₦airaland Forum

Michael Laudrup?
Time to get scared of Athletico.

How does I missed the threads?

Hey Muki!
Sorry I missed it. . . Happy belated birthday.
Any Pari?

@FBS

Borini really is a top class finisher. The only thing that worries me about him is his size. To be honest, it a big disadvantage for him. One can argue that Zola was small as well but Zola had a migically touch which Borini does not have. I am sure he can work on his touch. He bloody damn knows where the goal post is.

DS I think is exactly the way you've put it . . "eager to impress" That puts him under a lot of pressure. If we can find him 2 consecutive 60mins playing alongside Drogba and in front of Deco, Lampard, Ballack and Essien could be a wonderful experience for his career.

Milan Lalkovic is a product of the academy. Has had a few games with teh reserves because of loan players but in my opinion has shown why he was given the chance. Borini-like but quicker and can play in any position on top. He joined the academy during the 4-3-3 but now it's diamond all the way down to the academy.


Yes Roman was there. Did you not see him ? Wilkins was sitting comfy but Roman was standing leaning on some sort of old wooden frame. I am not amazed at his visit to a reserve game, he's been there many times but that he was standing. He truly is a football fan. Bigger Chelsea fan than all of us.

FBS:
@Nateevs, I was watching the reserves game the other night and this number 5 (LB) caught my eye. He plays like Ashley. You got any information on him?

Plus, DS played well but I'm amazed at the number of chances he missed or maybe it's just me being over critical?

Alex played 45 mins and scored the first goal but I don't think he is fully fit.

Your boy Borini scored 2 goals even though, he just like DS missed very clear chances.

FBS I'm sorry I had composed it but to post come be wahala. . I didn't know you were watching as well.
The fellas' name is Ben Gordon. I have done a little round-up on him here once before.
He is sooooo Ashley Cole-like, I bet when he watches the senior team play, he only watches one player.

The fella has got massive massive talent and if he continues to progress like that, Bros we have a new Ashley Cole even before the Legendary LB retires.

Funny thing is that we have Van AanHolt and Ryan Bertrand (both on loan now) who can both that position quite well.

Alex is not fully fit is why he was subbed after the first 45.
Borini and DS are young strikers allowed to make mistakes now. Though too many from DS I hope they learn quickly but boy did that Borini fella finish with a poachers' instinct.  

One guy you should watch out for - Milan Lalkovic.



Two highlights of the game:

Zola's son, Andrea Zola replaced a player as a sub in that match.
Roman Abramovic leaning on a wooden frame and watching the reserves.  

ritchboy:
"Atletico is a dreadful team"
i'll quote that again when they plunder a point or three

Awaiting your quote.

Kalou again.

Nice shot Anelka.

We should sell Kalou tomorrow

how do we interpret that?

What?

jalether:
whoever says Aguero is better than forlan will receive an E-slap from me

Me.

Deco has come with his crosses again. .
Crosses that don't beat the first man.

BlueDiva:
When will CA play Zhikov?

I have been wanting to ask the question sef. .

Nice play Essien.

MatchDay Live. . .

Carvalho dropped. .
Deservedly so.

Very nice goal.

The man is deluded.
Apart from the comment from BlueDiva which can be expressed as having faith in one's team rather than boasting, this fella actually thinks there's a direct relationship between boasting and "On Course". .

Oya the man who invented grammar. . What is the meaning of "We are on course to win the EPL" ? seconded by "Of Course, we are on course"


Is this the depth you reduce to just to prove a fruitless point?

Hey resign your identity abeg!  Just change your user-name. . .

OMO IBO:
Oh come of it.
The goals we conceded against villa were bread and butter.
Under JM they were easily dealt with.

I do not have a problem losing games i have a problem with the manner in which we lose games.

The games we've lost are down to way we are currently playing.

The games we lost were not due to the way we play.
We conceded set-pieces. What has that got to do with how we played?


And can we stop comparing every Manager in Chelsea to JM? Please!
Why do we act like we didn't know Chelsea pre-JM. .?
Under JM, they were easily dealt with but not in all games. JT and Carv were 5 years younger then. You expect everything to still be the same?

If we have a new manager, something has to give way. Something has to change. I am fairly happy with how far we have gone so far.

Ok! What exactly do you suggest we do? Because for all I know, the diamond is not going to change and according to you, our style of play is causing us to lose games.

Should we fire Carllotti?

jalether:
Pls spare me that, what is so time consuming in playing free flowing footie, what is so demanding abt pass and move footie

Really?
So you think Lampard will turn into a Kaka overnight . .
Or you want Essien to play like Yaya Toure.

You see playing beautiful football is not all about what happens with the ball but more importantly what happens without the ball.
And that is always the difficult part. Positional play. When you see a team lose possession a lot like we do, it's because they either:-

We are not intelligent passers of the ball (which we are not).
Or we don't don't understand the rudiments of positional play. (Which many of our players don't)

To correct this you need time. It's a philosophy. .  A complete change of the scope of mind. . which also will influence the Chelsea transfer structure. I just finished watching the reserves play. Some of the young players were bought during the JM era . . They have no football intelligence. Only gra-gra. Their passing technique is appalling and they can't learn much from the senior ones.

