boratsbrother

Young managers on the continent? Obviously the highly rated Alonso, but he's staying where he is. Below him there's Amorin at Sporting Lisbon who well thought of as well. Below their level would be a complete punt. Over here the best young manager has to McKenna. Two successive promotions and plays nice football. He'll stand a good chance of being the next Utd manager if he keeps Ipswich out of a relegation battle. The three elites are out of the question, so the next best levels are probably TT and Conte but neither of them play the kind of football this squad is being built to play, so they should not even be in the picture imho. Imho, if Poch leaves, we'll find ourselves in a very difficult position trying to find a manager who is right for this squad at this moment in time. Plenty want Poch to go and they are of course entitled to want that. What I genuinely don't understand though is how many would quite like us to go back and play grinding, shit on a stick football in the most attacking era of football I can remember.

But you and everyone knows the players were bought to develop into a quality team over a few years. There is every sign they are on track to do just that. I wouldn't swap our squad for any outside the top three! I'll go further and say that in two years time we'll have the strongest squad depth in the league. We'll probably need a couple more Palmer level signings to be the best first 11 team.

How many "elite managers" are there who'd win this current team the title next season? Imho, there's Pep, Klopp and Carlo and we 100% certain not going to be hiring any of them and neither we wouldn't win the league next season with any of them. Then you look at their some of their records in England. Klopp needed plenty of time at Liverpool to get them really going. Pep took a year to get City going. Carlo was completely unable to do anything at midtable Everton. But we expect Poch to come into midtable Chelsea with an unproven team and unprecedented injury problems and expect him to get us flying in season one. Imho, completely unreasonable and unrealistic expectations put on his shoulders this season! It was and always should have been about season 2, but the more I think about it the more i get the feeling that we won't have that season 2. Shame, because i was going to put a nice wedge on us finishing 4th next season and higher the season after.

In a way it will serve the club and fans right if he does walk away, goes to a bigger job and we stagnate or go backwards next season. There are very few if any who'll want to play football as attacking as Poch wants us to play, so if be does quit, be ready for everything to be ripped up and most likely started again with dour, pragmatic football that will ruin Palmer. I think he's been judged extremely harshly by the fans and media, so I won't blame him if he feels he's not liked or wanted here and will never be more than a few bad results away from the sack speculation, so why not take a job where he might be more wanted than he is here.

Poch just talking in his usual calm, honest and matter of fact way. Football managers leaving clubs happens all the time, so there's nothing wrong with him saying it's not the end of the world because it simply isn't. There is also the issue of him being happy to stay as well as the owners wanting him. If he wants a couple of ecperienced players (something nearly every member on here is calling for) but the owners won't sign them, then that would be a perfectly reasonable issue on which to quit the club. Same happened with TT. You either go with what the owners want or you leave.

I think his comments make it certain Poch will be here next season. He'd look a complete noob if he sacked him 3 ganes after praising the way the team is playing. Pressure will be on him bigtime next season though and rightly so I guess. Pretty sure 4th place will be expected with anything less resulting in him leaving. Will be interested to see what kind of contract he is offered if we do get 4th. A 2 year extension to try and win the title would be a fair one imho.

Would you prefer owners who want to see the club lose shedloads of money?

I wouldn't get too down on what TB said about "the brand" and the finances etc. Expanding the brand is a very important part of his role at Chelsea FC. Long gone are the days when all that mattered was just keeping the home crowd happy. To compete at the very top a club needs huge sums of money, most of which is now generated from outside the local fanbase. The emotional side of the game has always been generated by the players and managers, not the owners.

The European Full Members Cup 💩

Jackson is way ahead of a 22 year old Drogba and also had a better first season for us than the great man had for us too!

Apart from Jackson being mentioned I'm making a completely different point! My points yesterday were about Lukaku being appallingly bad in the big games for the two top sides he's played for in England. I remember Utd fans fuming about him in those big games, saying it was like they were having to play with ten men. He scored against the dross and goals when games were already done and dusted all of which boosted his goal tally which gave a very false impression of the actual quality of his performances. The vast majority of their fans couldn't wait to get rid of him, which tells you everything! As I said, just one goal in games against teams in the top six at the time of playing them. One measly goal in theee and a half years and you call him elite.🤔 Henry was elite. Suarez was elite. Torres before his injury. Salah. Aguero. Messi Ronaldo et al. To try and put Lukaku alongside those genuinely great players is simply laughable! He is, always has been and always will be levels below the genuine elite!

