Rob B

We should steer well clear of both Rashford and Grealish IMO. Both decent on their day, but comparatively overpaid for their level and not sure they will run through brick walls for this team. Both have the hallmarks of Sterling 2.0 written all over them, and I say that as someone who doesn’t mind Raheem, just don’t think the economics work at all.

My issue with Varane is he gets a lot of injuries so once you’ve added the Chelsea Injury Tax to that he’d never be available! I’d also be inclined to keep Badiashille for another season. I thought he had a good game against Villa and showed enough last season to stick with him. Tall, composed, good passer, left footed. Let him battle it out with Colwill, but go and get a number 1 RCB who will play every week.

If Mudryk was a free transfer or a £5m signing I don’t think anyone would be advocating to give him more minutes. He is, quite simply, miles off the level we require. He doesn’t even do some of the basics like run off the ball to take a defender away or stretch the play, he doesn’t track back and put himself about and constantly turns over possession in dangerous areas. Madueke is a player you would describe as raw and needing of minutes and he has for exceeded Mudryk already.

Not what Poch will play, but my team would be something like this Petrovic Chalobah Disasi Silva Cucurella Caicedo Gallagher Palmer Chukwuemeka Sterling Jackson After the Arsenal shambles, Madueke and Mudryk should be nowhere near it. Save Alfie G the embarrassment unless he's played in his proper position at CB (which seems unlikely). Chalobah at RB only because I think he is a better 1v1 defender than Disasi. Would be nice for Carney to get a start against his former club.

A few have already said it, but I'd definitely be looking to rest Enzo tonight, play Gallagher deeper and bring Chukwuemeka in as the number 10. Something like this perhaps.... Petrovic Chalobah Disasi Silva Cucurella Caicedo Gallagher Madueke Chukwuemeka Sterling Jackson

He certainly needs a year away to play regular football. I honestly don’t get it with Mudryk. We have wingers in the academy that can defend and tackle better, find space more effectively, retain the ball better, achieve a higher attacking output. The only difference is none of them can run 36 KM/H and were signed for £68m.

Jackson had a really good game, misses aside. Caused them problems all game by coming deep and spinning the defender and also with his runs breaking the last line. The Man City defence couldn’t handle him. But, and it’s a big but, I knew he was going to miss those chances. He is horribly predictable when it comes to two things; 1 ) Scoring important goals against big teams. Other than his hat trick against a 9 man spurs team, his goals have come against Luton, Sheff Utd, Burnley, Everton etc, and rarely the first goal. 2) Scoring chances where he has time to think. I can’t remember him scoring a single 1v1 chance this season. Contrast that to his Everton goal which was brilliant, but instinctual. I’d like to think this can be coached though? Finally, on the subject of being horribly predictable, it was the most obvious thing in the world that Mudryk would mess that free-kick up at the end ! This isn’t based on emotion, but I would genuinely try and get him a loan to somewhere like Germany next season, at a team where he is good enough to play every week. This season should now be about giving minutes to the likes of Chukwuemeka, Mudryk, Casadei, Gilchrist, in order to help inform decisions on next season. Give Enzo his surgery, rest Gusto etc.

Cucurella is a player we should look to move on if we can IMO. Yes he’s been slightly more solid this season but the bar was low and I still think he’s a liability defensively, either through poor positioning (erratically pressing and leaving gaps) or just lacking athleticism. He’s not fast, tall, strong and adds nothing going forward. I’m not sure what his strengths are? I know it’ll be a difficult sell, but I wouldn’t put it past these owners to be honest. They surprised us all with the sales of Koulibaly, Mendy, Pulisic, Havertz etc and given he wasn’t one of their signings it wouldn’t surprise me if we tried to move him on. Despite popular belief, we wouldn’t necessarily make a huge loss either. A sale of £40m would clear his remaining book value. But what is more likely is a loan move for a season whilst another £10m comes off his amortised cost and we sell him next summer for a small profit.

