Am i not allowed to be honest and say i am not enjoying seeing us play the way we are WITHOUT your kind of comment?
I cannot on the one hand slag off the ugly football employed by the likes of Pulis and Big Sam, but then support it when our manager does the same. The same manager who slagged off West Ham for doing what he's doing. There's a word for people like that!
I could at least understand Pulis doing what he did at Stoke, where it was all about establishing the club in the Premiership.
We've spent hundreds of millions and now reduced to parking buses.
Are we really not capable of more than that?

Listen carefully. That noise you hear is me playing the smallest violin ever seen by a family of violin playing ants!

Upon finally watching the game, I have to say a great TEAM performance, I wouldn't say anyone played better then anyone else, while today's football is often talked about in a "individual" way and people enjoy individual performances for me I will always enjoy a whole team performance better, I not sure how people can say a team that did not try to score actually scored two goals.

Gerrard for me spent too much time looking for his Wrestlemania moment and trying to make up for the mistake, a experienced player like him should forget about the mistake and move on.

While yes I can see people's point about how we played and do understand their frustration in our tactics of combating Liverpool's and would not dream of thinking that a team that has title ambitions of coming up with a plan B, more so when every man and his dog knowing Chelsea' s tactics I don't think we owe anyone a apology

I like Brendan Rodgers but that's just about the craziest thing I've heard for a very long time. There might have been some justification for saying that if the score had ended up 0-0, but we won 2-0 and claimed all three points !
That's maximum points from the games against both our main rivals this season, if Rodgers could have done that the title would have been his already. Anfield used to be a fortress, coming away with a point was an achievement. I'm sure Rodgers would give anything for a return of those days.
Our failure to win the title this season will be because of missed chances against so-called "lesser teams", not through any "parking the bus" tactics.

Yes, I wasn't going to watch the game, but couldn't resist in the end.
To be honest, when I saw our line-up, I thought we'd get hammered and didn't post throughout the game. But it was a great team performance as you say.
I can understand neutrals disliking the tactics we employed, it wasn't pretty. But it's not easy to keep up that level of concentration for 90 minutes either. It required tremendous discipline to defend around the edge of the box and not to lunge in and give away dangerous free kicks, or even a penalty. In fact, it was a text book lesson in defending, which has become almost a forgotten art in the modern game.
I have criticised Mikel in the past (many times) but he really is superb in this sort of game.
Matic is another who was outstanding, and Kalas slotted in like he had been playing in the centre of defence all season ! Yes, we parked the bus..but it was a bloody good bus.

Last season we had a manager who used the game to blow kisses and waving to the home crowd begging them to love him this season we had one who ran to the away fans cheering and beating his chest, I know what one I would prefer

Defending not only as become a lost art but also has become a dirty word in today's game. Young Kalas has played how much football this season? And yet pulls out a performance like that, Considering Jose would have only known on Wednesday he would be playing him to get him ready (and as a centre back when he had been used as a right back at times) was fantastic, to drill the team (that team would not have been the one he had in mind a week ago) to the reach the level that we saw in that we did not make a single mistake (unlike Liverpool) shows us how good Jose is, Rogers has had weeks to prepare for this important game,even with the surprising losses we knew that Liverpool Chelsea would be a massive game for them and should have been working on ways to combat the defensive side of Chelsea game, Jose had a few days to work with a very different set of players to work out a way to combat Liverpool's offensive way,One manager did his job while the other banged on about "it not being our way"

Chelsea deserved their win, and defensively they performed well. However, I disagree with the statement that Liverpool weren't well prepared. Liverpool do play a certain way, but this season they have shown that they can deal with the sort of game that Chelsea played.

If Gerrard doesn't slip, the game would have a different result.

It wasn't really about preparation, how can you prepare for an individual error?

Congratulations to Mourinho and his staff at a well prepared and thought out strategy

Of course you are.
For a true Chelsea supporter that was a fantastic result yesterday. For you to be disappointed is just a bit strange for me.

Ok let us put this to bed once and for all.

Gerrard let the ball run under his foot with a miss-timed trap, after it went across him he had to run to try and get the ball back - THEN he slipped.