The change has to trickle down to the junior team. Which also means changing our mentality of having English coaches for the young players and get Dutch, Brazillian or Spanish technically astute young coaches to teach the boys basic techniques.

It's a philosophy and it doesn't change over night.

OMO IBO:
well, how much time do you have?
We are losing games you  know.

We lost 2 games. Is that what you mean by we are losing games?
Do you not want us to lose games at all?  
2ndly, we didn't lose to Aston Villa because we were playing sexy. We lost because we we forgot how to defend and profligacy in front of goal.

We created 21 chances and only 7 went on goal. Of those 7 only one goal.
That's got nothing to do with sexy.

Borini Scores again . . . absolute poacher.

Borini scores. . . poacher!

Hey Gianfranco Zola's son Andrea Zola just entered for West Ham!

OMO IBO:
Under Gianluca Vialli, i'm sorry we did not play anything near good football.

It was more grit and brawn with people like Denise wise, Petrescu etc Vialli himself was a 'dirty' player.

I’m all for good free-flowing football but if it’s going to hamper our success then I’d very much stick to something that has worked for us.

If given good balance, grit and free-flow should work together for good.
One should not be at the expense of the other.
Arsenal have free-flow but lack grit. . .

ManU have both and have done it well enough to show the world you can do both and win.

Carllotti I believe, being Italian, knows all there is to having strength in the side.

If you are all for free-flowing footie, you have to give it time.

Sturridge scores!

Alex is back . .
Playing in a reserve match against West Ham and alongside Jefferey Bruma, Ferriera and Ben Gordon in defense.
He just scored a trademark free kick.

Hey Roman is watching.

OMO IBO:
Can you please remind me if and when we've any trophy playing sexy football?

If my memory serves me well, the season JM lost his job as Chelsea manager, we played our opponents off the park with  our scintillating football but how long did it last? 2, 3 games??

I never said we can't win matches playing good football. I said we will lose more games playing sexy fooball.

Ever since i started supporting Chelsea - which was in my formative years, we've never been abundantly blessed with skillful players.
At anytime, we had at most 3 players who were technically and skillfully sound.

Hey we played good footie under Gianluca Vialli. Not as sexy as Barca's but very good football . . very good footie and we won the FA Cup and the European Cup Winners' Cup.

I agree we haven't had a flurry of Ronaldinho-like players but don't make it sound like it's a culture.
It has been one big blunder after another in the transfer market.

Now how do we ever attract players that are skillful if all we ever do is say "Oh We don't play that way!"?


Take some time off and watch Arsenal youth. See how these boys are taught to play from a young age.

The Chelsea youth are already gearing up to the diamond as well and all the way down to the academy, they all play the diamond and one-touch football. They are not there yet but they are really catching up and that is the way it should be.

@OMO-IBO

What kind of gist is that? Where you not watching football in the days of Boring boring Arsenal?
Don't tell me things have to go on.
There's nothing like this is how Chelsea plays. Anything can be changed for the better.
Are you suggesting we go boring for life because "That's not our forte". . ?

You are already a culprit of your assertions. . . JM has spoilt us . . Spoilt us so much into believing we can't win matches without the gra-gra.

I am so sick of this.




@Jalether.

Changes don't always have to be made. The state of the bench is what determines if there will be a change or not. looking back at previous matches, did he make changes at the 82nd minute? In one match when we already had a comfortable lead, he brought on Borini. .that's to tell you he is not afraid of a change.
I watched 90mins of Joe Cole in the reserves last week and believe me he is not ready yet. You can look up my round up. Zhirkov has not played this season, Kalou is average at best. Who should he have taken out for Kalou?
As far as I am concerned we had the best players on. . and it's simple we have not any impact subs.

I really also do not understand this "Lampard was poor in the match" thing. Is that because he did not score? He role has changed as he's plays to assist rather than score. Now he makes all the crucial passes. He is the major link between defence and attack. He made a total of 50 passes in the game 42 successful and 7 unsuccessful . . . Sop how do you come about poor?

Thirdly Scolari did not use the diamond. The only similarity with the diamond is that the full-backs attack and provide width. Scolari used a 4-3-3 throughout.
And to the playing to the players' strengths, there is no player that has been hampered by the introduction of the diamond except Lampard. . . and only that he won't score as many so there is not reason criticize the diamond as yet.
Every other player has been in the form of their lives. .  from JT to Ashley to Drogba to Anelka to Essien and even Ballack.

The same diamond we played against ManU in the comm shield, Liverpool a week ago and we were all screaming goal!
We lose only two matches and we are already asking "what kind of manager we have"?

What right do we have to think we can win all matches ? . . This is a very dangerous disposition. Sometimes we lose some and we have to lose some to perfect things . . .


Let have some patience abeg.

@Chac.

