Mauricio Pochettino leaves Chelsea by mutual consent

[paulw66]

Lots more stories appearing on the intensity of the training, and it has been much harder than under both Potter and TT.

Good.

[ROTG]

16 hours ago, paulw66 said:

Lots more stories appearing on the intensity of the training, and it has been much harder than under both Potter and TT.

Good.

certainly, weeding out the sick notes

[Gurj SS]

On 18/07/2023 at 11:22, paulw66 said:

Lots more stories appearing on the intensity of the training, and it has been much harder than under both Potter and TT.

Good.

Maybe a little too intense for the likes of Fofana, hopefully they're taking into account the player's fitness levels, injury history and age; last thing we need is the likes of James, Chilwell and Silva all missing the start of the season.

[Chelsea_Matt]

8 minutes ago, Gurj SS said:

Maybe a little too intense for the likes of Fofana, hopefully they're taking into account the player's fitness levels, injury history and age; last thing we need is the likes of James, Chilwell and Silva all missing the start of the season.

The way things are going….

[paulw66]

Chilwell the latest to state how brutal the fitness has been.

We look a lot leaner and faster in these pre season games.

[Ham]

19 minutes ago, paulw66 said:

Chilwell the latest to state how brutal the fitness has been.

We look a lot leaner and faster in these pre season games.

Also quoted as saying "I won't run at the first sign of problems". 

Love that. A dig at someone. 

[RDCW]

1 hour ago, paulw66 said:

Chilwell the latest to state how brutal the fitness has been.

We look a lot leaner and faster in these pre season games.

I noticed that Mudryk in particular looked much leaner against Newcastle than he was last season.

[chara]

2 hours ago, RDCW said:

I noticed that Mudryk in particular looked much leaner against Newcastle than he was last season.

The fitness level seems way above last season and says a lot...For me there seems a lot more willingness to "take on" players as opposed to the inevitable as was safety side pass.

Beating a man and moving forward immediately opens up options rather than giving a defence time to reorganise.

The fitness level makes that more effective given the pace or added quickness to take the ball away..the extreme example was the Brighton game when THAT sprint past a Brighton defender made him look like a bollard!

GP was a mistake at so many levels with players who should have had more self respect and commitment to their pay packet source taking advantage ...no wonder things appeared to go toxic....putting one's all into training and playing to watch others still getting picked after blatantly..as we are led to believe...letting standards drop is galling at best and demotivating at worst.

Edited July 28, 2023 by chara

[My Blood Is Blue]

18 hours ago, Ham said:

Also quoted as saying "I won't run at the first sign of problems". 

Love that. A dig at someone. 

He’s also said “after 2/3 weeks, it’s pretty rare that you want to run through brick walls for someone”… we have ourselves a proper manager again!

[xceleryx]

On 28/07/2023 at 23:14, RDCW said:

I noticed that Mudryk in particular looked much leaner against Newcastle than he was last season.

Having arrived last season on the back of 2 months without kicking a ball and then thrusted right into the middle of an active Premier League season, it would be hard for him to be any less prepared in all honesty. That aside though, I do think we just look 90% fitter as a whole, which was much needed given the sluggish nature of last season. 

No European football will be an added bonus as it'll mean Poch and his team can continue tougher sessions throughout the season. 

 

[CarefreeMuratcan]

Did you guys see his team talk during one of the water breaks against Fulham yesterday. What do you think about it? It was something about telling whoever is in the no 9 position to drop deep and link up and not stay static in the no 9 position. 

[Mark Kelly]

45 minutes ago, CarefreeMuratcan said:

Did you guys see his team talk during one of the water breaks against Fulham yesterday. What do you think about it? It was something about telling whoever is in the no 9 position to drop deep and link up and not stay static in the no 9 position. 

I think that was to Mason Burstow 

[Ham]

2 hours ago, CarefreeMuratcan said:

Did you guys see his team talk during one of the water breaks against Fulham yesterday. What do you think about it? It was something about telling whoever is in the no 9 position to drop deep and link up and not stay static in the no 9 position. 

