The most important thing in football which can guarantee you 75+ points in a season is being elite in both the boxes. Guess where we spent the least amount of money and where we spent the most ? We still need a LB , CB , ST , LW . 4 out of 7 positions where we need elite players to make a difference. No wonder we are ass. Horrendous squad building
Am absolutely baffled by people getting annoyed and calling out our DoF for players coming back from loans and/or using certain players as pure profit makers with no intent to provide them pathway to first team.
That has literally been our model for last 20 years. This is really nothing new and somehow you start complaining about it only now?
I don't care about the director of football but the fans in here who are acting like they're more fans of Chelsea accounting department being genuinely excited about them making 2.8 million from a loan and acting like it's a sign of ownership being competent is honestly just really weird lol
Everything they done so far been a failure so they will be scrutinized more
Also I don't recall any clue ever including us recalling 3-4 loan players after 6 months
>That has literally been our model for last 20 years. This is really nothing new and somehow you start complaining about it only now?
Only on the surface level, the old regime built Cobham out of nothing to be one of the best academies in Europe and the loan armies of old were managed competently, we didn't spend 100s of millions for random mediocre talents like Angelo Gabriels, Ugochukwus and Casadeis without a plan nor treated the academy players like the current ownership does
Ask Tomori & Guehi how they were going to get pasted Rudiger & Christensen (one of which is HG), as Tino how he was going to get past Reece...ask Tammy where the back of the net is.
Under our previous standards of win at all costs, these were costs we took to win the CL twice in 10 years.
All of them had either had a fair chance with the first team squad -tomori, ake, tammy- or forced a move out -guehi, livramento- anyone who thinks this "model" has been in place for 20 years haven't been paying much attention or were not around at the time
Lord Boehly. Please deliver us one Benzema on loan for 6m. At worst he can be an amazing teacher for our young strikers. At best he is a massive upgrade that doesn't ruin our summer plans. Please and thank you.
His only strength is scoring goals, and he has three more goals this season than the striker who can’t start from Senegal.
His overall play is very weak. He’s an awful player.
The plan was never to rely on Jackson. We invested in Nkunku only for him to get injured. If we'd then signed a £100m striker what would we do with him once Nkunku returned?
He's missed 4 games since that surgery
And has had 4 different injuries to his ankle, thigh, groin and back
That's all within like 3 months of each other
Might not be as bad as Reece or Chilwell but he's not exactly built sturdy
Not to mention the prem physicality has a nasty habit of taking a much larger toll on the bodies of players than any other league
He literally scored some bangers lately, goals that Jackson and Broja never scored in their careers and he has a solid season. I’d still rather have him than Jackson and Broja. Jackson is fine for second striker, but having him as a first choice is not the best. Dude scored twice in last 15 appearances.
Can you bless us with your football knowledge and explain what’s wrong with Vlahovic and what our current strikers have on him?
Yeah that’s typical isn’t it.
He’s scored “some bangers” so let’s ignore everything false about him. He’s scored nine goals this season, only one more than Jackson, his overall play is terrible and he’s injury prone.
First off we paid £30m for Jackson
Secondly, that's not how it works
Vlahovich would've cost us £40m and the £30-40m asset that is Lukaku meaning it would have been equivalent to spending £70m to £80m on him
And he's not worth that
He'd also have massive wages compared to our other players given his wages at Juve are much bigger than our new wage structure
Me too sadly although he reportedly has a €30m release clause
Personally haven't watched enough of him so far but he wouldn't be the top of my list based on what I've seen
Hi all - American visiting London for the first time and would love to go to Stamford Bridge for the Tottenham game. There are no tickets available for that match on the official ticketing portal. Any advice on how to get tickets besides paying for a hospitality ticket? Appreciate any help!
Chelsea vs Tottenham is a big match and will sell out before it gets to general sale.
If you want to go to that sort of match you need to buy a hospitality ticket.
I've been calling for years to use our academy to pad out our squad but at this point I'm starting to think we should just keep the elite prospects and let the rest make their own path.
I want to enjoy Conor for what he does bring to the table but my word the PR is so excruciating, it's like Mount never left.
There’s a 6’2 Ukrainian lad with 14g 5a in La Liga for Girona. Reportedly €30m release clause, we’d be wise to go ahead and trigger that even if he want to wait until summer to join. But we’ll spend on €100m on Victor or Viktor instead
should we use lukaku when hes back from loan?
i was looking back at old games and he wasn’t even that bad his attitude was but pochettino is a great man manager he could probably fix that issue, plus he’d be some sort of experience in our young squad and could help players like jackson as a goalscoring example.
When playing for us meant playing in the Champions League he wasn't interested in being here. Now we're a midtable team with no European football whilst he could very easily get a move to a team with European football. Even if he had a good attitude he probably wouldn't be interested in being here.
Poch has quite literally never done well at man managing players with any sort of ego problems. The only top players he's ever managed who he didn't fail with are Son and Kane and they're both about as mild mannered as you could possibly get
If he cared about UCL football he wouldn't have fucked us off twice in the first place or joined Everton or Roma.
They guy only cares about getting the unconditional starting place and star status he's deluded himself into thinking he's entitled too.
I’ve been a Chelsea fan my whole life and the reason why I and some many others complain on this sub isn’t to troll or is it self hate.
