No doubt the knockers will be out in force ASAP after Napoli defeat. For what it's worth, I thought AVB handled things well for a change. Quite good selection, apart from Boswinga and Malouda. Not a lot of choice in Maloudas 'case. Made his subs at the correct time. Team did appear to try for a change. What did show like a flashing red light is our almost total lack of class. I can't remember one pass to send our forwards towards goal, everything came from crosses, usually delivered from a player who has come to a halt. Static dumb play gives opponents heaps of time to pack defence. Our midfield is absolutely dire. Meireles in not the creative player we need. Ramires had a below par game, bit rusty ?? Mata is totally wasted playing our system, but still close to best. Essien ,after terrible 2 years of injuries, is now too slow, and without his blockbusting runs, is just another squad player in my opinion. Lampard came on , and lumbered around in mediocrity. Sorry, he's absolutely hopeless at the moment. Drogba did very little for a man around whom the formation is built. If that's playing to our strengths, then we haven't got much strength to begin with. Sturridge is just not direct enough. never saw him once take the ball on the fly and run at goal. Always starts back to goal and tries to fancy foot past defenders. Down the wing he's fine, but mostly comes to nothing. Not blaming Sturridge, but those who are supposed to supply him. Cech was great early, but exposed too often. Brana spent too much time covering the holes left by Cahill, who was frankly, awful. Think he just needs more time . Luiz made one mistake and as luck would have it, a goal came. He had another very good game. Cole useless, apart from great block. Isn't it always the way, Luiz plays well, gets brickbats, Cole was hopeless, gets the praise. The good news??? We could and should have been 2 or even 3 up. Luiz put a clear header over, Ramires blasted over. We created plenty of chances but simply don't have the class to put them away. Oh for a decent ,direct lethal striker like Napoli have !!!! Napoli were there for the taking but our inability to stay tough at the back let us down. Time to really reassess the formation, we don't have the players to play our old dependable game any more.
Good points made, but you have to remember that a Mr. Abramovich owns you, and he's not the sort to point the finger at his players, it's always the manager who must fall on his sword.
I was just about post a topic in favour of AVB. I hope Ambramovich goes to training again, and absolutely hammers the players. Put these no good retches in their place. Only a few players I can genuinly say are worthy of being a Chelsea player. Full backing of AVB.
For a load of **** players? Fair enough he's had some bloody odd decisions tactically but who do you want as a manger then? There's no one. Rafa...
Yep, I said before the game I feared a hiding due to the team selection. It's easy to blame the defenders, but when you have no support for 90 minutes and are under constant pressure it isn't easy. I said at the time that having no defensive minded midfield players against a fast counter-attacking team like Napoli worried me. Ivanovic and Cole like to go forward which leaves gaps in behind. To fill those gaps you need disciplined, defensive players. Sturridge, Mata, Ramires, Meireles, Malouda can't play that role. We were crying out for a Romeu or Essien, even a Mikel. What we saw was a gung-ho approach which could have left us 4 or 5-1 down. I am not letting the players off scot-free either, there were sub standard performances but given the fact Luiz and Cahill often faced 2 vs 1 situations I'm inclined to give them some respite. There is no way we could realistically have expected to come off with anything but defeat with that team selection. Would you play no defensive midfielders against City, Barca, United? No of course not, why are Napoli any different? Napoli had balance and that was why they won, as well as the fact they had better attacking options. Comes as no surprise to me Essien, Cole and Lampard all had to come on
I see what you mean to be fair, I was pretty annoyed at the line up and was expecting to get beat by 2 or more but in the circumstances I was actually quite proud of a few of them, I think if Essien had started instead of Meireles we'd have been ok. Cahill was poor but we have to remember it was his first CL start EVER! Arguably against one of the best front three in the world aswell. I think 99% thought the same mate.
Napoli quite frankly ,are probably even more fragile in defence than we are. Even our hopeless team opened them up frequently. Our equally hopeless strikers , unlike theirs, can't do the job. Our chances fell mostly to midfielders and defenders .That , and the fact their strikers got chances because their midfield provided them, shows just how big our problems are. Cole "going forward" is one of our biggest problems. He almost always comes to a stop with no end result, leaving the rest of the defence shortchanged. I can see your point about either Mikel, Romeu or Essien starting, but that's not why we lost. We lost because they could score when they had chances, and we couldn't. And realistically, we had EVERY chance to come away WITHOUT a defeat with the team selected. We just don't have the class. That's not AVBS' fault.
