Chelsea A Post Match Thread

[RowlattsFox]

21 minutes ago, Twitcher said:

BR saying we were too slow at passing and need to play forward more.

That's been a common theme he's stuck by in recent weeks and I agree with him. Too many times the ball goes back to the centre-backs and we start to slowly build again with telegraphed passes, or instead of flying down the wing, the wing-backs stop and check and knock a sideways ball inside.

We can all see it. BR keeps saying it, so who's at fault? Is he not clear enough with his messages; not firm enough? As a player I'd prefer to go forward. It's the natural thing to do in a competitive game, where you can see the opponent's goal. So why isn't it happening? Are we too obsessed with losing possession. Explain?

Part of this is Perez, Maddison, Vardy and even Iheanacho at times have been really poor at offering an option and holding it up. Especially in recent weeks. We either have to keep recycling possession around the centre backs and midfield or they have to try a more difficult pass to the front men. 

 

It's the biggest area we have to improve and I think is the difference between us and the other 'big' sides. 

[Kendal Fox]

I just hope Dyche says something like "We're a provincial club with the chance to do the double over Liverpool and though Leicester have way more funds than us, they're still a provincial club in comparison to the traditional Top 6, so let's help them out too....".

 

Well, I can but dream I guess.

[Hoopla10]

3 hours ago, smudger63 said:

Showed a complete lack of respect for a club that brought him through the academy from the age of ten, spent money on his football upbringing, paid him well and helped to get him to a level of football that he is now playing at.

I think that's the thing that bugs me the most. This club has been working to achieve something special, wanting to fight among the clubs with all the money, to compete and mix it up against them. He would have felt and seen that growing up and being developed by the club. But the moment he's at a point (even by his own belief) he's ready to contribute to our project he leaves for one of those clubs with all the money. We reinvest his transfer money back into the club and move on but that's what he eventually became, just a commodity. He plays for the most plastic club in the league. 

[Rigga]

We have had a fantastic season...

That can not be doubted..

I just wish that during this difficult run in that we would play our football on the front foot in the league..

Too often we have been a goal down in the first half and its difficult to come back from..

have we learnt our lesson from last seasons capitulation ? I would say no..

take the game to the opposition and use the talent within our squad..

can not help but think what may have been..

 

lack of CL affects revenue and our ability to compete in yeh transfer market at a high level..

 

The 4 teams that will finish above us may be buying haaland, messi and Kane...(not that I am saying we could ever compete at that level, we couldn’t) 

we will be signing Eduoard....

just feel we have missed out opportunity again..

[Reg Vardy]

Would we (honestly) all be any different? Somebody offered twice their salary to move with unlimited spending power of the owner.....that is the league we compete in......Ben is young ambitious, entering his prime time, and is simply maximising his value.......happens everyday in real life....always made me smile, we praise one of our own players who celebrate scoring against their own club, yet berate those who do it after scoring against us.....

[Blarmy]

9 minutes ago, Reg Vardy said:

Would we (honestly) all be any different? Somebody offered twice their salary to move with unlimited spending power of the owner.....that is the league we compete in......Ben is young ambitious, entering his prime time, and is simply maximising his value.......happens everyday in real life....always made me smile, we praise one of our own players who celebrate scoring against their own club, yet berate those who do it after scoring against us.....

But ridiculous bias is one of the things that makes football not rugby. 

[fazzyfox]

He was partly responsible for the derailing of our season last season, didn't put enough in, blamed the fans stick, engineered a move despite being under contract, didn't care that he hadn't done enough to get us, his wage payers, into the Champions League, showed what we;d be left with if we didn't accept the offer and showed no thanks to the club who had given him his opportunity and development. Then, would love it more than anything ever to score against us? More than the Champions League Final, the Euro's Final for England? Strange B***end if that's the height of his ambitions.

[Twitcher]

1 hour ago, RowlattsFox said:

Part of this is Perez, Maddison, Vardy and even Iheanacho at times have been really poor at offering an option and holding it up. Especially in recent weeks. We either have to keep recycling possession around the centre backs and midfield or they have to try a more difficult pass to the front men. 

 

It's the biggest area we have to improve and I think is the difference between us and the other 'big' sides. 

Yes good point.

[urban.spaceman]

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Edited 19 May 2021 by urban.spaceman

[knitro]

8 hours ago, 21st Century Fox said:

I personally found it ****ing hilarious that a team with some massively experienced players like Thiago Silva can get wound up by one of our fringe players in a 10 second video. Tuchel strikes me as the sort of manager who would love the opportunity to stoke the fire with that sort of thing.

Well to be fair it is a club that likes to whale on ball boys, so going after soft targets is in their blood. 

