You don't select players on trust. When given a chance young players have to show they're good enough, or wait for another opportunity. I don't think you'll find much "patience" for anyone under-performing at any of the top clubs, there's too much at stake.

Indeed. The one exercising "zero patience" at the time was KDB himself, as I saw it.

It's very selective only counting the league games he played in anyway. He played in 9 competitive games overall and didn't impress in any of them as I recall. Some of us also watched him in pre-season too, and have a lot more to judge his performances on than a fan of another club.

Well, he was ultimately right to have confidence in himself - as were both Sturridge and Lukaku. As it's a recurring theme, surely you can't think Chelsea are completely blameless? Possibly a very ruthless and/or intimidating regime. The events of this season couldn't have been totally down to just Jose. Maybe it's all just coincidence but I think questioning things is valid.

So Baba has been doing enough to justify being given all these chances.

I hear that at City, KDB is not one for hard work and is a poor trainer. He does the business on the pitch though and that is all City care about.
We all know a certain manager would never tolerate a player who doesn't run their legs off, so KDB was never going to last at Chelsea no matter what his performances were like.
Same as Robben. Our manager didn't like his attitude so off he went.
Mata couldn't to the other 100 metres in 10 seconds so he was pushed aside.

See the pattern there? And then we wonder why we lack creativity and goal power. We have those very players and then replace them with workers.

You're not allowed to question God on this forum.
If you do you're either s fake or an idiot.

[quote=The_don1;82148526]But your view on Mikel is clouded by your likes and dislikes.

QUOTE]

My view of him is "clouded by my likes and dislikes"

Aren't there players you don't rate? Would I come on here and say your view is clouded? No i wouldn't! I would accept you don't rate them.

With all the players I like I can nail it down very easily as to why I like and rate them and what they bring to the team. Likewise, the players I don't rate I can just as easily pinpoint why.
You can never do that though! You always say it's more complicated than that and start giving wishy washy opinions instead of nailing what players can or cannot do.

I don't rate Baba from what I've seen of him either, but he's only played as much as he has because of our complete lack of squad depth in defence. If JT and Zouma hadn't both been out injured then chances are Ivanovic would still be at RB and Azpi LB. It shouldn't need spelling out really, and is hardly comparable to KDB who couldn't hold down an AM position back when we had Hazard, Oscar, Willian, Mata, Schurrle and him all vying for 3 places in the team.

You look at each case individually. With Sturridge even though I wasn't completely sold on him during his time at the club, he had actually shown flashes of what he was capable of when given the opportunities, unlike KDB. A case could certainly be made for him being given more of a crack in his favoured position at the time, considering it was only Torres keeping him out.

No disrespect to West Brom and Everton but we still don't know if Lukaku can handle the pressure and increased expectations of playing for a top club. Has he found his level, or is he capable of going on to better things? He wouldn't be the first to look good in a lesser PL side but struggle to make the step up, see the likes of Benteke and Bony.

The issue is Lukaku was given 15 opportunities to impress at Chelsea and didn't seize any of them. Yes only a few of those were starts and the rest of those were off the bench, but you only have to look at Bertrand Traore for a young forward who's managed to impress in his limited game time so far.

Now should we have stuck with Lukaku hoping he'd fulfil his potential with us or were we right to bring in the finished article in Costa? Can anyone honestly say we'd really be better off with Lukaku than Costa? I don't think you'll find many Chelsea fans willing to swap them.

[quote=Dixon;82151053]
There are many players I don't rate but it's has little to do with my likes of certain football styles. Mikel for example is a very good footballer but you refuse to see that because of your dislike of the style of play the imagery "anti football" (excuse number 2 from the Wenger book of excuses for another season of complete failure). Every time you talk about Mikel your distain for him comes though and it's because of the job he is sent out to do and little regards to how well he does the job

A very poor display. City played a very tough CL game mid week, and were there for the taking. Mikel far too forward, and didn't look interested defensively.

Going into next season:

Mikel out
Oscar out
Ivanovic definitely out.

Question mark over Matic, and felt sorry for Courtois who was constantly called on after some defensive players in front of him failed.

Rahman looked promising, although throughout the team there was very little desire and fight.

Oh well, at least we won 3 titles and a few cups. That's what fans want to see, well most of them.......
3 titles ? Liverpool haven't seen one in over a quarter of a century so imagine how hard they are to come by.

