Of course they worship Rafa, he did win their beloved club the champions league.

Anyone who suggests that Rodgers should have been the next chelsea manager is clearly on a wind up.

Of course they are, thats all they are doing.

Now suggesting Jose took us backwards from Rafa when we ended up stopping Liverpool winning the league, oh how that must hurt them, and winning it the next season.

You can't rewrite history when the facts are there. They have their clown shoes firmly on today.

That pearl of a thread appears to have disappeared funnily enough.

That's a shame Ninn, you didn't get your question answered.

Perhaps now we can concentrate in football in this thread.

How do you think that 3 at the back is going for us - is it the future?

I'd continue with it in our next game against Leicester, see how it goes. Hopefully Terry will be back to replace Cahill then. I know it was only against Hull but I thought Moses had a decent game as the right wing-back, so I would keep him in.

With two possible starters in this system out (JT and Zouma) and it being against a awful team I not sure we can actual gain much hindsight in to if its going to be the way forward or even if its work (due to us not really performing well at the moment).

If he does continue to use this system it would not be until we have everyone fit and we start performing near to where we should be that we will get an idea

Yes, I would stick with the 3 at the back. Need to find the best solution to be defensively solid with the tools we have to currently work with.

I've deleted that page. Come on guys, can we keep the football discussions civilised. Tolerance with other people's reasonable views, and let's stick to football.

Conte..
"The present is now more important. January is a long way away. I don't see an opportunity in January to spend money or change things."
"Now I see the present. I see in the present the opportunity to improve, and we must continue to change the story of last season. I repeat: last season it was very clear. I think that me and the players, none of us has forgotten this."

Good to hear our manager being realistic in my opinion. It doesn't matter what system we attempt, 3-4-3, 4-4-2, 4-1-4-1, or whatever. It will make little difference if the players don't step up a level.
We've been outplayed by Liverpool and Arsenal, two of our rivals for a top four position. At the moment there's nothing to suggest Man City and Spurs wouldn't do the same.
The good news is that we're still in touch. Man Utd don't appear to have settled on their best line up yet, and we have enough quality in our squad to improve considerably.

I liked the balance of the team against Hull, but it's likely we could have shuffled that team around in numerous ways and still won against such weak opposition. A back three of Azpil, Cahill and Luiz is a lot different to those employed by Conte for Juve or Italy. But I doubt he has any illusions about that. The return of a match-fit Zouma should make a big difference, we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed that we see the same player again.

Its going to be a while before we see a "match fit" Zouma, He will have not played any football for a long time and will be playing in a utterly new system with zero pre-season football. We cannot rush him back as do that will cause more harm then good. Its got to be done slowly

Agreed. He's had an awful injury and can't be rushed however much we might need him.

Thirded.

Zouma is a great young player, we have missed him.

Oh no, I wasn't suggesting that we rush to get him back. He was doing some light training with the team towards the end of July, but it's going to be a long process.

Roman man give conte funds to rebuild is all over the press.

You ARE Conte, you have £200 million plus whatever transfer fees out of the club next season.... what do you do?

A few of you might be interested in this: http://www.chelseafc.com/news/latest...te-dugout.html

Forums for balanced discussions are difficult to find I know.

He can give him 500m and it still wont make a difference if the wrong people are in charge of transfers. We all know Conte (the same as previous managers) has little or no say in the incoming and outgoings at Chelsea.

He can give the transfer committee a list of players who are perfect for us but its not him doing the negotiations and that is where our problems lie.

The type of players we need come at premium cost so unless they have a clause in their contract setting a price we should not be going in and offering silly amounts like 30m and sadly I think that is what we will do.

If Roman is serious about spending big on players then the first thing he needs to do is bring in people who call pull of those deals, Otherwise its a bit like an episode of the apprentice where you send out a bunch of idiots with cash and seeing what they can do, Once in while they will succeed but mostly they will come back with cheap knock offs

I really would like to see a future of purchases and giving young players more of a chance. It may be short term pain but maybe a better future.

I think that would mean forgetting about top 4 for a few seasons and don't think Roman will go for that. Moreso with the current plans for the new ground starting to take shape

Moses has been bright this season. Good for him. What I also liked about the system was that Kante was playing more like a box to box as opposed to just sitting in front of the CBs. He looked way more comfortable and I think even if Conte goes back to the old system, Kante should be the one playing where Matic has been so far this season with Matic playing as CDM.