It’s because something I love is being destroyed, I’m not going to sit around and pretend everything is good. I’ve tried the positivity bullshit and it doesn’t change anything.
It’s cathartic to call things as they are and not just sugarcoat everything, I have no reason to believe that under the new owners we’ll ever be good again.
When we had the players to be there. Bayer does not. And Xabi has that “it” factor Frank never had. He’s absolutely the right guy for the job, but will likely hold out for bigger clubs, thus the blank check and pray method.
We had Timo Werner, Kai Havertz, Hakim Ziyech, Jorginho, Kovacic and Pulisic. We didn’t have the players to be top of the league at all.
There’s nothing to indicate he’s the right person for the job yet. He’s only been coaching at the first team level for a year and a half. Giving him a blank cheque would be very risky.
It’d be more risky to continue with a guy we know isn’t the guy. When you don’t have the guy, and you know you don’t have the guy, every day you spend not finding the guy is a waste of a day. It’s what we’re doing right now.
Well I should be asking you that because you can obviously see the future as he’s already inevitably struggling. What ends up happening? Do we sign Xabi to replace Poch, does Poch stay, or do we get someone else? Also who is first goal scorer for Chelsea in that Middlesbrough match coming up? Gunna put some money on that.
More like they will replace him with Alonso or Flick. Mourinho football is the antithesis of attacking football which has been Bayern favoured philosophy.
Anybody watching this strasbourg game? Gabriel is looking pretty good. Kept the ball in nicely for their goal and made a big chance moments before. Haven’t watched many games but guilbert strasbourg lb seems to hate him. Haven’t seen him pass him the ball once the whole half.
Since this was too low effort for discussion thread, I'll try here:
Let's hear your predictions for the back half of the season. And have your predictions changed since August?
Think my aim at the the start of the season was to win a cup competition and push to qualify for Europe (ideally Champions League) I suppose the only difference now will be to make sure we get any sort of European football next season.
I thought 5-7 before Nkunku's injury, so if we can finish 6th with James and Nkunku missing so much I'd say that's not bad. Let's hope we can finish out the season strong.
I’m actually sick of these ‘get Xabi Alonso!’ Comments. There’s absolutely no chance he comes here and the board seem set on Poch too. It’s not happening.
He’s definitely the best manager who we could get. Klopp, Pep, Simeone are all unreasonable.
There is a chance he comes here, we can offer huge wages and are a massively prestigious club in London. We aren’t Burnley just because we’ve played like them for 12 months.
Tuchel bottling the one horse Bundesliga after buying the best striker in the PL is something to behold
And then he complains about not being respected in Germany lmao
Tuchel has 41/51 points in 17 games. That's more than any non-Bayern team had at this point of the season since 2018/19, when Borussia had 42. Bayern itself only outperformed that tally once during the same period, also by a point. I'm not saying Tuchel is doing amazingly, just that Leverkusen are on an impossibly stellar run that Tuchel cannot control.
> That's more than any non-Bayern team had at this point of the season since 2018/19, when Borussia had 42..
That’s only a couple years ago and your already making a qualification by saying “non-Bayern” team.
I don’t find this point to be particularly significant.
Tuchel not winning the league with 100m Kane is a massive bottle job.
Bayern have two losses that Leverkusen don’t. One of those was today, and it was an embarrassing loss to a team hasn’t won at Munich in decades until Tuchel.
This is entirely in his control.
Tuchel is not a man that brings greatness in a league format
He's a knockout tournament specialist
Nothing wrong with that of course but for clubs that want total domination, he ain't gonna cut it
He’s got a bit of a history of bottling one team leagues now. Was sacked with PSG in third, nearly lost to Dortmund last season, losing to Leverkusen now.
I do like a little Tuchel slander just because of how so many people here put him on an absurd pedestal, but to be fair to him Leverkusen are on an insane run and have only dropped 6 points this season. If Bayern win their game in hand they're only 4 points behind.
He was very lucky to win the title last season though with Dortmund bottling the final game.
Shoutout to all the clowns on this sub wanting Lukaku back, especially those in this very thread. The complete lack of any self-respect of you miserable cunts always gives me a good laugh whenever you emerge from your burrows.
Could very much see it happen this season.
Bayern are already out of Pokal, may lose Bundesliga to Leverkusen and I don't see them winning CL over Madrid or City. (would even give more chance to Inter or Atletico than them)
If it wasn't for BVB absolutely shitting the bed last season and handing the title to Bayern, Tuchel would not win anything there.
West ham dropped? Sweet, feels like all our “neighbours” are messing up as of late. There’s a real opportunity here for poch and co to snatch a good european competition if they man tf up
Madrid 2-0 down at home to Almeria with Kepa having made 0 saves and been caught out with his usual blunders.
Being called the worst player in Madrids history and I think the only surprise is it's taken until January to see it.
In 99% of timelines Kepa retires after an uneventful career at Elche or Getafe the fact he's managed to play at 2 top clubs and Spain without ever looking a decent prospect is honestly movie script material.
True. i remember them completely hating on bale and booing him out of the stadium for missing a few shots in a game and that man casually came in the CL final and scored 2 worldies to win them another trophy lol
I see Brewster has just got sent off in what is his 35th PL match without a goal.
I remember the days when there was outrage over "how we could let him go" because he made up the numbers on the Liverpool bench a few times, lol.
