25th Fixture: February 11, 2012 - Everton FC v. Chelsea FC [R]

I was at the game yesterday (courtesy of a Toffees fan !). I haven't heard the 'You don't know what you're doing' chant for years, but thats what our fans were chanting yesterday.

You missed nothing on the football side of things. We were shite, plain and simple as that. Cech was shite, our defence was shite, and the rest of them looked like they didn't know what they were doing. It was a limp performance lacking any creativity. We had no motivation whatsoever. What was AVB thinking of with those subs. ? I thought we couldn't play any worse than in a couple of recent games (Liverpool for example) but this capped the lot. My luck to pick this game to go to .

I heard the fans yesterday and I've seen that many on this board, even those who supported the hiring of AVB, are now turning on him. And I totally understand it. Football is a results-based game, as 'Arry may find out if he is stupid enough to take the England job, but I have this to say :

We simply CANNOT keep changing our manager. IMO the main reason for our present predicament is exactly because of that.

AVB has a very strong dressing room, with the likes of Cech, Lampard, Drogba, Terry all very likely to be influencing his efforts to overhaul things. Its pretty obvious to me that there is a level of disharmony there that is negatively impacting how we play. Furthermore, and there has been little debate about this; just how empowered IS AVB to carry out the changes needed ? There is a certain mystery about how the upper echelons do things at SB - my personal feeling is that there is a level of incompetence here which is not helpful.

Hey, AVB may NOT be the guy to lead us in the future, but we have to give him some rope. We also have to accept the pain of our present predicament, hoping that with time things will get better. I've written this season off. I frankly don't think we're going to beat Napoli over two legs in the CL and we may not finish in the top four of the PL. In other words things may get worse.

AVB manned up to yesterday's crap in his post-match interview. He was clearly angry at what happened. IMO we simply cannot sack the man at this point. We've paid a lot of money for this guy on the back of great potential so lets see if we were right to do so.

 

I was halfway prepared to turn computer on this morning and see that AVB had been sacked.

Agree with you Swiss, but I think AVB has lost a lot of rope with fans just in the last few weeks with how he has handled three situations:

-Cahill/Bosingwa/Ivan selection
-Meireles playing 90 week in and week out (can't fault him as much here as there simply isn't anybody else left to play with the injuries)
-his stubbornness in keeping his 4-3-3 and when we do change late in a game it is always something ridiculous like playing Lukaku out on the wing.

it's just amazing that we wanted Cahill so bad and the only game he gets is 90min vs United where he played well. I really want AVB to be successful and be the longterm solution for us, but if he can go into the film room and watch Bosingwa play and then select him again the next week......well then AVB simply isn't what we need.

 

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I was just reading that Alessandro del Piero has further cemented his football legacy by allegedly waking a girl from a two-week coma simply by speaking to her. Would he like to come and speak to the Chelsea dressing room I wonder?


Hiddink, Jose and maybe even Brendan Rodgers are possibilities and they are waiting . . .AVB is running out of time. Should he get more time? Should Big Phil Scolari have been given more time? AVB has lost the fans support, he may also be losing the support in the dressing room of the staff and players and IF he loses the dressing room then Roman has no real choice but to replace him.



I understand that the second season as a top-flight football manager is tricky. . .but it is getting harder and harder to have any sympathy for AVB. In hindsight he probably should have stayed at his previous club in Portugal for a few more years and got some more management experience.

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I think Roman is giving him rope.
[insert image of noose here].
We need some new players for certain. BUT we also already have some great players (Even Torres and Me-relish can be great players at times - the manager needs to get more out of them).
We are looking at confidence, motivation and tactics - and that is all down to AVB. As naughty pointed out after Hiddink took over from Big Phil the team transformed - same players. To be fair AVB took the blame for the Everton game, so let us see what he can do, he still has time to turn the season round. FA Cup, Champions League and a top four finish are still possibilities. Basically AVB has a couple of more lives left, but if we exit the cups and our league form continues to decline then Roman may look to Hiddink again to get us a proper top four finish.

 

there's your answer

this teams sucks, scolari and grant are both better than AVB

 

Indeed, as crappy as our season is, we are still in the Champions League and Porto are not.

