the end of the month. Might be too soon but hopefully he at least makes an appearance. Sucks that he got that injury over the summer. Azpi needs a break.
Chelsea u23 Match today at 2pm EST will be available as a live stream for free on the chelsea website from what I can tell. Hudson-Odoi and Reece James are expected to get minutes according to lampards press conference this morning.
Watched the u23 game. CHO played 60 minutes and you saw flashes. The talent is still there and his acceleration looked good. Still a bit rusty which is to be expected. Reece James player 45 minutes and looked more rusty than CHO. You saw the skill and the elite crossing though. He needs a bit more time. Tariq lamptey played RW first half and then went to RB when Reece went out at halftime and was phenomenal. He’s a future RB prospect that can play at a high level. Tino anjorin came on for CHO and is a big talent. I think he stayed on the bench so CHO could play with more structured midfielders but anjorin and lamptey look a step above all the other players on the pitch. He’s got some RLC to him. A big, Powerful guy who can dribble really well. Both look like guys who can make it in the future. Marc guehi the CB is also very solid. We have plenty of CBs but he will be a future premier league player.
3 at the back? I like? Willian!? I don’t like. FWIW I have a feeling that we go 3 at the back a decent amount when we have the fullbacks for it since our “wide” players all like to drift inside and operate as 10s at times anyway.
He hasn’t been at his best all year. Most of the goals have not been his fault and he hasn’t had an egregious error but a few of the goals he could have saved and didn’t. I can’t think of one good save he’s had in the league. He was incredible against Liverpool in the super cup though.
Every single premier league goal we have scored so far this season has been scored by a Chelsea youth player.
Can't add much, just amazing and exciting what the youth are doing. To think we have Reece and CHO coming back to add to the talent is super exciting. I will say though watching them perform like this is also fairly frustrating considering all the panic buys and reluctance to play any youth the last few years. I guess it all needed to happen that way for us to end with lamps and bring in the youth movement
Really feel like the transfer ban is a blessing in disguise. Not only are we ushering in the youth, well enter the next window with a defined team identity a good idea of how to spend money efficiently to improve the squad, rather than inventing an identity on the fly based on the players we brought in. It will be much easier to make 1-2 big signings rather than panic buying "best player available" all over the field. We literally needed to be put on the sidelines for a year to come up with a coherent personnel strategy. That being said, I'm probably too optimistic on that front and it will be right back to the old ways next summer.
Time to sell him to Arsenal. https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/fo...for-champions-league-with-frank-a4237436.html
good article on the youth movement from Athletic: Spoiler As he sat in the Molineux press room fielding questions about an emphatic Chelsea 5-2 victory over Wolves that was made in Cobham, Frank Lampard knew exactly who he wanted to credit. “When I’m sitting here and seeing Tammy scoring and it makes me happy going home, we should also say to Neil Bath (head of youth development), Jim Fraser (assistant head of youth development) and all the academy staff ‘Well done’,” he said. “They put the work in and then the players show it.” Lampard added that he enjoyed “a couple of pints” with Bath, Fraser, and the rest of Chelsea’s academy staff during the September international break. Given the sensational progress that Tammy Abraham, Mason Mount and Fikayo Tomori have made under his guidance in the opening weeks of this season, the new manager should probably have been drinking for free. The variety and quality of Abraham’s finishes against Wolves were a validation of all the work Lampard and his assistants have been doing to round out his game since the summer, while Mount continues to thrive in every new role he is given. Tomori’s 30-yard screamer to break the deadlock at Molineux was not in anyone’s script, but did act as a spectacular reminder that if you trust in talent, it might surprise even you. Ask people at Cobham about the effect Lampard has had on the players and staff at Chelsea’s academy, and the word that keeps coming back is “galvanised”. For the best part of a decade, those responsible for producing the club’s youth teams that dominated all over England and in Europe knew their talented teenagers were worthy of greater consideration. Now, finally, they have a man in charge of the first team who is of the same mind. Lampard spent his Friday night in Wolverhampton streaming Chelsea’s development squad game against Brighton with assistants Jody Morris and Joe Edwards, monitoring the return to action of Callum Hudson-Odoi and Reece James after significant injuries. The next morning, in the midst of the final preparations to face Wolves, he called Hudson-Odoi