Might argue Rudy over Luiz but when he’s on his day he’s the best of bunch. Rest of the squad is def best 11.
Comfortable 3 points but for a long time it still felt like uphill work. Winning despite of the tactics rather than because of them. Plenty of work still to do but great to see CHO and RLC grab the opportunity and show why they merit more chances. Cue Pedro and Kova getting their places on Monday......
CHO is a much more likely to hit a cross into the box than either Pedro or Willian. CHO is also more inclined to hit them in first time rather than noodling around too much. He played well today. As did RLC. The advantage of playing RLC and/or CHO is you get a sense that the fans get behind the team more. They are young homegrown players the fans love that. The fans will also love Pulisic for much the same reason. Young players, new, making some mistakes, but the fans will get behind them, this can only help the team. I am not saying you play them all at once, but just rotate them in, get the fans excited.
That was better, why do we bother with a manager, we should just let the fans pick the team, if CHO an RLC don't start on Monday I may 'explode'.
tbh.. same story with most all of our wins. luck or individual moments coming in clutch. sarri doesnt know how to have these guys play against any team that fields a defense
Sarri doesnt seem to understand how important scoring goals is in football matches. Midfield goals from, well from, midfield players. Kovacic 0, Drinkwater 0, Jorghinio 2. Loftus-Cheek has scored five Premier League goals this season in only two starts and 16 substitute appearances.
Credit where credit's due. Sarri got it right today. Our best players were on the pitch today and it showed.
Absolutely. My guess is no. I'm afraid we'll see a Hazard Higuain Pedro Barkley Kante Jorginho Dave Rüdiger Luiz Alonso lineup. Sarri is a stubborn bastard.
Sarri has to learn to rotate players more to be successful in this league and he also has to recognize when players are in 'form' and when they are not. Emerson is in much better form than Alonso. RL and CHO are bursting with energy and top form right now. Sarri doesn't seem to like change much. Perhaps Chelsea's biggest problem all season is not having that goal scoring striker and all that false 9 bullshit got tedious very quickly. Our next biggest problem is midfield. It is the Kante or Jorghino debate. In a 3 man midfield I am not sure how or why you would play both of them. 4 man midfield maybe. Jorghino is not as creative as he should be. He is the man 'pulling the strings' and his puppeteering is not producing the goals. Seldom, is there a killer forward pass like that of our old freind Fabregas. Sarri persisted for a large part of the season with the Kante---Jorg---Kov midfield which lacked physicality and well the ability to score goals. RLC adds the goal scoring and also the aerial threat from corners etc. But I still think that we need a better quality player in the Jorghino-role. If we persist with Sarri and this way of playing we need a new player in that role.
He had very very good things to say about Cho, RLC and AC post game. Including something along the lines of Cho should start and finally figured out the defensive phase. RLC is and has been about his back. I think AC is just in a legit positional battle with Rudy and Luiz. I hope this is our A team going forward. Will be interesting to see what he values more EPL or Europa. Monday will be telling because it will be a short turn around to Europa then Pool then back to Europa
Think we have to prioritize both. Fact is, Slavia are a bit of an easier side, so we should advance, then it'll get trickier, but we have to focus on the league here and get the results against the sides we should.
Agreed. I hope we see the same 11 Monday. Maybe rotate Rudy in for Luiz. Then basically do a full squad rotation for Slavia. If we can lock up the first leg with a big win even better but we should be able to beat them with Willian Higuian Pedro then back to this 11 for Pool. Then rotate again.
I just think the 11 we saw yesterday gives us the best chance to win because it really has the perfect balance the squad could have. Giroud is the target man we need. Hazard does a bit of everything. CHO is direct, plus his crossing is superb. Ruben is just so smooth in the final 3rd plus he has the ability to out muscle anyone and glide past them. Kante for all the obvious reasons. Jorginho with the right balance is really quite good as his passing yesterday showed. His chip to CHO was Fabergas esque. I'll show some indifference for the CB's but I really thing AC should be playing. Emerson is also growing too. All in all, IMO, today that's our best squad. I've seen people complaining about the competition yesterday. ******** them. We scraped the narrowest of victories by cheating death against a terrible Cardiff side. I'll take what I saw yesterday 11 times out of 10.