[quote=The_don1;82151244]

Not rating Mikel has nothing whatsoever to do with the style of play I like to watch!
Makalele couldn't run round a row of dustbins with a football, but he'd be in my all time Chelsea 11.
I do not and never have been able to see what Mikel is great at. He's extremely slow and imobile. A crucual fault for a player in his position who's meant to provide cover for the back four. He gives us nothing in the oppositions half.
Watch Kante then watch Mikel and see what an enourmous difference there is.

The point is we got rid of quality players and replaced them with inferior ones. At our peak we had Robben and Duff and replaced them with the very average Malouda and the woeful Kalou.
At that time we being tipped to go on and dominate European football, not just the EP.
Those players were crucial weak links in our otherwise excellent team.
We would have done even better had we hung on to players we got rid of.

Again ignoring the fact he did not do that while at Chelsea maybe mainly due to your obsession with all things Jose (as proven by your consent of repeating of why players like Mata and Robben leaving when it was really nothing to do with those reasons)

[quote=Dixon;82151707]
Well the very strange thing is you are agreeing with Jose then. He didn't play him.
I assume you blame Guus for picking him ?

Come on, we were never ever tipped to dominate Europe. You have to win the trophy first. Make an argument for sure but don't blatantly make things up.

How do you hang on to players who was either not good enough at the time or wanted to leave?

Of course we have made transfer mistakes every club has but we have also made very good ones.

On the balance of transfers we are probably tipping the scales to the right side

But Chris Sutton said so on TalkS*it* and so did Eric Hall and Barry Fry

Yes, I think you've summed up things very nicely. With the benefit of hindsight it's very easy to say we made mistakes in letting players go. But you have to look at the circumstances at the time.
Torres was the elephant in the room for several seasons. The club appeared to be in denial, and every manager was tasked with bringing him back to form. Sturridge became another casualty in that fruitless pursuit.
We should probably have kept Lukaku for season 2013/4 instead of sending him out on loan to Everton. That was when Mourinho brought in Samuel Eto'o, a player he knew well from Inter. But again we still had Torres who we couldn't move on, and Demba Ba who had signed half way through the previous season.
Another thing is, I don't think any manager likes a young player who starts to give them ultimatums, demanding reassurances that he'll get games. It's a delicate balance between the commendable natural confidence a young player has in his own ability, and the less attractive feeling of entitlement some young players show.

It takes years and years of being in the Champions League before you can win it never mind dominate it.

If we had not had quite as many blips we might now be ready to start at looking at doing such a thing, Although I don't even think that is possible nowadays even if we was playing amazing stuff and had a fantastic team. The Premiership has never really lent us (or any English team) the ability to do that in the past and with the league getting more and more completive its going to get harder and harder to do so without risking The League and that always has to be the top priory.

Yep, United dominated English football but never Europe. City only reached the semi's after a number of years and Arsenal never won it.
When you have the likes of Real, Barcelona, Bayern it's very unlikely to ever happen to an English team

[quote=Jokanovic;82151767]
Yes, I am blaming Guus.
At least under Jose it looked like he was finally on his way out of Chelsea and not before time.

To "dominate" you need to at least retain the trophy or title etc once and no team has done that.

If you look the Champions League during the times when we could have "dominated" it I think only Munich have got to consecutive finals and even before that in modern football teams might have got to the finals twice consecutively but I don't think many more then that.

This idea of dominating the Champions League is no more then a fairy tale used by the media to sell the English League. In actual reality its almost impossible to do that

No team has ever retained the CL, so we were never going to dominate Europe no matter who we had.
The main point I'm making though is that we made some bad mistakes that stopped us from being as good as we could have been.
From Cech to Drog our team was filled with genuine top class players, but crucially, we had four regulars - Malouda , Kalou, Ramires and Mikel - who wrere a class or two below the rest of the team

Nobody is saying we have not made mistakes but many as mistakes we have made some have been mistakes with hindsight like KDB and some have been just mistakes that happen in the normal course of running a club such as Chelsea and sometimes its been due to an obsession with style and sometimes its been due to an obsession with buying the latest big name and sometimes its been due to one with winning the Champions League (instead of letting it come naturally like it did in the end) and sometimes its been due to having one man making all the decisions.

Don't mind us making mistakes as long as they make sense at the time and in the context of what has happening at the time and how the club was actually being run and not how fans thought we should be doing or trying to do and I think on the whole many of mistakes have fallen into that category not all of course but again when you balance them up its about right