We can do both imo. All the teams above us have brought in a couple of youngsters into their teams and they are still doing well. I know we are at different stages but there's no reason why we can't buy world class players for certain positions like defence and still promote a couple of youths.
Rashford (United), Ihenacho (City), Iwobi (Arsenal). Ali and Kane for Spurs have also done well. We passed up on Ali because we had Lewis Baker in our academy but now Ali is a regular starter for Spurs and is into the national team whilst Baker is loan at Vitesse. We have the best youth academy in the country but are the worst at actually bringing them into the first team mold. The second half of last season would've been perfect to give our young players some meaningful minutes and experience at this level but RLC was the only one who was part of the first team setup and he hardly played even after Jose left.

Looking at our youngsters I not so sure, RLC looked far better then many of the others and his performances for the first team have not really showed any of the ability shown before,

Am not saying he is not good enough but its going to take playing him week in week out to improve and what with the rebuilding we need to do I not sure we can do both at the moment.

City are so far ahead of us in terms of first team I not sure we can even compare us with them, Ali for Spurs is again different as he played not short of 100 league games before he went to Spurs, When Kane started they was building to be a top side and if they did not get it then it was not really a big deal, They at the time was not a "top 4" team.

We have a massive job on our hands at the moment, The make up of the current squad is just not working at the moment, We have a few players who are doing really well on loan at the moment think if they can do a Ali and get a similar amount of games under their belt then that is when we will see some real benefits. To put players who have next to no real games under their belt into the current first team with the issue we have is going to cause them more harm then good, We have experienced professionals who have won trophies not performing, Putting players with no real experience of playing football at a professional level is risky and you cannot blame a manager who has the Chelsea job of not taking risks, If you take top 4 off the table then you give him more of a incentive to take risks

It doesn't have to be RLC but even someone like Chalobah who's one of the most experienced 21 year olds in the country is finding it hard to break into the Chelsea team despite us having problems in that area for over a year now. I know we are at different stages with the other clubs but I just wanted to point out how they turn to their youth in times of need whereas we don't ever. For instance, after Bamford's breakout year in the Championship where he won Player of the Year, I don't think it would've hurt us to make him our third choice striker for the next season instead of turning to a 37 year old Drogba (as much as I love the guy). His subsequent loan moves have all been horrible and have probably done more harm than good to his development. RLC is being played out of position by Conte so it's difficult to evaluate where he really is at the moment. I'd suggest sending him out on loan to a Premiership side but Kenedy, Ake and Bamford are hardly seeing the field at their respective loan teams so I doubt we can trust them to get the right team for him.

BIB: That's why I mentioned that last season a lot of our young players could've played more. It was apparent by late January/early Feb that we weren't going to be in top 6 so why not play the likes of Aina and Tammy? Furthermore, Hiddink wasn't even angling for a permanent job so he had nothing to lose in that regard. Tammy got like 10 minutes at the end of the season but we could've done better.

Also it seems the board/Conte did try to get Koulibaly for £58 million after all but Napoli declined because they needed him.
http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/foot...-a3362846.html

Looks like we had all our eggs in this basket that's why we ended up going for a last ditch buy in Luiz.

Would Bamford have been happy going from a player of a season to 3rd choice? I very much doubt it, I would have rather he stayed at Middlesbrough for another season, He was settled there and would have been a senior member of the team, Instead we moved him and if you look at it from a education POV and that's what I look at loans as moving schools is always problematic at very best more so when you really enjoyed it there

With regards to last season, I think the thought process was to try and get the first team players back to their standard by playing them clearly that did not work. Guss knows the club really well and I think he thought if he could get the first team players up to standard that would help the next manager more then blooding youngsters as being in the top 4 next season would be one of Conte's key objectives.

There was no point in giving young players a taste of first team football then take it away from them next season due to the new manager being under pressure to get top 4, Which was likely to happen. If we want to bring in youngsters its at least a two full season project. Other teams do it but their culture is different to Chelsea's and to change that is not going to be easy.

Yes picking the right clubs for our loan players has been a issue but hopefully that will change now that Joe Edwards is working with loan players but again this has been the biggest problem at Chelsea over the last few years, Its the behind the scenes stuff we been getting wrong again and again and again, These sort of things cannot be changed mid-flow or on the fly. We need to stop and start again almost like we did when Roman first came in (for example we bought in Peter Kenyon). The whole fabric of the club needs to change if we are going to go down the mixing youth route and I not sure Roman has the right people advising him to put the changes needed in place to do that. I think if you gave someone like Guss real power and a massive say in the running of the club and the ability to say to Roman no or you need to sign off on this no questions asked and let him and Conte work with each other then we would see massive changes but they need to be able to drill right down and get to our issues without having the worry of doing some very hard work and then getting fired at the end of the season.

But from what I heard the 58m came in at the last minute and we spent most of the time putting in silly bids like 30/40m.

What we should have done is go in with that bid from day one