I also noticed how he pointed at Burstow at one point and called him Carney. 😬

[ROTG]

18 hours ago, Ham said:

I also noticed how he pointed at Burstow at one point and called him Carney. 😬

I bet Karen is not impressed

[exiledblue]

I like that players when they sign are saying Poch had called them and got them to buy in to his ideas. It seems he is a rare coach with a say in transfers

[exiledblue]

On 11/07/2023 at 07:25, Flinkers said:

I thought the common consensus was that due to the short turnaround between seasons we were woefully undercooked going into last season.

why only us?

[McCreadie]

9 hours ago, exiledblue said:

why only us?

Because we had reached both domestic cup finals, travelled for the Club World Cup and Super Cup and had a lengthy run in the CL. Liverpool, who had a similar number of fixtures suffered last season also. Everyone else played less.

[ROTG]

Dear Mr Poch,

that’s it,

transfer window closed, £1b of player recruitment by TBSD in three transfer windows, all eyes are now focused on you to see what you can achieve with the hand you have been dealt. 
 

Good Luck

ROTG

[McCreadie]

5 hours ago, ROTG said:

Dear Mr Poch,

that’s it,

transfer window closed, £1b of player recruitment by TBSD in three transfer windows, all eyes are now focused on you to see what you can achieve with the hand you have been dealt. 
 

Good Luck

ROTG

TBSD was not in place for the first of those 3 windows. 

[Gurj SS]

Reality is Poch has been working with the club to bring together some sort of project, some sort of dream team of young players on long contracts to build over the next 5-6 years; RA proved short term works better, just take a look at Liverpool as they have peanuts to show for so many years of being labelled a top class team. Took them 5 years to build a team and it only lasted about 2-3 seasons before they were gassed out.

Yes some of our players may come good, but we can't expect to win anything on a maybe, we need a core regular 11 but have young players in need of guidance and 20 year olds needing game time too; the squad is a mess. It's easy to talk of potential, but potential needs to be mixed in with a established players in order for them to be supported; if 3 of our young players lose their way we're in serious trouble because we don't have a spine to hold them up.

In my opinion as things stand right now this is what I make of our squad even compared to last season's disjointed mess of...well...everything.

Not good enough: Sanchez, Bettinelli, Petrovic, Bergstrom, Disasi, Cucurella, Colwill, Fofana, Sarr, Ugochukwu, Mudryk, Broja, Washington;

Maybe: Badiashile, Maatsen, Lavia, Madeuke, Palmer;

Good enough for sub: Chalobah, Gusto, Caicedo, Carny, Gallagher

Starter: Silva, Chilly, James, Enzo, Sterling, Jackson, Nkunku;

Sure things can change, some players improve and move up or some drop down the pecking order, but it will take game time for them to improve. When everyone is fit if we start with: Sanchez; James, Silva, Chalobah, Chilly; Caicedo, Enzo, Gallagher; Nkunku, Sterling, Jackson. If we're struggling to break a team down or something isn't going to plan our only choices is to bring on players who may come good at some point in the future, who could easily come on and get lost in the game as they could help the team. If we had a core of extablished players then everyone above in bold are loaned out players where they can be given real playing time to grow (and not just to cover injuries). The ones underlined should never have made it through the doors of the club let alone be loaned out; oh and forgot Poch -not a fan until he proves he didn't sell us a lie in pre-season, his tactics/system of play is beyond rubbish; I couldn't care less who is injured and who isn't, that's a cop out becasue it's not like this current system is compensating for it; it s a total failure.

[Ham]

5 hours ago, Gurj SS said:

Reality is Poch has been working with the club to bring together some sort of project, some sort of dream team of young players on long contracts to build over the next 5-6 years; RA proved short term works better, just take a look at Liverpool as they have peanuts to show for so many years of being labelled a top class team. Took them 5 years to build a team and it only lasted about 2-3 seasons before they were gassed out.

Yes some of our players may come good, but we can't expect to win anything on a maybe, we need a core regular 11 but have young players in need of guidance and 20 year olds needing game time too; the squad is a mess. It's easy to talk of potential, but potential needs to be mixed in with a established players in order for them to be supported; if 3 of our young players lose their way we're in serious trouble because we don't have a spine to hold them up.

