For me was never going to be a long term manager for a club wanting to compete for the Title. The Champions League for all its hype is still just a cup competition. Don't believe in luck when wining things but you cannot judge a manager on cup competitions alone. It has to be on league success. Grant got us within a pen of winning it and no sane intelligent Chelsea fan would suggest he was good enough to be given the job for the long term.

Thought Di Matteo was harshly treated. Whether he should have been given the job permanently in the first place is open to debate, but having been appointed he should have been given a proper crack at it, not just sacked at the first available opportunity. We were only 4 points from the top of the league at the time, and that was in spite of being stiffed by Clattenburg against United.

There was no value at all in sacking him when we did and then appointing Benitez of all people, despite what the likes of Tip Top might have you believe. We went from being 4 points from the top when Benitez took over to finishing 14 points behind.

Eh, come on CB lad, show some respect. Rafa's doing a grand job at Madrid. Give the guy a break

It was one of many decisions the board have made over the years that should have been handled more professionally. It was a knee jerk reaction (one of many made).

In a ideal world we should have found a more proven manager and asked him to stay as a a number two after the champions league winning season was over, Could not have blamed him for saying no but still think it would have been a better option for us.

At the time it made no sense unless they replaced him with a real top top manager which they did not. If it was a choice between Rafa and Robbie as a stop gap manager then Robbie would have been a much better choice. Even if things was not going well many fans would have still given him a chance and I think working with Jose could have been something we could have convinced him to do.

RDM could tweak the team after AVB left, but he couldn't manage the new players such as Hazard. I remember him substituting Hazard in one match, and Hazard looked at him as if to say, you don't know what you're doing. At that time in the season, he didn't, and he'd lost the trust of the squad imo. He was just out of his depth with the new arrivals. Not qualifying from the group phase of the CL costs the club a lot of money, and it was the first time that had happened in a long, long time.

I agree that he could have worked well with an older, more experienced manager, but not on his own with the changes that Hazard and other new arrivals required.

It was just one of those decisions that a more experienced board could have dealt with.

The board was also still obsessed at the time with The Champion's League and all its hype and did not their eye on the most important the league (hence appointing a cup manager).

Luckily I think we have learned from our mistakes in the past and now know while of course the Champions League is important for us to do well in that we first need to build a platform of league success before we can really take a proper assault on a cup competition and a very tough one like the Champions League.

Due to his inexperience and if he had lost some of the players he lack the ability needed to kick those players who questioned his decisions around the dressing room and tear them a new hole. Any player who questions a decision by a manager no matter how bad it is and no matter how talented a player needs to be bought down to earth

Yep, it was very knee-jerk at the time and the decision to appoint Rafa was appalling.
It created a terrible atmosphere at SB and we quickly dropped points.
Rafa took us from challengers to also-ran's very quickly.

What a bore!

Very decent result considering the form of the two teams.

Brana played very well, Cesc was not that impressive for big parts of the game.

Performance in places was very very good

Defensively much better, possibly the best all season.
Not liking Costa's attitude. If he doesn't want be here then we should sell.
I assume Remy was injured as not on the bench....

I actually don't mind it. I never like players just sitting on the bench, at least he showing he wants to play.

Yes, I was expecting the worse, so I'm quietly satisfied with our performance. The second half was pretty dire in respect of entertainment, but we did what we had to do. Both sides seemed to decide a draw was a satisfactory result.
Some good individual performances. William (as usual these days), Hazard looked dangerous at times, Ivanovic (as you say) was much, much better and Azpil barely put a foot wring.

Before the game I was somewhere between confident and not confident although maybe because it was Spurs more then a team with the same form as them.

It's a step forward and if we are honest and not living in the world of should is the most we can hope for

Costa's lucky he wasn't dropped sooner - he's been terrible all season, and poor all year. If we don't see some goals from him in the next few matches I wouldn't be sad to see him go.
Remy's wife/girlfriend had a baby yesterday.


Bournemouth next. Somebody needs to score some f**king goals.

When it comes to Remy I still not seen anything from him that says he is a starter yes seen from Costa he might not be good enough to start but that doesn't mean we should ignore Remy's past games. Everything about Remy says "bench player".

Pretty much. Same with Ba, and it'd be the same with Berahino if we went for him. (vastly more expensive though)

Although those players are very impressive if you follow football via statistics less so if you actually watch them and don't follow what you are told.

Of course its very different if you watch the players week in week out but we cannot let facts get in the way of a good story

so who is the answer to our striker problem?

Think we need to sort out the "team" problem before we start talking about individual players. We are going heading in the right direction at the moment but the work is far from done. Only then can we look at certain players

Good to see we have agents fee's under control.

Not a massive change from the last period but if you look at the other big teams around they either increased by a big amount or stayed around the same but its a very good start and shows we slowly moving in the right direction of getting our spending under control and using our money is a sensible way.

Cahill has signed a new 4 year deal. Seems a bit long to me at 29.

Would have gone for no more then 3 myself.

But he has not had that many serious injuries and is a very intelligent player and seems to be a good player to have around in the dressing room so think a 4 year contact is deserving. Been a important player for us (more important then I thought he would be when he came) so not so upset he has been rewarded with a 4 year contract.

Abysmal performance so far. Matic and Oscar didn't do a single thing right between them.

Well TC back but pretty tame so far , they have looked more dangerous.

I agree, it's been pathetic so far. But the player who's really annoyed me is Fabregas. There's no other way to say it, he's been bloody lazy. Willian and Hazard have done quite well, but they shouldn't need to be tracking back so deep covering up for Fabregas.