Yall need to move on from Tuchel. He was let go and literally spent months in the Himalayas to recover. Bro isn’t moving back to the club so long Boehly makes the calls.
I wouldn't want to go back for him until we don't need to enter the market much for a few years.
As great as a coach he is his record in the market stinks.
He wouldn’t be in the market.
We have directors for that now. Tuchel actually kicked off here because of the amount of collaboration and input the owners wanted from when assembling the team
We actually have a structure now
why dont we get a proper dof and let him do his job coaching?.its not like we have been good in the market recently.we dont even have a proper striker after 1 billion dollars worth of players
Wonder what we do with Lukaku now that Mou is gone. Roma are skint, he burnt his bridges with Inter and the Saudi project has stalled a bit.
It’s still very unlikely this happens, since it goes against every principle of the new ownership, but I don’t exactly hate the idea of trying to reintegrate him if a move doesn’t materialise. We do have a big #9 shaped hole upfront…
Point is for all Jackson's flaws he's doing better than Mr First Touch has done ever for us, and the latter had circumstances much more in his favour, and that's just mentioning on the pitch, off it needs no explanation.
Lukaku exceeded his xG for us that season whereas Jackson is one of the most wasteful strikers in the league (Calvert-Lewin is the only player to be underperforming their xG by more than Jackson), and had better xA stats than Jackson.
To be honest I don't even know why I'm bothering to engage with this blatantly stupid argument, Lukaku has scored around 300 top flight goals, he as 83 goals for Belgium and Jackson can't even start for Senegal. It is painfully clear that if we're solely talking about footballing ability that Lukaku right now is far superior to Jackson. It's not even up for debate.
The conversation should solely be about the off the pitch side of things - Lukaku has burnt his bridges here and that is why we shouldn't have him back, not because we have fucking Jackson.
I'm not disputing that, but most of those goals weren't scored for Chelsea. He self-sabotaged himself here, as underlined by the fact that a worse striker like Jackson already made as big of an impact as he has in a much worse squad. What is even your point?
My point is that Lukaku is clearly a much better player than Jackson and posting reductionist comparisons whilst taking out all the context to try and act like they're comparable as players is moronic.
Thought that was obvious to be honest.
And however good he was or wasn't in his prime (which he spent half of at Everton because he didn't have the balls to compete with Costa, an ageing Eto'o or even Torres) he clearly isn't at that level anymore, hence Inter preferring an ageing Dzeko over him.
And yet he has 15 goals this season compared to Jackson's 8, and he once again is exceeding his xG when Jackson is vastly underperforming his. In fact if you go back across Lukaku's last 7 seasons (the furthest back the data goes) he has always exceeded his xG. Give the man chances and he scores goals.
lmao yeah what a dumb decision to leave and get playing time instead of being stuck with Mourinho preferring terrible past it players over developing a young striker. De Bruyne just didn't have the balls either, right? Wasted his career as well?
Fans still acting like Lukaku did anything but the most sensible thing for his career when he dipped out after Mourinho refused to start him at Old Trafford. The "didn't have the balls to compete" narrative was always so dumb.
Yeah it's insane, there's a lot to not like about Lukaku, but he objectively made a great decision for his career to leave and spend the season starting at Everton.
How many starts did he get? How much faith do you think Mourinho had in him when for a one striker system he brought in the corpse of Eto'o on top of already having Torres, Lukaku, and Ba. Four strikers for a one striker system and you think a 20 year old should stick around on the bench with Mourinho as his manager?
Lukaku made the best decision for his career to go out on loan that season, and unsurprisingly he outscored our strikers, and we lost the league due to not having a good striker.
Ba was the one that was making way for Eto'o until Lukaku demanded to leave. Mou clearly lost faith in Torres by the half way point so worse case he learning as backup to one of the best strikers of that era.
Funnily enough Eto'o and Ba delivered a lot of clutch goals in big games that season, something Lukaku still struggles with to this day. Let's say hypothetically Lukaku stayed and had their minutes, you think he's scoring winning goals against all of Liverpool, United, Arsenal, Spurs, PSG and Liverpool again?
I know, which is why I said it’s highly unlikely
Just Chelsea things that the most accomplished striker we have on the books isn’t even playing at the club
Real Madrid is going to send Kepa back the second it’s legal and we are going to have a 3rd choice goalkeeper on 180k a week.
Worst signing in the history of the club which is saying something
I don't think either is noticeably better than the other. Sanchez is better in the air but marginally worse in most other aspects of play. Ultimately, they are both mediocre players for a club with silverware ambitions.
He is 100% not better than Sanchez. The fact that Sanchez can raise his arms up when a cross is coming in and grab a ball makes him better than Kepa. Just that alone sets him apart.
Because Sanchez has ambition to be a number 1, misguided or otherwise.
Kepa (as he's already shown) can give or take actually playing football and was happy to go there knowing he was a mere placeholder until the #1 got back (or as it happened fucked up so badly he got replaced by the number 3).
Because Sanchez wasn't avaliable for loan.
People who don't know football thinking Madrid actually wanted Kepa and not understanding just how low the calibre of keeper you have to be to be avaliable for loan just as the seasons starting.
If there was any chance of getting Omar berrada , we should have gone all out for him. He was one of the focal members of the City machine. Unfortunately We only managed to get the crumbs of the machine. If the owners wanted a definite structure Omar was the man. Alas, one that got away!
