Chelsea (H) | PL | Post Match Thread

Another in a line of disappointing performances at home this season. Our home form so far has not been good enough to be Champions. Too slow, too predictable and leaving the same players on the pitch when the shape/formation was crying out for changes. Lord knows why our best player is left on the fringes to accommodate others of lesser quality in his best position ? Foden's touches to Doku's must have been about 1:10. Haaland missing sitters. Akanji struggling in midfield. Alvarez a non factor. Even De Bruyne way off it today. Doku frustrating beyond belief. We left it far too late to raise the intensity and effort rates. Conor Gallagher for them was everywhere and never stopped running.
Need to kick on from here and really start clicking.
 
Haven’t seen replays yet so won’t comment on the penalty decisions.

I thought we set up wrong. Foden has been immense in the middle and was scoring goals so the decision to move him out wide today was very strange. I thought it was even more strange to keep him out wide when it looked like Alvarez had his boots on the wrong feet. Bernardo really made a difference when he came on.

I don’t like Akanji stepping into midfield. I think it exposes us. Stones and even Lewis both perform better in that role for me. I’m not criticising Akanji there though, he’s doing as he’s told.

The tempo was way, way too slow and we invited pressure needlessly. Chelsea overran us too often through the middle and when we had the ball we waited patiently for them to get back and set up as they wanted.

Haaland was woeful looked like he couldn’t be arsed. Doku even worse, sadly. Too ponderous, then running down blind alleys. He’s not letting the ball go at the right time.

31 shots, 5 on target. We can complain as much as we like about bent refs but that stat is fucking pathetic.

Bad day at the office. We’ll still do it, though come the end of the season.
 
Cityinmyheart said:
Should be anti Alvarez to be fair
Click to expand...
For me that's strictly on Pep. Alvarez is a 9 plain and simple...he doesn't make out the line-up, Pep does and his obsession with playing Alvarez as an AM will cost us the league title unless he stops doing it immediately. We had 3 professional midfielders on the bench plus our best AM this season playing on the right touchline...impossible to understand...

And where has Pep gotten the idea that Akanji can play in the midfield role that Stones excels in? Can someone please explain to me what I'm missing here? Holy fuck
 
Haaland forgot his shooting boots and has developed a 50p shaped head.

Ederson making huge saves though.

Can’t win them all, but should have today even though we didn’t finish well.

Akanji isn’t great in the midfield box and the Alvarez experiment moving Foden wide needs to stop.

Still in our hands. Onwards.
 
1Basti said:
if you look at the first 60 min. we could have been down by 2/3 goals but we also could have turned it around in the last 30 min. I guess a draw is "fair" result. I think the Ref/VAR didn`t make any mistakes regards the penalty decisions. Dissapointing performances by Haaland,Alvarez,Walker & Pep. Rodri was the only light & Ederson held us in the game.
Click to expand...
If yer look at the first half we should have gone in 2-1 up. Don't know how Haaland missed that header and why did VAR not pick up on the foul on Haaland in the box in the first half.

I think Erling has to be kept off that video he'd taken to watching before this game - The Best of Bernardo Corradi!

CFC probably played as well as they could - and we didn't. We've played that kind of game for the last three home games. Why don't we inject the same kind of urgency into the first half that suddenly appeared when they realised in the second half we had to chase the game. Yer can pick any five passes as we move out of defence and on the fifth one it's back with the player who started off the move. Teams are not put under enough pressure with the pace of our attacks that would draw them into a mistake. And I wonder how many are waiting for one of ours to pull out the goal from next to nothing.

I also think that if you had a weekly league table of refereeing performances the one we seem to get would invariably be propping up the others. it took Madley only an hour to book the timewasting green bastard for timewasting - an exhorbitant amount of time compared to an outfield player getting booked for a series of illegalities. But the same pattern of fouls, yellow cards that seem to litter our games - blatant fouls that are just ignored. The biggest laugh today was when Phil strode away from someone with their hand steadfastly clutching most of his shirt in their hand, and all within feet of the lino. But the slightest amount of contact, foul or not, delivers unto the opposition a free kick, And the sooner we adopt the rugby approach to 'so-called' injuries the better - play round 'em.
 
Fair result in the end I thought, even though I was expecting a fairly routine win before the game . If i'm honest I found the draws against Spurs, Palace and Liverpool in particular more frustrating.
Chelsea, who are probably better than their position suggests and were the better team in the first half, and though not at our best, we were well on top after the break.
How a penalty wasn't given at the end was unbelievable when the defender knocks it away with his arm (well, actually it wasn't really unbelievable though was it!) Still, with the kind of game Haaland was having he probably misses it anyway!
Without sounding too arrogant/presumptuous, no excuse for not picking up 6 points from the next 2 matches and improving our goal difference to nicely warm up for the rags on a couple of weeks time.
 
hgblue said:
Pep needs to lose this infatuation for Alvarez. Sometimes it’s a bit shit to be a manager when you have to break bad news to someone you like, but the kid needs to be on the bench.
Click to expand...
No infatuation, the formation simply didn’t work against the Chelsea midfield triangle. No space & it meant Alvarez was often getting in the way. Credit to Chelsea there. Another game to learn from and then move on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top
✖
  AdBlock Detected
Bluemoon relies on advertising to pay our hosting fees. Please support the site by disabling your ad blocking software to help keep the forum sustainable. Thanks.