Chelsea Banter Archive May 05 2014

 

Use our rumours form to send us chelsea transfer rumours.


05 May 2014 23:33:27
Praying that we see some of the lads from the youth team start against Cardiff.

Believable0 Unbelievable0

05 May 2014 21:37:51
Stunning comeback by the Chelsea youth team. Congratulations to them beating Fulham 7-6 on aggregate!

Believable0 Unbelievable0

05 May 2014 22:00:53
How stressful was that cup final haha well done though very entertaining not for all the right reasons sometimes like but all in all deserved it I thought

Agree0 Disagree0

Haha yeah Chelsea never win anything the easy way. Here is to hoping we see some of these youth players in the Chelsea first team in the years to come.

Agree0 Disagree0

Fantastic result, let's hope Solanki develops, 16 such a talent.

Agree0 Disagree0

05 May 2014 16:33:32
Ed
Jose keeps saying we are looking at 2 critical signings and no more Is he kidding us again we must be looking at least
a minimum of 4 or 5 if we are to believe that up to 15 could be on there way out of the bridge

Believable0 Unbelievable0

{Ed018's Note - I wouldn't pay much attention to what he says}

I agree with you, Lampard will retire as well a. Hillario and Schwartzer. No one knows what will happen with Cole. Eto'o&Ba are leaving for sure. Bertrand future is unsure. That is what we can tell now. That is minimum 7 players . Minimum 4-6 signings are necessary.

Agree0 Disagree0

05 May 2014 14:17:13
Quick question guys if you will, not having a go at jose or the team, i'm just really curious where exactly is the improvement in the team from last season to this. Although there has been a lot of difference which hasn't been entierely positive, take for example the sale of Mata, now mind you i'm not saying we should or shouldn't have sold him, the point is he was the best player at the club for two seasons and his stats are terrific so selling him to be honest shouldn't count as a positive for the season, cause any way you look at this he did have 20 goals and 20 assists last season( give or take). Now that also with the fact that no one in the team has replicated that this season, so I can safely say another reason why the difference of him not at the club cannot be deemed a positive move on the season if we are all being honest to ourselves. Secondly, still on the difference front we can all say we would finish the season trophyless, again not a positive if anything its something big clubs like ourselves try to avoid at all cause . Another quite troubling difference which if I judge with the response on here about a year ago everyone was quite excited about our free flowing football now I do agree that we didn't always get us the result we desired but we all thought it was a work in progress which we hoped TSO was going to perfect (obviously not the case, if anything we are more slow and boring than I can remember.) I just can't help but think that we've taking a step backwards in that particular case. Jose has brought some sort of positive change in terms of the mentality of the younger players like Hazard and Azpilicueta who have been great, he has also brought JT back, which is a big one for us cause we've missed him. We have been in transition for two years now I believe and we can all say this is jose's first season back and that's true but honestly we have to be Frank with ourselves, the difference from this season to last leans in favour of the latter. Another case that got me scratching my head is the Lukaku and courtois incident where they should be part and parcel of our setup (cause let's be fair they couldn't have done much worse) I think they would and should have been let to grow with our squad but they just haven't been given the chance. If anything I feel perhaps if we ended the season with those two and still playing the free flowing football and the introduction of the likes of some youngsters also I think it would have been deemed a better season on all accounts can't help but feel we didn't imrove in much this season in fact I think we stood still.
Now again, please I repeat i'm not criticizing i'm just a really curious and want to know what fellow blues ED018 and other posters think. (Ed002 I know you're not particularly interested in this sort of stuff )

P.S. Sorry for the long post just tought I should give my genuine take on our season. Looking forward to the summer.

Believable0 Unbelievable0

{Ed018's Note - I don't have the time right now to comment but maybe I'll chime in later}

Everyone needs to relax a little bit, me personally although I haven't been filled with excitement with our style I fully understand it we cannot go and play attack for attack football when your strikers cannot finish if we had played that way against Arsenal City and Liverpool we would of lost.instead we are going to finish 3rd automatically qualified for next years CL and will probably finish only 5 points off the league winners( which whoever it turns out to be we beat them twice).All the talk of transition is all well and good but people need to realize you can't play a certain way if you don't have the players to do it IMO next year we will see a completely different Chelsea much more attacking and this time with 2 or 3 forwards that can compete with the other to attacking sides.I can't speak for everyone but at the start of the season I would of took top 3 finish and semis of a CL I whole heartily believe that next year we will win the league and that it will be buy a comfortable margin the fans need t stick with Jose and back the team we all know what he is capable of the records our club holds because of him when he gets the final pieces to the attacking jigsaw it will show. but we have improved we leaked less goals the points gap between us and first has dropped dramatically and if we had that killer forward to have provided that something special in the silly games we lost we would of been champions so me personally I am happy with the season and I fully expect next year Jose and the boys will take the league and Europe buy storm.

