Manchester United 2 Chelsea 1

[Original 21]

On what planet was it a good idea to drop Badashiele and play Cucurella at right back? How did that work out? 

[MickyDroy]

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.

[patThenevin]

22 minutes ago, Mark Kelly said:

We heard you the first time .

Yeah I'll continue to hear him.

Championship and get back to being Chelsea any day of the week Vs this. Not having tourist day trippers in the Harding, contributing to god awful atmospheres (been to better league two and national south), getting tickets to away games and home without spending an arm and a leg, being able to get to matches with a decent mob of mates and, most of all, not feeling like bystanders in a global vanity parade. Bring on the points deduction and flush away the win at all costs disease. 

 

 

We'll take the memories under Roman and get back to being a club that means more than being a capital investment slush fund run by the inept and out of touch, or as he says, owned by a dictatorship with morals to match and an identity stolen and sullied.

 

....or does your lust for trophies need pimping out to that degree? 

 

Laughable, the look away, no fecks given approach by many fans nowadays. The type of modern fan mindset infesting football. Take a long, hard look at yourself and decide whether youve been infected.

[ShedMiddle]

3 minutes ago, Original 21 said:

On what planet was it a good idea to drop Badashiele and play Cucurella at right back? How did that work out? 

I was pissed off before the game. Badiashille is probably our best CB behind Silva. Play your best players..  Put Diasi at right back if James can only do 45.  Cucurella should have started left back. I feel pochs hand is tied in that he has promised players playing time and therefore is playing players out of position. It's either that or he really has no clue!

Broja should also be starting ahead of Jackson if he is fit enough.

[boratsbrother]

9 minutes ago, chara said:

Absolutely no control in the game..the odd slick move that comes to nothing,,,,hard to watch with a cold eye but I think I am about done with Enzo but who else is there in the squad?....

 

I' ve been saying it for a long time that Enzo is just far too slow for this league.  If anything he's even slower than Jorginho and bringing in Caisedo has done next to nothing in helping him. 230 million on those two is a disastrous waste of money and not improved the team one single percent in those positions.

[Dwmh]

Entertaining game.
And we did get a goal back against the run of play.
and now I have run out of positive things to say.

Man U were poor and would have got a rollicking if they hadn't won.
We were poorer more is the worry.
 

2 hours ago, thevelourfog said:

Letting Kepa go really was fucking idiocy.

and a message that Tom Coboehly and all are not focused on a 100 point team this year.

 

1 hour ago, Original 21 said:

I think Sanchez has been simultaneously our best and worst player that half. 

A curate's egg indeed.

1 hour ago, thevelourfog said:

Everything has been in our half. Terrible passing, terrible runs, terrible positions taken up. We're crap even by midtable standards.

45 minutes ago, Bison said:

They have entrusted somebody who cannot coach simple passing patterns with players who need to be developed sharpish. This project doesn't exist.

yes and yes (and yes @martin1905 was right)
What bothered me is that we kept playing the ball about deep in our own half without knowing how to get it out of our own half.
I kind of hoped that H2 their press would weaken and we'd learn, but that never happened.

I'm thinking that they'll be a key cup game soon, maybe a LC QF, and we'll be 4-2 down with 20 mins to go and about to go out when suddenly the ref will decide to give us a penalty (to go with the one he gave us in first 5 mins) and send off two opponents at the same time, and we'll get a cheeky win on pens then a Div 2 semifinal opponent and somehow get through to a final.
The oppo manager will be Erik ten Hag and the keeper Onana.
Result will be Poch gets an extra 12 months.

 

33 minutes ago, Max Fowler said:

WHY THE F DID WE SACK TUCHEL.

Almost the whole of that CL winning side and quite a few others are celebrating their escape from Chelsea.  Many have gone to bigger clubs, some even to RM and Barca.  None escaped more successfully than TT.  How did he get away - he really really wanted to.
Conclusion 7 year contracts work apparently.

23 minutes ago, Ham said:

I have nothing positive at all to say about tonight.

Absolutely disgusted by that performance.  Everybody played badly. 

Honest, true.  good for you.

21 minutes ago, CarefreeMuratcan said:

But we literally recently played well against Arsenal and City (should have won both) and from that we go to these recent performances? 

But that is the problem - we underperform in so many many ways, not just one.
£prices > Player quality > player performances > team performance > xg-xgA > GD > points achieved.

All the way through there is underperformance.

[for those that care we are 6th of xPts, 1 point behind Villa]

[patThenevin]

2 minutes ago, boratsbrother said:

I' ve been saying it for a long time that Enzo is just far too slow for this league.  If anything he's even slower than Jorginho and bringing in Caisedo has done next to nothing in helping him. 230 million on those two is a disastrous waste of money and not improved the team one single percent in those positions.

