MickyDroy

It's all a bit underwhelming with him isn't it? Its a bit like watching Jorginho try to reinvent himself as a box to box midfielder in the twilight of his career. Not saying he is but for me he certainly plays football and runs like he's about 30 pounds overweight. Just soooo slow and poor Caicedo must hate the sight of him by now as he's constantly left entirely exposed by his midfield partner who either doesn't bother to run back or on the few occasions he bothers is far too slow to keep up anyways.

I for one will be fuming if the manager brings Enzo back into the pivot at the weekend. Reckon we'll have a good chance against side if we play this exact side. Palmer clearly MOTM but the midfields been brilliant and we've even been able to control the game tonight.

So far I like the Gallagher-Caicedo pivot a lot more than what we've seen from Enzo-Caicedo this season. We look more dynamic with todays duo and Caicedo's got actual help in the press and defensively which brings out the best in him.

Ridiculous if that's actually allowed. But talk about kicking the can down the road. You'd think selling off our most talented club lads was bad enough but NO, now we are also asset stripping the club to comply with the financial rules. Thank God for the CPO, otherwise you just know The Bridge would be in their names soon enough if not for the CPO. Cobham may be next though unfortunately. But make no mistake about what they are doing here. They are lending money against the club so they can purchase properties like the Stoll Mansions and the hotel for themselves which for them is insurance for the future while they club is likely going to be fucked.

Bonkers isn't it? £75 million on agent fees since February 1st of last year... In light of this the price hikes and removal of the £300k coach subsidy is even more egregious. Perfectly happy to rinse their working class supporters to their last dime while doing this at the same time...

Never underestimate private equities ability to make money. They are vultures and often win when they seemingly lose through tax write offs or deduction allowances for example. They will eventually also load the club up on debt while they keep the assets for themselves. I think what they've just done with Stoll Mansions is what they'll continue to do for as long as they can. The property is now theirs (the owners) but they have used the club to finance it as the only asset of the holding company. I reckon they will continue to buy up as much London property as they can by leveraging as much debt against the club as they can while stringing the supporters along by communicating that the purchases are do with rebuilding the Bridge which in actuality won't be the case.

To me it seems we've burned almost all of it already. They committed to £1.75bn in investments but they are well over a billion already and the stadiums essentially not been touched. Holding company debt is at £500 million and rising and the clubs running on a operations loss that's quite mindblowing.

It's increasingly hard for me to see how we can avoid getting into a really vicious circle at this point. Problems seem to be piling up everywhere and it includes running PSR-compliance issues, ongoing investigation for historic FFP breaches, breakdown in stadium plans (the hired architects recently left), apathy amongst supporters, no European football/income, commercial challenges, unbalanced and poor squad, poor manager and one could go on. Can we sell enough players before June 30th this summer to barely comply for another season for example and will we fail to do so and be deducted points next season? That's an open ended question at the moment and that's just one of very many unfortunately. If we manage to escape deductions on PSR for another season we may yet be deduction points for Roman & Marinas FFP trickery in previous year. So there's a lot of bad stuff happening at the club at the moment and it's increasingly hard for me that we'll ever get out of it.

Let's say they spent 2 billion to do a complete rebuild of Stamford Bridge. They still wouldn't own the stadium would they as the freehold would continue to belong to CPO?

I can't agree with this. I am of the opinion that chaos breeds chaos and that's what we've seen this season. We are completely unorganized which for me is unforgiveable 10 months into the job. There's space everywhere for our opponents, there is no structure to our build-up or defensive shape and players are confused. We've seen this before under Lampard. Rudiger, Christensen, Jorginho and others looked like complete jokers dropping clangers every week only for Tuchel to change all that when he came in and put a proper structure in place in all areas of the pitch. I am not advocating for appointing him but I fully believe that if we hired Sean Dyche lets say we'd see individual mistakes drop by a massive amount. Not a flashy manager at all but he can organize a midfield and a defense and had we hired him I do believe Caicedo, Enzo, Disasi, Badiashile and the others would look like competent players again in an instant.

I'd also invite anyone to watch the entire buildup to Sheffields first goal and specifically look at our midfielders. Petrovic and Cucurella is ultimately at fault in the end but just look at Caicedo and especially Enzo in Sheffields buildup there. Enzo does nothing to mark either a player or space to begin with. Waddles over to McBurnie proximity eventually but then lets him go with zero pressure. Ball is then played to Hamer and Enzo's got every chance to put pressure on him (Picture 1) But instead of doing that as he should he takes up some kind of squatting position again and being completely useless (Picture 2) Just really poor all around.