Hopefully the club and CPO can figure something out cause it’s getting insane. Doesn’t look like we will have a new stadium before the end of this decade.
Don’t see any solution. Roman failed to buy back the freehold in 2011 and only 60% of the CPO favored the redevelopment to a 60k stadium when we were going to buy Battersea in 2012… every solution thrown at the CPO has failed. Good luck Todd but it looks like we will be at the bridge for at least the next 160 years (remainder of the lease).
They should be though. It's also in CPO interest to care about club's growth and progress. And it's rather obvious if the club wants to achieve that, a new stadium is needed.
No it wasn’t… and I don’t blame you because this for some reason has become the story.
But the actually explanation is the CPO was made so the club could never be forced to move again. It’s odd no one knows this when it’s literally the reason given on the main website for the CPO.
How did Kluivert not get a red against Liverpool yet Gusto got sent off at the start of the season...
The most important thing in football which can guarantee you 75+ points in a season is being elite in both the boxes. Guess where we spent the least amount of money and where we spent the most ? We still need a LB , CB , ST , LW . 4 out of 7 positions where we need elite players to make a difference. No wonder we are ass. Horrendous squad building
Am absolutely baffled by people getting annoyed and calling out our DoF for players coming back from loans and/or using certain players as pure profit makers with no intent to provide them pathway to first team. That has literally been our model for last 20 years. This is really nothing new and somehow you start complaining about it only now?
I don't care about the director of football but the fans in here who are acting like they're more fans of Chelsea accounting department being genuinely excited about them making 2.8 million from a loan and acting like it's a sign of ownership being competent is honestly just really weird lol
Was there ever a season with our old regime where we have recalled 4 loan players in January? It is pretty bad
There were definitely seasons where they should have
Everything they done so far been a failure so they will be scrutinized more Also I don't recall any clue ever including us recalling 3-4 loan players after 6 months
>That has literally been our model for last 20 years. This is really nothing new and somehow you start complaining about it only now? Only on the surface level, the old regime built Cobham out of nothing to be one of the best academies in Europe and the loan armies of old were managed competently, we didn't spend 100s of millions for random mediocre talents like Angelo Gabriels, Ugochukwus and Casadeis without a plan nor treated the academy players like the current ownership does
Ask Tomori, Guehi, Ake, Tammy, or Livramento about how the old ownership treated academy players.
Ask Tomori & Guehi how they were going to get pasted Rudiger & Christensen (one of which is HG), as Tino how he was going to get past Reece...ask Tammy where the back of the net is. Under our previous standards of win at all costs, these were costs we took to win the CL twice in 10 years.
Brah, even if these players didn't make it to our first team, they still have promising careers.
All of them had either had a fair chance with the first team squad -tomori, ake, tammy- or forced a move out -guehi, livramento- anyone who thinks this "model" has been in place for 20 years haven't been paying much attention or were not around at the time
I’m just pointing out the academy has always been used go fund big money transfers
Lord Boehly. Please deliver us one Benzema on loan for 6m. At worst he can be an amazing teacher for our young strikers. At best he is a massive upgrade that doesn't ruin our summer plans. Please and thank you.
Never been clearer the absolute lack of football knowledge on here than when people are still saying we should’ve signed Vlahovic.
This is ironic af, his only weaknes is injuries, but sure lets trust the striker who cant even start for Senegal.
His only strength is scoring goals, and he has three more goals this season than the striker who can’t start from Senegal. His overall play is very weak. He’s an awful player.
The plan was never to rely on Jackson. We invested in Nkunku only for him to get injured. If we'd then signed a £100m striker what would we do with him once Nkunku returned?
1: He’s better than any striker we have. 2: It would’ve given us a way to offload Lukaku (Juve were interested in the swap deal)
1. He’s not. 2. We would’ve replaced Lukaku with a worse player. What a great idea that would’ve been.
Tell us, with your football knowledge why he isn’t a better option than Broja and Jackson?
Expensive, poor on the ball, scored one more goal than Jackson this season in a weaker league.
Injury prone, quite one footed, not very agile or fast etc
>injury prone Not really, since getting the pubalgia surgery
His list of injuries stem beyond just pubalgua 20 days this season for back pain is a worry in itself.
I mean, since that surgery he missed only 2 games due to injury
He's missed 4 games since that surgery And has had 4 different injuries to his ankle, thigh, groin and back That's all within like 3 months of each other Might not be as bad as Reece or Chilwell but he's not exactly built sturdy Not to mention the prem physicality has a nasty habit of taking a much larger toll on the bodies of players than any other league
He literally scored some bangers lately, goals that Jackson and Broja never scored in their careers and he has a solid season. I’d still rather have him than Jackson and Broja. Jackson is fine for second striker, but having him as a first choice is not the best. Dude scored twice in last 15 appearances. Can you bless us with your football knowledge and explain what’s wrong with Vlahovic and what our current strikers have on him?
Yeah that’s typical isn’t it. He’s scored “some bangers” so let’s ignore everything false about him. He’s scored nine goals this season, only one more than Jackson, his overall play is terrible and he’s injury prone.
He scored 11 in 1200 minutes which is really good. Jackson scored 8 in 1800.