In my opinion as things stand right now this is what I make of our squad even compared to last season's disjointed mess of...well...everything.

Not good enough: Sanchez, Bettinelli, Petrovic, Bergstrom, Disasi, Cucurella, Colwill, Fofana, Sarr, Ugochukwu, Mudryk, Broja, Washington;

Maybe: Badiashile, Maatsen, Lavia, Madeuke, Palmer;

Good enough for sub: Chalobah, Gusto, Caicedo, Carny, Gallagher

Starter: Silva, Chilly, James, Enzo, Sterling, Jackson, Nkunku;

Sure things can change, some players improve and move up or some drop down the pecking order, but it will take game time for them to improve. When everyone is fit if we start with: Sanchez; James, Silva, Chalobah, Chilly; Caicedo, Enzo, Gallagher; Nkunku, Sterling, Jackson. If we're struggling to break a team down or something isn't going to plan our only choices is to bring on players who may come good at some point in the future, who could easily come on and get lost in the game as they could help the team. If we had a core of extablished players then everyone above in bold are loaned out players where they can be given real playing time to grow (and not just to cover injuries). The ones underlined should never have made it through the doors of the club let alone be loaned out; oh and forgot Poch -not a fan until he proves he didn't sell us a lie in pre-season, his tactics/system of play is beyond rubbish; I couldn't care less who is injured and who isn't, that's a cop out becasue it's not like this current system is compensating for it; it s a total failure.

Alarmist reactionary nonsense. 

 

[Sleeping Dave]

4 hours ago, Ham said:

Alarmist reactionary nonsense. 

 

I think he raises quite a few legitimate concerns. Perhaps I’m not in agreement in how he ranks and categorises the players but for me I reckon Chalobah should be a starter at CB with Colwill for example. £150m spent on Fofana, Badiashile and Disasi and none of the are, to me at least, better than either Colwill or Chalobah. Such strange decisions can be seen everywhere in the squad. It’s just odd. 

We could have padded the squad with academy players and bought 10 £100m players, or 5 £200m players. That would have been some project and one that could have been successful both in the short-term and in the long-term. Now, of course it’s not easy to find 5 £200m players who are likely to want to join us, but I’m listing extreme examples to make a point. We’ve bought potential for £1bn. It’s a really risky strategy and if they fail, I fear for the future of the club to be perfectly honest. I’m their first season in charge, had the season been 10 games longer we’d be playing in the championship this season. This season hasn’t started much better;

Liverool (h) 1-1, West Ham (a) 1-3, Luton (h) 3-0, Forest (h) 0-1. 

4 points and a GD of 5-5 after those four games in well below acceptable. 8 would have been par, 10 very good and 12 excellent. After four games we are out of the PL race. It’s absolutely laughable after spending so much money. There is no other way of putting it. 

[My Blood Is Blue]

2 hours ago, Sleeping Dave said:

I think he raises quite a few legitimate concerns. Perhaps I’m not in agreement in how he ranks and categorises the players but for me I reckon Chalobah should be a starter at CB with Colwill for example. £150m spent on Fofana, Badiashile and Disasi and none of the are, to me at least, better than either Colwill or Chalobah. Such strange decisions can be seen everywhere in the squad. It’s just odd. 

We could have padded the squad with academy players and bought 10 £100m players, or 5 £200m players. That would have been some project and one that could have been successful both in the short-term and in the long-term. Now, of course it’s not easy to find 5 £200m players who are likely to want to join us, but I’m listing extreme examples to make a point. We’ve bought potential for £1bn. It’s a really risky strategy and if they fail, I fear for the future of the club to be perfectly honest. I’m their first season in charge, had the season been 10 games longer we’d be playing in the championship this season. This season hasn’t started much better;

Liverool (h) 1-1, West Ham (a) 1-3, Luton (h) 3-0, Forest (h) 0-1. 

4 points and a GD of 5-5 after those four games in well below acceptable. 8 would have been par, 10 very good and 12 excellent. After four games we are out of the PL race. It’s absolutely laughable after spending so much money. There is no other way of putting it. 