Yep, just one of the symptoms that says this ain't football anymore. 

 

Pathetic and abject waste of money by a now contempable corporate mob now hijacking CFC

[Gurj SS]

I could talk about the game but what is one more game like this anymore. I can't even rant about the game because it just feels like wasted energy because I know this team doesn't do it because the other team puts more effort in, it's because we hit our ceiling and in order to get wins we have to be 100% on the ball; and that is a sign of poor quality because it can't be done all the time, it gasses the players for the next few games much like a mid-table team.

Last year we were poor, we had top players who fell short due to a troubling season on and off the pitch; reality is Tuchel and the players who left became scapegoats for a witch hunt that turned into an extremely poor run club that needed stability and growth, not stripping down to the bare bones and being rebuilt.

This year we are poor, we have poor players who just don't have the footballing quality or decision making skills to get the job done, on top of that the manager is clueless; one good run with Spurs in which they came 3rd in a 2 horse race and somehow he is now seen as a managerial icon.

Straight up, last year's team needed improving on, but they would mop the floor with this current team. Say whatever you like about them, but without the club being targeted by the UK Government they had given us a CL; after that they all went through some very difficult times, more so because of the extremely poor quality of new ownership.

Colwill is a joke, captain my arse he needs to change his shirt number as of tonight; not something I'd normally say but it's like watching a parody. James looks lost, is it the injuries or is it the realisation that those who left are better off; either way he looks half the player and half the person. Caicedo is not better than Jorginho just because he can run faster, and after today I'm not entirely sure he could do that. Kovacic is better than Enzo, yes Enzo is a good player but not in a team with so many holes to fill. Mudryk is not a top talent, he's a very fast average player (the type who would play for Crystal Palace and have one good game where his pace wins the game against a big team).

If we had just signed Palmer, got Gallagher and Broja back, maybe Jackson too, and a world class centre back, I'm confident we would have at least 10 more points this season; just as long as Poch isn't the manager.

All these 7-8 year contracts are just that, it has set us back by that many years. Just as our players start to mature and develop the rest of the teams will have stepped up once again, if anything the gap will get larger and players won't pick us over the top 6-7 teams.

We are in a bad place, it goes deeper than the results, the foundations are too weak.

[east lower]

14 minutes ago, boratsbrother said:

I' ve been saying it for a long time that Enzo is just far too slow for this league.  If anything he's even slower than Jorginho and bringing in Caisedo has done next to nothing in helping him. 230 million on those two is a disastrous waste of money and not improved the team one single percent in those positions.

Championship teams would have given our midfield the runaround tonight. 
 

Fernandez was anonymous (which in my view is worse than Caicedo) and Caicedo hasn’t got a pass in him over 10 yards and sideways- ish and tonight could barely manage that. 

Edited December 6, 2023 by east lower

[Max Fowler]

The boys gave everything.

 

[chara]

I have heard some bad post match interviews but that one is just a disgrace,

[east lower]

9 minutes ago, Gurj SS said:

We are in a bad place, it goes deeper than the results, the foundations are too weak.

As the saying goes “the fish rots from the head down”.

The owner’s decided to ‘rip it all up and start again’ as they knew best. They didn’t and still don’t.

[east lower]

1 minute ago, chara said:

I have heard some bad post match interviews but that one is just a disgrace,

Been done with him for a good while, that interview just confirms my suspicions.

[Dwmh]

11 minutes ago, Max Fowler said:

The boys gave everything.

To be fair, effort is the one characteristic we have not lacked to date.
Conviction, courage, precision, planning, coolness, intelligence, ruthlessness, tactics, strategy, confidence, there is a long list of failures.

Not effort so far.  Won't be long mind.

[Max Fowler]

9 minutes ago, east lower said:

Been done with him for a good while, that interview just confirms my suspicions.

He has an air of confidence that I admired but now I just think he is making things up that sound good to appease the press. He is a liar who is good on camera.

[east lower]

11 minutes ago, Max Fowler said:

He has an air of confidence that I admired but now I just think he is making things up that sound good to appease the press. He is a liar who is good on camera.

When you consider the mantra preached at the start of his stint here and what he’s saying now, you can only come to the conclusion that he’s either a liar and/or a poor/very ordinary coach. 

This will be his last shot at a club with the recent history we have and possibly one with the amount of money that has been available.  I would admit that I didn’t want him here anyway, at the time that was mostly tribalism, but also with thoughts that he somehow managed to finish second in a one-horse race in France with M’bappe, Neymar etc at his disposal.

