Why are you counting Liverpool in? With that defence? They will have to outscore their opponents in every game to have a chance to win the games.
The Title Race 2017/18 | Done and dusted.
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Generally speaking out scoring your opponent is the key to winning any game Santi.
I wish someone had the stats for % of goals scored by defenders, I'd swear Chelsea would always be near the top of the table for it. Terry, Alonso, Cahill, Luiz, Ivanovic etc. always seem to have had defenders more prolific than the average player in their position.
But even defending well. Ask JosèGenerally speaking out scoring your opponent is the key to winning any game Santi.
. The fact is that you don't win the title without a good defence during the whole season (the same thing goes for us).SneakyJust demonstrating that they haven’t a chance
Absolutely agree about Costa being far more useful than Morata, Costa used to score almost one goal a game and many of those after 80th minute. He got 20 last season but I am sure he scored in more games than both Kane and Lukaku and Aguero who often score 3-4 in a game and then have a few quite games. Morata is similar to the later group.
Also, Chelsea is for some bizarre reason being over-rated in this thread quite a bit. Chelsea's squad is well behind United's and City's.
Why will that be? I accept that will probably happen in the CL. It might happen in the league,but it might not. Why must there be days when our opponents are stronger than we are? We have a superb squad, a great manager and are playing with confidence. We will surely have off days, in fact we had one yesterday, and ran out 5-0 winners.
And even if what you say is true, how many days do you think there will be where our league opponents are stronger than us? If there's only 4 or 5 matches like that, arguably we can lose all of them and still win the league.
There is this myth that winning the league is necessarily about being able to pick up points when not playing at your best. This is not the case. Winning the league is about getting the most points over 38 games, nothing more, nothing less. You can lose all the games where you are not at your best, so long as you don't do it very often.
That said, I am not certain we will win the league. The season is long and form will vary. We'll have to see how it pans out. I just don't accept that being able to grind out results is a pre-requisite to becoming champions. Rarely playing poorly is the other way to do it.
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Presumably they'll get more used to it. Might be too late though for a title push.
Based on the 6 games he's ever played in the PL I take it?
Sure, it's not like we won the league last year and strengthened quite a bit since or anything..
It is no myth but a proven fact that you have to grind out results when the situation demands. City last season were better than chelsea yet chelsea beat you lot. Under sir alex, there were many times we got 3 points at emirates or ainfield even when arsenal and Liverpool were the better side. You did not have an off day yesterday, winning 5-0 against a struggling palace does not amount to off day.
I am not saying you have to grind out results every game but you are taking things for granted if you think just because you have the best squad in the league means you will cake walk the league. Wasn't your squad better than Leicester last season or better than everton last season, yet both teams thrashed you. Like I said just because you have the best squad and the so called best manager mean feck all if you cannot grind out results when having bad games.
You yourself say form varies as the season goes by , that's when you have to get those 3 points. League winning clubs do that. We, under sir alex did that on many occasions. Conte last season did that. It is not a myth but it is a general fact that for winning the league you must get those 3points even when not playing well.
And the 100 odd games he played in other leagues. I know Costa ditched Chelsea and all but to say Morata is as good is just delusional.
Also, Chelsea have not strengthened in any of the areas this summer, not at CF, not at CM not at RWB and not even at backup GK. We have barely only covered our losses while United and City have strengthened 3 to 4 positions in the first 11.
This is a bizarre argument-you are giving teams that were worse credit for improving to the point where they aren't as bad anymore? By what arbitrary criteria does that mean our squad is now "well behind"?
Also, Bakayoko is definitely an upgrade over Matic in a 3-4-3, and although Drinkwater isn't worth anywhere near what we paid for him we're stronger at CM than we were last year. Furthermore, Zappacosta is absolutely an upgrade on Moses, he'll be the starter before too long.
United and City were 1-2 good players behind us and have brought in 3-4 starter quality players each. All we have done is just bring in (at best) like for like replacements. Hence we are now behind the two. I don't know what is so hard to understand in this.
Also Zappa is not even as good as Moses as seen from his two outings already. Even his crossing (which used to be his strong suite) has been poor along with his dreadful shooting as usual. Its no surprise that Moses is holding down the RWB position easily.
Baka is probably the only position where the replacement is of the same level as the departing player but still no upgrade.
Are you on a fecking wum or something? We've lost JT at the back and brought in Rudiger and Christiansen, both of whom have looked outstanding so far, and Zappacosta who has already shown promise in the 2 games or so he's played so far. Matic was looking like a tired uninspired version of himself in his last couple of seasons regardless of how he's now re-energized at United, and we've replaced him with an extremely exciting and vibrant talent in Bakayoko. We've also added Drinkwater to strength our depth even more. Oh and of course yes we lost a great striker, and have replaced him with a guy who currently has 6 goals and 2 assists in his first 6 games.
