Sluggish - All Chelsea defenders, except the starting 4, together have only a combined total of 53 Premier League minutes this season. Only Rudiger of the big 4 has not played every minute and he has only missed 22 minutes. December will kill us if Sarri does not rotate a bit, hopefully starting with Luiz resting for Christensen. RLC finally gets some time for the overused Kovacik , who has done little today or recently
yep "job done" is all that can be said Not sure if it is more the players or the system, but I would like to see a lot more off the ball movement, Hate to say anything nice about City or Pep but they near always have 4 or more players in purposeful dangerous motion We seem to be stagnant except for isolated attacks, though the ball itself moves a lot. Not sure we can likely make the Top 4 as Arsenal looking better these days, and we saw what the Spurs did to us, so I would like to see us take the risk of playing Christensen, RLC especially, Hudson-Odoi, and some Ampadu a whole lot more. I though don't see it as a risk but an upgrade on Christnsen and RLC and more Barkley over Kovacik. Rest the usual crew more and focus on trying to win Europe and blood and retain the younger players Gonna kill me if RLC, Hudson-Odoi, Christensen become our next DeBruyne, Salah stupendous blunders
Hazard is isolated when teams press Jorginho. It forces our other mids to do more work. We can get the counter going, but not much else right now because Kante and Kovacic aren't great in the final third. It's part of the reason a player like RLC was so good. He's really good with the ball and he's super effective running into the opposition's half and at defenders. His goal was outstanding and something we haven't seen much of in the last month or so.
Whilst I do think we can lock in a top 4 on our current trajectory I'm with you on the risk/reward gamble. Last season I thought AC was nailed on as a regular but with the sarri style change see why he prefers Luiz (though he is too regularly involved in goals we give up for my liking). He still has areas for improvement but the talent is there, no doubt. This year RLC is really showing well with limited chances and would use him more often in combination with our other centre mids. So much of the gameplan runs through whatever grouping we have there its essential to keep them fresh and hungry. I'm not as high yet as others on CHO as he is still very raw but he wont improve on the bench. Either we find a quality epl loan for him in January or risk messing that situation up. I can't see him getting enough minutes in our first team any time soon and I'd be surprised if sarri started him once Europa gets more serious. Still our biggest headache is up top. Morata still doesnt know the offside rule and giroud is not really a goalscoring threat though he does hold it up well. I'm also not seeing michy (1 goal in 11?) as the knight in shining armour. We need a radical change there which could do wonders for hazard. But that's easier (and cheaper) said than done and dont expect us to resolve in Jan.
Tammy seems to be knocking them in for fun at the moment. Re today's game, the fans near me were getting very frustrated with the fact we spent more time playing the ball in our penalty area than in Fulham's. We were inviting disaster, it was a good job that Fulham were so crap we will get murdered next week if we play the same way. Alonso seemed upset by the chants of Murderer from the supposedly good natured Fulham fans Classless idiots.
Europa has really taken it out of us. Rotation for it has been pretty good, but the travel is the killer. Thick part of the schedule is coming up though. Have to keep it up against the lower half of the table and hope to eek something out against any quality opposition we face.
First, that was hardly an easy chance - the ball was quite high. Second, the key was getting in that position to begin with - Giroud failed to get anywhere near a shot all game. Against weaker teams, I'd like to see RLC get more time over Kovacic, personally.
Yep, Morata never misses easy chances..... Never argued about his positioning which is great. As Sarri has said, he is mentally fragile when it comes to finishing.
I like Kovacic, a lot actually. however if the season keeps progressing the way it is, i think one could make the case we don't actually need to buy him at year end. he could be the bridge to seeing RLC and Barkley reach further in to their potential. RLC has basically only impressed this year when playing. it's time to give him a run of 5-8 games and see how he does. we need to learn how consistent he can be and what his low games are like. Kovacic, for being a really good player in a lot of ways, hasn't really produced anything so far this season that's translated in to goals. is there more to that position than goals? absolutely. but we do need some assists and goals from midfield. and right now that's looking like RLC or Barkley give us a better shot there. i say this as someone who was incredibly excited and happy by picking up kovacic. i thought he'd most likely force us to sell RLC or Barkley too. basically i agree with the above, and i'll be interested to see when perhaps that changes for some of the harder games too.
He misses easy chances. Every striker does! This wasn't one of them. It was a chance, yes, but hardly an easy one. I think we need to consider playing Kante a bit less against weaker sides when we dominate the ball. It's not that Kante's not great, it's that he's a lot less useful when he breaks forward. Against top sides, he's essential. When we have 75% of the ball and counterattacks against us leave him trapped behind the play, it doesn't help since his offensive output is also less effective.
i agree. though i'm certainly not one to say we are playing kante out of position. i actually don't really subscribe to that thought process. he's played box to box before, and while he's not a scorer, his pressing and energy are great for this setup in most situations. see the opening goal in this last game. i've been reading a lot more analysis regarding his play specifcially, and i don't think he's being wasted there. however, yea, against a lot of opponents i'd like to see Kovacic and RLC together, or through Barkley in there somewhere. some of the europa league games have been incredibly fun to watch for just that reason (against lesser opposition sure) but i remember thinking how fun it was seeing both RLC and Barkley as two very good dribblers in one of the games together and commenting at the time how we should try that in the league at some point as well.
To be fair it's difficult to craft easy chances to miss when you fail to learn the offside rule several years into being a professional footballer.