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Thread for the Champions of England - 2015/2016 season


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Report that Jose will be let go after the Stoke game this weekend so the replacement will have time with the squad during the international break. This is regardless of the results.

Its easy to spot the flaw in that, as the vast majority of the Chelsea first team will be on international duty. Any new manager will have John Terry (and a few others) plus some youth players to work with during the international break.

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The strength of the squad should've also really meant that we ought to have won (or at the very least made a serious title challenge) the league in his first season, as we probably had the strongest squad in the league but, to make it easier upon himself, we heard the 'pony in a horse race' crap from him. I mean fair play that we won the league upon strengthening well the following season, but did anyone not expect the league with that squad?

As I think I mentioned earlier in the thread Gerrard's slip makes that season look so much better than it actually was, we bottled that title far worse than Liverpool but as they did it more spectacularly all the attention was on them.

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I don't think you bottled that title at all. You didn't really have a chance as you couldn't break teams down which is a bit about Mourinho but is more to do with not having the personnel to ensure he could do it with his style of play

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Not really as you didn't have the players to win those sort of games consistently within Mourinho's style.

That's fair to an extent but regardless of style a team going for the title should be beating a team trying to avoid relegation. Even if you ignore the Villa and Palace games (why Mourinho defeats so frequently descend into indisciplined farce is a debate for another time) beat Sunderland and Norwich and, if we are assuming Liverpool and City get the same results, we'd have been champions.

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That's fair to an extent but regardless of style a team going for the title should be beating a team trying to avoid relegation. Even if you ignore the Villa and Palace games (why Mourinho defeats so frequently descend into indisciplined farce is a debate for another time) beat Sunderland and Norwich and, if we are assuming Liverpool and City get the same results, we'd have been champions.

Yes but equally you over-performed (relative to other top sides) in the big games that season. I think you were just different to the other teams as a consequence of Mourinho's style and as a result of the squad being incomplete you can't really expect him to have produced those wins on a consistent basis.

I am not really sure why I am defending him, I dislike him and think he is overrated. :D

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That's fair to an extent but regardless of style a team going for the title should be beating a team trying to avoid relegation. Even if you ignore the Villa and Palace games (why Mourinho defeats so frequently descend into indisciplined farce is a debate for another time) beat Sunderland and Norwich and, if we are assuming Liverpool and City get the same results, we'd have been champions.

Yeah, except that you're forgetting that if you want to be champions, you have to be able to beat everybody. With another manager we *may* have beaten the smaller teams, but we sure as hell wouldnt have beaten Liverpool and City twice. Take those points away and we'd never be in contention. Like the years before for example.

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I think it's clear that these supposed comments are likely from Hazard but it depends on a few things. I am sure plenty of players have been in a huff and would have said something stupid if asked at that particular time

The fact some other out of form players have come out and backed Mourinho, thereby making it clear it's not them (Terry, Cesc) kind of leaves us with Hazard who hasn't said a word ... GUILTY!!! :p

Carried you for 2 seasons but been dog turd this season

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Mourinho doing a top notch job of forcing out the guy who's essentially carried us the past 2 seasons :applause:

I'm glad he didn't start. Did you watch the Liverpool game? He did nothing the entire game. Tonight he was A LOT better when he came on, looked like he actually wanted to play.

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yeah you can say what you like about Chelsea this season - but Willian has scored some ****ing amazing free-kicks :D

Three of them have been crosses that eluded everyone and went in. Good delivery but not really what everyone's getting at. The two others were fine strikes admittedly but even tonight's one owed something to poor goalkeeping, Shovkovskiy never got his feet set and still got a (weak) hand to it.

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I always think if you get to a stage where THE NEXT GAME IS MUST WIN then even if you win ... what about the next game and the one after? It seems inevitable a manager will leave

I am not sure the higher ups have placed that on Mourinho though, just said 'results need to improve'?

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Three of them have been crosses that eluded everyone and went in. Good delivery but not really what everyone's getting at. The two others were fine strikes admittedly but even tonight's one owed something to poor goalkeeping, Shovkovskiy never got his feet set and still got a (weak) hand to it.

I got the feeling that the couple he scored after the flukes were almost "well, if i hit them a bit harder, i can actually score properly".

Which to be fair, isn't a bad thing at all.

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Winning with an own goal and another free kick is going to fool plenty of people, means the defeat to Stoke this coming weekend will hurt them even more.

We would've won by a lot more goals if Costa was more clinical. He's **** atm. We passed the ball across the 6 yard box on multiple occasions and he was no where to be seen. Also the fact he dived instead of shooting when he was basically through on goal, so frustrating especially when you think back to what he'd do in that situation last season.

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That's like saying we'd have won more games this season if we'd have defended better though. Everyone finding excuses but looking past several huge flaws.

Not really, I've pin pointed the reason why we're creating chances but not finishing them... Costa. Remy / Falcao at least deserves a chance to do better and by a chance I mean starting a couple of games.

By saying we'd have won more games by defending better, that's a more generalised solution. If you could identify why we've not defended well, then it'd be more similar.

