Chelsea Banter 4

21 Mar 2026 19:32:05
We were in the Champions League places under Maresca and in my opinion, would of beaten Arsenal in the semi-final and PSG in the Champions League because he had a way of winning those games and just needed to see out the season and have a full review of his tenure but oh no, the sporting directors find a way of parting company with him and appointing Liam who is so far out of his depth it is obvious for even the most blinkered to see.

This is AVB all over again and I hope he is gone tonight but it won't happen and he will drag us down even further. He has lost both the players and the fanbase.

21 Mar 2026 19:46:32
Greenaway, if the grass wasn't greener with the LR management, what makes you think it would be greener with the next management appointment?
I wanted the Stuttgart manager and not LR, but if we change again, even with a temporary manager, trust me, it can get a lot worse. Port Vale looms large.

21 Mar 2026 20:11:11
Greenaway, Tom

I think we'll limp to the end of the season with the coach, but we need to let go of the current SDs tomorrow and look for a new SD (single) for the summer transfers.

21 Mar 2026 20:23:17
Tom, I honestly think Liam is out of his depth, and a change will improve things. Maresca, whether you rated him or not, I did or didn't, maybe you? He was a far better coach. It was a huge mistake parting company with him at such a crucial stage of the season. If you think keeping him will be better than replacing him, then fine, that is your opinion, and I respect it, but for me, he needs binning now.


Bill, you are right, we need to sack the sporting directors who appointed Liam with immediate effect and appoint a singular head of football. We might then move forward.

21 Mar 2026 20:35:59
Greenaway, I definitely did NOT want Maresca sacked and said so over and over again.

I also did NOT want LR. I now do NOT want LR sacked, but I have said his performance as manager needs to be reviewed at the end of the season.



Maresca isn't coming back so that episode is all water under the bridge. If the club do decide to look for another manager, my choice would be the lad from Stuttgart or maybe the Bournemouth manager.

23 Mar 2026 10:00:42
Greenaway, you keep going on and on about Maresca.

He wanted to leave, our form was terrible, he spoke to a rival about getting a job there and should've been fired the second the club knew about that.



He disrespected the club (I agree with some of his complaints), but he was deservedly given the boot, and good riddance. His ego was inflated far beyond his ability.

21 Mar 2026 09:28:00
I see that there is another protest planned against Blue Co in April but this time, CFC fans will be joined by Strasbourg fans.

21 Mar 2026 14:48:45
The last one was pathetic. I hope the fans from Strasbourg have a nice time out in London.

21 Mar 2026 14:56:55
Who knows, Tom. You can never count on our weather.

21 Mar 2026 15:17:29
What is the protest about, Bill?

21 Mar 2026 18:22:27
They should protest right now at halftime. On the pitch. Because this is dreadful.

21 Mar 2026 18:34:34
What is the gk doing... jeeeeeeez.

21 Mar 2026 19:31:48
When and where's the next protest?!!!

21 Mar 2026 20:03:33
Not sure on the date, JBS, but the way it's going, I would not be surprised if it was much louder than the last one, especially with Strasbourg ultras coming over.

I think the 2030 Project should be renamed Project Never.

21 Mar 2026 21:46:51
I wouldn't have a clue, but have Strasbourg improved their standing under Blue Co?

Or, is there a fans' grievance about being part of a multi-club model?

22 Mar 2026 08:23:06
Tom, Strasbourg fans are fed up being used as a stepping stone for a move to us.

What they want is Blue Co to build a squad and leave them with it, not move the good ones to us.



The protest is due to take place before the home game vs. Man U.

The object is to get rid of the owners, which can happen at Strasbourg but sadly, not at our club for another seven years.

22 Mar 2026 13:46:59
I applaud and defend the right to protest, but I remain confused what our fans want or expect as an outcome.

21 Mar 2026 07:39:17
{Ed's Note - EHL2020 has posted a new article entitled, Rangers and Scotland’s Youth Pathway Problem

20 Mar 2026 13:52:36
I have zero confidence in us getting a result this weekend.

I see them putting us under pressure in the first 15mins and us crumbling.

I obviously hope I’m wrong!

Come on my mighty Blues.

20 Mar 2026 16:56:34
Tom, I think this is a big test for Liam. Can he get the game plan right? A lot of us fans are thinking like you, due to our lack of confidence in the gaffer.

20 Mar 2026 17:08:39
Everton away will be a tough game. No team is scared of us anymore. I think they will try to batter us in the first 20 mins. It's up to us to manage the game and take the sting out of it. It is a match we should win but...

20 Mar 2026 18:31:56
Sadly, I agree with all these posts, and expectations are low.

20 Mar 2026 19:01:20
Wow, it's a sad state when we are talking about struggling at Everton. I said we wouldn't win another game till May, the Notts Forest game.