The main criticism of the team last year was that we lacked depth. We've now got much more depth, and have also upgraded in several positions. There's certainly an argument to be made that City are the strongest squad in the league (although its up for debate), but this running down of our squad is ridiculous.
1-2 good players yet they finished 15 and 24 points behind us last season. To what extent is a team going to be able to improve on one that finished with the 2nd most points ever? Just because they've leveled the playing field doesn't mean they've passed us, this is nonsense.
Out of the 3 squads Chelsea have the best defense and the best group of central midfielders. City have the best attacking midfielders and strikers. United have the best goalkeeper.
You also have plainly never watched Zappacosta before this season. He'll be the starter before long.
We have hardly got any depth at 3 positions while City and United can field two separate 11s out of their squads. You are simply in denial if you don't think that the Board fecked up this summer by failing to get atleast Sandro and Llorente.
As for bringing in Christensen and Rudiger, you do realise we lost Ake as well (one of the leagues most promising defenders). Aslo, seems like you seem to fail to realise that players over 30 drop in quality as they get older. Any expected increase in quality while moving from Zouma/Ake and getting Rudiger/Christensen is easily offset by the drop in quality of Cahill and Luiz this season. Luiz had a freakishly good season last year any way. One that he is probably not going to repeat in his remaining career.
Hmm, I may have it slightly confused then.
Giving it a quick look now, I think I may have been thinking about the 2008/2009 season.
Man Utd champions with a pretty hefty 90 points, only 5 out of a possible 18 against the rest of the top 4 (4 of those vs Chelsea).
Which means Ferguson and his team dropped only 11 points in their 32 fixtures against the other 16 games.
Because they had Europe to deal with and we didn't. Its totally delusional to think we would have anywhere near 90 points if we were playing in regularly in CL with that squad.
This is not even worth a laugh. You seem to have RAWK levels of bias for your own team and zero objectivity.
United have a far far superior collection of CM players to any team in England. Their CM options could put Madrid's CM options to shame. Same goes for City in Attack.
Second Chelsea XI:
Caballero
Clarke-Salter-Christensen-Cahill
Zappacosta-Drinkwater-Fabregas-Kenedy
Musonda-Batshuayi-Willian
That's a pretty decent second XI all things considered.
You seriously think Pogba, Herrera, Matic, Fellaini, and Carrick are the best group of CM players in England and are better than those at Real Madrid? And I'm the one who lacks objectivity? I'd take Kante, Bakayoko, Fabregas, and Drinkwater over that group.
And the whole point of signing depth players is now we can compete on multiple fronts. How are you not grasping this simple concept?
I'd agree we arguably have the best CM collection in the Prem, but Madrid's are a level above ours.
Pogba wouldn't even be a guaranteed starter for them. And Herrera wouldn't even make the bench.
Well then those fans are stupid. You need to get a certain number of points every season to be champions. It doesn't matter how you amass those points. You can win them vs crap teams or against the 'top teams'. Doesn't matter. You've dropped only 2 points so far and that is an excellent start.
You're arguing against something which I don't think anybody here is really arguing.
Saying that you need to be cautious re the early start because of the quality of the teams is completely different from saying Man Utd are a bit crap and will fall apart once they meet a semi decent team.
That could be argued. I think it would be difficult to argue that any of the top 6 are significantly weaker than last year without allowing the season to go on a bit further and see how things play out. After the same number of games last season, I absolutely guarantee that many people were already trembling about how dominant City were looking and almost nobody would have had Spurs coming comfortably 2nd, let alone to a Chelsea that ultimately walked pretty comfortably to the title. It is just pointless to make those kinds of predictions imo.
Is facing Liverpool at OT harder than facing Southampton away? Well that is a bit of a leading question, its not quite the same playing away or at home. Regardless, I would say yes, probably. Southampton didn't even manage to score a goal against you in the league last season. And even this new season in which Liverpool are apparently much weaker, they're still currently ahead of Southampton.
It surely goes without saying that the following fixture list:
Chelsea at SB, Arsenal at Emirates, Liverpool at Anfield, Spurs at Wembley and Man City at the Etihad is more difficult than playing
Everton, West Brom, West Ham, Brighton and Burnley away?
The points are huge because they're 3 points. What other teams are doing and whether Man City also have an easy or hard fixture list isn't really relevant imo.
Hmmm. Zappacosta is really not anything special. He's an average full-back. I wouldn't be surprised if Moses keeps him out the team to be honest.