Agree0 Disagree0

05 May 2014 17:13:51
The sale of Mata was sad and we have missed him terribly in recent games with Oscar being so poor. I have said on more than one occasion we can't just blame the lack of quality strikers. Our general play has been woeful in recent weeks and it's clear Jose is feeling the pressure with his comments and attacks on officials and players.
of course, we as fans remember what he did in the past and hope he does again but I feel if we don't make a fast start next season Roman will axe him again. I can see our flair players being sold in the Summer to create funds for robust, physically and mentally strong players who will, no doubt, bring success to our club but Roman does want a certain style of football so I fear (although hope not) that we might be looking at a new manager sooner rather than later.
lets hope not and that a balance can be found and Jose leads us into a new, trophy laden era of success. It's in the balance though.

Agree0 Disagree0

100% agree with Lampsy. Yes we haven't played attacking football but we don't have the strikers to finish the chances. What would be in the point in playing tiki-taka football and giving our strikers 100 chances to score in the box when they'll miss 99 of them?

Overall we've closed the gap to 1st place and have challenged for the title for the majority of the season. Which is a massive improvement for me. Yes perhaps we haven't taken the next step from last season but JM was never likely to continue Benitez's work but start over.

You're asking why we never kept Courtois at the start of the season. If I had to rate him at the start of the season I'd say he was a 7 or so. Now he's a 9 out of 10. He's improvement this season has been exponential. Something which wouldn't have happened if he wasn't playing week in week out.

As for Lukaku, he's only scored 14 goals in the PL. Which may be more than our current strikers but isn't exactly world-class. He also, from what i've gathered, wanted to be considered first choice. Ed002 has also said on numerous occasions that someone within the club has issues with him. Whether there were those issues at the start of the season or not, it's highly unlikely he'll be around much longer.

One final point. Yes we let Mata go, which for me was disappointing but I believed it was the best for the team, so I stand by the decision. But our current AM's apart from Hazard have been incredibly inconsistent. Oscar seems to have dropped off since December? Schurrle is still settling, and is a bag of Revels. Willian has great work ethic and good defensive work but has yet to show his potential in the final third. I believe had all our AMs been on point for the majority of the season, we'd definitely still be in contention for the title despite our misfiring strikers.
Next Year will be a massive improvement in style, with a couple new strikers, a proper LB and hopefully a DLP. (Sorry if it's a bit long)

Agree0 Disagree0

Unless I am mistaken Jose tried to instil a different approach.

However there were a couple of games that proved to be the turning point namely against Stoke & I think Sunderland

Up till then we seemed to scoring ok but alas not enough added to which we were conceding too many.

Jose came out at that point and said he would have to change approach
For me that was the point when it was pretty certain that he knew the squad was far from balanced and would require a complete overhaul.

The Jan window afforded a couple of opportunities which were taken although we won't see the real benefit of those three signings till 2014/15 .

It would be extreme to say that the season was written off but at that point I thought that we were going to try and kill off games and see where it got us, all the while getting to season end when a major overhaul would come about.

I can only think players like Torres and Ba had to be given a chance under but others like Bertrand, Marin & Moses hadn't done enough in the past to be afforded such an opportunity



As for Courtois v Cech not a difficult call will be more difficult next. Lukaka again not a difficult call .

It has been suggested that there will be quite a few leaving, not difficult to see why but let's not forget we reached the CL semi finals and were still in with a shout of winning the with two games left

Agree0 Disagree0

I must say, before the season started I had aspirations of us winning the league and if not coming second behind City as we definitely appeared to have one of the two best squads in the country. However, I think to blame Mourinho for moving us 'backwards' in terms of development is harsh as he acknowledged himself that he needed to go back to a more defensive style of football to guarantee us top 4 (which he has now duly done). I believe he will be aiming to sign two big name strikers in the summer so that he can change our style of play and I am sure he has talked about this with Abramovich at length which is presumably why there has been no rumours of his sacking as with so many other managers in our (recent) past. Overall I would definitely regard is season as an improvement on last as we are probably going to be nine points closer to first place than last season and although it merits no trophy, being in the champions league semi-final is far better than winning the Europa League in both mine and most peoples mind's. Finally, the point that was made that we have had no player reaching the figures of Mata this season is I believe unfair as if you look at Hazard's stats on games played, he would probably have reached a far higher numbers of goals as he has only three less with 12 fewer appearances.

