The Official Chelsea Thread [Vol 2]
Discussion
The thing that grates me about Mourinho in the CL is that he has all that talent & flair at his finger tips yet plays such a dull game at times, if there was a team made out with the players Chelsea have out on loan they would probably finish in the prem top six, I know flair & style is not always going to win trophies, but blimey he has the players to just blow teams away .
I went mad when RM scored, shame they couldn't have finished the tie with another couple of goals ...
Bayern are SO boring to watch it's untrue ... Back and forth, back and forth, FFA ... No one running behind the last line or anything. Barcelona three or four years ago moved it much quicker than this, and that incisive last pass by Messi, Xavi etc and they were in ... Never going to happen at the pace Bayern play at. Possession is worth SFA if you can't do anything with it.
I'd love RM to get through just to dispel the Pep myth a bit ...
Bayern are SO boring to watch it's untrue ... Back and forth, back and forth, FFA ... No one running behind the last line or anything. Barcelona three or four years ago moved it much quicker than this, and that incisive last pass by Messi, Xavi etc and they were in ... Never going to happen at the pace Bayern play at. Possession is worth SFA if you can't do anything with it.
I'd love RM to get through just to dispel the Pep myth a bit ...
Justin Cyder said:
The problem people have with it is when Mourhino accuses for example, West Ham of playing 19th century football only to go out & play the same way with his own team. We all understand the sound tactical reasons, it's the hypocrisy that sticks in the craw.
All managers are hypocrites. Moaning about opposition divers and defending their own, moaning about other teams tactics and then adopting them themselves, saying the ref is against them but forgetting the decisions that went their way. It's absolutely par for the course for all managers.Negative Creep said:
The West Ham games was more one of those fluke ones were one team lays siege to the goal but simply doesn't score (unlike Tuesday night where Athletico had most of the ball but never looked dangerous). If we'd have scored one against WH it would have been 3 or 4 soon after.
ETA - did everyone see this goal from the U21 game?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-U-ayMx_XI
Great article in The Times this morning om Mourinho...I'll add the text here....if it needs removing please tell me Mods.
Even by his own standards of self-serving, agenda-bending conspiracy theories, José Mourinho is pushing the bounds of credibility. He is desperately trying to push a certain narrative surrounding Chelsea — a narrative that presents any failure as a travesty and any success as the type of miracle that should get him canonised.
Mourinho wants us — the media, the public, his players and perhaps not least Roman Abramovich — to believe that the authorities have made life impossible for Chelsea this season.
He wants us to believe the Premier League, through some dark conspiracy of routine refereeing appointments, consistent inconsistencies and regular kick-off times, has left him with no choice but to “play the kids” at Anfield on Sunday, at the expense of their dwindling title ambitions, and that, if he is denied this right, Chelsea can hardly expect a place in the Champions League final.
Give it a rest, José. Chelsea have three days’ rest between their Barclays Premier League match against Liverpool on Sunday and the Champions League semi-final, second leg at home to Atlético Madrid on Wednesday night.
It is not ideal, but, by all of 25 minutes, their 2.05pm kick-off on Sunday gives them more rest than any of the other semi-finalists. Chelsea play Tuesday-Sunday-Wednesday; Atlético likewise (but with a slightly later kick-off time on Sunday before they fly to London); Bayern Munich and Real Madrid both play Wednesday-Saturday-Tuesday.
On Tuesday night, after the 0-0 draw away to Atlético, Mourinho said the match against Liverpool should be on “Saturday or Friday”. Saturday would indeed by ideal — four days after the first leg, four days before the second leg, such is Chelsea’s and Atlético’s fortune in playing the semi-final tie over nine days, rather than Bayern and Real’s seven — but does anyone believe he would be advocating playing Liverpool tomorrow, 72 hours after kick-off in Madrid, had they not damaged their title hopes by losing to Sunderland on Saturday?
Ah, there I go, forgetting this was all part of the conspiracy too. Chelsea were not beaten by Sunderland — or indeed Crystal Palace or Aston Villa — but merely beaten by the Premier League establishment. Of course they were. Where most of us who watched it saw a poor Chelsea performance, punished by a late penalty that was soft and marginal without being fundamentally wrong, Mourinho saw — or claimed — conspiracy, bringing his latest FA disciplinary charge for misconduct after “congratulating” Mike Dean, the referee, and “Mike Riley, the referees’ boss,” because “what they are doing through the whole season is fantastic”.
