They had quite workrate... Deception our players didn't show that.. That was a golden oportunity for them! .. Porto are dirty but they match them on workrate and was the only team who beat them in Champions and the team who put them through more difficultiesWe never had a better time to win it. We had every player available, so what does Pep do? He plays a system we've not played all season. Compare that to Tuchel. Started exactly as you'd expect, and you could predict every substitution he made. And yet he still won.
Even Pep's substitutions were bizarre. When De Bruyne goes off, you look to Bernardo to take responsibility, but instead he takes him off. And the last 7 minutes of the game is just us lumping it into the box because we've taken off the players who can play those intricate passes.
Chelsea were brilliant all the way through. Won it because of their defence and workrate. If we played as well as we can, we'd beat them. We didn't, so we didn't.
Love me some Neil Warnock!I always liked Fat Sam. Or Tony Pulis.
Had a big say though mate . We had no steel in midfield and all it did was put pressure on our defence in the first half . Sterling’s runs don’t go anywhere and he shouldn’t have been on the pitch let alone be captainGot what we deserved.X I
Chelsea’s set up was fantastic. Ours wasn’t.
Sterling/Fernandinho decision didn’t decide the outcome. They wanted it more.
Exactly. I had to check I was still awake and watched the same match at times, you'd think we had lost 3 or 4 nil. They have a great defence and they've won by one shot. Could have gone either way, neither side was mind blowing on the night. I'm rpoud of where we are compared to 20 years ago, that's all I feel.As gutted as I am, as much as I think the team selection was wrong(Sterling? No Fernandinho? Why?)... I really don't think it would a have made a difference. I don't think City performed tonight, they didn't play their normal game and it wasn't all down to how Chelsea set up. Even KDB was off form. It was another game where they beat us with not much in it, probably heading to extra time if Zinchenko tracked the run of Havertz.
It wasn't that they didn't care though, people can fuck off with that, they just didn't get going, trying too hard to force things, no fluidity to our play, our pressing and positioning was out of sync too. Which is why I maintain Chelsea weren't really that good either, they did just enough to go in front and defended well(easier to do when you have a deep line like they did for most of our attacks).
Wasn't our night, still been a great season overall though.