Jose was highly effective at gaslighting our fanbase into thinking he wasn't good enough. Same with other players. Toxic. Just look at Bale putting em in the back of the net now.. just why was he relegated to the bench? To make a point? I realize that that, beyond anything else, is something I find impossible to reconcile and contributed heavily to my distaste towards the idea of continuing with Frank. Its like hold on dude.. you mean to tell me you sold us this sob story of not having any of the players you needed then deflected any and all accountability to hang one guy out to dry and it turns out we just weren't making the most of what we had? Wack.
It was either "We just need this one more player..." whether it was Mendy or Declan Rice. Or..."You gotta give Lampard more time with these new players to mix and create a real sense of team..." Tuchel comes in, new league, new team, players he's never met aside from Pulisic and Silva, mid-season...undefeated, one goal from the run of play, victories over Atletico, Spurs, Liverpool, 10th to 4th. Players know their role. They know what the other team is going to do and anticipate it. Is it a new manager bounce? Maybe. Or Tuchel is able to utilize the potential, which, as I see it, is not even at 50% realized as of yet. As for Jose, he's insane. Mata was the clubs' most popular player. Adored by fans and players alike. Jose comes in, boom, you're not bigger than me. May 2012-13: Players Player of the Year; Chelsea Player of the Year. FA Cup, Champs League, Europa League... June 2013: JM appointed for 2nd time. January 24, 2014: Mata sold to United
Frank Lampard has left the building. He got us into the top four and to an FA Cup Final. Promoted youth Academy players. into the first team squad. Bought well in the transfer market, when he was able to. Thiago, Chillwell, Havertz, Werner, Ziyech, Mendy - money well spent? Time will tell. Not our greatest manager in recent years. Not our worst, I am looking at you Big Phil.
Interesting point from Matt Law - we won't really know fully about Tuchel until we lose. We saw a bit when we drew Soton, which was a major letdown, but a loss will be interesting. But where will the loss come? Leeds Atletico West Brom Crystal Palace Brighton West Ham Fulham We shall see.
Outside of Atletico those are all games we should conceivably win and at worst draw. Tho West Ham is looking good and Leeds is dangerous.
While I don't feel the need to pile on to any negativity towards Frank, I do think there is yet *another* cautionary tale here. How many times have we been in this situation before? Players, x,y and z aren't good enough, the millions spent aren't enough, etc. etc. From Jose to Conte to Lamps - this issue isn't special to any one manager (!!!). The thing that has been proven ad nauseam during our managerial merry-go-round is that one thing somehow manages to remain sorta consistent - the players who have shown their worth at one point are usually still pretty damn good and the idea that we offload them because of poor managerial utilization in favor of spending ungodly sums, is ridiculous. Kante is an amazing example of this. I mean, ******** man. Nearly 3 years now of watching the guy get played totally out of position to our own severe detriment and the plenty of fans were happy to say "Yeah, past it, sell him" (sorry for the "I told you sos" but maybe it's time for some to recognize this pattern?). Alonso, Rudiger, Christensen and Azpi are all part of a defense to be reckoned with at the moment. Alonso was the guy that needed replacing for us to take the team to the next level. Rudiger, player of the season under Sarri, was somehow deemed past it. Christensen no longer worthy. Azpi aging and past it (tbf, I thought he was 100% past it) Remember Jose v2? Yeah, I do. Needed to sell Hazard, Fabregas, Costa, etc. and replace the whole starting 11 for the sake of our dipshit, toxic manager (yes, my ire towards Jose is that strong these days) to appease his ego. So what is the point? Good players don't stop being good players overnight when management changes. Poor utilization and drained confidence at the behest of the current manager are far more important factors and I believe its time to show some respect and some loyalty to the guys that actually do the work on the pitch instead of selling them out because of one guys (bad) judgement.
And so it goes, take turns to keep posting. Enough already. Nothing to see here time to move on. Why not post about the CL draw and dream of the possibilities?
