Aston Villa 1 Chelsea 3

[Max Fowler]

33 minutes ago, paulw66 said:

Quite.

Smaller teams against City. Or the smallest team playing anyone.

All the teams in between, not so much 

Come on Paul - you're being persnickety 😝. 

[Sciatika]

One interesting statistic is that we had no offsides against us. Are we finally figuring out how to time our runs?

[Proud-Blue]

I loved this moment. I feel like Noni has something genuinely special about him.

 

 

[boratsbrother]

Progress this season????

Are people forgetting that Hoddle took over when we were midtable and left us when we were midtable, yet everyone said he'd done a  good job in starting the transformation of the club. Back then we were able to look beyond just our place in the table and look at the bigger picture and what was starting to take shape.  Poch is the new Hoddle for this new Chelsea era. 

 

[blueandproud]

23 hours ago, Sciatika said:

Still have my one from about 20 years ago

[My Blood Is Blue]

1 hour ago, asvaberg said:

Wouldn't it be easier to put it in a spreadsheet (excel). Then one also can analyze more thoroughly......

Pivot of the day: 3 at the back or 4 🙂

That sounds like a nice job for the weekend! 

[Dwmh]

27 minutes ago, boratsbrother said:

Progress this season????

Are people forgetting that Hoddle took over when we were midtable and left us when we were midtable, yet everyone said he'd done a  good job in starting the transformation of the club. Back then we were able to look beyond just our place in the table and look at the bigger picture and what was starting to take shape.  Poch is the new Hoddle for this new Chelsea era. 

People were wrong then - Hoddle was rubbish.  W54D53L50
Since when has getting the England job been proof of success?
Indeed since when have successful managers taken the England job?
Bates was right (again)

[blueandproud]

Great performance by the players and the fans who totally out sang the home fans.  And up yours Gabby Agbontosspottingwhore, spitting hi dummy about Enzo's celebrations on Talks**t, talk about sour grapes!  Onwards and upwards (I hope).

[Max Fowler]

47 minutes ago, boratsbrother said:

Progress this season????

Are people forgetting that Hoddle took over when we were midtable and left us when we were midtable, yet everyone said he'd done a  good job in starting the transformation of the club. Back then we were able to look beyond just our place in the table and look at the bigger picture and what was starting to take shape.  Poch is the new Hoddle for this new Chelsea era. 

 

Poch told us we need to let go of the past remember! The relevant fact is the owners have took us from a CL-winning 3rd placed team to two seasons in the bottom half of the table after spending 1 billion.

[boratsbrother]

1 hour ago, Dwmh said:

People were wrong then - Hoddle was rubbish.  W54D53L50
Since when has getting the England job been proof of success?
Indeed since when have successful managers taken the England job?
Bates was right (again)

It was the great respect for Hoddles ability as a player which played a significant part in attracting  the likes of a Rudd Gullit to the club. Until that singing  we were an irrelevant  club who'd not won a sausage for 20 years.  It was the signing that started the transformation of our club! 

[boratsbrother]

1 hour ago, Max Fowler said:

Poch told us we need to let go of the past remember! The relevant fact is the owners have took us from a CL-winning 3rd placed team to two seasons in the bottom half of the table after spending 1 billion.

I was talking about their comparative positions when they became Chelsea managers.

It doesn't matter a jot that we were CL winners a few years ago. That is for the  history books. Trophies won years ago mean zilch when this new team steps onto the pitch! Where we are now and have been for two years is a midtable team which is at the very early stages of a big job in turning the club around, the same as it was when Hoddle arrived. 

 

[Max Fowler]

1 hour ago, boratsbrother said:

It doesn't matter a jot that we were CL winners a few years ago. That is for the  history books.

You’re the one who’s banging on about Hoddle!

[boratsbrother]

33 minutes ago, Max Fowler said:

You’re the one who’s banging on about Hoddle!

And I've explained why and will do so once again.

You keep bringing up the Ambromovich era,  winning the CL etc. As Poch rightlfully said Chelsea are not that club anymore! We are post a Roman Chelsea  trying to rebuild the club from a midtable posistion. Hoddle was pre Roman trying to rebuild the club. That's the job Poch has on his hands, not at all like the one TT,  Conte, Carlo and Jose had to deal with. 

 

[Floyd25]

5 hours ago, Proud-Blue said:

I loved this moment. I feel like Noni has something genuinely special about him.

I do really like him and Gusto, they do blow hot and cold but consistency will come with age, will be interesting to see where they’re at in a couple of years. 