On March 8, Chelsea were seven points clear of Liverpool at the top of the Premier League, albeit having played one game more. The subsequent 12-point swing reflects form, nothing else.
Freedom from European commitments has certainly helped Liverpool, even if that argument tends to overlook the difficulty in getting to that stage without Champions League riches and allure. Chelsea have one of the biggest, most experienced, most expensive squads in European football.
As it is, we are left with the same old Mourinho claptrap, which is a shame because it threatens to obscure whatever his teams might achieve. Chelsea are in the Champions League semi-final and will be two points off the top of the Premier League with two matches remaining if they beat Liverpool.
We should not be surprised. In The Special One: The Dark Side Of José Mourinho, recently serialised in The Times, Diego Torres, the Spanish sportswriter, claims that in May 2011 Mourinho, the Real Madrid coach at the time, floated the idea that his team, 2-0 down to Barcelona from the first leg of their Champions League semi-final, should play for a 0-0 draw or a narrow defeat rather than trying to overturn the deficit — “impossible”, apparently — and ending up with an even heavier aggregate defeat.
“If it ends 0-0,” Torres reports Mourinho as telling an outraged group of players, “we can say the tie was decided by the referee in the first leg. The priority is to finish with a close score so we can blame the referee.”
Torres, Mourinho claimed upon publication, “should write books for kids, for imagination”. But the deeper the Chelsea manager descends into his self-pitying, self-serving conspiracy theories, the more and more convincing Torres’s portrayal seems.
Aren’t there rules against Chelsea naming a weakened team?
There used to be. Rule E20 stated that “in every league match each participating club shall field a full-strength team”. Wolverhampton Wanderers were fined for breaking it in 2009, Blackpool in 2010. Neil Warnock complained about Liverpool fielding reserves against Fulham in 2007. Fulham won and stayed up, and Warnock’s Sheffield United were relegated.
So what changed?
A majority of Premier League clubs voted to modify it for the 2011-12 season. The rule now states that a full-strength side are one drawn from the 25-man squad list every club submits twice a season.
Teams often call up young players who are not on their squad lists. Are they all breaking the rules?
Not really. Home-grown under-21 players do not have to be on the senior squad list. But the reason the rule was altered and not abandoned is to stop egregious abuse of that loophole. Mourinho could probably name a couple of youngsters, but he cannot send out a load of rookies.
Even by his own standards of self-serving, agenda-bending conspiracy theories, José Mourinho is pushing the bounds of credibility. He is desperately trying to push a certain narrative surrounding Chelsea — a narrative that presents any failure as a travesty and any success as the type of miracle that should get him canonised.
Mourinho wants us — the media, the public, his players and perhaps not least Roman Abramovich — to believe that the authorities have made life impossible for Chelsea this season.
He wants us to believe the Premier League, through some dark conspiracy of routine refereeing appointments, consistent inconsistencies and regular kick-off times, has left him with no choice but to “play the kids” at Anfield on Sunday, at the expense of their dwindling title ambitions, and that, if he is denied this right, Chelsea can hardly expect a place in the Champions League final.
Give it a rest, José. Chelsea have three days’ rest between their Barclays Premier League match against Liverpool on Sunday and the Champions League semi-final, second leg at home to Atlético Madrid on Wednesday night.
It is not ideal, but, by all of 25 minutes, their 2.05pm kick-off on Sunday gives them more rest than any of the other semi-finalists. Chelsea play Tuesday-Sunday-Wednesday; Atlético likewise (but with a slightly later kick-off time on Sunday before they fly to London); Bayern Munich and Real Madrid both play Wednesday-Saturday-Tuesday.
On Tuesday night, after the 0-0 draw away to Atlético, Mourinho said the match against Liverpool should be on “Saturday or Friday”. Saturday would indeed by ideal — four days after the first leg, four days before the second leg, such is Chelsea’s and Atlético’s fortune in playing the semi-final tie over nine days, rather than Bayern and Real’s seven — but does anyone believe he would be advocating playing Liverpool tomorrow, 72 hours after kick-off in Madrid, had they not damaged their title hopes by losing to Sunderland on Saturday?
