I reckon you should at least buy him a shirt if not the whole kit as he was very close and he even got the score right even if it was the wrong way around
He's a ******* embarrassment to the sport. A positive performance from the team overall and an "unlucky" loss, but Troost and Cathcart are still utterly horrific to watch attempt to play football.
A strong, battling defeat worthy of a point but still plenty to be encouraged about. Even Rose put in a shift I thought. We matched them all over the pitch and arguably Mount was the difference in the end. Can see why we brought in a new keeper and Bachman will be moving on at the end of the season. I agree with other posters, Foster likely would have saved the 2nd, and possibly even the 1st as from the TV angle Bachman appeared close enough to have really done better with it. Must say it’s refreshing to see the ball being moved forward regularly rather than sideways and backwards drivel under Xisco, who lets face it, was clueless at this level. If we avoid having have our pants pulled down as usual by City we can go into the next 10 games pretty confident. 18 pts from those games takes us to 31, 9pts from safety with 13 to play. Sarr getting injured may be the best thing that could have happened as we do seem play better without him. My only concern is AFCON when we’ll almost certainly lose Dennis.
Worthy a point and against most teams would of won with that performance, Sissoko lmran and cleverly bossed the middle but to ask Sissoko and cleverly to keep that up for 90 wasn’t happening. When they started to lose a bit of steam Chavski punished us with the 2nd. WTE had a better game than recent performances but was at fault again ball watching for the 1st. Thought the inclusion of Silva at half time proved decisive for them and Mendy had a superb game which shows how good we played. The tinker man has tinkered to good success if only we had the defenders to do a job for him like the forward players do. Hopefully start turning these defeats into draws and wins against the lesser teams, we should get enough points playing like this. Roll on the weekend as I’m enjoying tuning in to watch us again and am hopeful of coming out the Dubai game keeping it more respectable than what we’re used too. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Played really well, fought throughout, you can see the improvement Claudio has made. We need to be a little more ruthless in their box & a little less rash in ours I fancy us on Saturday
Dennis's goal was the first that Chelsea have conceded on the road this season in the Premier League.
Deserved a point. Great team effort. Claudio animated on the touchline. Players willing to run through walls for him. This is setting up nicely. Just need a bit more luck when the defensive brain farts kick in.
The fact Tuchel was so angry with his players tells you all you need to know. Our squad of charlatons, misfits and freebies did that.
I thought we were excellent last night and played some really good football , the press works so effectively for us …. Fair play to Ranieri and the players. I thought Sissoko was immense last night and, although they both ran out of puff so was Louaza and Cleverly all the players worked incredibly hard tbf. Also I thought Rose was excellent when he came on king was superb too - he leads the line on his own so well and allows us to build attacks - he is a quality player …… then there is Dennis, what a signing he has been a constant threat whenever he has the ball and he works hard with out the ball too - he was magnificent last night. just imagine where we would be in the table if we had 2 capable central defenders….. I really wish someone would mention it to help Gino and co. out … some gentle encouragement perhaps to buy a CB and invest in the defence in general …. I know you like to buy players as investments to sell on for big bucks …. But if we don’t stay up and have a solid defensive base the Investment players will be worth less than half if we go down - quite simple really - PLEASE BUY SOME DEFENDERS !!!
I can only imagine that as Ngakia is good at winning the ball back he'd be useful putting pressure on the Chelsea defence in the latter stages.
For all the usual pre match whinging, we had opportunities to win If we'd only had Ranieri in for pre season...
Thought we played well, not so sure we'd of done so well without the Chelsea changes but you can only play what is in front of you. Really need to sort things out around the back, we can play like that all season but still go down (which would be heart breaking as we've finally got some exciting attacking players)
Weird that for anyone looking in they probably think Ranieri is doing a terrible job, yet we’ve got 6 more points than we would’ve expected from his nightmare first set of games, should’ve had about 4 more points, and the difference between us under him and Munoz is like night and day. We’re lower down the table yet most fans would give us the best chance of staying up now, than they would’ve at any point before.
I genuinely believe that had we started the season with CR and got in two centre backs we'd be up there on 19/20 points and sitting around 7th.
I think a top keeper saves their second goal, and also a bit sloppy from Sissoko to lose Ziyech in the build up in my opinion.
Etebo's injury is so frustrating because if we could rotate him and Cleverley in games we could have kept some of that press later into the game.