20 Mar 2026 19:58:02
Nib, Notts Forest might have to win that game!

20 Mar 2026 21:29:34
Come on lads, we beat Villa 4-1 not two weeks ago. 3-0 Chels.

21 Mar 2026 08:16:36
We always struggle at Everton, so I agree there will be another struggle today, and I am not hopeful of anything either today or for the rest of the season. Confidence will have been shot to pieces.

A good trivia question would be: when was the last time we started more than one game with the same backline?

19 Mar 2026 07:44:47
PSG beating us 8-2 on aggregate, Real Madrid beating City 5-1 on aggregate, Barcelona beating Newcastle 8-3 on aggregate and Atletico beating Spurs 7-5.

Is the gap really that big? We've recently had convincing victories against both PSG and Barcelona. I'm sure City are capable of beating that Madrid side. Is this more a case of the strains of the EPL hitting our teams in Europe, again?

19 Mar 2026 08:34:19
Yes, the Premier League is tough, and the other leagues do more to help their clubs, with games postponed as well as a mid-season break.

The top of the Spanish league is good quality.

Maybe, the Club World Cup in the summer is coming back to bite us. We have played so many games without a proper break, and the players are starting to look tired.

19 Mar 2026 09:11:35
Spot on, seymns2.

19 Mar 2026 09:33:52
Yeah, you just don't get a week off in the EPL like you do in the other leagues. With all due respect to the bottom half teams in France, Spain, Germany etc., the UCL teams can play at 70% and still get a result, you just can't do that in the EPL.

I don't want to make excuses for our poor performances over both legs (although, that's exactly what I'm doing), but those two games were cup finals for PSG, their sole focus.

For us, they were just another couple of fixtures in a congested calendar.

I agree, CWC is 100% impacting the team negatively.

19 Mar 2026 14:32:39
Excuses, excuses. Perhaps, the top European teams are just better. The much used mantra that any team can beat any other team in the PL is proof that the so-called big teams aren't that good. The Premier League has been dreadful this season: us included.

19 Mar 2026 16:44:10
Absolutely an excuse, but the Club World Cup is a valid excuse nonetheless.

I agree that it is not a vintage year in the Premier League. Arsenal are going to win, and they are not a great side.

19 Mar 2026 18:11:30
There is no doubt that the Club World Cup has put extra pressure on the squad. However, the hierarchy and fitness analysts would have been aware of that. Moreover, we have a significant cohort of players who are constantly injured: Lavia hasn't played a full 90 minutes since we signed him.

Even when 'fit', James and Fofana can't play two consecutive games. These factors add to potential fatigue issues for the rest of the squad.

19 Mar 2026 23:54:33
Jimbo, it's not just us that have suffered with injuries. Spurs & City have had terrible injuries this season, even though Spurs weren't at the CWC, and neither of their squads have the 'injury prone' players such as James/Fofana/Lavia.



The intensity, if not the difficulty, of the league puts so much more pressure on players in the PL. Combined with 2 domestic cup competitions, no winter breaks, it's pretty clear that PL teams have it harder.

20 Mar 2026 07:41:14
Quality in depth within the squad for me. When they bring someone on or rest a player, the player is just as good. With us, we don't have that. We have 7/8 good players, and that's where our weakness is.

20 Mar 2026 10:51:41
Quality players get injured, and it's very rare for any team to have twenty-five so-called "quality players." I find it hard to believe that any manager could keep such a squad happy.

I have no idea how our number of matches lost to injury compares to other clubs.

It could be that it's generally accepted that Premiership teams that play in Europe get more injuries than teams who are not in European competitions.

I think we just expected too much from the last window.

We signed a few untested Premiership players who haven't hit the ground running. This happens at virtually every club. It can sometimes take a player a season to adjust to the Premiership. I think that the newly signed players, not so far being up to speed, allied with key injuries, have exposed us.
The time to truly judge these players, in my opinion, will be next season. Some fans/posters are all too quick to write players off.

20 Mar 2026 12:08:35
Fuser, there is no doubt pl clubs have it harder. However, top clubs want to compete in the Champions League. We willingly participated in the Club World Cup and earned around £100 million. Clubs will be scrambling to join the party when the next one is held. There is no point in clubs complaining; it is in their and the Premier League's hands. They could arrange a winter break; they could reduce the number of clubs in the pl and ditch the League Cup, among other things, but they won't because of the money.

As for Chelsea, most of our days lost through injury are from players who are constantly injured and rarely play, and not because of fatigue caused by busy match schedules. Some posters are too quick to hype players who clearly aren't good enough.