Ah, there I go, forgetting this was all part of the conspiracy too. Chelsea were not beaten by Sunderland — or indeed Crystal Palace or Aston Villa — but merely beaten by the Premier League establishment. Of course they were. Where most of us who watched it saw a poor Chelsea performance, punished by a late penalty that was soft and marginal without being fundamentally wrong, Mourinho saw — or claimed — conspiracy, bringing his latest FA disciplinary charge for misconduct after “congratulating” Mike Dean, the referee, and “Mike Riley, the referees’ boss,” because “what they are doing through the whole season is fantastic”.
On March 8, Chelsea were seven points clear of Liverpool at the top of the Premier League, albeit having played one game more. The subsequent 12-point swing reflects form, nothing else.
Freedom from European commitments has certainly helped Liverpool, even if that argument tends to overlook the difficulty in getting to that stage without Champions League riches and allure. Chelsea have one of the biggest, most experienced, most expensive squads in European football.
As it is, we are left with the same old Mourinho claptrap, which is a shame because it threatens to obscure whatever his teams might achieve. Chelsea are in the Champions League semi-final and will be two points off the top of the Premier League with two matches remaining if they beat Liverpool.
We should not be surprised. In The Special One: The Dark Side Of José Mourinho, recently serialised in The Times, Diego Torres, the Spanish sportswriter, claims that in May 2011 Mourinho, the Real Madrid coach at the time, floated the idea that his team, 2-0 down to Barcelona from the first leg of their Champions League semi-final, should play for a 0-0 draw or a narrow defeat rather than trying to overturn the deficit — “impossible”, apparently — and ending up with an even heavier aggregate defeat.
“If it ends 0-0,” Torres reports Mourinho as telling an outraged group of players, “we can say the tie was decided by the referee in the first leg. The priority is to finish with a close score so we can blame the referee.”
Torres, Mourinho claimed upon publication, “should write books for kids, for imagination”. But the deeper the Chelsea manager descends into his self-pitying, self-serving conspiracy theories, the more and more convincing Torres’s portrayal seems.
Aren’t there rules against Chelsea naming a weakened team?
There used to be. Rule E20 stated that “in every league match each participating club shall field a full-strength team”. Wolverhampton Wanderers were fined for breaking it in 2009, Blackpool in 2010. Neil Warnock complained about Liverpool fielding reserves against Fulham in 2007. Fulham won and stayed up, and Warnock’s Sheffield United were relegated.
So what changed?
A majority of Premier League clubs voted to modify it for the 2011-12 season. The rule now states that a full-strength side are one drawn from the 25-man squad list every club submits twice a season.
Teams often call up young players who are not on their squad lists. Are they all breaking the rules?
Not really. Home-grown under-21 players do not have to be on the senior squad list. But the reason the rule was altered and not abandoned is to stop egregious abuse of that loophole. Mourinho could probably name a couple of youngsters, but he cannot send out a load of rookies.
Cheib said:
Great article in The Times this morning om Mourinho...I'll add the text here....if it needs removing please tell me Mods.
Great from a Times perspective I suppose because it lets them plug a book that they've been serialising and great from your perspective presumably because it supports your point of view?
smn159 said:
Great from a Times perspective I suppose because it lets them plug a book that they've been serialising and great from your perspective presumably because it supports your point of view?
It's the bitter rankings of a hack who clearly has a beef with JM and Chelsea. Of course Fergie and no other manager has ever created a narrative of us and them! For the benefit of Joffrey and the other morons that have joined this thread, this is a tactic that has been repeated again and again by managers around the world. Only a bell end would give it any credence.Yes, I can definitely see it. He's gone from Inter to R. Madrid and to us. That's a massive step down if we're being honest. We're no R Madrid!!!
If we manage to win the CL this season he'll have won the lot with us. I despise Man Utd but they are a much bigger club than us so you couldn't really blame him if he went. Personally, I wouldn't hold it against him.
If we manage to win the CL this season he'll have won the lot with us. I despise Man Utd but they are a much bigger club than us so you couldn't really blame him if he went. Personally, I wouldn't hold it against him.
uk66fastback said:
Maureen said in January ...
"I stay until they want me not to stay."
"No club moves me from Chelsea until Chelsea wants me to move because I want to be wehere I am loved."
Gonna look a lying tit isn't he is Utd offer it to him and he goes (I can't see it myself though)
Football manager says one thing and then does another.....no.....that could never happen. "I stay until they want me not to stay."
"No club moves me from Chelsea until Chelsea wants me to move because I want to be wehere I am loved."
Gonna look a lying tit isn't he is Utd offer it to him and he goes (I can't see it myself though)
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