[ROTG]

8 hours ago, McCreadie said:

We have the youngest average starting 11 in the PL

We have the youngest average squad in the PL

Probably why we are an average mid table PL team. 

I'll get my coat 

[Bert19]

Really liked what I saw on Wednesday night. Some very good individual performances (Disasi, Enzo, Jackson to name a few) and it felt like a glimpse of what Chelsea could become.

But no one is off the hook yet. We have to follow this up with a series of much better performances and results over the coming weeks. This won’t mean much if we drop more points at Palace and get thumped at City.  These away setups and performances need to be a lot closer to Wednesday night than to the other 10 or so away games we’ve seen this season. 
 

A very welcome step in the right direction though. And lovely to see Caicedo, Gallagher and Enzo bash McGinn about all night. Something about being able to dish it out but not take it yourself there John?

[Max Fowler]

10 hours ago, boratsbrother said:

And I've explained why and will do so once again.

You keep bringing up the Ambromovich era,  winning the CL etc. As Poch rightlfully said Chelsea are not that club anymore! We are post a Roman Chelsea  trying to rebuild the club from a midtable posistion. Hoddle was pre Roman trying to rebuild the club. That's the job Poch has on his hands, not at all like the one TT,  Conte, Carlo and Jose had to deal with. 

How ironic that you lecture me on looking forward when you are looking further into the past!

The difference is - we were mid-table back then through various circumstances more or less outside of our control. We are such a different club now, with an abundance of resources at our disposal, and yet we have made strategic choices that have left us in mid-table. Chelsea fans as a whole don't care if Poch succeeds or not - they care much more about how this new ownership model is fairing. And it has left us mid-table - it has been a self-inflicting failure that you are comparing to a time of far less abundance and hope for our club. It is much more relevant to compare to Roman - because we are still a much more similar club to the Roman era than we were under Hoddle, and the model for success is there. Sure we are going to do things a little differently, but these owners have completely thrown out the rulebook with undeniable hubris and assumed they can succeed without understanding the game or hiring the best people. The Chelsea fans know better.

I also believe Poch could get sacked before the end of the season and still have been the right person for the job - I just think we can't be afraid to move on and teach the players how ruthless this league is. I would be looking to get Jose in on a 3 month deal to try and win the cup, and put feelers out for De Zerbi after that.

[jasonb]

If our success against Villa was largely down to being able to pack out the midfield because we did not need to worry about Silva's defensive pace then we are going to struggle when he plays and he seems to be our least injury prone central defender. 

Suggests to me that this is our Achilles heel just like Liverpool with TTA.  Don't think we can fix that until the summer.

Dropping Sterling also improved our attack as it gave Madueke a full 90 and allowed Jackson to run the left channel which he seemed to do better than Sterling recently.

[paulw66]

17 hours ago, Dwmh said:

People were wrong then - Hoddle was rubbish.  W54D53L50
 

Well, that's disingenuous, at best. I know I am going to regret this but...........

A straight forward look at wins, draws and losses is not the only measure of a manager's tenure. A bit like shots at goal don't tell the whole story of a game.

In Hoddle's three years we got to the FA Cup final in 1994 and the semi in 1996. A handful of players, certainly in the 1996 team played a significant part in winning the trophy in 1997. I expect they were all the better for the experience(s).

Hoddle also completely transformed the style from the direct stuff we saw from Porterfield and Webb, to a neat passing game, and encouraged the likes of Gullit, Hughes, and Petrescu all to sign. This undoubtedly laid the foundation to what followed in 1997-2000 winning 4 major trophies, having not won diddly for 26 years. 

His "record" may look ordinary, but what he actually did for the club, was far from that. 

[Dwmh]

2 minutes ago, paulw66 said:

Well, that's disingenuous, at best. I know I am going to regret this but...........

A straight forward look at wins, draws and losses is not the only measure of a manager's tenure. A bit like shots at goal don't tell the whole story of a game.

In Hoddle's three years we got to the FA Cup final in 1994 and the semi in 1996. A handful of players, certainly in the 1996 team played a significant part in winning the trophy in 1997. I expect they were all the better for the experience(s).

Hoddle also completely transformed the style from the direct stuff we saw from Porterfield and Webb, to a neat passing game, and encouraged the likes of Gullit, Hughes, and Petrescu all to sign. This undoubtedly laid the foundation to what followed in 1997-2000 winning 4 major trophies, having not won diddly for 26 years. 

His "record" may look ordinary, but what he actually did for the club, was far from that. 

