Atalanta completely outplayed us.. Ederson ran the midfield and cooked Enzo out of the game. We were second to every duel, outpaced, outworked, and outclassed. That midfield battle was lost badly hence Gusto’s introduction into the midfield.

No comments from me for today’s game. The players and manager should do what they want it’s their own cup of tea

Joe Cole:

"Remember, PSG were in the [#UCL] play-off round last year, and they won the whole thing."

[via Football ontnt]

Chelsea continues to struggle with results.

Why isn’t Maresca using Tyrique George, Hato, and Buonanotte? 🤔

Does he not rate them?
Is it a message he’s sending to the recruitment team?

FireSide

#BottomLine

Let me tell you where the rain starts to beat us against bus parking teams. It's so easy. You could say system inefficiency or player deficiencies or both.

When teams play compactly first you need good close penetrators. Second you need your most potent attackers near the box. Third you need them to be able to drag, pass and move. That's how you break compactness.

Our system problem? We stick our attackers wide, and we push our central midfielders into the box. We want to rely on half crosses to Enzo and Cucurella on defenders blindspots. And we stick our attackers wide hoping this will create the spaces for the CM and Fullbacks to run into. If the opposing team is disciplined and remains compact our plan A fails and since we have no dribblers inside the box, we can't dribble and we can't shoot.

Player problem? Yes too. Most of our players are technically inept. Mostly runners. Almost all of them can't string consecutive two-three ball carrying dribbles.

Enzo would run into the wall like a blind donkey. Joao Pedro legs!! I have never understood them. He just runs in this funny way that results in awkward ball knocks and constant possession loss. Neto without space to run to is another blind horse. He can't protect balls in short spaces. I am not even going to say anything regarding Gittens and we all know Garnacho loses the balls as fast as kids lose virginity these days.

So unless we find a system that favours their deficiencies, we will always come short. They will perform great in one game, we pump ourselves up when they win against the current bottom three teams in the league (West Ham, Burnley & Wolves) then they normalize with crap in the next five when they come up against still silly but a little better quality.

Hot and Cold.

We will die of mixed emotions.. and rant till we die.

Henry agrees

Chelsea have made 46 line-up changes in the Premier League this season. 11 more than they’d made after 15 games in 24-25 (35). They’ve made 4+ changes in each of their last four games, last doing so in more in a row between September and December 2022

[Via BBC]

Chelsea currently have the 14th best home record in the Premier League this season with 11 points from 7 games.