The Chelsea F.C. Thread VI

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New stadium renders look incredible tbh, prefer the asymetric design as it's more interesting to look at when inside the stadium, especially compared to the dull soulless bowls such as the Emirates and Madjeski/Stadium MK

tbf, if there's one thing we can learn from Arsenal, it's how not to design a stadium with atmosphere/character.

Reply 8021

ZÃ¼rich

looks genuinely awful. SB going from looking like a suburban ASDA branch to a prison.emirates is bland but at least not ridiculous looking

but jokes that CFC think they can fill a 60k stadium weekly.also lol at thinking SB has an atmosphere

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 8022

yo radical one

I think it shows a huge amount of class the way Chelsea are maintaining something which is of importance to them by expanding and preserving history; there are some perhaps quite lower class teams who build a generic oval and sell the naming rights to some corporation whilst charging the highest ticket prices out of any premier league club, despite going nearly a decade without trophies.

Then again, I suppose a fangroup which celebrates finishing above their local rivals as if they just won the triple, is always going to be easily satisfied.

Reply 8023

username1315644

Hard to tell without seeing the rest of it. Assume it has a roof, as much as roofless designs look good, not really suitable for England. Agree the asymmetric design is a good idea, I don't think character and efficiency blend well. An endearing quirk is generally another term for a financial inefficiency. That said, it I do think if not done well it will run the risk of looking a bit like 1950's modernist architecture, just like it was a good design on paper, but the materials and such have let it down in reality. Assuming Roman is paying anyway so might as well.

Reply 8024

Mackay

Karanka admits he does not think Patrick Bamford will return to the club next season and believes he has proven he is now ready to play at the top level.

Reply 8025

ZÃ¼rich

mou confirming sideboy status.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyPUd70g8nc

wengz is king of his castle

Reply 8026

Devran22

Baker, brown and Nathan all going Vitesse for year loan

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 8027

doobucks

Fair enough. Lets see how they do there. Could always just sell them and then put buy back clauses.

Reply 8028

Zerforax

Stolen off twitter

#AskJose Do you ever get a babysitter or do you just loan your children to Vitesse when you and your wife aren't around?

:rofl:

Reply 8029

doobucks

Original post by Zerforax

Stolen off twitter

#AskJose Do you ever get a babysitter or do you just loan your children to Vitesse when you and your wife aren't around?

:rofl:

That's a good one.

Reply 8030

doobucks

Didn't want to clutter the united thread with off topic conversation, I'll let you guys have your fun with Schweinsteiger, would have loved to take him in all honesty but I hope the lack of transfer activity in CM means that Mourinho's seeing RLC as a viable solution. Mourinho said earlier that he'd have never sold Matic as he was a 6'4" left footed defensive midfielder, which obviously is a rarity. RLC is 6'3.5" and I guess with his ability to play the ball in midfield Jose loves that.

I feel that for this reason and because Jose has a point to prove wrt youth that he will try out RLC. He was brave enough to start him at home to Liverpool, despite his home record potentially being in jeopardy, so I guess he has faith in him. Lets see how this pans out.

Original post by Depleted

Yeah I think his season in terms of goal output is unsustainable, scored some worldies and I'm fairly sure his conversion rate was up from what it usually is. Think he's around a 17 goal a season player, also goes through dips in form and the team as a whole lack goals if he's not doing well (more in big games as he's the major goal threat against your Chelsea's and United's as opposed to Giroud). Hazard's a funny one, can't see him having as good a season in the sense that he was consistent week in week out for the whole season and it's hard to recall a game he was bad in, but there's massive scope for improvement to his stats, if he improved his long range shooting he can hit 20 a season tbh.

Hazard in all honesty is lacking a killer instinct. He doesn't have a long range shooting game but his finishing from close range is inconsistent as well. His real problem is that he has a clear lack of shot power. I would think that may be him needing to do some work on his legs, but Messi has quite good shot power, so it's most likely an issue of his technique. You can see it in his penalties, Muller attempts the same type of penalty but he has more power in his pens, which means that he's very accurate and it's next to impossible to save those.

