Four goals to the good now!

Terrible pen from Oscar

Yes, experience and class tells in the end. They've got some good youngsters, but they're not ready for 90 minutes at this level.

All a bit too easy really. Still, it's City's decision to play that team.

Not the best of draws

A fantastic performance, and Hazard is back! Motm, and why not give Hiddink another year at the helm, given the way the players have responded to his leadership?

No doubt, pretend fans like carfree red, whatever his name is will moan that it was against a weakened city side, but some of those players are very good and unpredictable.

Come on the Chels'!

Mention should go to the few real fans on this thread who campaigned for Mourhino's removal, against a number of abusive so called fans who said he should stay. Where are they now?!

Anyway, enough of the banter, I'm off for a well deserved celebratory lager at the Duck!

Decent result from a difficult game. We win and its "against kids" and we lose and its we been knocked out by kids.

Very good performances from players like Cesc and Obi Mikel and Pedro and a okish performance from Hazzard who still has an awful lot of work to do but in fitness and mentally POV but very slowly he is improving he just needs to play 90 mins as often as possible. Nice touch from Willian in giving Hazzard the free kick shows the most important thing needed to this level a team mentality

But at the end of the day a decent performance and one that not unexpected with the two teams put out.

Don't blame City for putting out the team they did, He is out of a job at the end of season and just getting to the Semi Final of the Champions League will give him better options after this season then winning the FA Cup will

Good to see our Liverpool fan is still posting on the Chelsea thread. Perhaps he is cheering CHelsea on in the FA Cup to compensate for his team not being in it.
Shame you have never celebrated a league title down The Duck

You can be only beat what's in front of you.

Oh of course but from the POV of seeing where we are as a team at the moment its a game we can gather very little from. Even at our worst this season I think we still would have got a positive result more then likely would have been a much closer game but still a result that would have seen us go though to the next round

Biggest plus IMO was another 90 min's for Hazzard.

Indeed. He didn't look like Torres did he......

Even though we played awfully fit the first half of the season, it's nice to be reminded we do have some fantastic players.

Courtois, willian, pedro, hazard, Oscar, fabregas, azpi, willian and Costa.

It's fitting you listed Willian twice as he's worth two of most of the others - Hazard and Fabregas should hang their heeds in shame in particular.

Good win today, although yep it was against a second string City team so I agree with the Don that it still doesn't tell us much as to how much progress we've made to getting back to the level we need to be at. The trip to Southampton next week will be a much better indication.

Good to see Traore take his opportunity again to make an impression when he came on but I was a little disappointed Hiddink didn't use the opportunity to give either RLC or Miazga some minutes off the bench.


Those two haven't covered themselves in glory this season, although have at least shown signs of improvement lately (Fabregas in particular). Oscar is the worst of the lot though, and shouldn't be on that list. Certainly a player I would be looking to sell in the summer as I don't think he's ever going to kick on and become the player we initially hoped. Has the occasional good game (e.g. MK Dons) but it's nowhere near enough.

Very happy with Willian though, and also glad to see that Pedro appears to be settling in more. To be fair to him it can't have been easy coming into a team where nearly everyone were so far off their game.

I thought there were quite a few positives even if the second half did look like a training session at times. Some of our moves were a joy to watch, at times the interchanges between Hazard, Fabregas, Pedro and Willian were as good as any I've seen.
Rahman seems to be improving with ever game. What I do like about him is that if he does make a mistake he's able to recover very quickly. Needs to improve his crossing though, like a few others.
Yes, it was all too easy to give any true indication of where we are right now. But I think there was enough there to show that we still have an abundance of quality in the squad.
Don't forget, it wasn't long ago that some people (not on here) were suggesting that we'd need to get rid of most of the team.

The players always had the talent, the problem seems to have been a rotten egg.

I cannot believe i am typing this, but it does seem to look like Jose was that rotten egg.

What is the consensus?

Excuses shouldn't be made for the players. Any way you look at it some were very unprofessional, they're paid to do a job whether they like the manager or not. Willian showed them up, and has come out of this season with a lot of credit.

And whilst I was never an advocate of overhauling the entire squad (that would never work), I'm still not convinced some of these players are what we want going forward. Assuming Fabregas keeps up his current form till the end of the season then he still will have only provided us with 2 decent half-seasons and not been consistent enough for an entire season. Costa still remains a liability. Oscar doesn't cut it the majority of the time. Question marks over Matic too.

I agree the players should be professional, but in reality, as people find in the workplace every day, its very difficult to get motivated for a boss that you hate.

If you work in the crazy world of football, you can get your boss the sack. How? By putting in lazy half hearted performances.

It happens all the time - you could argue that it happened at liverpool to get rodgers the sack, and IS happening at Man U to get LVG the sack. Their last game reminded me of chelsea at the start of the season.

Willian is a star, always was in my book

I can believe it, at the time Jose was Chelsea manager so you couldn't say anything bad about him, but now that he may be the next United manager, it was him all along.

Not sure about Liverpool. The occasional game aside, they don't really seem to be performing any better under Klopp.

It is a straightforward question.

What was the problem?

The manager or the players?

Chances are, it was the players, after the manager had a breakdown and they no longer wanted to play for him.

I would be happy with giggs or jose at united.

To simplistic to blame one party.

The players was to blame for not being professional (am not saying it was or was not because of them liking or not liking the manager, Cesc for example has rarely produced a full season of top performances throughout his career).

The club was to blame for not bringing in new players and in my view going on a post and pre-season tour and not seeing the effect that would have on our fitness at the start of the season, It was clear to see throughout pre-season very few of our first team players was anywhere near a competitive match fitness

Jose should have handled things in a different manner at times.

It's much like the situation at Man Utd, Only a fool would blame the manager 100% and a bigger one who would think LVG is a bad manager.

Clubs like Chelsea and Man Utd,City etc are just too big for such massive failings to be one parties fault

I really don't know. In the beginning, I was blaming the board, particularly after the poor summer transfer window. Now I'm not so sure. There's no denying that Jose behaved very strangely (even by his standards) right from the start of the season.
I don't want to believe that he would engineer his own sacking, but I have my suspicions. it was all very peculiar, we'll probably have to wait for someone to write their autobiography..JT perhaps ?

I agree, it is his bizarre behavior that was most odd. Almost like he was goading the club to sack him at points.

If he wanted to engineer his own sacking (after signing a new contract) then he could not have done things better than he did.

Whats also worth considering is JT in the mix.

Now i am a HUGE fan of his, captain, leader, legend etc and he is all of these and more to the club. He deserves a statue.

However, what i am not a fan of is how much influence one club players have. Could he also have been part of the problem, as a Jose man?

???
Chelsea got 30M for Lukaku(suitable fee considering his age) and 50M for David Luiz and you're questioning whether they can get a suitable fee?

Anyway Hazard ain't leaving. He also was responsible for the first 2 goals vs City yesterday and played Willian in perfectly for his goal. It's an issue of fitness for Hazard more than anything. Which is what is causing him to slow down the play. He's not playing with as much intensity as last season which is the real problem.