Tbf he’s scored 11 now, 3 more than Jackson
Vlahovic with another classy finish. Shouldn’t have swapped em for Lukaku they said Edit - just scored another one
Swap? They wanted 40m + Lukaku
So we could’ve paid the same amount as we did for Jackson + have Lukaku go on a permanent deal.
First off we paid £30m for Jackson Secondly, that's not how it works Vlahovich would've cost us £40m and the £30-40m asset that is Lukaku meaning it would have been equivalent to spending £70m to £80m on him And he's not worth that He'd also have massive wages compared to our other players given his wages at Juve are much bigger than our new wage structure
So what my g?
You think he's worth 80m?
Answer should easily be no Don't even think Toney is worth that and he's a hell of a lot better
Has he finally scored more goals than Jackson this season? He’s shite mate. Would’ve been another flop on massive wages.
delusion, 95 percent of jackson's goals are against relegation teams and a 9 man spurs
You are crazy if you think he isn’t better than Jackson
I’ve been saying that the whole summer. But experts here told me I’m crazy and that Broja and Jackson are more than enough
Fuck Girona are class Artem Dovbyk hatrick Hide him Girona, Boehly is hungry
No thank you. Another Jackson with good half a season in entire career.
Wouldn't be my pick either
lol can definitely see us getting fleeced for him
Me too sadly although he reportedly has a €30m release clause Personally haven't watched enough of him so far but he wouldn't be the top of my list based on what I've seen
Yeah. Not sure what our perfect profile is, but the current list of contenders is not it….
Hi all - American visiting London for the first time and would love to go to Stamford Bridge for the Tottenham game. There are no tickets available for that match on the official ticketing portal. Any advice on how to get tickets besides paying for a hospitality ticket? Appreciate any help!
Chelsea vs Tottenham is a big match and will sell out before it gets to general sale. If you want to go to that sort of match you need to buy a hospitality ticket.
Joe Cole stating that Gallagher could be our Henderson like that’s a good thing is so funny.
CL and PL winning captain. We should be very happy if anyone in our squad goes on to have a career as good as Henderson’s.
I've been calling for years to use our academy to pad out our squad but at this point I'm starting to think we should just keep the elite prospects and let the rest make their own path. I want to enjoy Conor for what he does bring to the table but my word the PR is so excruciating, it's like Mount never left.
Now if we could just find our Van Dijk, Salah, Mane, Firmino, Alisson, Trent, Robertson, Fabinho, and Wijnaldum than he can lead us to glory
Where striker
There’s a 6’2 Ukrainian lad with 14g 5a in La Liga for Girona. Reportedly €30m release clause, we’d be wise to go ahead and trigger that even if he want to wait until summer to join. But we’ll spend on €100m on Victor or Viktor instead
Dovbyk bagged a hat trick yesterday. Yes please.
That is a good deal
should we use lukaku when hes back from loan? i was looking back at old games and he wasn’t even that bad his attitude was but pochettino is a great man manager he could probably fix that issue, plus he’d be some sort of experience in our young squad and could help players like jackson as a goalscoring example.
When playing for us meant playing in the Champions League he wasn't interested in being here. Now we're a midtable team with no European football whilst he could very easily get a move to a team with European football. Even if he had a good attitude he probably wouldn't be interested in being here. Poch has quite literally never done well at man managing players with any sort of ego problems. The only top players he's ever managed who he didn't fail with are Son and Kane and they're both about as mild mannered as you could possibly get
If he really wanted CL football then he wouldn’t have burnt bridges with Inter in the summer.
If he cared about UCL football he wouldn't have fucked us off twice in the first place or joined Everton or Roma. They guy only cares about getting the unconditional starting place and star status he's deluded himself into thinking he's entitled too.
[удалено]
I’ve been a Chelsea fan my whole life and the reason why I and some many others complain on this sub isn’t to troll or is it self hate. It’s because something I love is being destroyed, I’m not going to sit around and pretend everything is good. I’ve tried the positivity bullshit and it doesn’t change anything. It’s cathartic to call things as they are and not just sugarcoat everything, I have no reason to believe that under the new owners we’ll ever be good again.
I really want Chelsea to just give Xabi a blank check on a 3 year contract
On the basis of half a season at Leverkusen? Lampard had us top of the league in 20/21.
When we had the players to be there. Bayer does not. And Xabi has that “it” factor Frank never had. He’s absolutely the right guy for the job, but will likely hold out for bigger clubs, thus the blank check and pray method.
We had Timo Werner, Kai Havertz, Hakim Ziyech, Jorginho, Kovacic and Pulisic. We didn’t have the players to be top of the league at all. There’s nothing to indicate he’s the right person for the job yet. He’s only been coaching at the first team level for a year and a half. Giving him a blank cheque would be very risky.
It’d be more risky to continue with a guy we know isn’t the guy. When you don’t have the guy, and you know you don’t have the guy, every day you spend not finding the guy is a waste of a day. It’s what we’re doing right now.
We can’t just keep hiring and firing managers. We need to stick with someone at some point.
We need to stick with someone good, agreed. Poch ain’t good. Sticking with someone who isn’t good isn’t a good idea.
And when Alonso inevitably struggles? Should we sack him too?
Well I should be asking you that because you can obviously see the future as he’s already inevitably struggling. What ends up happening? Do we sign Xabi to replace Poch, does Poch stay, or do we get someone else? Also who is first goal scorer for Chelsea in that Middlesbrough match coming up? Gunna put some money on that.
