We should have kept Cech as he is a leader and Courtois is a talented lanky boy and he does not have the maturity and he wants to leave Chels. Antonio Conte was spotted watching Joe Hart play for Torino and if Courtois want to leave then we should just let him leave.
Though while at Atletico, Courtois was considered a top, top keeper. He's a good shot stopper, but there's much more to it than that. He has the body language of a wet noodle.
As much as I want to shit on Courtois and the club (for not keeping Cech), there was some massive amount of psychological damage done to most of our squad under Jose (whether his fault or not, idk, not the point) that several don't seem to have recovered from. Even Hazard was not immune from this extraordinary drop in confidence that affected just about everyone. Not gonna pretend I know what the deal was, but something ugly enough happened for him to probably not want to be here anymore and I don't blame him much. Atleti are consistently in the final stages of the CL and competing for the title in Spain. Who exactly are we right now? Players usually leave clubs to be competingfor trophies with us, now its the other way around.
The general consensus here is to throw in the towel. We're not in that bad shape. We just comfortably won.
I didn't feel comfy watching it. Nor did I feel comfortable watching the high level of intensity that Spurs and City played yesterday. Our next several games are going to be brutal. Leicester United West Ham (away) Soton (away) Everton Boro (away) Spurs City
Such is life in the league. Win or get draws. The only one I'm really nervy about is Citeh as they'll play us off the pitch. Spurs play well and then are awful the next match. Yanited are on par with us. No one else there makes me nervous. We could have and probably should have scored 4 or 5 goals in Saturday. We are light years ahead of where we were last season.
Are people serious? Out the door? We just won after a bad spell in which we lost to our two biggest rivals and were poor in the process. But the general feeling around here is awful.
Congrats on being so optimistic. And we all know how Roman works after bad results which is not out of the realm of possibility looking at our run in.
I'm with Blue here... this isn't last season where our manager makes stupid ********ing excuses for every loss and trots out the same players in the same formation game after game to no avail. We just bounced back from two losses and kept a clean sheet. Sure, Hull sucks but this is a game we would've lost at the same point last year. And for those saying we're mid table, I don't buy it. 3 losses in 21 games under Guus, 2 under Conte so far - largely because of terrible individual errors - I'm not neaaaarly as scared or concerned as I was basically all of Jose's reign. We'll be alright. Top 4 still the goal imho.
I've been down. Pros -We won -No Ivan -Alonso looks promising -Clean sheet Cons -It wasn't a convincing win. -Bad giveaways. -Exposed many times at the back. -Hazard invisible. -Matic -Moses playing at all in the first team -Big international break
Two losses aside, it's freaking October! We were a lot worse off at this point last season. We also gave up goals and... came back and won. We've already looked better despite the two atrocious losses.
My concern is the international break. Took us this long to recover from the previous break. Need our players to come back focused
Mentioned the exact same thing to a friend today. Put an end to our early season momentum in September. Hope this doesn't do the same.
Tbh I thought Moses did quite well; he's far more deserving of playing time than Pedro. And I thought we won pretty comfortably. Many media outlets were saying it was our most complete performance so far, probably a lot to do with the clean sheet rather than actual play, but with that being said, there was never a moment where I was genuinely panicking. Courtois only had to make 3 saves on the day, and they were saves that he should be making every match. Seems to me that we've figured out how to beat the smaller sides (a large step up from last season) and have regained the mentality that's needed to come back against them if we go down a goal, but we have yet to get back to having a winning mentality against the better sides of the league. The latter will only come with more games against them imo. If we beat United in three weeks time that plays huge into the confidence of the side, and that will only improve our performances against City, Arsenal, Spurs, etc. Not saying the squad doesn't need reinforcements, but we are definitely on the right track mentally (and probably tactically despite the square pegs in round holes here and there) in comparison to where we were
Do not blame if he wants to leave and that is football and if he want to leave he should leave. We should keep players who want to play for us and not worry about keeping players happy who do not want to be at Chels.
We are much better than last year and that is good but really we should never be as bad as last season ever again considering the players that we have and the money that we spend and the manager and that we have and the youth team investments. We should be a top six team this season and that is good, but we are unliekly to be a top four team that this season as Man City, Man Utd, Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool are currently much better than we are and this is our new reality and for years now we have been in the top two or three teams all the time and that is no longer the case.
Why does it have to our new reality though? We are two seasons removed from a league title. We are 5 seasons removed from a Champions League. 4 seasons removed from a Europa League title. Sometimes blips happen. Last season was hopefully that blip. We are in decent position this season. Half of the squads you've just mentioned have far less investment than we do. If you want to say that the league is tougher, I'll agree. It may be that with 6 or 7 quality aides each year yeah, it may occasionally happen where we are without European football, but this expectation that our new reality is that of a mid table side I just don't buy or even a side that has a predetermined spot at 5 or 6. We can still finish top 4 this year.
Our new reality is that we are not capable of challenging for the title this season and that is the first time in a long time where we have begun a season like that and nobody is throwing in the towel but we have lost two games already and that is not title winning form. For the last decade we have begun each season as potential title winners and this season it is different and we are not going to win the league and we all know that and that is our new reality. And of course we are all still loyal Chels supporters and we never going to give up even if some of our players cant be bothered.