Getting on for six months in charge and individual performances are generally worse than with previous managers or previous clubs.

Just like with Potter at this time last season - tick, tock we’re in countdown mode now.

Edited December 7, 2023 by east lower

[Dwmh]

3 minutes ago, Max Fowler said:

He has an air of confidence that I admired but now I just think he is making things up that sound good to appease the press. He is a liar who is good on camera.

We have Pochettino because we are the club we became last year (finishing with a spell that was W1 D2  L8)
Indeed we were W6 D8  L18 from early Nov.
We are NOT the club we are now because we hired Pochettino.

We are simply a club that no better manager would want to join*.
That we have a manager who was unemployed for 24 of the preceding 42 months is effect, not cause.

 

*Perhaps we are a club that no older player than 21 would want to join either!

[Max Fowler]

11 minutes ago, Dwmh said:

We have Pochettino because we are the club we became last year (finishing with a spell that was W1 D2  L8)
Indeed we were W6 D8  L18 from early Nov.
We are NOT the club we are now because we hired Pochettino.

We are simply a club that no better manager would want to join*.
That we have a manager who was unemployed for 24 of the preceding 42 months is effect, not cause.

 

*Perhaps we are a club that no older player than 21 would want to join either!

The best managers available wanted to join us. We sacked a better manager in Tuchel and arguably rejected a better manager in Nagelsmann.

[Original 21]

42 minutes ago, chara said:

I have heard some bad post match interviews but that one is just a disgrace,

I think he knows what kind of performance that was and just doesn’t think there’s anything to gain from destroying the players’s already fragile confidence by telling it like it is. 

[east lower]

4 minutes ago, Max Fowler said:

The best managers available wanted to join us. They sacked a better manager in Tuchel and arguably rejected a better manager in Nagelsmann.

Amended that, hope you don’t mind. 
 

THEY wanted a yes man to go along with the way THEY wanted the football side of things to be done. THEY did not want a coach who made demands of them and who wanted a say in who was bought and how the playing staff was structured. 

[chara]

Concerns,,for me...squad performance...coaching staff performance...back room Admin performance..and lastly Todd and Co...

The lynch pin for me is the so  called" Backroom Football Experts."......what have they actually achieved...Palmer?

Take any three posters on here ...ANY... and given what we know,, admittedly not a comprehensive knowledge of the whole football scenario but with enough real knowledge of Chelsea and The Game ,,I would bet the trio would make a better job of picking long term prospects than we have been seeing..remember Todd and Co employed "Football" people to do the advising. How is that working out?

I think The Poch is slightly ahead of GP if only for getting a better level of fitness in the squad although that wasn't too much on show today.

Aside..Conor would not have seen the game out today...Cucu?..has he no concept of angles and positioning?..invariably he was in a foot race which would not have been necessary with an awareness of angles and positioning..does my head in.

[Max Fowler]

31 minutes ago, east lower said:

Amended that, hope you don’t mind. 
 

THEY wanted a yes man to go along with the way THEY wanted the football side of things to be done. THEY did not want a coach who made demands of them and who wanted a say in who was bought and how the playing staff was structured. 

 

 

(i.e. NAGELSMANN WAS NOT A YES MAN - POCH IS)

[Max Fowler]

Aside from anything else I don’t feel that much is on the line for Poch. 
He came into a dysfunctional club and can blame any failings on the owners and their strategy. He keeps calling us a “different kind of project” in which we are developing young players, rather than looking for instant success. 
For Potter, the Chelsea job was his one chance of stepping up to a big club. Poch could leave in six months with his reputation intact as a media darling. Would any other manager have done any better given the circumstances they will say?

If not all that much is on the line for Poch, he hasn’t got a cat in hell’s chance of transmitting urgency to the players. But that’s not in the remit of this project. We are fostering a nurturing environment. 

[johnnybozo]

For everyone who carps on about Jackson being decent. Hope tonight proves I've always been right and the guy is even more of a giraffe-legged donkey than Abraham. Terrible terrible striker.

[kev61]

It will be interesting to see what our owners will do now(probably nothing).I would have got rid of Poch at least 6 weeks ago (I said so at the time).

He is not the main reason we are failing.The owners are more responsible imo -buy players at an inflated price and give them a 7 year contract!!!.

I honestly think some of today's players aren't really that bothered about playing football.They are multi millonaires without having to kick a ball.

Things were starting to unravel under Tuchel.Some players were ignoring his instructions and you could see his frustration on the touchline.

The new owners came in and got rid one of the best managers we ever had and thought they knew best.

We are in crisis with this manager(again not all his fault)but it is cheaper to get rid of the manager that has blantantly failed than to throw more money after bad.