Almost everything we do at the moment is unsustainable. Reliance on Palmer is another and so is getting bailed out by overtime goals. The team should get some credit for the latter as there are some signs of a "never say die" attitude but 4 out of 5 of our last wins have come in overtime and it goes without saying thats 1 - an unprecedented amount of overtime wins and 2 - completely unsustainable.

But to say that in a meeting with club supporters was dumb. If he can't read the room better than that I have no faith he'll do any good work for the club.

You should look into how they've financed that mate. Keyword being heavy debt. Since the purchase they haven't spent a cent of their own money. Not a cent.

Hoping for an ultra toxic atmosphere tonight. F*ck Poch, F*ck Clearlake and so on and it should commence from kick-off. Always KTBFFH but our dear club needs a deep cleanse at this point and unless us supporters actually stand up en masse there's not a chance in hell it happens. https://www.thisisanfield.com/2023/03/fan-protests-did-help-remove-gillett-and-hicks-the-inside-story-of-liverpools-2010-takeover/ This kind of story needs to repeat itself.

Poch just said we are nothing compared to Liverpool in his post-match. Can he kindly fuck off already?

You have to think that if Villa beats us tomorrow and we go on to lose against Liverpool at Wembley the remaining three months of the season is going to get not only ugly as hell but also unbelievably toxic. City crushing us at Etihad between those two games goes without saying and there will be absolutely nothing to play for, for several months for the second consecutive season.

From everything thats leaking out it sounds like he's completely lost the dressing room.

De Zerbi if he was interested. He's got a buy-back clause. Results may not improve overnight but at least he would presumably lay some foundations for the future. He'll drill the squad into a set system and make us comfortable in possession, both of which Pochettino have failed at. Already worked with a few of our players are brought out the best in them, namely Caicedo, Colwill and Mudryk. He makes sense to me. Top 4 is 100% gone this season but bring him in and give him a head start on next season when we need to look to be up there around Top 4/5.

Poch in July: "With the players we have and the strategy to believe. It's about winning, being competitive. And translate this energy to our fans. To create the togetherness, it's a difficult, in the Premier League all together we can be close to win again." "In football, it is difficult to wait," he added. "At Chelsea you need to deliver from day 1. What we are working now in the training ground is about delivering from now, to give our best. Football is about today or yesterday. We cannot talk long term. We cannot tell people we need six months, I think it is not good. We are going to have a squad of players who can deliver." Poch in December: This is so over. PochOut.

Not sure he lasts until New Years tbh. Looking at the next five games its hard to see where the points are going to come from and Pochettino desperately needs points. We have put ourselves in such a situation that even a point away to Tottenham next is a poor result for us even though it's a good one in isolation. Same goes for City and Newcastle after Tottenham even though we'll probably lose all 3 and be even worse off. We are level with 14th place and a couple of points ahead of 16th with brutal fixtures coming up. No Chelsea manager survives being down here in 14-16th place in December...

Feels like there's some kind of defining moment coming up inside the next two months or so. It's already toxic, fans are seriously worried about getting relegated and the entire club seem to be in a state of pure chaos. For me there will either be a miraculous turnaround on the pitch or we continue to lose which ultimately leads to mass protests against the ownership, they then sack Poch to try and protect their back but in the end it doesn't work and we end up relegated.

Whether one rates Pochettino or not. Is it not true that he simply have to go if we lose to Fulham and draw to Burnley let's say? It isn't exactly unlikely and one would have to start making serious plans on how to avoid relegation at that point.

It should be food for thought that even with a really generous points estimate for our next 10 fixtures we'll find ourselves hovering very slightly above the relegation battle after Everton on December 9th. If one is less generous we'll likely find ourselves among the bottom 3. Oh how i'd like to see the owners and directors groupchat right now. I honestly don't see how Pochettino last to the new year even. At best we'll be 12th or 13th in mid December and Potter was sacked when we slipped down to the bottom half.

A draw or loss here and that's when i'll genuinely start to worry about getting relegated this season. It's already toxic, fans are booing and fed up and there's just this feeling that things can unravel even further very quickly here.