The error was made before the slip.

Great result for us yesterday what a master Jose is really knows how to win the big games.
Each and every one of our players were immense but a special mention has to go to Matic , what a player he is at the moment and next year will only be better. Also Kalas to be put into that match against Surez and to play so well. One for the future.

For me it was a bad short pass to Gerrard (something that I have seen time and time again recently from many players for many teams, Do they not practise this sort of thing in training?) and it was more due to that and him not being in fully control of the ball that caused the goal, Yes the slip meant he could not catch up with Ba but I not sure he would have done anyway (not without conciding a foul/pen anyway)

Regardless, an individual error has nothing to do with preparation, which is the point I was making.

But one could argue that in any game.

LFC only beat man city because of an individual error by the ref in not spotting a handball..

It was clear that LFC were nervous - their players were snatching at things - hence the poor pass and the mistake by gerrard.

It was pressure from Chelsea that forced the error.

Clearly comprehension isn't your strong point. I only posted here, in response to The_don1 claiming that Liverpool were ill-prepared.

I believe you make your own luck in life and football, and Chelsea were well worthy of the win yesterday.

That doesn't mean I can't disagree with the point about preparation, and think that the result would have been different without that error.

The ill-prepation was not only from a result point of view but from their performance on the day (regardless of the result), They seemed to me to go into that game as they would have any other premership game, Where as for me when you are playing a team in the top 3 you alter your tactics (more so a team as skilled at getting results away from home and in defense as Chelsea) and style how ever slightly.

Rogers seemed to me to be like Wenger in that "we will play our style no matter what" and for me that is not going to be sucessful, I did not see anything new from Liverpool that I would not have seen against any of the other teams in the league. It seemed they went into the game very narrow minded andif Plan A was not going to work so we will just chuck on attacking players until it worked, There was no OK this is the game we are in so I will change this and that and hence we get this result, One of Jose's strengths is adapting to the game being played, A game is not going according to plan he will right away change things,

As much as Chelsea was not going to score, Nor was Liverpool with their tactics. If I was a Liverpool fan and my team was in a game which would just about ensured a title win I would have wanted to see something different from my team, IMO it was not a intellegent way to go into such a massive game

excellent post

To be fair even if what you say is what happened. Liverpool have been the most tactically dynamic team in the league this season, we must have tried 5-7 different formations. 9 out 0f 10 times yesterday we wouldn't have lost playing the way we did. It is fair to say we probably wouldn't have won that many either, with Chelsea set up so defensively.
Chelsea set up well, but as other people have said the slip/bad pass whatever you want to call it was absolutely crucial to Chelsea winning yesterday.
Putting bias out of the window, could you really see yourselves scoring before that?

Out of the two teams if you look across the season, I know which one has been more tactically flexible and to be fair if you had have employed different tactics in certain games, I'm pretty sure you would have won the league at a canter this season.

The thing is, we didn't have to!

Football is useless if it is reduced to ifs and buts.

If Liverpool were that good, if their attacking were as good as all the plaudits - they had 90 minutes to break us down. They didnt. That is not the fault of Chelsea.

It is good to see three chelsea players in the PFA team of the year, Cech, Cahill and Hazard.

Cahill rarely gets the plaudits but i wanted to take time out and state what a wonderful signing he was.

Bargain.

Nope and you are absolutely right. Chelsea had no intention of scoring yesterday, their game plan was to stop Liverpool and pounce if they got a chance. Mourinho would have been perfectly happy with a draw. That isn't Chelsea's fault. Liverpool were not patient enough in the second half and ultimately our lack of experience showed on the pitch. I'm not sure Rodgers could have done much more yesterday. Setting up defensively himself wouldn't have changed the result.

The problem with the result yesterday is it just highlights how good you are against the better teams in the league and if Mourinho had done something different against the likes of West Ham you would have probably won the league by now. I can imagine being a Chelsea fan this season has been times of wonderful joy, but other times desperate frustration.

Very surprised John Terry wasn't anywhere near it. I can't stand him, but he has been awesome for you lot this year!

He has been awesome - but people will not vote for him after his time as UK press/ media pantomime villain.

Errr....Suarez???