Firstly, glad the fan is stable, it must be frightening for him and his family and well done to all first responders. I think the biggest compliment we were paid last night was Tuchel changed formation with the substitutions to stop us as Sissoko, Cleverley and Louza were bossing the midfield. The one area we need to look at and it's where Etebo is so important is the 'pull back', no one patrols between the edge of the area and penalty spot. It happened several times against Utd and it's where their 2nd goal came from. Defence and midfield are drawn towards the goal leaving a yawning gap for players to run onto. Sometimes you don't need to mark the man, just fill the space. I'm worried about Dennis as I said in the Shoutbox that he was playing at about 80%, maybe less - he didn't look as freeflowing and looks to be carrying the Lesta injury. Controversial, but City is a free hit so I'd wouldn't be too upset for him to be on the bench or left out to recover fully - he's too important in the long run.
I tend to agree with this, because from experience and knowing our luck with injuries Dennis is only a game or two from getting something that puts him out until April or this time next year...
I thought the coverage by Amazon was quite good, and liked the stats being available on the stream page too. Although Im sure they got confused over Trevoh Chalobah and thought he had played for us...
If we play like that all season we will be fine. That sort of performance would have beaten Southampton and Newcastle at home so there is clearly a huge improvement under Ranieri. Get Saturday out of the way and then some winnable games are coming up. Troost-Ekong is hopelessly out of his depth, he was dreadful again. His one good moment was the tackle on Mount which was a thing of beauty and shouldn't have been a free kick let alone a booking. Football really is no contact now which is to the detriment of the game. The ref was terrible but for both teams. I'm not sure if he had a new whistle as that might explain his enthusiasm for using it every couple of minutes. Chelsea were very good at running the clock down, I'd love to know how long the ball was in play for. If the front three last night continue in that form then Sarr might have a challenge getting back in - Dennis and Pedro were brilliant out wide and King was superb through the middle. Most importantly I'm glad the chap in the UGT was stable as he was taken out. I sit in the UGT not too far from where it was happening. Watching the initial moments of people desperately trying to get attention on the pitch in what was at the time a noisy atmosphere was difficult to see as it was clear whatever was occurring was serious. Hope he makes a full recovery.
Tuchel admitted his team were lucky, he said they might've been lucky even with 1 point. Fair play to him for the admission.
I am no great fan of WTE, but I think he did ok last night and is being rather harshly vilified on here today. Having said that we really do need to bring in a defender or three in January as unfortunately WTE and many of our defenders are not really PL quality starting eleven players. And my guess is that those players are likely to be little known steady Italian or other continental decent journey men that Ranieri has in his little black book. Who should be good enough to do a steady if not spectacular job and improve our defence. As for Bachmann who has also been vilified by many on here this morning, I think he did not do too badly, but as others have said he should possibly have kept out their 2nd goal as it was straight at him, and I agree that Big Ben might well have saved it. WHAT THE PAPERS SAY: - "We stole three points says relieved Tuchel" Bachmann 6.5 Kiko 6.5 Cathcart 7 WTE 6.5 Masina 6 Rose 7 Louza 7 Kucka 5 Dennis 7.5 Cleverly 6.5 Sissoko 7 Pedro 6.5 King 6.5 Ngakia (no score given even though he was on the pitch almost twice as long as Masina who was awarded a score?)
An excellent performance which deserved more and if we can continue to play like that we will be fine. I know WTE was at fault for the first goal but actually wasn't that bad aside from that. Interesting that he gets massive stick for the first goal but apart from one post, nobody mentions Sissoko losing his man for the winner. I admit that Sissoko was superb and has been a brilliant signing but we do seem to pick on individuals while ignoring other players faults. That aside I thought we were excellent. Louza looks like he's found feet as looks a very good player. Rose is a good player but god he's so unfit. Looks like Masina will be out for a while so Rose will get a run in the side. Pedro had a quiet first half but showed a lot of quality in the second half and the front three were superb. Chelsea defensively are superb but these gave them the run around last night. Dennis could be the best signing we've ever made. Finally, best wishes to the bloke who was taken unwell in the first half and well done to the quick reactions of many
As can Chelsea to be fair. As we are currently without our 2 best centre backs, first choice goalkeeper and star player.
I hope they find and ban the massive bell end who threw and hit John Barnes with a bottle when him and Zola were out filling in front of the cameras while the paramedics dealt with the situation. Barnes didn't flinch and gave a very small eye roll.
