Chelsea v. Burnley January 11, 2020 Stamford Bridge, 10:00AM EST TV: NBCSN After an easy FA Cup win against a reserve-side Championship team, we now return to league action to face the industrious Burnley, who are 15th in the table with a league form of WLLLW. Chelsea sit in 4th place, with the erratic form of WDWLW. We last met Burnley away from home and got all three points thanks to a Pulisic hat-trick. Our last loss to them in the league came in 2017. As for injuries, Burnley have a bunch of players with some knocks, but are likely to play: Ben Gibson, Chris Wood (leading goalscorer), Aaron Lennon. Ashley Barnes looks to be out. For Chelsea, Alonso and Pulisic are still areas of concern. I was watching a Burnley match recently and Arlo mentioned the population...70,000. That's incredible. I wish they would announce the populations of these towns more often for perspective. Could you imagine an American sports town having a professional team with 70,000 people? For perspective, in the US, towns with populations of 70,000 include: Morgantown, WV, St. Augustine, FL, Porterville, CA, Lima, OH and so on. Off the top of my head, the smallest American pro sports town must be Green Bay, but even they have over 100,000. You could argue the New England Patriots, who play in Foxbourough for tax/land reasons - that town is only 17,000. I mean, even Leicester...they have 330,000 people. In the US that's Corpus Christi, TX and Honolulu, HI. Anyway, I thought that was interesting. This will be a tough one because we suck at home and have trouble breaking down teams who pack the midfield. Burnley are very good on set pieces, we are not...and we give away a lot of free kicks. Kante has really looked off lately. Let's go Chelsea.
Throw in all the London clubs and it's something else. West London alone has Chelsea, Fulham, QPR, Brentford, and Wimbledon. Brentford has a stadium capacity of 12,000! And, they're currently in 3rd place in the Championship. Football in London has it's own wiki page and it's fun to read through.
Yeah, football in London is incredible. When I first started to understand English football as a kid, I was amazed at the number of clubs in London/outskirts alone. As for the US, population/space-wise, it's incredible. We could host a Northeast, Southeast, North-Midwest, Texas, Pac-NW, California, Southwest World Cup - concurrently.
There is on the other hand, a lot of minor league soccer teams all over the US. I can count 3-4 clubs based out Michigan alone and it's something. There's Detroit City FC, Flint City Bucks, Michigan Stars, and AFC Ann Arbor. All of these clubs are within an hour or so of each other. On a related note, I'm happy Detroit finally has a pro team. Four pro sports teams and somehow Austin Texas has a MLS team. It's not MLS, but it's been semi-pro from the start, hosted teams like FC United of Manchester, FC Saint Pauli, a Serie A teams, and a few Mexican teams, and has been successful in the 8 years they've existed. They went pro and I treated myself to season tickets and they started a women's team.
Would like to see the below: pulisic pulisic-pulisic-pulisic pulisic-pulisic pulisic-pulisic-pulisic-pulisic kepa
Oh My! Yes, yes, we expect great things from the lad. The lad CAN, but he has to Do it. But we expect great things from ALL our lads. It is a team game y'know. Let us not put too much pressure on Captain America. I wanna see more crosses. Reece James can hit them in perfectly. I want us to to utilize the fact that we have a great big lad up front who likes to score goals. And if those crosses come in, then the rest of the team must pounce. Swiftly and with ease. It is a style that not many of the other clubs have, maybe Kane? This is special. Other clubs dont have this option. We need to use it.
Alonso and Pulisic out tomorrow. Pulisic will actually be out a few weeks with a tendon muscle injury from training.
pulisic would have been injured in this game anyway, burnley players would have chopped him down before he ever got anywhere near goal after his hat trick last meeting.
with pulisic out it means the 4-2-3-1 with Mount is back in play, which isn't my favorite right now. otherwise it's MM or CHO taking the left forward spot, and neither is totally ideal at the moment on either CHO being a little out of form or Mount a little out of position. think personally i'd just go ahead with a 3 man midfield (Jorg, Kov, Kante) and start CHO and Willian as the wide forwards.
think I'd do a midfield diamond with Mount at tip and CHO or Willian in a free 2nd forward side line to side line role with James and Az (James for width on right and Will/CHO favoring left) And for those who went on and on and on.... about how terrible Lamp was for sitting Pul against Forrest: "Pulisic will be out for a few weeks," said boss Frank Lampard "He was injured in training the day before Nottingham Forest, it's an ("nasty painful") injury to his adductor, a tendon injury."
hmm, that diamond could be appealing. you could do a 4-3-3 inititally with that too, or switch between the two, basically have Mount drift in to the "hole" and let Willian stay floating higher. our wide forwards like to drift inside while in possession at times anyway.
So much for the "HES NOT USED TO PLAYING IN THE WINTER" narrative. Jesus ******** these talking heads are lazy and boring. Not just the general reporters, but even the beat reporters for Chelsea.
Remember when some idiot was convinced we were giving all of our players steroids or some shit because they never got hurt? God. If only.
I just hope we 'break' the recent home pattern of lots of possession, let one in from their first attempt, not have the ability to break them down. I want a clean sheet!
1Arrizabalaga 24James 2Rüdiger 4Christensen 28Azpilicueta 8Barkley 5Jorginho 19Mount 10Willian 9Abraham 20Hudson-Odoi Substitutes 11Pedro 13Caballero 15Zouma 17Kovacic 23Batshuayi 29Tomori 33Emerson No Pulisic, No Kante. 4-3-3. Return of Barkley. It could be argued that Barkley is perfect for these battles. Not much game-changing excitement on our bench.