Why even bother posting in response? Nothing about my post was an attack but you like acting like I just called your kids ugly. It's been 10 years of similar policy from several different managers. Players sometimes deserve the respect many choose to not give them.
Regarding the ability of the last couple of managers, can I just gently remind people that most new managers get a bounce when they come in and players are doubling their effort to show the new guy what they can offer. That's the case both with the people in the side and those outside the current first team who are looking to get a slot. That's the case with pretty much ALL new managers, (with a few notable exceptions), and it's been the case with us in recent years. New manager gets a 'bounce'... Film at 11. It's not exactly a new story, is it. The fact is we had started to look a bit stale and seemed to quickly run out of ideas against some teams under frank. Now we seem more 'together' and solid from front to back. So, IOW, I'm MORE than happy we've got the new guy but I've been following the game long enough to know we might have shown an improvement whoever it was. As to whether it will continue... let's hope so! Can we leave it at that now?
Pretty wild how one can use tangible examples to make a point about something and all you ever really get back are truisms and 4th grade level observation.
Very true...the one notable difference here is it's not just the players who were playing under Frank that look better, it's practically everyone, including those who were riding the bench.
tangible examples? incoherent bollocks more like, bollocks about how we all wanted to sell Kante? Who the fcuck said they wanted to sell Kante? ? ? Okay, sure, we should stop selling out the players. Er, Good point.
Well, tbf, I did say both those in the side and those not in it. The only thing I'm not sure about is how we'll fair against the better sides with some of those guys like Alonso who I still think is a bit of a liability and Jorg who seems to play pretty much every game when he's available. But it seems to be working atm so more power to them
I hadn't really been reading this thread recently. I just wanted to have my say about comments made after the AM game so I'd missed this... Yeah, that has to be born in mind. Managers usually see an uptick in performance if they have good players available and our guys hadn't become bad players in the past, say, 6 months. I don't know how we'd have gone with another new guy. Maybe we'd have done better and maybe we'd have done worse. What we DO know is that we've done better since TT arrived. Of course, it's also true to say that some of the guys we brought in, (like Havertz, Puli and Ziyech), have had more time to familiarise with the club and their team-mates. That's probably been an advantage although, of course, that was the case under Frank as well so we should have been seeing better play... instead we'd become rather stale and inept. Now we're seeing the benefits we should have been seeing before. Despite that I still have question marks about some players, as I've said, including Alonso and Jorg but, y'know... it's football... that's how the game works. As long as they push the alternatives to become better players to force their way into the side, what's the problem
Whatever the case, if an otherwise good set of players is performing well under par, my eyes are on the manager. Parting ways with someone you no longer know how to perform with or under will almost always result in your own individual performance going in a better direction. In football, work, life, relationships, etc. If it isn’t working and there doesn’t appear to be a path forward, move on. I’m glad we did.
This is the genius of the chelsea manager go round. Keep firing and hiring and lurch from one honeymoon period to the next. Very post modern.
I've mentioned him before, but Maurizio Zamparini is laughing and calling us amateurs! Over 40 managers in 15 years! Some he hired and fired more than three times! Then there's Madrid in the 2000s, given how many managers they went through in a few years after Del Bosque but until Capello.
Which former manager would you take back if you could though? Zidane left because of how he felt he had no support in the transfer market. He kept winning but knew he had holes to fix. The management being management felt this was not necessary because he was winning after all. Let's see a dip then we will adjust our opinion. Zidane didn't want to stay around for an obvious incoming shit show and left respectably. This was a bold move but very intelligent. He came back and was handed a huge transfer budget.
You can't judge Tuchel before halfway through next season. What can you expect taking over a team during the season. You can't change much, you just can organize the team and hope for a better flow/form when success comes back. Other than that you can only rely on a different approach on practise and oration and hope for the best. I do think Tuchel is doing a great job to this point.
Good article with some truly awesome visualizations of what we've been like under Tuchel tl;dr Life is good y'all