Tiresias

Motd complaining about our penalty no mention of theirs, irksome

Oh that sucks. Wish him speediest of recoveries

I can see it but I also think it won't work at all. Howe will hate not having access to the players often. He's fairly straight ahead with the press so they will be constantly goading him into saying something 'controversial' to splash on the headlines and they will hate him for not indulging them much. I also don't think he will suit managing teams in those short spurts. Could be wrong, I thought Tuchel would find the lack of coaching time difficult and he seems to be doing fine. Honestly think it will go to Frank Lampard as he will love the extra time for showing up nattering to pundits midseason and everyone will bang on about him being an inspirational figure, though the results will be dreadful.

I agree he's tried to change the high intensity game to cope with injuries and schedule and it's just quite worked, I think he wants us to press at the high intensity only in certain phases of games, but our composure at the back has been so poor it isn't working. I don't think the group of players is suited to playing a slower more deliberate style, the ball retential is just too poor, but also we didn't really even seem to try and sign a ball playing technical midfielder which is surely first step towards having a more posession based game in our locker.

What I don't understand about Gordon is why he keeps trying to run horizontally into the centre circle, he embarks on some dribble with the ball effectively straight towards where all the opposition players are and loses the ball. It just directionally seems really weird, like is it to make space for another player and he's just not making the pass needed? Really don't understand and yet he keeps doing it. Genuinely may need the fans to have a big arrow to point to him where the opposition goal is. Partially i have sympathy he is receiving teh ball nowhere near their box but directionally seems confused.

The owners have come in tried to disrupt how things are done, positives for them - they have proved that PSR can be maniupulated as much as you want if you have existing assets etc - they have a lot of young exciting players - while not title winning or anything, considering how widely mocked their method of taking decisions away from manager their results havent been terrible, they are definitely in a decent position to get into the champions league - the contract length thing has proved to be a decent way of attracting sellable talent at lower wages and they seem proven correct that this will work out negatives for them - Even sensible commitee decisions are hardly the excitement most football fans want - they're cunts - they'll forever be cunts - they'll need a manager whom is willing to tie themselves to the club's decisions, manage the ridiculous squad and not care when players are sold whom is also good enough to get them to win something while putting up with that crap. Hmmm

Reported in nyt that the order came down to maresca that he couldnt overrule the medical team regarding player availability and they had strict rotation rules. I can see both sides, he obviously resented getting slagged off by their fans for weird rotations that were forced on him, but on the other they have had a lot of injuries and managers will always rush players back for short term gains which often results in substantially longer injuries. Still it's clear one has limited power as chelsea manager

Merry Christmas all

Hahaha

Rafa is washed man he clicked with us and made a haphazard team play above their level with buy in and discipline. Everywhere since he has been overly negative and unable to connect with the players. We should not be playing the underdog anymore. If plan is to be number 1 in five years we need to be more ambitious than that. I'm sticking with Eddie though. Sorry he's not perfect but you have to build around something and he fucking won us a trophy. We need a hard reset of the team with a raft of new young players capable of playing high intensity.

Yes, and we're so technically inept at times got to be frustrating. The ball goes out wide to the wingers and then they immediately lose the ball running into traffic. The number of times Gordon just runs into traffic in the middle of the pitch is infuriating, I dont mind if you're running at them into their box, but at the half way line dribbing into the midfield scrum happens too often. I don't demand a posession based team, they can be quite boring, a Howe team operating at it's best is brilliant, but a Howe team at 80% intensity has no penetration and is exposed a lot more

You can't do a major reset in january, just impossible. League this season is a writeoff, focus on the cups.

Still back him absolutely, but think this squad needs a major refresh now, and he needs to get off his blinkers over Gordon at the very least..

Exceptionally poor performance. Team needs a major reboot in the summer.

Not going to criticise their side when ours is well short of where we should be, so many of our players levels have significantly dropped since last season. Our squad is assembled at much higher cost then theirs and we look very ordinary. I'm never going to turn on Howe, this is not how he wants us to play but the choice of wingers was odd. The decision making of a lot of our players has weirdly gone completely. The squad needs a rebuild. As brilliant as some have been for us I would be eyeing major surgery in the summer

Can only laugh at that

More dropped points to dreadful defending sigh

Dreadful keeping

To clarify bit, it's kinda up to him, I'm all for new contract keeping him around, burn isn't getting any younger and botman could be the future (but the injuries are huge concern still). But if we're looking for new young CBs anyway is he in the plans? And if he wants to get into starting for holland does he want to be fighting for his place or does he want to go somewhere he will automatically start?

If he can't displace Burn on the left and stay fit for rest of season i think we probably ought to cut our losses with him. Club are looking to recruit cbs apparently still so guess they have similar thoughts, albeit apparently we are negotiating a new deal so who knows.

You're not wrong, maybe slightly wrong there I mean more i guess we don't have players who can play roles interchangably, burn cant play like hall on the left, noone can play like bruno or tonali in the middle. I dont particularly enjoy players drilled into being identical either. Bleh. I am not trying to be critical it just seems we can't play consistently the same no matter the personnel (and in truth no team really can but we are fluctuating in levels too much)

I think it is definitely an area he needs to get better on, rotation that is. The thing of it is that for instance the swap of tonali and bruno the other week made a big difference, when such tiny tweaks can be difference between a win and a loss rotating the whole squad around can feel a huge risk, if you have a settled 11 you sort of know what you are going to get. Certainly coaches of the big teams sort this by intensely drilling into players their duties making them somewhat robots who follow specific instructions. I'm not sure that is quite Howe's style, but if we want to compete on all fronts things need to be learned.

I've been really encouraged by recent performances from him that a useful player is still there. It would absolutely be best thing for him to be honest to move on though to a club he can regularly start at.

So I didn't watch the man city game as out drinking with my everton mate and we win, i watch the marseille game we lose, i listen to this game on radio up until 0-4 and then as soon as i start waatching they score. It's me, I'm the jinx, I watch and bad things happen

Sigh rubbish again away