Is this a joke mate? Please say it is.
Really? this again, after you got caught out with your make believe Torino supporting family in the Chelsea thread.
Putting RAWK to shame here.
Pretty decent to do what? Avoid getting relegated before 30th game of the season?
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Feel it's out of three teams for the title this season, Chelsea, City and Utd...
Both Manchester clubs look very impressive. I feel if we are to retain our title we'll need Hazard to have his best ever season for us. He's the type of player that's the difference between a 2nd place finish and a 1st place finish
Both Manchester clubs look very impressive. I feel if we are to retain our title we'll need Hazard to have his best ever season for us. He's the type of player that's the difference between a 2nd place finish and a 1st place finish
The top three (United, City and Chelsea) and the bottom three (West Ham, Bournemouth and Palace) are going fill those positions for the rest of the season. The gap between them and the middle 14 teams is going to prove insurmountable, imo.
Ah... fair enough, it was so long ago... Ronaldo was still here.
Mathematically or pragmatically this is true, but there’s more to it. When you breeze through easy fixtures whiles your rivals get stuck with difficult ones, of course over the season it will even out, but if you end the period ahead that’s a distinct advantage.
Momentum... arguably it won Leicester the league. The players believe in the philosophy, good form is developed, the supporters start believing, the media buy in and every week the team comes out with a weight of expectation to maintain the position. Your opponents approach you cautiously. (I’m pretty sure cricket scores will be on the back of Conte’s mind going into next week).
I’d much rather approach City at the Etihad on the back of back to back 6-0 wins vs mid table teams than play the same fixture on day 1 of the season.
Have to say some (even chelsea fans) are underestimating chelsea big time. They have won the league 2 times in last 3 years. They have a solid squad with a top manager. Chelsea can again pip united and city.
Really? this again, after you got caught out with your make believe Torino supporting family in the Chelsea thread.
Putting RAWK to shame here.
Pretty decent to do what? Avoid getting relegated before 30th game of the season?
What on earth are you talking about? I haven't made anything up at all; believe it or not there are people who travel and marry others outside of the same place where they grew up.
It's really not that complicated, it goes me--->Portuguese wife--->Portuguese brother in law--->Italian sister in law.
And that second XI would finish comfortably in the top half of the league in all likelihood.
Mourinho won it the first time. Last season they were excellent but they had no competition. They have a habit of not retaining the title when they win it.
By grind out results you mean park the bus after going up?
More getting away with a 1-0 win when you aren't playing well and things aren't going your way. Chelsea and United have that in their DNA, but we're yet to see whether City can develop it. There's been a lot of times when they've gone from huge victories to stupid defeats, and if they want to start thinking like regular champions they need to find that grit.
Thank you for.making my job easier.
I'm not convinced of this train of thought.
It's still early days, and we're yet to see the winter break or fixture congestion have an effect on top teams. But if City dominate affairs on the pitch and can convert that dominance to goals in a majority of their matches, this grit you refer to won't be needed.
Plus, City are currently leading, with United and Chelsea behind. I think that lines up well with the fact that the more you need undeserved victories or need to "grind it out", the lower your top level as a team is.
Once in a blue moon you might get a team just blast their way through the season, but its extremely rare. When you look at this season, there's at least 3 teams good enough to compete for the title, so unless City manage to do something very unusual there will almost certainly come a point in the season where their form dips. At that point either they dig in and show grit, and find a way to keep collecting the points anyway, or they risk getting overtaken. If that happens, then its a hit to the confidence that's an extra challenge to overcome as they try and pull themselves back into form.
Few things are more demoralizing than watching your rivals playing like crap and still walking away with 3 points week after week. You guys used to do it all the time under SAF, and as a rival it was devastating. Mourinho ingrained the same mentality into Chelsea long ago, and at the times when we've had successful seasons, that's been a huge part of the reason why.
As for City leading, its 6 games into the season and you're level on points. It's hardly evidence of anything, especially considering City actually have less points now than they did after 6 games last season.
City will win it. Their squad is just too strong. They have like two world class players/talents in literally every position now. (Except CB)
Do they have a world-class defensive midfielder? Or GK?
Guardiola teams always start strongly. If the CL final was in September, Bayern would have won it three times in a row.
As the season ends and the players are tired and not-so-eager to attack 90 minutes, that's when Mourinho and Conte will have the upper hand. Not saying Pep can't do it, but he's usually had easier ends to the season recently at Bayern.
City win the league in September every season.
I don't completely agree with you. They are pretty light-weight in the CM department too, KdB nor Silva are genuine center midfielders. That leaves Fernandinho and Gundogan who are either not world class or have fitness issues.
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