Also, what hasn't helped the owners, which you kind of touch on, is that we have overpaid for almost all the signings we've made. If we had made the number of changes to the squad that we have but had paid half the amount, then the pressure and expectation would be less and therefore the patience from the fans would be slightly increased (I say slightly because we are still football fans of a very large club).

With this many changes made, we have to accept it will take time, however, because we're paying very high fees for a lot of these players, the expectations of it clicking quickly are there as well. Add to that we've spent so much on young players who will clearly never play for us, it just adds to the narrative. 

[thevelourfog]

I'm disappointed with the results after 4 games, and more than that worried by the manner of yesterday's defeat and its similarities with the last 6 months of 22/23. But it's really, really obviously too early to be drawing conclusions like those in the last few posts. And that is precisely because of how much money we've spent, how much change there has been. The idea we'd be flying, or even just stable, immediately with 6 or 7 new players in the starting XI is obviously silly.

I think we need to keep pace with CL qualification. I'm not currently feeling optimistic we'll do that, but that is the yardstick for me and we're a good few months (or 5 or 6 defeats in a row, which hasn't been beyond us!) from having a clearer picture on that.

[xceleryx]

17 hours ago, Sleeping Dave said:

I think he raises quite a few legitimate concerns. Perhaps I’m not in agreement in how he ranks and categorises the players but for me I reckon Chalobah should be a starter at CB with Colwill for example. £150m spent on Fofana, Badiashile and Disasi and none of the are, to me at least, better than either Colwill or Chalobah. Such strange decisions can be seen everywhere in the squad. It’s just odd. 

We could have padded the squad with academy players and bought 10 £100m players, or 5 £200m players. That would have been some project and one that could have been successful both in the short-term and in the long-term. Now, of course it’s not easy to find 5 £200m players who are likely to want to join us, but I’m listing extreme examples to make a point. We’ve bought potential for £1bn. It’s a really risky strategy and if they fail, I fear for the future of the club to be perfectly honest. I’m their first season in charge, had the season been 10 games longer we’d be playing in the championship this season. This season hasn’t started much better;

Liverool (h) 1-1, West Ham (a) 1-3, Luton (h) 3-0, Forest (h) 0-1. 

4 points and a GD of 5-5 after those four games in well below acceptable. 8 would have been par, 10 very good and 12 excellent. After four games we are out of the PL race. It’s absolutely laughable after spending so much money. There is no other way of putting it. 

Will break this down in two parts.

Re the defender situation. I like Chalobah, sung rave reviews of him when he came onto the scene and how he played. However, as time has gone on he's shown a limit to what he can do. He's prone to lapses in concentration which lead to mistakes and silly fouls, I mean that abysmal attempted stooping header against Liverpool that he completely botched immediately springs to mind. There is a limit to what he provides and I've said this recently. He's abundantly poor in the air, gives you little to nothing from a possession based capacity, and overall is quite a passive defender. Players like Fofana, Badiashile and Disasi when fit do provide a wider scope of tools that are of greater benefit. Whether they provide a talent improvement is subjective, but not everything revolves around talent and attributes/profile play an equally important part. 

Re the remaining part. As you said, you've provided some extreme examples to make a point, but let's run with that for a moment. Let's say we did just that, purchased 10 £100m or 5 £200m players and they flounder. What do the repercussions of that look like? Not only are we in the hole with massive transfer fees we're not going to be recouping, but established players in these sort of transfer bracket are going to be earning some significant coin on top. We'd be, and to put it crudely, completely fucked. As such we'd have little choice but to persevere, maybe try to offload a couple for huge losses, or be stuck trying to sort loans over the following windows. Can you imagine the state of thing with 5 or 10 Lukaku like deadweights? 

Don't disagree we've started slow, but as I shared in the match thread this was the same case with Poch's first season at Spurs. Wasn't until the beginning of December when things turned around. We're not only facing the general adjustment to a new manager, but also the turnover of faces, a young team, and missing a couple key players through injury. This is not your normal set of circumstance and therefore judging it as such isn't the best approach either.