My mind was fully made up on Poch during the Man United game. Until then, I'd been on the fence because I felt like the squad were behind the manager, we need stability, he'd had injuries etc, but the last two games have sold it for me, he has to go. He's tactically inept and the players aren't developing, in fact, many of them are regressing. The run we've had over the last 10 games (against incredibly poor opposition I might add) feels like it's happened on some occasional brilliance / talent alone. There is no cohesion, no patterns of play, no defensive structure and no plan. The starting 11 yesterday was awful - Cucurella and Gallagher on the left, Disasi and Madueke on the right, Palmer in the centre, none of it worked. But for some unknown reason, he refuses to change until it's too late. Which has happened time and time again this season, the game was crying out for a couple of subs around the hour mark yesterday - move Palmer back to the right, bring on Chukwuemeka in the middle, and introduce Mudryk or Sterling on the left to pin them back. Everyone can see it, apart from Poch. Despite having 8 days before the next game, I suspect we are stuck with him until the end of the season now, but surely enough's enough?

I’d swap Gallagher and Chukwuemeka personally but other than that, probably what I’d go with too

Palmer will do that with ease IMO. I’m convinced he has another gear yet. Everyone is aware of the huge goals he’s scored for us (United, City etc) but I heard a really interesting stat on Talksport yesterday where a disproportionately high number of his goals are the first goal in the game. Compare that with someone like Jackson (who I also rate) who tends to score the 3rd or 4th goals in comfortable wins against teams in the bottom half. Palmer is a phenomenon

Was going to make this exact point also. Cucurella and Gusto have been playing as wing-backs but in a full-back formation. With those two getting forward, plus Enzo, too many times it basically left Disasi, Badiashille and Caicedo to defend a counter attack. And you can cut through us with ease. It's pretty straight forward, in a back 4 if one full back goes, the other sits - Jose used to apply that rule all the time. We are incredibly exciting going forward, no doubt about that. A lot of that is to do with Cole Palmer but in fairness we also have Nkunku and Chuk to return - and Reece James even, but Poch simply has to strike a better balance between attacking and defending. It's going to cost him his job if he doesn't.

Is my feeling as well. Not sure the stats back this up given that Thiago played in the 4 goal defeats to Wolves and Liverpool before he got dropped though? From memory it also seemed to coincide with his wife's outburst on Twitter. I wonder if someone can validate whether we are now playing higher up the pitch?

And look at the players surrounding him - Terry, Ivanovic, Mikel, Ballack, Lampard, Drogba!! Regardless, my point wasn't really to be a good FB you have to be tall, and I'm sure we can all point to examples that buck the trend, but we have pretty much the smallest team in the league and I think it is the cause for a lot of the goals we concede (that and physicality generally). You've only got to look at the back four and CDM's that Pep and Arteta put out nowadays to see the direction things are going - Spurs and Villa are the same too. How many teams have genuinely outplayed us this season and either deserved a draw or a win against us? Only the heavy defeats to Wolves, Liverpool and Newcastle spring to mind. And then how many teams have robbed a point or a win by being thoroughly outplayed but scoring a header from a set piece, or a ball to the far post? Loads. We are the most naive team in the league. Genuinely think a couple of big, experienced, leaders would transform us.

Agree with most of this post, but I don't think it's entirely on the manager. I absolutely think that a different (better) manager could achieve more with these players in the same way you reference that Tuchel did taking over from Frank, but I think we have major gaps in our squad composition - namely leadership, experience, height, physicality etc. Individually, most of our players are very good, potentially world class even, but collectively they're a real problem and it would be the first thing a world class manager like Tuchel, Jose or Conte would call out. Take our full backs as a fairly trivial but real example - we had Gusto and Cucurella in the last game who are like 5'10 and 5'8, yet the teams above us have Ben White, Gvardiol, Udogie, Dan Burns, Joe Gomez, Akanji who are all monsters. And we wonder why we are conceding from set plays? You can't get away with not matching the physicality of teams anymore, the standard is too high.