 

i don't like comparing the current team to when we had Grant or Scolari. The players have aged/slowed down and have been playing through many injuries since those two were here. Not fair

The problem is that every manager that comes in (except Hidink which was only 3-4months anyways) thinks they can get the best out of the current crop instead of actually studying their digression in form and pace over the years. AVB didn't do anything different that Carlo tried to do with these players. AND for the most part that is his own fault any why we are in the situation we are in now. For being such a "master tactician" that studies videos and stats, his stubbornness and team selection is mind boggling.(you can toss that into the stat debate everyone loves using as credible information on how players perform.)

Getting rid of AVB now may help us finish in the top 4 this year.....maybe win the FA even. But then what next year? Start off with a new manager again only to have the same decline in form come November? This is the last thing that we need.

Supposedly,......sigh he has a plan for next season already cause he mentioned that next year's project is very exciting. Personally i'd like to slap the sh!t out of any manager that is talking about next year already. But we never heard any other manager actually talk about a project that is being worked up since jose first came. As painful as watching what we have now, I'd like to see what AVB can do with a crop of players that are actually motivated towards him and want to win something. This current group of Malouda, Kalou, Bos, DD (sometimes) and anyone else who's contract expires soon have ZERO, 0.0, motivation and fire in them. Pretty much 1 leg out the door already.

Until these players are replaced, we will be sandbagged. I'll give the guy another year to be fair regardless of the growing pains that we'll be forced to deal with in the interim.

 

I could go for this...just get Torres out of here.

 

Good post, but both Grant and Scolari were the aim of one of my favorite chants. And I think Carlo may have gotten it after his umpteenth right-back substitution in a row.

Why can't we find a manager who does know what he's doing?

 

Well, without going all 'psycho-babble' on you fellas, I'm beginning to wonder if the players still see AVB as the assistant and not the manager in his own right? Bear in mind this is a guy who was introduced to them some years ago in his mid 20's as Jose's sidekick. Maybe it's just too hard for them to think of him as the boss now?

Quite what can be done about it I don't know.

 

Yeah. Bridge, before his semi-retirement, was always a markedly better crosser than Cole, and a player like Baines is much more threatening with his delivery than Cole ever has been. Cole's worst football for Chelsea came with that awful 4-4-2 diamond, where he was constantly asked to cross the ball from deep to no effect.

 

So true. In fact ash only started crossing under AVB.

 

I don't know about this. As a former GK, I always give them the benefit of the doubt. While I agree that Cech is not as great (and he was great) as he once was, this was an odd goal. It came into the box oddly and in a weird place. Bosingwa stopped marking. 3 or 4 field players messed this up before it even came close to Cech. Pienaar also placed it perfectly. Cech closing down the angle would've helped for sure, but I think it's a goal regardless.

At this level, goals are very rarely solely the fault of the GK.

 

I think that's the point.

Drop Frank to 'make a point', (that NOBODY is untouchable), but then you continue to play a worse player in his position in Meireles, a forward who looks like he couldn't score in a knocking shop and a right back who can't defend. So... what point are you making? You're making the point that you don't know what you're doing.

The thing is the PLAYERS can see this too. THEY can tell that Bos has dozed off again and let someone run right past him. THEY know that Meireles has passed it straight to the other team again. THEY know that Torres has missed a sitter for the umpteenth time. They know because they're trying to recover from those mistakes.

I don't know but, if I had to guess, THAT'S why AVB has lost the confidence of his players. Because they think they know more than he does and, based on all the available evidence thus far, they're probably right.

 

As much blame it is on AVB for picking the players....you can't predict that Bos is going to toss the ball to the other team and then do a lite jog back to cover for his mistake. The team collectively have been making a ridiculous amount of mistakes this year that is just baffling.

again...if your NOT putting your body on the line for this club then you shouldn't be able to play. Bos and Malouda show this week in week out. IF there were only two players that we can move next year, they would be the ones.

 

well, just saying we have had a couple of players at fault for making poor passes that have been intercepted. The thing is most of them tried to run back and make up for it. Usually too late by that point. In Bos case, he just didn't even try.

wondering how much time Kalou will be seeing now that he and DD are back. I see them both playing this upcoming FA game

 

Will Drogs be available? I'm worried that the only change we'll see is a straight swap of him and Torres.

I know AVB is trying to save his job with an FA Cup win, but would like to see this mixed up a bit. Play Sturridge in the middle and Kalou/Malouda out wide. Cahill in central defense with Luiz. Bertrand out left, Ivan out right. Lamps, Essien, Mata in the middle.

Hilario in goal.

 

anyone hear how Cole is doing? No reason to not play Bertrand come this weekend