Agree0 Disagree0

To start off I think the mata sale made a good deal of sense. His numbers last year was in a completely different system where he had a free role and zero defensive responsibility. He wouldn't have ever gotten close to those numbers in the new system. You must look at things in a buisness perspective and when you have an asset worth £37m not playing in most of your big games that's not value for money. Can you argue we got more value from mata than matic and salah as well as an additional 5m. I don't remember anyone predicting Oscar to fall off in form the way he has at the time of the transaction. I fear the same situation will occur to Luiz. Having a 30m+ asset that isn't an automatic selection isn't value for money. As far as trophies go can you argue this team didn't make progress from last season. We challenged in the league and our inconsistency killed us while we dominated the big games. There's absolutely zero reason city shouldn't have won the title this year. Their squad is far superior to everyone else's. We went about 50 minutes from the cl final compared to getting bounced in the group stage. In the cups we underperformed against Sunderland but drawing city away in the 5th round is just unlucky. As far as play styles I go back to arsenal. Would you rather play pretty football or give yourself the best chance to win. Anybody who chooses the first is delusional. As far as player developement there were tons of positives. Cahill and Dave have become world class and terry has regained top status. Hazard has become world class and Oscar was our best player in the first half of the season. Luiz is maybe the only player that I can think of that took a step back. Everyone else remained pretty even. As far as loans go I feel this season has been hugely successful. With courtois there was nobody at the beginning of the season that said he should be here over Cech and now they are which is progress. Lukakus situation was player driven as he didn't want to be part of a three with etoo and Torres so pushed for the move. In other loans atsu, bamford, omereu, van aanholt, and piazon showed big steps. The only people that weren't successful was josh (which has been a trend) and Chalobahs first spell.

Agree0 Disagree0

To start off I think the mata sale made a good deal of sense. His numbers last year was in a completely different system where he had a free role and zero defensive responsibility. He wouldn't have ever gotten close to those numbers in the new system. You must look at things in a buisness perspective and when you have an asset worth £37m not playing in most of your big games that's not value for money. Can you argue we got more value from mata than matic and salah as well as an additional 5m. I don't remember anyone predicting Oscar to fall off in form the way he has at the time of the transaction. I fear the same situation will occur to Luiz. Having a 30m+ asset that isn't an automatic selection isn't value for money. As far as trophies go can you argue this team didn't make progress from last season. We challenged in the league and our inconsistency killed us while we dominated the big games. There's absolutely zero reason city shouldn't have won the title this year. Their squad is far superior to everyone else's. We went about 50 minutes from the cl final compared to getting bounced in the group stage. In the cups we underperformed against Sunderland but drawing city away in the 5th round is just unlucky. As far as play styles I go back to arsenal. Would you rather play pretty football or give yourself the best chance to win. Anybody who chooses the first is delusional. As far as player developement there were tons of positives. Cahill and Dave have become world class and terry has regained top status. Hazard has become world class and Oscar was our best player in the first half of the season. Luiz is maybe the only player that I can think of that took a step back. Everyone else remained pretty even. As far as loans go I feel this season has been hugely successful. With courtois there was nobody at the beginning of the season that said he should be here over Cech and now they are which is progress. Lukakus situation was player driven as he didn't want to be part of a three with etoo and Torres so pushed for the move. In other loans atsu, bamford, omereu, van aanholt, and piazon showed big steps. The only people that weren't successful was josh (which has been a trend) and Chalobahs first spell.

Agree0 Disagree0

05 May 2014 11:28:51
Ivanovic on the ball is ridiculous too. Watching game, hiss crossing is terrible,, azpilcueta on other hand crosses like a winger, hope we get aeft back so azpilcueta can have his RB position back,

Believable0 Unbelievable0

Sorry he may not be the best crosser of the ball, but if half the players in that team had his balls and commitment we would not have lost the soft games we have this season.
So if you are wanting to moan about players there are much more deserving causes than Ivan .

Agree0 Disagree0

Haha have to agree with andrew you could moan about our strikers before that, or Ramires being terrible apart from his work rate or even Oscar and some more of our attacking mids consistency but not Ivanovic! I do think that he should drop to the bench as a squad player if we sign a quality left back for e.g Moreno/Shaw/Luis and then move azpi back to his natural position to make us more attacking with a better crossing ability but Ivanovic isn't rubbish. He will be a great player to have on the bench next season if he doesn't start.

Agree0 Disagree0

The problem is not so much bran but the fact is his a better cb and azpilcueta is brilliant RB, and when teams sit deep ball gets played back to wing backs and they can't get decent crosses in as ones wrong sided and other can't cross, there's loads of players and points to moan about but after the game yesterday it was a point that was frustrating and nobody seems to mention it

Agree0 Disagree0

I do agree with Matt that it's incredibly frustrating to watch Ivanovic cross the ball. Yes he has a lot of energy and I commend him for joining the attack but everytime he crosses the ball I know the move will break down. He's fantastic in defence and I don't doubt his commitment or balls but yesterday when we need better crosses into Ba, he was poor (in that department)

Agree0 Disagree0

We should get a proper left back, move azpi to rb, and have our two cbs to be cahill alongside ivanovic (if terry is going to leave) with kalas and especially zouma being backups and slowly being integrated into the team.

Agree0 Disagree0

Guys,
How many crosses came from "world class wingers" yesterday.
You expect crosses to come from wingers not backsdoes it make sense?

Agree0 Disagree0

05 May 2014 00:02:15
Hi ED002 reports the barca want hazard and that he is unhappy, I know you say chelsea won't stand in a layers way if they want to leave the club but I'd their any legitimate concern in this

Believable0 Unbelievable0

{Ed002's Note - It will be speculation.}