Watching the West Ham v Spurs game and it got me thinking - we really lack height and physicality in our team. We read a lot about leadership and this is also true, but I think a couple of monsters would do us the world of good. According to this article we have the second smallest team in the league https://www.givemesport.com/the-average-height-of-every-premier-league-squad/ Given we have a (much needed) set piece coach joining in the summer, I think we should be looking at a tall left-back, a CB to replace Silva/Chalobah and somehow keeping Lavia, Ugo and Carney fit long enough to get regular minutes. I can’t help but see about a lot of our players on the weekend (Cucurella, Enzo, Palmer, Gusto, and Mudryk) and it remind me of when I played 7 a side football as a 35 year old against teams of 21 year olds, who were way better but you’d end up beating them because you’d physically dominate them and they’d end up hiding. Chelsea are the elite equivalent! A team of very talented, high potential, weaklings! And though they split opinion at the time, even a prime Cahill, Alonso and Matic would transform this team, despite none of them being “world class”

Although we were wasteful yesterday, I’ve no major problems with our attacking play. A little bit selfish at times which should be easily addressed but if you look at our record over the last 10 games, we are scoring lots of goals. Our defence on the other hand is diabolical. Particularly set pieces. We are basically conceding 2 goals per game and have been since the 4 goal games against Wolves and Liverpool. It doesn’t matter who plays, Cucu or Chilwell, Badiashille, Colwill or Silva next to Disasi, we give every team in the league a chance At some point we need to have an honest conversation about Enzo too. I’m not sure he adds enough defensively to be in a lone two - so easy to play around and a liability at set pieces as we saw yesterday.

So it was only Chalobah, Chukwuemeka, Chilwell, Sanchez who were added to the injury list for Burnley and now Gusto then?! And yet the first four were all available last match week. I’m surprised more isn’t being said about these. I’m not having the defence that all teams are having injuries. That might be true to a degree, but the amount of absentees we’ve had has constantly been more than anyone else, and the number of re-occurrences is unprecedented. More gross negligence from the people that run the club. Needs to be the biggest priority to address in the summer.

You forgot about Carney!

I forgot that we still own Hakim Ziyech! Would anyone take him back in the summer? I was very happy for him to go at the time, but given how inexperienced we are, I wonder if he would be an able deputy for Cole Palmer for a few years? Their styles are similar and we aren’t going to get a big fee for him at 31. I’m not saying we should, in fact, on balance I probably wouldn’t, but just throwing it out there to see what people’s views are…

For all the talk about needing a striker, we’ve been banging them in of late. We score 6 on another day today, got 3 against Leeds, Villa, Newcastle and Palace. I think the talent in this squad is super exciting, but I’m a bit concerned about the defence. We seem to concede two goals almost every game at the moment regardless of who plays.

Agree with almost every word of this, but thought Caicedo was brilliant tonight. He gets through so much dirty work. Enzo looks gassed to me…I’d seriously think about moving Gallagher back to play 6 against Leicester and start Mudryk in the 10

Where did you get that information out of interest? Have nothing to compare this to but that backroom team is outrageously young! Not sure how anyone else feels, but I'm kind of alarmed that we have kids in their early 20's analysing matches and the opposition?!

I’m increasingly leaning towards this view also. The release clause for Osimhen is prohibitive for me and Toney is a good player but also not worth the money required, so perhaps we should be looking at an Oliver Giroud type signing that we made in 2017/18?

But this was 20 years ago. Society and the new generation are different. Softer, entitled. I just don’t think you can get away with rollicking them in training sessions like managers used to (ie JT’s story when him and Cahill gave the ball away in training and Mourinho told them he was going to sign two new CB’s if they didn’t sort their shit out 😂) Or when he would make a sub in the first half if he didn’t like what he saw. Nowadays players would be on the phone to their agents, who’d want a meeting with the Sporting Directors etc. Love Mourinho, he’s my favourite ever Chelsea manager but I just don’t see any scenario where he comes back and it’s productive. He either quickly alienates the players or hierarchy or both.