He takes about 2.1 shots per game, Sanchez is taking 3.5 in the prem and 2.9 in the league and it's clear that Hazard doesn't really go for goal as much as he could. It often leads to our play being profligate in the final third, especially with our other players not being as good at holding the ball and controlling play as Hazard, but it means that Chelsea often keep more possession, which then allows us to conserve energy with our small squad. I have no doubt that it's a tactic of Mourinho's to just get Hazard and Fabregas to retain our possession. He did that very same tactic against United, used Hazard as our main aims of retaining possession, while also being our main outlet. When we gained possession Hazard could have gone for goal more(in both games) but instead he decided to drift out wide near the end of the games to keep possession and waste some time.

Other issues are how deep he's often playing under Mourinho, Sanchez e.g. plays higher up the pitch than Hazard which means he's often in better goalscoring positions, but Hazard is generally being the guy stringing play from deep while being a goal threat, add that to slow transition and it leads to the problems we often had in 13/14, the only difference now is Fabregas is capable of controlling from deep as well and we have a very opportunistic striker in Costa, while Matic is capable of sweeping up any mess.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 8031

The Shed End

New home kit is pretty nice, mint coloured goalkeepers kit may be the worst thing I've ever actually seen.

Reply 8032

Pimped Butterfly

@jam277 Chelsea's possession is 56% so I think the conserving energy thing is overstated. Hazard's pass success is nearly 87 though, which is outrageous for someone with 2.1 key passes and 4.8 dribbles as well. But should be trying to create more if he wants to be a true top tier player, because he's not doing enough in front of goal to be compared to Neymar et al

Original post by Depleted

No lol, not at all, for Alexis. Alexis's goal numbers are very, very sustainable. His conversion rate is 13% is which is pretty low for a front line attacker, but his shots per game is at 3.7, which is very high. If anything he's likely to get better - his conversion rate in his last season at Barca was 29%, and he was shooting at 2.5 per game. Even when you account for the Messi effect on conversion rate (helping Neymar rn) and the fact that he's taking more speculative shots at Arsenal than at Barca (ties into Messi as well, negates a lower conversion rate), Alexis is pretty likely to have an even better goalscoring season. No penalties too.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 8033

doobucks

Original post by Pimped Butterfly

I do think our possession stats obviously go down because of games like United home, Arsenal away, PSG and the City games where we clearly had little intention of keeping the ball until we scored. I'm talking more about the games where we play vs the likes of Stoke/Southampton/West Brom etc where we attempt to keep the ball for long periods when we could quicken our transition play or in the final third and attempt to score, we usually have around 60+% in these games, which is possession levels starting to border from attacking to conservative. Earlier in the season in particular we tended to just go 2 goals up quickly and slowed our game down when we pretty much sealed the game (e.g. vs West Brom/Burnley).

I'm unsure on how much of this is down to Mourinho(although I'm sure he does tell the team to conserve energy sometimes). Hazard's shot numbers partially are low because he plays quite deep for us compared to say Neymar at Barcelona who's the 2nd most advanced player in the team. Don't think we take too many shots anyway. Our shots per game are less than City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Barcelona, Real, Bayern etc so it's clear we don't go for goal unless it's a goalscoring opportunity, I'd say that's again down to Hazard's deployment though.

While we're at it, it probably affects Costa too.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 8034

iRush

http://www.chelseafc.com/news/latest-news/2015/07/begovic-transfer-completed.html

and Begovic signs and will take the vacant No. 1 shirt. Well 2nd signing complete, we can proceed to rumours for CB/FB, CMs and RWs.

Reply 8035

Nichrome

Original post by iRush

Sweet. Seems like the rumours around Pedro are going into overdrive today.

We are definitely going to need to make a few more signings - United seem to be buying every player under the sun and should win the league next season.

Reply 8036

doobucks

Would like to see Pedro. If he has a €30M release clause why not.

Reply 8037

The Shed End

Good signing, about as good as backup keeper as we're going to get. Weird how out no.2 keeper will wear the no.1 shirt.

I've been away a few days, have we started pre-season training again? I'm going to the Kingstonian v Chelsea XI match tonight, guess it will be full of youth players though.

Reply 8038

Mackay

Absolute waste of Begovic's talents.

If Tottenham were to shift Lloris to Man United after DDG's inevitable but prolonged transfer to Real Madrid, he'd be the ideal candidate to replace him. He's as good as Mignolet, if not better. He could easily be a top seven PL goalkeeper.