There was a change in style.  How much of that was Hoddle, how much was Bates or Zola or Di Matteo or Matthew Harding's access to borrowing we can argue about all day.  I'd put a lot of it down to Petrescu myself - playing a clearly superior kind of football, though Wisey had a role too.

Oddly from what I hear of the core members of this site, I am really surprised that a man called Pet Rescue isn't much more of a hero on here.

[paulw66]

13 minutes ago, Dwmh said:

There was a change in style.  How much of that was Hoddle, how much was Bates or Zola or Di Matteo or Matthew Harding's access to borrowing we can argue about all day. 

This is mindblowing.

Hoddle came in, in summer 1993, and from day 1 went from 442, to 352, or 532, whatever you want to call it. 

Zola and Di Matteo came in a lot further down the line, after Hoddle had gone, and their presence accelerated the success.  The initial change, which was crucial, was made in 1993. 

[JonnyCFC]

45 minutes ago, paulw66 said:

Well, that's disingenuous, at best. I know I am going to regret this but...........

A straight forward look at wins, draws and losses is not the only measure of a manager's tenure. A bit like shots at goal don't tell the whole story of a game.

In Hoddle's three years we got to the FA Cup final in 1994 and the semi in 1996. A handful of players, certainly in the 1996 team played a significant part in winning the trophy in 1997. I expect they were all the better for the experience(s).

Hoddle also completely transformed the style from the direct stuff we saw from Porterfield and Webb, to a neat passing game, and encouraged the likes of Gullit, Hughes, and Petrescu all to sign. This undoubtedly laid the foundation to what followed in 1997-2000 winning 4 major trophies, having not won diddly for 26 years. 

His "record" may look ordinary, but what he actually did for the club, was far from that. 

Agree with this, looking just at the results does not tell the full story.

Hoddle changed how Chelsea were perceived by the media, oppo fans and attracting other players. I’ve always felt it was the start of the journey to where the club got to in the Roman era.

Yes the league positions were mid table but we had success in the cup competitions as stated above, also add a cup winners cup semi final against Zaragoza.

And remember we were in the second division only a few years earlier, so the fact we were established in the prem, doing well in cups and attracting better players was progress, and I remember those times as exciting that something was happening.

[Dwmh]

1 minute ago, paulw66 said:

This is mindblowing.

Hoddle came in, in summer 1993, and from day 1 went from 442, to 352, or 532, whatever you want to call it. 

Zola and Di Matteo came in a lot further down the line, after Hoddle had gone, and their presence accelerated the success.  The initial change, which was crucial, was made in 1993. 

The improvements also came in a lot further down the line.  Many players and managers contributed, and mostly the Bates willingness to pay for older players had a big effect.

 

As I recall (and I didn't watch a lot of games in 1990s from Poland pre-broadband) 352 was essentially a way to start Hoddle, then Gullit as a very deep quarter back role without havng the essential pace or heading ability of a proper CB or the mobility of a midfield DM.  (Essentially Matic but not as slow).

The difference between a back 4 + a DM and a back 3 have always been very minor.  I recall some thought it was first introduced by Conte, but the playing ideas are much older than the names.  (In the Villa game someone praised Caicedo for dropping in as 3rd CB when needed)

So all Hoddle really did that was new was to call it a back 3.  But the team were no more successful in the league than David Webb's team.  

Data sourced from Wiki

Post War Chelsea managers (50+ games) sorted by Win %

Win % has been corrected from wiki numbers

 

1 minute ago, JonnyCFC said:

Agree with this, looking just at the results does not tell the full story.

But looking at the results does tell a very contrasting  story.

2 minutes ago, JonnyCFC said:

And remember we were in the second division only a few years earlier, so the fact we were established in the prem, doing well in cups and attracting better players was progress, and I remember those times as exciting that something was happening.

So who takes the credit then?  The manager that took us sideways or the ones that took us upwards before and after?

[paulw66]

22 minutes ago, Dwmh said:

The improvements also came in a lot further down the line. 

which was not the point I was arguing.

 

[paulw66]

27 minutes ago, JonnyCFC said:

Agree with this, looking just at the results does not tell the full story.

Hoddle changed how Chelsea were perceived by the media, oppo fans and attracting other players. I’ve always felt it was the start of the journey to where the club got to in the Roman era.

Yes the league positions were mid table but we had success in the cup competitions as stated above, also add a cup winners cup semi final against Zaragoza.

And remember we were in the second division only a few years earlier, so the fact we were established in the prem, doing well in cups and attracting better players was progress, and I remember those times as exciting that something was happening.

Thank you.