No one is convinced about anything. Even ManU are not "flying off the blocks"
Except against Wigan you have struggled in every single game you guys have played.
You have looked like you won't take the points in every single game.

The only team that has had the most comfortable wins is Arsenal and that could be related to quality of the opposition they played. The real judgement will come when they start to face stiffer opposition and we saw a glimpse of that against ManU and City.


I don't expect Carllotti to come around doing a Mourinho. I am not expecting unbeaten runs. I want decent performances that appeal to the eye. I want us to be able to play football beautifully and I also want titles with it but if they don't come, I won't be calling for the manager's head. To be fair to him he's done well so far.

Also, you have to be on some form of drugs saying Avram Grant is better. Why is the world not chasing after him if he is that good?

@Chac


There is nothing to be sorry about. We are only a point behind the league leaders. We had a very good game against Villa. We only defended terribly.
You are also not certain about anything. Nothing at all. Not even a win against Liverpool. We were going to drop points at some point and we've lost 2 games now. Big deal. It's not enough to get Carllotti fired.

With Scolari, we didn't just have bad results, we topped them with terrible performances.  My own opinion is we are playing a new system that requires a bit of time to adjust to as getting used to any new thing does.

Nothing do us as you shall see in weeks to come.





@HNIC

Chelsea fans worldwide are not in dreamland. You guys are manufacturing stuff.
There's no need to call out the riot police . . . We conceded 2 goals against a team that's scored 9 goals from set-pieces even when they've scored only 12 goals this season. Also last season was the only time Chelsea ever beat Villa at Villa Park in the history of the prem. There's history between those two.

It's not a disaster. For me, there really isn't any reason at all to be concerned. Y'all just sit back and watch. Your stiffer tests are coming as well.

@Debo.

It is a very sorry case if you will quote The Sun telling us Carllotti said we will win the title. When in actual fact the fella that can barely mumble a good sentence in English may have been mis-quoted. If it was clearly spelt out by Carllotti, why hasn't any other paper carried the story?

This is such a sorry situation. You guys just have to complain about Chelsea. Nothing bad except you do it without any sense whatsoever. Criticize the things that make sense and no one will have a defence.

Secondly, you could not find any quote from a Chelsea fan saying the season is ours. And where is the one from me boasting about our winning the title? Where is it? Everyone knows Ibime is the most out-spoken of us wrt Carllotti. Most people on here know my disposition toward Chelsea's hire and fire policy. That's the reason why you won't see me criticize him openly hoping we will eventually give one man the mantle to build on for years. On other hand I am still not convinced he is the messiah until of course he proves it. Even BlueDiva expresses her concern for Carllotti passing the big tests.

My opinion on the bookies is a delibrate misquote by you. Ritchie and I were having a debate about what the season. He say my opinion is we have already won it. I said it isn't citing the bookies are calling Chelsea a favourites for the title. It was a separate expression to boasting. It was rather a discussion around the strength of teams and the strength to compete. . . but your sorry arses see it the way you want to.

It is normal for any fan of the big four to feel confident about beating Wigan. If you guys are not then I am sorry. If you think that is boasting then you need a reality check. There are 2 teams in the prem I don't boast about beating. Aston Villa and Liverpool. Where you got all that from, I don't know.

Liverpool was rendered useless by Sunderland's defence and Burnley's defence too - does that mean they are championship material too?

Firstly, what exactly does the "too" mean? Is that referring to Chelsea. Are you trying to suggest that Chelsea are not premiership material? It's either you mean that or you forgot how to use too.
Secondly footie is not maths Liverpool didn't do well against Sunderland and Burnley suddenly makes them rubbish eh? So we can conclude that ManU is rubbish since Burnley beat them too or if Liverpool beat ManU next weekend they (ManU) are rubbish.

You are so full of rubbish.

debosky:
Yeah yeah. . . .a few games ago, you were loudly BOASTING, now many teams are catching up with the big four?

Premature boasting by Ancelotti saying the premiership is yours to lose. . . .if Arsenal had plays and wins the game in hand, we'll be above you.

When your much vaunted 'defending' becomes as shambolic as Saturday's, y'all need to be seriously worried.

I can bet you won't find a single quote with Ancellotti saying that.
Secondly you won't find a single quote of any Chelsea fan me inclusive boasting of the premiership being ours.
Many of us are still trying to accept Carllotti.

You guys talk sometimes like you have to talk. So much rubbish off your camp, it's unbelievable.

And the defending on Saturday though, shocking is premature to make a mountain of after only one match. The same defence that rendered pool useless a week ago. If I were y'all, I will sit back relax and watch everything unfold.

[quote author=~Sauron~ link=topic=278163.msg4756152#msg4756152 date=1255869287]Whatz the colour of the Premiership?[/quote]Flipping Blue mate.
Don't make a mountain of of anything.
Next week you play Liverpool and we play Blackburn.
God help you . . you lose to wounded Liverpool. . You would have dropped 8 points and we six.

The prem is no longer like we know it. Many teams are catching up with the big four.