Thiago97

Great to see us come from a difficult situation and turn the game around. I’ve been critical of their heart and ability to deal with difficult situations for two years now, so credit to them to keep their heads and produce a positive result from being unlucky 2-0 down. Great technical finish from Enzo. Lavia was brilliant in that first half. Caicedo is now our leader on the pitch, he sets the tone for the team . Sancho first touch and ability on the ball does provide another option to the team. We still look suspect at the back. Badiashille remains an accident waiting to happen. Still early days in our current cycle. We should avoid getting too drawn into short term reactions. We only have to look back at the examples held up against Poch impact from last season. One was Postacoglu and one was Glassner……a few months later and one is under huge pressure and the other one is sat just above the relegation zone ! Maresca is doing well, but the pressure and expectation on us increases from here.

I'm much more a reader than poster these days. A few reasons really, I started a new job role in July which involves my region/role going from a UK role to a European role. Lots more travelling outside of the UK, and with the rise of MS Teams in the last 4-5 years, much more requirement to be on Teams calls and just less spare time in general. Generally speaking, I think I suffer from football discussion/analysis fatigue these days. It's become so over analysed and discussed during the last 10-15 years, I find the saturation of PL football discussion is to the detriment of the product. Personally, it just makes it less interesting as you cannot really escape deep PL football analysis and opinion. So last thing I want do on a regular basis is get drawn into futile football chat with middle aged men ( I say that as a fully paid up member of the middle aged man club) Too much of a good thing doesn't make it better.

In the sense that the Xmas and New Year period has a tendency to throw up odd results and a number of games in close proximity. It's one thing having squad options in advance of those games, but injuries picked up prior to those games has potential to have an impact. We will feel it if we lose Caicedo , Cucurella, Palmer ....even if just for 1-2 matches

Missed the game due to an 18th birthday meal in the family. Definitely the kind of game we would normally slip up in in recent seasons, so a convincing 3-0 is a surprise to me and a great result. It's one of those wins that becomes much less relevant if we don't get the right result on Wednesday though. We are approaching a very tricky period of the season, so need to avoid disappointing slip up's in this next run of 5-6 games.

My current take on the situation is that the new coach is doing ok, but much like the last coach was doing ok given the situation he was working with. If we are being straight and objective here. We are more organised as a team and that will get you a fair way in terms of progression, but we are also not as dangerous as a team as we were at times last season. The organisation and structure is kudos to Maresca. At the same time, he has also had the luxury of a deeper squad, less injuries, and younger players another year into their cycle. However, he does deserve some credit for having the team more organised. The problem he has, much the same as the last manager had, we continue to make stupid errors. As I posted last week, more often than not we are going to need minimum of 2 goals to win a game, so despite Maresca having us more organised, we face the same problems the last manager had. Braindead and stupid mistakes offered up by players on a regular basis, often 2-3 times per game. I'm not really a stats person, I tend to rely on my eyes, but we look less likely to score in many games. We have just had two games back to back against top clubs, its great that we didn't lose, but we rarely looked like scoring and rarely worked the oppo keeper (3 including Liverpool), and had to rely on two fantastic strikes from outside the area to score. We are not going to find those goals on a weekly basis. Overall, I would same very minor progress, but also progress you would expect moving away from a very loose attack minded coach and changing to a more pragmatic coach. He's done ok so far, but I am far from convinced top4 will still be clearly in reach come March. Very little to criticise him on so far, but very little to get too excited on either. I'm seeing what I expected to see, but my doubts remain about the physical , mental, and quality of many areas of the team right now. If the manager can hold that together, then job well done.