Saka is Arsenal's top scorer with 16 and they are going for the title. Proof that a team does not need a high scoring CF to be title challengers, let alone just be good enough for top four. Will Jackson ever be true world class? I highly doubt that he will. Will he be good enough for a top four team? I am positive he will be! Leaving Poch out of this It's not Jackson who's lost us a place in the top four this season, it's because Sterling has once again been nowhere near good enough. Mudryk not producing anywhere near enough. Our keepers making mulitple howlers. Our defenders having multiple brainfarts. We are 13 points from 4th and with a game in hand. We'd have more than enough points for top four if those other players had done thier jobs as well as Jackson has done his this season!

Ive been asking for time all season for Poch, but I think we aren progressing at a faster than rate than I expected, so next season I'll be looking for more than just a season of stability. Imo, we have a better first 11 than Villa, Spurs, Newcastle and Utd and a significantly stronger squad as well. I think we'll be ready for a title challenge in 25/26.

That would make sense if we saw a gradual return to form but that wasn't the case. He literally went from being absolute shite to being good again from one game to the next. In fact, it was the second half against Villa when he suddenly looked a different player. I can't even guess at how or why a player can so suddenly turn his form around like that.

On match of the day, the streams and radio, the common denominator with ex players and managers and pundits is current managers need time. And by time they do not mean one season. I think that is all you, myself and a few others have been asking for. No manager can build a quality team from scratch in one season. As for Poch not being the nan to take us back to winning or at least challenging for the title. I have agreed with that but I've been thinking I might be wrong. He's far from being too old, so why can't he have really started to learn from his past shortcomings and improve on them? We might just be lucky in finding a manager who is starting to put it all together and reach a new peak. Being given an almost completely blank canvas might be what can bring the very best out of him as a coach? Time will tell I guess.

The positive thing about our poor defensive record thisxseason is that the problems are very easy to identify and can be greatly improved on next season and beyond. Too many very basic keeper errors. Too many individual brainfarts. Clear weakness with crosses into the box. All of those have cost us lots of goals and points. We don't need an injection of world class talent to sort out those issues, just better concentration and a dominant CB who can organise.

Even before CHO was injured, at no time did I see anything in him to make me think he was a potential star player of the future.

I'm genuinely intrigued with Poch and his coaches plans to change or tweek the way we are playing. He can see what he's doing is starting to work but that's not good enough for him and therefore must think what he had in store is going to be even better. He has talked a lot of guff, but this is the kind of talk makes up for it. As you say, very peak Jose like. I really do think we could be onto something very good indeed. I'm going as far as saying 4th next season and a title challenge the season after.

Football moves so fast these days. Only a month ago Poch was number one to get the sack, but now the media are praising him and his team. Now its the Spuds and Utd managers who are coming under scrutiny and pressure. Love it!

At this rate of decline even a club of Everton's level won't go near him. He certainly wouldn't get in our team anymore!

You know what Frank Carson would say about that one.

MM finding out the hard way that the grass isn't always greener... Genuinely shite player at this level these days. Shocking decline over the last couple of years and heading towards Deli Ali level of oblivion if he continues to play like this.

From the limited amount of playing time I saw of him here, I thought Halk looked quite promising going forward but looked well short of being defensively good enough. The fact that he's stated so few games for a Newcastle team which has not been that good for most of this season and had a lot of injury problems as well, suggests that he's not kicked on this season, whereas Cucu has been one of our most improved players this season.

Talking openly about his future plans for the team very much suggests he's staying next season.

I very clearly talked about his performances for the two big clubs he's played for in this country and his record for them against teams in the top 6. It was appalling! He was decent at smaller clubs where there pressure to perform isn't anywhere near sane level as it is for Utd or Chelsea. In the big games for the big club he couldn't cut it. That is a statisticle fact!