20 Mar 2026 13:30:57
And some posters write of players after just seeing them for a few games.

Give players at least a season or a run of games is my view before making a judgement. That doesn't mean they can't be criticised for playing a bad game or making a mistake.

19 Mar 2026 07:39:16
{Ed's Note - EHL2020 has posted a new article entitled, Why Preseason Conditioning Shapes Tactical Success

18 Mar 2026 13:19:46
I thought starting three at the back was a risky decision. I do not understand why Josh isn't playing more. I think Palmer was awful again, but Enzo was also poor and he has been playing well recently. PSG got their tactics spot on by going man for man.

We got lucky against Brentford when did the same thing against us and they ain't no PSG. Some small pluses, Hato did ok and despite losing out on an important tackle I thought Santos was good. Hope the Chalaboa injury isn't as bad as it looked.

18 Mar 2026 13:34:17
Tom

Let's be honest, over the two legs, we were terrible. Someone has to be called out for this, whether it is the owners, SD's, players, or coaches.

Goodness knows what this is going to do to the players for the remainder of the season.

18 Mar 2026 18:08:30
We will be okay. Highly disappointing result (thankfully I was celebrating St Pats and missed the game), but we will still finish in a Europa League position at worst. That would be a failure of a result, but a likely one currently.

18 Mar 2026 18:46:25
Bill, I remain convinced that if it hadn’t been for a mad 15 mins in Paris, last night would have been a lot different.
Last night, I thought they did a number on us going man for man. They won all the 50/50s and took their chances.


It’s probably me, but if we make a mistake, we are always severely punished, but if the opposition make a mistake, we never take advantage of it. Probably blue-tinted glasses at play!!

18 Mar 2026 19:57:47
70 minutes into the away leg I thot Chelsea were the better team, with smarter combinations & slicker patterns of play. PSG's goals were given to them. Chelsea's goals were worked for. Then the wheels came off. Often, when a team takes a beating of 3 goals plus in the CL, it is not so unusual for them v very good teams to draw or lose the second game.

Last night Chelsea were awful in all aspects of the game. But, imo it will take a good team to beat PSG. I also think that result might signal the end for LR. It looked bad for the lad, & I truly think he drowned in it all. But the SDs do require a reality check. The team needs a GK, two CBs, & a CF, & all of them need to be at CL, if not WC, level.

19 Mar 2026 09:23:51
I agree with you Londonscot. No one on here surely believed preseason that we had a squad able to challenge successfully for the EPL or Champions League. Yes, we had won the League and the 2-level Conference League.

We had also won the CWC, but we had a very easy route to the final compared to the far tougher one PSG had, and they had also won the Champions League. We looked far fresher and more up for the final than they did, and thanks also to Maresca getting tactics spot on. Some fine saves by Sanchez and Palmer, in particular Palmer at the top of his game in a way he largely hasn't been this season, meant we won that.



But perhaps this 'flattered to deceive' in terms of expectation for some of us this season, and we didn't fix the weaknesses in the squad still obvious to most. I am by now pretty exhausted, as probably others are, by having to repeat all this, and yes, mention that the club's Vision is Vision 2030, not 2026 or 2027. We just have to hope, hugely, that we can still qualify for the Champions League next season, so keeping at least most of our best, and now mostly our most experienced, players, and that the SDs will gradually get the squad closer to being a really competitive one in the two competitions that really matter, the EPL and the ECL.

19 Mar 2026 23:59:57
I agree with TomB that if we'd finished the first leg at 2-2, it would have been a much different game at home. We gifted PSG almost all of their 8 goals, but stats show we outperformed their xG in both legs. Poor defensive lapses and a slight lack of clinical finishing/good goalkeeping from PSG made the games look far worse, imo.

That's not to say we don't need to change personnel to fix the mistakes we keep making, but I don't think it is necessarily a tactics issue.

18 Mar 2026 09:42:37
Thoughts on Enzo's comments.

He was asked the question in the immediate aftermath of a very disappointing result, I'm not sure anything he said could be relied upon for accuracy. However, whilst I think he's a really good player, if he wanted to go, I wouldn't loose too much sleep over it. I'd put forward the argument that he could, possibly even should, be replaced with a genuine midfield partner for Caicedo, which would allow Palmer to play 10, whilst fitting Estavao in at RW. There'll obviously be other setups required for different games, three man midfields etc, but, moving forward, I believe we need Palmer and Estavao on the pitch together as much as possible.

One problem for Enzo, should he want to go, will be finding a club willing and able to pay the money for him. Only Real fit into that bracket, and that's a maybe at best.