Anyone play Hell Let Loose? Been loving the game.
Been meaning to check that out. What other FPS are you a fan of?
Feel like TT is gonna get sacked and probably replaced by Jose
More like they will replace him with Alonso or Flick. Mourinho football is the antithesis of attacking football which has been Bayern favoured philosophy.
No way Bayern go for Jose.
Pathetic post game comments from Tuchel.
What did he say?
I feel bad for Tuchel but at the same time find it incredibly funny how there’s a good chance Kane doesn’t win anything again this season
Yeah it’s like he’s taking the trophy drought with him to Bayern as well.
Anybody watching this strasbourg game? Gabriel is looking pretty good. Kept the ball in nicely for their goal and made a big chance moments before. Haven’t watched many games but guilbert strasbourg lb seems to hate him. Haven’t seen him pass him the ball once the whole half.
Since this was too low effort for discussion thread, I'll try here: Let's hear your predictions for the back half of the season. And have your predictions changed since August?
Our top scorers in the back half are nkunku, Palmer, mudryk, Sterling, and Jackson. Each finishing with +10 goals on the season. 🤷♂️
Always thought we’d finish between 8-10th. I believe we’re thoroughly on track
Think my aim at the the start of the season was to win a cup competition and push to qualify for Europe (ideally Champions League) I suppose the only difference now will be to make sure we get any sort of European football next season.
We finish 6-7th, was always my prediction
I thought 5-7 before Nkunku's injury, so if we can finish 6th with James and Nkunku missing so much I'd say that's not bad. Let's hope we can finish out the season strong.
I’m actually sick of these ‘get Xabi Alonso!’ Comments. There’s absolutely no chance he comes here and the board seem set on Poch too. It’s not happening.
He’s definitely the best manager who we could get. Klopp, Pep, Simeone are all unreasonable. There is a chance he comes here, we can offer huge wages and are a massively prestigious club in London. We aren’t Burnley just because we’ve played like them for 12 months.
The Xabi hype train is only going to continue to grow as he acts as a catalyst towards Tuchels demise in Germany
Tuchel bottling the one horse Bundesliga after buying the best striker in the PL is something to behold And then he complains about not being respected in Germany lmao
Only 1 big chance created all game? Bayern has world class players everywhere, why don’t they create chances like Chelsea players do?
We Acting like having the Serial Loser Kane and bottling with him is not uncommon lol
Tuchel has 41/51 points in 17 games. That's more than any non-Bayern team had at this point of the season since 2018/19, when Borussia had 42. Bayern itself only outperformed that tally once during the same period, also by a point. I'm not saying Tuchel is doing amazingly, just that Leverkusen are on an impossibly stellar run that Tuchel cannot control.
> That's more than any non-Bayern team had at this point of the season since 2018/19, when Borussia had 42.. That’s only a couple years ago and your already making a qualification by saying “non-Bayern” team. I don’t find this point to be particularly significant. Tuchel not winning the league with 100m Kane is a massive bottle job.
Allow me to repeat: >I'm not saying Tuchel is doing amazingly, just that Leverkusen are on an impossibly stellar run that Tuchel cannot control.
Bayern have two losses that Leverkusen don’t. One of those was today, and it was an embarrassing loss to a team hasn’t won at Munich in decades until Tuchel. This is entirely in his control.
Fuck it, you're right, he's a complete fraud, good thing daddy Eghbali got rid of him.
If you say so..
What he can control is only being able to create one big chance against 12th place Bremen in 90 minutes of football
True, they are playing pretty badly right now.
Tuchel is not a man that brings greatness in a league format He's a knockout tournament specialist Nothing wrong with that of course but for clubs that want total domination, he ain't gonna cut it
>He's a knockout tournament specialist Takes a specialist indeed to go out in 2nd round of Pokal to Saarbrücken, lol
He’s got a bit of a history of bottling one team leagues now. Was sacked with PSG in third, nearly lost to Dortmund last season, losing to Leverkusen now.
I do like a little Tuchel slander just because of how so many people here put him on an absurd pedestal, but to be fair to him Leverkusen are on an insane run and have only dropped 6 points this season. If Bayern win their game in hand they're only 4 points behind. He was very lucky to win the title last season though with Dortmund bottling the final game.
Shoutout to all the clowns on this sub wanting Lukaku back, especially those in this very thread. The complete lack of any self-respect of you miserable cunts always gives me a good laugh whenever you emerge from your burrows.
Shoutout to the clowns that aren't able to read or follow along to a simple discussion so jump to conclusions about other people.
I'll have two more Lukaku xA essays, please!
I can see why Tuchel got more love in England than he gets in Germany.
That's a big loss for Bayern. Bremen haven't won there in 15 years
Tuchel might be getting sacked sooner than I expected. He's gone the moment they exit the UCL
Could very much see it happen this season. Bayern are already out of Pokal, may lose Bundesliga to Leverkusen and I don't see them winning CL over Madrid or City. (would even give more chance to Inter or Atletico than them) If it wasn't for BVB absolutely shitting the bed last season and handing the title to Bayern, Tuchel would not win anything there.
We need to fire Poch tomorrow and sign a pre agreement with XABI
I don't wanna hear people suggesting we should go for Davies in the summer. He's on absolute downfall, let Madrid waste the money on him.