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Agree that Remy should be getting more chances, not sure what Falcao has done to warrant more game time as has shown no signs of life when he has had (albeit limited) chances in the team.

With the defence, the situation is more complicated as you say, but there are some basic things that could help a lot, mainly stop playing people out of position! Luckily Ivanovic got injured otherwise I'm pretty confident he would still be waving attackers past him every league game, but playing Zouma there is nearly as bad. He constantly seems to be about 10 yards to far infield, which is understandable, and offers nothing going forward. Baba has been looking better every game and if he plays it means we can play Azpilecueta in his natural position too. Begovic has been pretty good standing in, but think when Courtois comes back it will help too, not only with better shot stopping but in communication and confidence for those in front of him. Also the sad coincidence of Terry, Cahill and Zouma when he has playing at CB making too many individual errors, but we have left ourselves so limited in choices we're not really able to do too much about that.

Another big thing is how easily opposition are getting to our defensive line as Matic and Fabregas who were plaing as the shielding two for much of the season haven't been doing enough. Mikel has been slightly better than Matic since coming in, but Ramires has been played there as according to Jose he is better at getting the ball back but I've not really seen it so much and his distribution has been suspect at times. I would like to see Loftus-Cheek being given more game time as he runs and tries as hard as Ramires but actually moves the ball forward and creates attacks which takes the pressure off us. Jose seems to have gone in to full siege mode where his preferred tactic seems to be to actively try to have as little possession as possible so the opposition bring more players forward, soak up pressure and score on the break. That tactic doesn't work as well as it used to when your defence looks like conceding a goal at any moment and your only attacking player who has looked good at any point of the season is Willian who is basically carrying the team.

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I would like to see Loftus-Cheek being given more game time as he runs and tries as hard as Ramires but actually moves the ball forward and creates attacks which takes the pressure off us.

Unfortunately this is Mourinho's Chelsea.

actively try to have as little possession as possible so the opposition bring more players forward, soak up pressure and score on the break. That tactic doesn't work as well as it used to when your defence looks like conceding a goal at any moment and your only attacking player who has looked good at any point of the season is Willian who is basically carrying the team.

Unfortunately this is Mourinho's Chelsea

(admittedly the second one makes less sense but oh well)

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Unfortunately this is Mourinho's Chelsea.

Unfortunately this is Mourinho's Chelsea

(admittedly the second one makes less sense but oh well)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting any of these things will change under Jose. Was just continuing the discussion about what would improve our defence.

To be fair, I've actually been surprised by how often Jose has made changes during this slump, given how utterly one eyed and inflexible I expect him to be. It just means once in a while I look at a line up and think we have a chance. I'm pretty sure if I could be bothered to go through every game then the ones where I thought we would get a result we have, and the ones where I've sighed and thought "Really? Again?" we haven't.

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I don't disagree with what you wrote (I posted a week or so ago that we needed Ivanovic back but Rahman being able to deal well with Yarmolenko fills me with a lot more hope, and makes me question why Zouma at RB continued for so long) but unfortunately I don't see significant use of RLC (or Traoré but that's slightly more understandable) or an improvement in the playing style. The number of changes are interesting but in all honestly they are to a large extent what made me doubt he knows what he's doing, the 3 central midfield positions (including the 10 here) in particular seem to just be drawn out of a hat every match.

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Unfortunately, considering apparently Ivanovic is back tomorrow, I don't share your optimism. Considering Jose's propensity for "mind games" hopefully he isn't though. With regards to Traore and the picking names out of a hat thing, made me laugh when Kenedy and Traore both came on in the Stoke game, Kenedy was basically anonomous but Traore who came on 10 minutes later was a livewire and created a couple of good chances. Then in our next game Kenedy is the first sub on while Traore doesn't even make the squad (though I'm sure Phil is about to enlighten me that it was due to him being involved in a youth game).

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Unfortunately, considering apparently Ivanovic is back tomorrow, I don't share your optimism. Considering Jose's propensity for "mind games" hopefully he isn't though. With regards to Traore and the picking names out of a hat thing, made me laugh when Kenedy and Traore both came on in the Stoke game, Kenedy was basically anonomous but Traore who came on 10 minutes later was a livewire and created a couple of good chances. Then in our next game Kenedy is the first sub on while Traore doesn't even make the squad (though I'm sure Phil is about to enlighten me that it was due to him being involved in a youth game).

Complete opposite, the 21s played Tottenham the night before Liverpool and neither RLC nor Traore played despite not being in the 18 the following day. Defies belief really.

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Unfortunately, considering apparently Ivanovic is back tomorrow, I don't share your optimism. Considering Jose's propensity for "mind games" hopefully he isn't though. With regards to Traore and the picking names out of a hat thing, made me laugh when Kenedy and Traore both came on in the Stoke game, Kenedy was basically anonomous but Traore who came on 10 minutes later was a livewire and created a couple of good chances. Then in our next game Kenedy is the first sub on while Traore doesn't even make the squad (though I'm sure Phil is about to enlighten me that it was due to him being involved in a youth game).

That is Mourinho for you. Remy scores the goal that gets us level with Stoke then Falcao is preferred to come on instead of Remy against Liverpool.

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