Edited 19 May 2021 by knitro

[Sunbury Fox]

1 hour ago, RowlattsFox said:

Part of this is Perez, Maddison, Vardy and even Iheanacho at times have been really poor at offering an option and holding it up. Especially in recent weeks. We either have to keep recycling possession around the centre backs and midfield or they have to try a more difficult pass to the front men. 

 

It's the biggest area we have to improve and I think is the difference between us and the other 'big' sides. 

Agree with this. Chelsea's movement off the ball both up front and in midfield was streets better than ours yesterday, especially in the first half. The player on the ball had numerous options and breaking the press was therefore always straightforward. Of course, as I've said separately, we were missing a number of players with the running power to get around the pitch which didn't help.

[sacreblueits442]

16 hours ago, MiDuck55 said:

Chelsea clearly wanted revenge and perhaps  was down to Tuchel.

He said in interview that he kept his team out on the pitch, watching us celebrate the cup win, out of 'respect'

No doubt the bitterness they must have felt was used as motivation for the re-match

He's sucessfully raised the morale of a team that 3 days ago lost the FA cup final they were massive favorites to win.

As preparation for their CL final to come you have to admit he's done a good job.

 

...just taking a look at their bench on Saturday and the quality they started with on the pitch we were going to have problems!!!

They are overladen with quality, it was difficult to go again, in a sense with the same team. If we had scored at the end, it would have been a steal and after their comments about us I would not have mind.

[sacreblueits442]

2 hours ago, RowlattsFox said:

Part of this is Perez, Maddison, Vardy and even Iheanacho at times have been really poor at offering an option and holding it up. Especially in recent weeks. We either have to keep recycling possession around the centre backs and midfield or they have to try a more difficult pass to the front men. 

 

It's the biggest area we have to improve and I think is the difference between us and the other 'big' sides. 

...a quality winger available to us this season would have made a great difference!!!

Losing Barnes and JJ and the short comings of  Under has greatly held us back.

[urban.spaceman]

It's amazing to me how Amartey's not only rattled an entire fanbase but now the club and players (and their wives) too. 
 

He’s rattled them so much that it motivated them to beat us last night, and the only way they could beat us was through Werner’s diving, an offside goal and handling the ball into the net. 
 

We’ve rattled them so much because they know they can’t beat us fairly anymore. 
 

On the pitch AND off it. 

 

This should motivate us going forward. 

[Hoopla10]

2 hours ago, Reg Vardy said:

Would we (honestly) all be any different? Somebody offered twice their salary to move with unlimited spending power of the owner.....that is the league we compete in......Ben is young ambitious, entering his prime time, and is simply maximising his value.......happens everyday in real life....always made me smile, we praise one of our own players who celebrate scoring against their own club, yet berate those who do it after scoring against us.....

 Not everybody is driven by money. It also depends on how you want to define self value. It's not like he'd be on a living wage playing for us. I get this is the nature of the league but maybe that's not a good thing and after the Super League maybe these things are connected. We have a market and media that's driven by this idea of maximizing value, of the "best" players go to the "best clubs" (ie most wealthy). I mean how many column inches is just written over Kane moving from Spurs. Isn't all this what directly led to the idea of a Super League? Players imo are just as much a part of that. They are complicit. They can't look ignorant as if they haven't participated (and maximized value) because of it.

[HybridFox]

Also Martin Tyler last night saying we've had comparatively less injuries 

 

Has his head been in the sand  

[OhYesNdidi]

4 minutes ago, TK95 said:

Also Martin Tyler last night saying we've had comparatively less injuries 

 

Has his head been in the sand  

The only reason we’re not comfortable 3rd is because we’ve been shafted with injuries

[Duquesne Whistle]

5 hours ago, lee7 said:

 

I find it funny how he turned comments off on his post  show us your winners medal you kn*b

This, 100 times over. 

[Kendal Fox]

15 hours ago, gerblod said:

I'd expected that they would be told to wait before they celebrated. Maddison hinted that they'd 'indulged' themselves, but hadn't forgotten what was coming up.

Two days recovery isn't enough for a player who has been careful about sleep, rest, massage and his nutrition. It's easy to forget that these are cosseted boys - trained to do what the men around them tell and allow them to do. It needs an iron hand to sustain focus and thereby stop any 'wandering' from the the goal. I suspect it was just too much temptation to party and let Tuesday look after itself.

I think City is a comfortable club to play for. The types who end up at the big clubs are very ambitious - they have ambitious owners and coaches and they're always running to stay in the pack. Sacking and dropping is normal for them. They wouldn't need telling to stay 'on the ball' and that a result wasn't just expected - it was obligatory. Living in that cauldron demands a certain type and Rudiger demonstrated that attitude fully. I was glad our guys retaliated - it shows that they were motivated.