to talk to him about his first competitive minutes in almost five months. It is this personal touch that has helped Lampard to build the family culture he pledged to construct on his first day in charge at Cobham. On the frequent occasions when players from the development squad are invited over the road to train with the first team, he is known to shake their hand on arrival and go to great pains to ensure they are fully integrated in sessions. Such an atmosphere is a far cry from Tomas Kalas saying he was made to feel like a cone by Jose Mourinho. Many of the things that distinguish Lampard’s approach are small, and some merely a manifestation of his belief that “it’s important that the club is joined up” — but within the context of Chelsea’s long modern history of indifferent first-team managers, his genuine interest in youth is revolutionary. “We’ve had managers at Chelsea where they’d be 50 yards away, there’d be a Champions League Under-19s game going on, and the manager’s sat in his office, rather than coming out to watch,” said former Chelsea youth coach Morris in an interview with Sky Sports in October 2018, when he and Lampard were still at Derby. “It’s very disheartening.” Billy Gilmour and Marc Guehi are regular participants with the first team, and versatile left-sided player Ian Maatsen has been the latest beneficiary of Lampard’s “open door” policy with Emerson Palmieri injured. The talented 17-year-old got the occasional taste of senior training under Maurizio Sarri but, for him, as for many others, the prospect of actually being granted some minutes on the pitch seems more achievable than ever. Lampard brought Maatsen along to Wolverhampton, and while the Dutchman was not ultimately included in the match-day squad, he stands a real chance of making his senior debut in the EFL Cup third round against Grimsby next week. Sources have told The Athletic that a new long-term contract should follow, just as it did for Gilmour earlier this month. The wave of new contracts that Chelsea have agreed with their top academy prospects since Lampard’s arrival is a tangible sign of the young players’ faith in him. Mount, Gilmour, and Ruben Loftus-Cheek have already committed to new long-term deals, and long-awaited confirmation of Hudson-Odoi’s lucrative extension is getting close. Next on the agenda will be Abraham, Tomori, and James. Given the present environment it is hard to envision any of them considering alternative options. Talk of Lampard’s appointment — flanked by Morris and Edwards — prompted a flutter of excitement in Chelsea’s academy when it was first mooted in the spring, and not just because it would see the back of the disinterested and disliked Sarri. It struck many as a unique opportunity, perhaps even a now-or-never scenario for the club’s youth development pathway, in light of FIFA’s 12-month transfer ban. But what has transpired since has exceeded even their expectations. In less than three months Lampard has overseen nothing short of a youth movement unprecedented in Chelsea’s modern history, and a mass of startling statistics underline what uncharted territory the club is now in. At least three academy graduates have featured in every one of Chelsea’s five Premier League matches this season, with four starting against Wolves. The 11 goals scored by Abraham, Mount, and Tomori have already smashed the previous best tally (six in 2018-19, all scored by Loftus-Cheek) contributed by academy graduates in a single campaign since Roman Abramovich arrived in 2003. In fact, just three Cobham products — John Terry, Loftus-Cheek, and Bertrand Traore — had scored in the Premier League for Chelsea in the previous 16 seasons of the Russian’s ownership. That feat was matched in a single day at Molineux. This is the second-most minutes (960) that Chelsea have given to English players aged 21 or younger in any season of the Abramovich era, and it is the middle of September, with Hudson-Odoi and James yet to contribute. Abraham’s hat-trick also means that he has already scored more Premier League goals for the club (seven) than any Englishman in a single campaign since Lampard himself in 2012-13. Delight in the academy at what is happening is coupled with amazement. They knew the talent was there and expected Lampard to show greater trust in youth than any previous Chelsea coach, but no one anticipated the speed and scale of the first-team revolution, nor that it would pay off on the pitch so quickly and so emphatically. It is another reason why virtually everyone at Cobham, whether with the academy or the first team, feels emotionally, as well as professionally, invested in making sure Lampard succeeds at Chelsea. He was always guaranteed to begin this job with vast goodwill because of who he is, but he now commands an even greater level of loyalty from those around him because of what he is doing and the way he is doing it. The sight of an elated Abraham, match ball in hand, walking off the deserted Molineux pitch with Mount and Tomori on Saturday provided a perfect illustration of Lampard’s bold, exciting project. This is the new Chelsea, and many at Cobham have been waiting to see it for a very long time.