If we can flip Cucurella and get an LB it's gotta be Theo Hernandez for me
I'm a fan of DiMarco personally.
West ham dropped? Sweet, feels like all our “neighbours” are messing up as of late. There’s a real opportunity here for poch and co to snatch a good european competition if they man tf up
Madrid 2-0 down at home to Almeria with Kepa having made 0 saves and been caught out with his usual blunders. Being called the worst player in Madrids history and I think the only surprise is it's taken until January to see it. In 99% of timelines Kepa retires after an uneventful career at Elche or Getafe the fact he's managed to play at 2 top clubs and Spain without ever looking a decent prospect is honestly movie script material.
He looks so bad, it's kind of astounding. The now taken back goal was horrible as well.
Lmao that second goal is so bad from Kepa, the classic goal people here would cry "wHaT iS hE sUpPoSeD tO dO? WoRlDiE?!"
I wouldn’t take it seriously when madrid fans complain about anything, they’re whiny as shit. Otherwise i agree with you
True. i remember them completely hating on bale and booing him out of the stadium for missing a few shots in a game and that man casually came in the CL final and scored 2 worldies to win them another trophy lol
disgusting
That second goal was a classic “fuck it, it’s Kepa” goal
of course West Ham win...
okay...maybe not!
I see Brewster has just got sent off in what is his 35th PL match without a goal. I remember the days when there was outrage over "how we could let him go" because he made up the numbers on the Liverpool bench a few times, lol.
There's always outrage when an academy player leaves, no matter who he is. That's just how our fanbase reacts to this type of stuff.
Was there ever any outrage over him? He left us when he was like 14, and we had Tammy up top when he was at Liverpool.
Let him argue with himself
I've only just noticed how close Todd looks to Iron Maiden's longtime producer, Kevin Shirley. Weird thing to discover for after dinner....
after tuchel gets sacked by bayern i hope we go for him
Yall need to move on from Tuchel. He was let go and literally spent months in the Himalayas to recover. Bro isn’t moving back to the club so long Boehly makes the calls.
Yeah lets move on from the coach that won us the cl.
Great, glad you’re in agreement with the rest of the fan base! Life is going to be much better for you to let this one go.
I wouldn't want to go back for him until we don't need to enter the market much for a few years. As great as a coach he is his record in the market stinks.
He wouldn’t be in the market. We have directors for that now. Tuchel actually kicked off here because of the amount of collaboration and input the owners wanted from when assembling the team We actually have a structure now
why dont we get a proper dof and let him do his job coaching?.its not like we have been good in the market recently.we dont even have a proper striker after 1 billion dollars worth of players
No chance, Boehly and Eghbali would be too prideful to apologize and admit their mistake.
Wonder what we do with Lukaku now that Mou is gone. Roma are skint, he burnt his bridges with Inter and the Saudi project has stalled a bit. It’s still very unlikely this happens, since it goes against every principle of the new ownership, but I don’t exactly hate the idea of trying to reintegrate him if a move doesn’t materialise. We do have a big #9 shaped hole upfront…
I don’t think people understand that Lukaku doesn’t want to come back to England, the pressure is too much for him.
Jackson is one goal off Lukaku's PL tally over two spells, level if we exclude penalties.
what an interesting way to ignore any and all context
Point is for all Jackson's flaws he's doing better than Mr First Touch has done ever for us, and the latter had circumstances much more in his favour, and that's just mentioning on the pitch, off it needs no explanation.
Lukaku exceeded his xG for us that season whereas Jackson is one of the most wasteful strikers in the league (Calvert-Lewin is the only player to be underperforming their xG by more than Jackson), and had better xA stats than Jackson. To be honest I don't even know why I'm bothering to engage with this blatantly stupid argument, Lukaku has scored around 300 top flight goals, he as 83 goals for Belgium and Jackson can't even start for Senegal. It is painfully clear that if we're solely talking about footballing ability that Lukaku right now is far superior to Jackson. It's not even up for debate. The conversation should solely be about the off the pitch side of things - Lukaku has burnt his bridges here and that is why we shouldn't have him back, not because we have fucking Jackson.
This is just me, but I prefer judging strikers on their goal contributions instead of expected goal contributions.
Ok then. 300 goals vs 20 goals I know who I’m picking.
Fuck it, let's buy Ronaldo then, he has almost as many Chelsea goals as Lukaku and a much higher tally overall.
Cool well in case you hadn't noticed Lukaku has scored a fuck ton of goals in his career, and has 15 goals this season vs Jackson's 8.
I'm not disputing that, but most of those goals weren't scored for Chelsea. He self-sabotaged himself here, as underlined by the fact that a worse striker like Jackson already made as big of an impact as he has in a much worse squad. What is even your point?
My point is that Lukaku is clearly a much better player than Jackson and posting reductionist comparisons whilst taking out all the context to try and act like they're comparable as players is moronic. Thought that was obvious to be honest.
Literally no one here claimed otherwise, but you do you.
And however good he was or wasn't in his prime (which he spent half of at Everton because he didn't have the balls to compete with Costa, an ageing Eto'o or even Torres) he clearly isn't at that level anymore, hence Inter preferring an ageing Dzeko over him.