If what you state is true, then it's a pity they couldn't bring that motivation to their preparation. I'd disagree that they were satisfied with 5th and the Cup - they just weren't mature enough to bring self-discipline and group-discipline to bear.

 

Yes, I guess I was being a little facetious and don't really think the majority of the team were satisfied with 5th place and the Cup. But reports - presumably from some local journalists and some on the ground/players social media, etc - didn't look good in terms of some of the key players just settling for being a little merry then early to bed with the view to a piss-up once the season had concluded. Like you say, elite level athletes have such honed and finely tuned bodies that they need more than the average beer bellied guy in terms of recovery time. Would they have trained hung over on Sunday, with Monday off and then light training Tuesday morning before the coach in the afternoon? Or would they have trained both Sunday and Monday with no recovery time at all? Either way that's just ridiculous if they seriously expected to be at their best last night. Yes, it's a hard slog but hey, the money's not bad and to clinch that CL place would hardly have been a slight consolation for them being knackered.

I get that we have thrown points away throughout the season, but you just feel there were mistakes that could have been avoided and I question just how committed some of the team are. Mentally, we've struggled since winning the league and even Rodgers can't seem to stop us from drifting out of games altogether and now, 2 seasons in a row, we've again drifted out of the CL places at the 11th hour.

Also, hope I'm wrong but assuming we lose or even win on Sunday but GD is not good enough, Will Rodgers and Tielemans  hang around? Not so sure. Tielemans is now just about in his prime and the trad Top 6 clubs will no doubt be planning a swoop for him, knowing he has not signed a new contract. He will probably get the chance to play CL football with one of them, have a better financial package and also a genuine chance to win the PL.

 

And with Rodgers being with us almost 3 seasons but dropping out of the CL places for 2 consecutive seasons, he might be tempted to get out with the Cup win softening the blow a little. Don't get me wrong, he's clearly the best technician we've had and we've seen more than a glimpse of the quality he can deliver. But one Cup win and 5th place twice in a row is not actually that good for a bona fide top-flight manager. But it's clear he just doesn't have the strength in depth of the other big boys when injuries start mounting, which they have yet again throughout this season. That coupled with the somewhat erratic nature of some of the players probably spells out Deja Vu yet again and you have to imagine he'll be ruminating over that if he is indeed head hunted this Summer. 

I'm thrilled with the Cup win, but as the days go by, think it's papered over the cracks a little and it is very frustrating. 

Edited 19 May 2021 by Kendal Fox

[moore_94]

 

[Always Next Year]

It’s took the FA two days to come up with this, it’s a pity that they seem to be dragging there feet over the punishment for the Super League Clubs.

Or is it a case of be good boys now and we will forget about it. The rest of the clubs in the Prem need to keep pushing for a punishment that fits the crime 

[Jonezy]

Here after a few days I have realized, that I am not that frustrated with the loss. Chelsea were much better on the day.

 

But I get really frustrated with the state of football. Somehow the narrative is that Chelsea was unlucky with VAR both in this game and in the FA Cup final. I don't get it. They got 3 goals chalked off rightly and according to rules. The first Werner goal on tuesday even got waved off by the linesman.

 

Then the non-pen on Werner from Tielemans; which 4 out of 5 presenters/'experts' in the Danish coverage thought was a pen. If it was the other way around and Werner was trying to kick the ball into an open goal and Tielemans then put his foot in the way without getting the ball it would have been a stone wall penalty, so what is it I do not understand about football? As long as Werner did not get the ball, that was a freekick to Tielemans or do I not understand football?

 

When they then actually get a penalty, the narrative is that Fofana made a stupid challenge and that it is a little soft. A little soft? Its absolute minimal contact trying to press the player and he goes down like he been shot; Chelsea did it all game, pressing our players with little contact, without conceding any freekicks. So the lesson learned is dive and whine and we can continue this progress of making football a theatrical non-contact sport. It frustrates me immensely, that Werner's dive is not called out and instead actually gets  rewarded. 

 

Also Chillwell going full Richarlison on Ricardo and completely overplaying contact causing mayhem not getting called out is annoying me.

 

Well thats my frustrations out of the way. Still can't believe, that we were that close to a point after that first half onslaught. When those juggernaut teams step up their game with intense pressing and slick passing, we are really struggling and need our strongest 11 to all be at their best. 

 

[Spudulike]

The modern origins of the theatrical play acting can be traced back to the Wenger era at Arsenal. That said, Liverpool won many league titles in the 80's on the back of dodgy penalties although that was mostly ref intimidation/incompetence. It was always something that English clubs complained about when up against continental teams in Euro and international matches (especially the Germans, Klinsmann, and the Italians). 

 

Don't know how we go back from here.