Horror touch from Michy almost leads to an equalizer.. yikes man. What is with the nothing giveaways!
That touch by bats to move it on for himself may have been the worst touch of the match and that's up against some pretty stiff competition. That it led to a chance for them from our attack in a one goal game makes it all the worse. And there is the goal....
Something about Kova and Jorginho in that they are chronically useless footballers. Barkley as well. Azpi? Washed. Zouma? Not good enough. Kante, Rud and RLC are sorely missed...
Weird end to the game. After the goal all you could hear were Sheffield fans. Chelsea fans evaporated at the whistle and the SU fans are still here and singing. Did I miss a goal or two? We won, right?
If Christensen is healthy enough to be a sub he is healthy enough to start. I don’t understand Frank’s love of Zouma. Or how he got called up by France. Our midfield is dire without Kante. Jorginho and Kovacic should never play together again in a three man midfield. They’re too slow and lack any threat.
We need to fix the right side of our defence. Leaking goals from there every game. We need to shift Tomori to the right. Rudiger and Christensen in the centre. I'm still optimistic. We will be better in the second half of the season once the injured players are back and firing.
Hate to say it but this really is our 'level' right now, Sheffield fans celebrating like they won, in reality.............I think as of right now they may be 'better' than us. As for the first fix, its gotta be the defence, 9 feckin goals for chrissake, the IS relegation numbers.
I saw an interview with JM a few weeks back and he said that Frank didn't need any more defenders as he already had Kurt Zouma. I thought then, maybe JM has been following the guy closely and knows something I didn't. Anyway, I'm wondering if that's playing a part in the fact he keeps getting picked. But, whatever the reason, it's not looking like a good call so far. I hear what people have been saying about the midfield and their problems but, tbh, if the defence keeps leaking goals willy nilly, it's hard to see how we're going to win games of football. Anyway, I thought Kante was back? What's happened to him? We need him and Rudi back, like, NOW!!!
Actually it looks like I did miss a goal trying to cash in my free beer at the half. You can’t see the score from my seat so I really did think we’d won til just now. Oy.
That was a 2 man midfield - we were playing a 4-2-3-1. I like Jorginho more than some other posters, but even I freely admit his limitations (his long balls today were bad today and he’s slow). So why did Frank pair him with an 18 year old for 10 minutes? Bizarre. I thought Kovacic was mostly good today - had a couple of very good runs and nearly scored a goal. Tackled well. He continues to frustrate by asking for calls instead of playing on and some of his passing is off, but he’s not the problem. Tomori looked very good. Zouma.....
Gosh, all this criticism of Barkley - I’m starting to think you guys might not think he’s that good! In fairness, I think Barkley might be reasonable as a sub with a very strictly controlled role. Instead Frank has given him the freedom to be our number 10 in this formation. Which is bananas.
TBH I don't think we'll be able to tell what Frank's intentions are for him, (or others), until we've got some of our crocked guys back. That's why I asked how we'd looked since the change. Because, unless we look noticeable better when he's not there, the argument about how good or bad his overall contribution is more complex. IOW if others are equally useless, (maybe not passing it to the other side but only playing 5 yards sideways to someone in essentially the same position which doesn't really help us), we're no better off. From what I've seen and from the descriptions on here I'd say it seems like a back line of Emerson, Rudi, Christensen and maybe Tomori, with Kante in front, should be a reasonable base from which to attack. Otherwise the MF setup is all moot because we're not going to win games anyway.
Apart from Tammy, Tomori was a real positive today. Zouma needs to drop to 4th choice when Rudi comes back.