18 Mar 2026 11:25:08
I fear LR will have lost the confidence of some of the players last night....
They will have had doubts when he was appointed, and the first few results would have helped his cause.... but now a string of bad results will have done little to quieten the doubts in the squad. Last night was a night where we should have made sure we were still in the game at half time. We should have set ourselves up to not concede, and hoped that we went in at half time either 0-0 or 1-0 up. We came out and instantly seemed to want to go toe to toe.

Naive. Players don't like being thrashed and outclassed. Maybe Enzo wants to leave.... or perhaps he was just sending a message to the powers that be... Either way, the appointment of Liam, who is so far out of his depth, will now tear the club apart if not relieved of his duties ASAP. Under Maresca we were getting there, winning trophies and qualifying for the Champions League, he wasn't the finished article, but miles ahead of this guy who has lost the players and the fanbase. The SD behind his appointment must be called out and replaced.

18 Mar 2026 12:54:11
If Enzo wants to go and we can get the right price then fine, the money should then be spent on a goalkeeper and a midfielder with a different profile to Enzo.

18 Mar 2026 12:56:53
I read that a top French journalist who was sitting behind the dugout said that the instructions LR was giving to players were totally ignored by them.

If true, it does show a lack of confidence in LR, but if true, it is very poor of the players who are putting themselves before the club.

18 Mar 2026 13:05:54
We're all in agreement. If a player wants to leave, fine, once we get the right deal for us.

Enzo is seen as one of the senior/better players in the squad. If a player of his standing in the club wants to go, the SDs and owners should see it as a real wake-up call that something has to change.



Who could be next? Palmer? Caicedo? Estevao? Cucurella? If these types of players want out, the club would be in proper s****!

18 Mar 2026 13:08:10
Bill, how about it's all a load of old tosh. It's as good a rumour as any!!

18 Mar 2026 13:28:24
Maybe Tom, maybe not.

18 Mar 2026 18:47:11
People will believe what works for them.

19 Mar 2026 09:33:34
Well, LR definitely did give Garnacho instructions in c. 87th minute, when the game and tie were long gone, and it did make LR look a bit like the captain of the Titanic, sending a crew member with some tar to fix the leaks caused by the iceberg.

But, I will still suspend judgment on LR and his relationship with players until the end of the season, and we should all bear in mind just how much more tiring the EPL is than the French league for perennial winners PSG, who had also been given last weekend off by their league.

It was pretty close to cheating, I'd reckon, even if having to play a game would probably not have changed the result.

19 Mar 2026 09:41:31
And, some don't believe the truth, Tom.

I don't know if it is true or not, but I do know Lauren's a respected journalist.

19 Mar 2026 10:22:26
Respected journalists are in short supply in my opinion.

20 Mar 2026 00:03:01
Greenway, LR was lambasted by loads of people by playing tight against Arsenal and hoping to score 1 goal in the 2nd half. Considering we had to overturn a 3 goals deficit, I don't think playing defensively would have worked.

18 Mar 2026 08:36:34
Today actually resembles spring, sun is shining, birds are chirping and green shoots are appearing on my trees. Have a good day fellow posters and chatters.

18 Mar 2026 09:02:00
You too, Greenaway.

18 Mar 2026 13:23:20
Greenaway, lovely day to be out and about.

19 Mar 2026 09:34:27
Yes, another lovely day today, so will repeat Greenaway's welcome post of yesterday, and say hope we can all enjoy it here in UK!

18 Mar 2026 07:55:40
I still have no idea what this project is and what they told the players who they signed for long contracts.
Football doesn't work on 5 years time, a week in football is a long time.
Ultimately in my opinion and it's obvious that the owners have made some serious mistakes and hopefully they realise that we need a change in management.

18 Mar 2026 08:43:32
I totally agree. All this project talk, the project in football is to win your next game.

18 Mar 2026 13:11:53
My guess is to buy players with potential that can be put on a suitable pay structure. Try to win games, try to win trophies.

It's either judged as a success or failure at the end of each season.

19 Mar 2026 09:41:12
Tom, don't you think there is a clue to our problem in the 'project' of just buying players with potential rather than at least having a critical mass of a finished article into which that potential can be blended - even if we can see the trading/profit logic to the club's approach - in terms of winning the EPL or the ECL any time soon? In 2030, perhaps, if our best players stick with the project and most we buy with 'potential' can fulfill it, I suppose.



But players' confidence feeds off success, so we need to win a few things in the meantime. That is why the two rather odd competitions we won last season were helpful to the morale of the squad and fans. So I guess we can but hope we are able to win the FA Cup this season?!

20 Mar 2026 13:36:51
JBS, My view is we have all been guilty of referring to the terms "project" and "process."

I personally am not a person who thinks age can be used as an excuse when it's clearly an owner's choice.



I would have bought different players, and maybe different types of players, but that is just me. The SDs are only rarely going to make me happy with a player or manager signing.