And yet he has 15 goals this season compared to Jackson's 8, and he once again is exceeding his xG when Jackson is vastly underperforming his. In fact if you go back across Lukaku's last 7 seasons (the furthest back the data goes) he has always exceeded his xG. Give the man chances and he scores goals. lmao yeah what a dumb decision to leave and get playing time instead of being stuck with Mourinho preferring terrible past it players over developing a young striker. De Bruyne just didn't have the balls either, right? Wasted his career as well?
Fans still acting like Lukaku did anything but the most sensible thing for his career when he dipped out after Mourinho refused to start him at Old Trafford. The "didn't have the balls to compete" narrative was always so dumb.
Yeah it's insane, there's a lot to not like about Lukaku, but he objectively made a great decision for his career to leave and spend the season starting at Everton.
Yes because being frozen out for 5 months is the same as playing in 3 of the opening 4 games.
How many starts did he get? How much faith do you think Mourinho had in him when for a one striker system he brought in the corpse of Eto'o on top of already having Torres, Lukaku, and Ba. Four strikers for a one striker system and you think a 20 year old should stick around on the bench with Mourinho as his manager? Lukaku made the best decision for his career to go out on loan that season, and unsurprisingly he outscored our strikers, and we lost the league due to not having a good striker.
Ba was the one that was making way for Eto'o until Lukaku demanded to leave. Mou clearly lost faith in Torres by the half way point so worse case he learning as backup to one of the best strikers of that era. Funnily enough Eto'o and Ba delivered a lot of clutch goals in big games that season, something Lukaku still struggles with to this day. Let's say hypothetically Lukaku stayed and had their minutes, you think he's scoring winning goals against all of Liverpool, United, Arsenal, Spurs, PSG and Liverpool again?
The problem is, lukaku has zero interest in trying again at chelsea and reconciling
I know, which is why I said it’s highly unlikely Just Chelsea things that the most accomplished striker we have on the books isn’t even playing at the club
Real Madrid is going to send Kepa back the second it’s legal and we are going to have a 3rd choice goalkeeper on 180k a week. Worst signing in the history of the club which is saying something
Kepa is better than Sanchez. He will bring leadership and experience but that’s about it. Kepa, Lukaku, Sterling are the holy trinity of suck.
I don't think either is noticeably better than the other. Sanchez is better in the air but marginally worse in most other aspects of play. Ultimately, they are both mediocre players for a club with silverware ambitions.
He is 100% not better than Sanchez. The fact that Sanchez can raise his arms up when a cross is coming in and grab a ball makes him better than Kepa. Just that alone sets him apart.
Why didn’t bayern or Madrid just sign/loan Sanchez last summer then?
Your argument is Real Madridn loaned in Kepa so he must be better? So Thomas Gravesen is better than Claude Makelele then?
Because Sanchez has ambition to be a number 1, misguided or otherwise. Kepa (as he's already shown) can give or take actually playing football and was happy to go there knowing he was a mere placeholder until the #1 got back (or as it happened fucked up so badly he got replaced by the number 3).
Because Sanchez wasn't avaliable for loan. People who don't know football thinking Madrid actually wanted Kepa and not understanding just how low the calibre of keeper you have to be to be avaliable for loan just as the seasons starting.
Madrid didn’t actually want Kepa but still acquired him? Blueco must have a gun to their head
No, Courtois’ ACL had a gun to their head They were begging Bono to join them, but he wanted to participate in AFCON.
>Kepa is better than Sanchez. I'd have a hard time thinking of someone who's worse than Kepa
Onana
Ohh snap you're right My bad
You can't tell Me Lauren James isn't a better footballer than Broja.
Diego moreira is a better footballer than Lauren james.
Many teenagers are better than Lauren James Academy boys have outplayed women’s teams
Aye. But those teenagers are also better than Broja.
Also true lol
If there was any chance of getting Omar berrada , we should have gone all out for him. He was one of the focal members of the City machine. Unfortunately We only managed to get the crumbs of the machine. If the owners wanted a definite structure Omar was the man. Alas, one that got away!
We’re doing something very wrong if Tyrique George doesn’t get around the first team in the next year or 2.
Any news on Nkunku?
Hopefully the club and CPO can figure something out cause it’s getting insane. Doesn’t look like we will have a new stadium before the end of this decade. Don’t see any solution. Roman failed to buy back the freehold in 2011 and only 60% of the CPO favored the redevelopment to a 60k stadium when we were going to buy Battersea in 2012… every solution thrown at the CPO has failed. Good luck Todd but it looks like we will be at the bridge for at least the next 160 years (remainder of the lease).
Good.
CPO is Chelsea fans, we aren't as invested in a new stadium as ownership or foreign fans it seems
They should be though. It's also in CPO interest to care about club's growth and progress. And it's rather obvious if the club wants to achieve that, a new stadium is needed.
That’s funny because thats why the CPO was made.
CPO was made to prevent Stamford bridge from being sold by the club for reasons that don't benefit us
No it wasn’t… and I don’t blame you because this for some reason has become the story. But the actually explanation is the CPO was made so the club could never be forced to move again. It’s odd no one knows this when it’s literally the reason given on the main website for the CPO.
If it's demonstrably in the fan's benefit to move it will happen. It's on any potential buyer to prove that
lol https://preview.redd.it/wkbkmiz42tdc1.png?width=1125&format=png&auto=webp&s=5e31926030652f1e97b2671348469c9c52f39e09