We had a good game going forward, but the chances just kept falling to the wrong people. Once again at the back, we lost to individual mistakes costing us very dearly. Essien is still getting back to match fitness, he needs another couple of games period. In the end Napoli were not all that there defence was shocking, just werent punished like us, as for their attack, ffs the third was bounced off one of their strikers, and fell kindly for them, so **** off with all this negative crap, and stop buying the ****ing sun! Maluda actually had one of his btter games was constantsly beating 1 and two men and putting in decent crosses, but ran out of puff at 70 mark. Mireles was anonymous, but apart from that decent performance,.
Agree about Hiddink - moulding a young manager into your corporate set-up is a cute idea but in the end there's no substitute for experience; fearful about us taking the wrong fork in the tunnel.......AGAIN!
AVB is the right man, but we' re lumbered with this squad until the summer. With JT out for 6-8 weeks just makes it worse! Good players have all been affected by this malaise. I just wonder if this is a case of one classy win can bring us back to some form again?
Pretty much agree with most of this. I think AVB and the players are equally to blame really. AVB has lost the faith of the players but ultimately individual errors costs us on all 3 goals (plus many other chances to boot which were not converted). However even if we change the manager, in the long term this squad needs an overhaul (probably did 2 years ago to be fair but the 'double' put play to that) so if we have to choose between a young manager and an ageing squad it should probably be the manager.
Used to live in W london so often watch Chelsea, not sure who you have in your squad but your back four were not 'protected' very much, I'm not sure who your defensive midfielders were supposed to be, cos' you did not seem to have anybody on the pitch performing that role. It was a pity cos' Napoli's defence was not that good and you should/could have scored more goals than them.
I thought we had some great passages of play last night, for me Mata and Sturridge were stand out performers and although Luiz made one mistake.... hes freaking class. Mereiles was awful.... properly awful possibly the whole reason we got schooled defensively, is that AVB's fault though? we have great players who can cover the back 4 and Mereiles is not great in any area.... Drogba.. didnt realise he was even on the pitch until he lost the ball. He done a few good things but generally he was pants.
Luiz is not class,Luiz is a character that people like but he is not anywhere near a good defender. He costs the team more than he brings. Luiz made one mistake that cost a goal and from that point you have to try and get the goal back which can lead to conceding more. Luiz is a nice fella,a laugh etc etc etc but please don't tell me he's a good defender let alone a class defender.
He always had his defensive frailties, he is good for running into the box but doesn't offer much else.
The group of players AVB has to manage aren't great but the attitudes of the older players is the biggest problem and I don't think there's many managers that could control them. Unless you can get Mourinho in the summer I don't think there's much point changing manager. Drogba's leaving in the summer and hopefully taking Malouda, Kalou, Mikel and Bosingwa with him. Clear the decks and let AVB build the team he wants to. He struggled early on because he had the wrong players but tried to get them playing his way anyway and now he's struggling because he's trying to meet them halfway but no one knows quite how to do it. If Terry and co start grumbling again and trying to get the manager out I'd sack them.
According to the Times, Lampard and Cole were the main antagonists at a clear the air training ground meeting last week and voiced their displaesure last night at being dropped to the bench. Cole is alledged to have said "I came here to win trophies and I'm not going to do that with you" to AVB at the meeting at Cobham. Now, quite a bold statement really but I have to say that Cole is normally one of the more understated players in vocal terms, and he has won trophies with three other managers so knows what he is talking about. I ****ING HATE THIS SEASON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We were **** last night, our defence was bollocks, our midfield was bollocks and our attacking line was led by an out of form Drogba...Sturridge and Mata were the only two who gave a ****, and the question is...why? They are all good players...AVB has to bear the brunt of the blame with the rest of them having to take their share... He has alienated an element of dressing room but not backed it up with performances and results from those that believe in him, and they are people who get more in a week than I would in 3 years. On another note Petr Cech had a pretty good game as per, but is consistently let down by his centre halves...lets not forget here if you take ten shots at goal with only the keeper to beat the chances are you'll score 5 or more...his confidence is improving and I believe he is one ofthe top 5 keepers in the world. That ****ing clown Luiz however is a prize twat, and Cahill is still learning and would benefit from having the steadying hand of an established centre half next to him rather than that ****ing curly haired maverick nutsack.