We control matches more and are less exposed in transitions, and have a better structure than first half of last season. We still make stupid mistakes though, and that will continue to hamper progress. We still look mentally weak and that will show further if we do come across any injuries, Wednesday night showed that. Lavia and James don’t look 100% and we are clearly managing them. Not having them worked against us last season, it’s great they are back, but we need them back at 95%+, it looks and feels like they are 70% to me. Sadly, I’m almost waiting for them to breakdown. Sanchez very good shot stopper, but mistakes are a problem. Colwill and Fofana always look like they have an error in them, whilst we know the back up are even more error prone! Enzo continues to be a problem , whilst we are only seeing flashes from all the wide men and little consistency. we have to play our best players and Maresca has to find a way to integrate Nkunku in the league. I’m not really critical of the manager here, other than not playing Nkunku more. We still need some experienced heads to help game and we still look soft. I have not seen anything change on this front and this is one of the main issues from last season.

They are very poor. Hardly scored a goal all season. It’s not a bad result cos of the history of the last 30 years, it’s not a great result given the context of their team.

Fair enough. I’ll concede on Bournemouth. It very much looks like a one off though doesn’t it. We still make stupid mistakes game after game, which means we need at least 2 goals to get a positive result. I stand by my overriding point though. We have to play well to win . Top teams do not have to play well to win. We have 3 top level elite players in Palmer, Caicedo and Nkunku…..(4 if James stayed fit) why one of them is constantly sat kicking his heels on the pitch is just a mystery. This was just a drab performance against a very poor team, and we still did our best to hand them the win.

Let’s be honest . This lot only produce positive results when they play well. They are still miles away from grinding out results when not playing well. If it clicks and forward players produce great moments, we can win matches. If it dont, we are looking at defeats in many of these matches. This is a meh result and it took a worldly to get it. Very little has changed in 3 seasons now. 3 games in this last week have blatantly laid it out there that very little has changed.

I can only speak from a personal perspective. A win generally has less talking points than a defeat, we got the result we wanted. As an example, win against Arsenal or Spurs will have far more posts than a win against Bournemouth or Palace. We are Chelsea and have spent billions, its expected we win against lesser teams. Again, I am only speaking personally. I have stepped back from posting as often for a number of reasons. Time being a key one, I just can't afford the time to get involved in long back and forward disagreements. I find it easier to mostly read and add the odd post these days. I also find it better for my own state of mind, it just doesn't suit me becoming embroiled in back and forth with people who you will never convince. It's football followed mostly by men, with that comes ego's and a reluctance to admit wrong. I just can't be doing with that any more.

Like so many things in such a hard league as the PL, its the fine margins at play. We played well in defeat on a number of occasions last season, so it was not a case of the opposition letting us play well, nor was it a case of we only played well when we won. It's a case of more often than not, we were on the receiving end of those fine margins, mostly due to silly mistakes and poor game management. From both the players and managers. Saturday was no different. A silly unforced mistake,they got the penalty which would have certainly changed the game, we got on the right end of the fine margins by Sanchez producing a great save. If Sanchez goes to his right there, very likely a different set of circumstances plays out.

Positives - Cucurella , Caicedo, Sancho , Sanchez , Tosin….Veiga much better 2nd half, looked like a fan who won a competition to playing with pros first half. Negatives - Created next to nothing and pretty dull to watch. Felix was rubbish and offered nothing .

We looked better when he came on. It was subtle but changed the game in our favour. I think I realise why to some degree. Colwill and more so Fofana are just not very well balanced athletes. They are both quick, but they often look so unbalanced as individuals. Neither of them receive the ball technically well, so they always look under pressure and uncomfortable. It can often look like they are playing on a bobbling pitch, Tosin came one and proved it wasn’t the pitch, just their lack of balance.

Don’t wanna dig him out so soon, cos players need time……but he does look a right lummax

He did. This is one of the most frustrating things about this strategy, what fundamental evidence do we have that this lad is not useful in our first team squad ? It was only pre-season, but he looked like a kid who knew the game due to playing first team football since he has 16 years old. He might have had a shot in the PL and took to it like the proverbial duck to water. We simply don't know. This is in part why its impossible to have any fan/player dynamic under this ownership. Just a pointless waste of time and effort really, we have not made any significant profit from him, just moved him from one set of accounts to another. If a player is not going to be up to the job, at least lets have a look at him and form a judgement based on what he offers. I just find it frustrating and illogical.