Mou losing to Fat Sam would be the best possible way he could get sacked tbh.

No one from ESPN has been right about anything United related, they're a step above The Sun with the **** they peddle.

It's probably true but no-one from United is speaking to those ****s.

lvg vs mou really needs to happen. Instant catching up on sleep

Have a good Christmas, pm your details.

Isolating the games where we did get some points, you could say we were lucky to gain quite a few of those.

Not sure what to make of it all. One obviously disappointing thing is not much in the way of change / experimenting within tactics and lineups this season. Some say tso ran them into the ground last year. Not sure that is valid. Granted, there wasn't a load of rotation but it's not like Chelsea were playing any more intensely than other sides and total games for the season was 54 - around average. Plus league won 3 weeks early.
There is a case that having gained a decent points advantage in February the tactics became more cautious. Performance levels did drop but not enough to have Chelsea not overall no1 in real life and on the numbers sheet. Of course those levels have dropped further and the cautiousness remains without any stability.
Anyway best stop guessing and enjoy the rest of season. Well not the football, it's horrible to watch atm and while tso can rely on fan support he has to remember they're watching some real hopeless crap so that might not last much longer. Not to mention that as each game passes the target of achieving another ~ 25 more points grows more uncertain. At least there's the champions league.

Ha just busting balls, we can wait til end of season.

The easy answer is mourinho is a **** and no one wants to play hard for someone that is as large of an insufferable **** as he is. This is prob exacerbated by winning the title last year so even less ****s are given.

Hope he stays around and wallows in this purgatory for the rest of the season. I'm just dreaming about Chelsea getting relegated as arsene hoists the trophy while dropping a who's a specialist in failure now with a wenger smirk. Buttttt let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.

So last season Mourinho was a nice guy and all his players wanted to play hard for him but all of a sudden at 52 years old he turned into an ******* and the players decided over the summer they wouldn't wanna play for him anymore. Seems like a legit and well thought theory.

This whole Chelsea fiasco is really a test of humility and the ones throwing around opinions as if they had a single good explanation for it are failing that test

so last year players were great and receptive to his ideas and now suddenly they're all out to betray him, seems legit

Was there a time before this where Mourinho had to climb out of a serious or even semi-serious downswing?

Extensive rotation after a couple of games went wrong, mindgaming his own players in post game interviews, picking fights with staff and players alike... I think he just doesn't deal with negative variance

its the mun 2013/14 thing all over again i reckon, some runbad plus a load of people went from 9/10 performers to old and ****ty in the space of one summer:

diego costa is now in his late 30s and completely useless

fabregas started playing 60 games a season for wenger when he was about 14 years old and is following in the footsteps of others who took on too much too early such as rooney and torres

capt racist bellend has gone all rio for qpr

ivanovic is nearly 32 and looks finished

the good news is that de bruyne and lukaku are having great seasons, bad news is that the dummy in charge sold them so he could one day pay falcao £270k/week

i'm sure there is a model that predicted this would happen.

Tony Pulis teams have consistently posted very bad shot numbers and consistently "ran above ev" with those numbers, problem is it's so consistent that clearly the numbers are missing something.

As of yet I'm yet to read a piece to convince me of why.

I thought Klopps antics towards Pulis were disgraceful and I lost some respect for him, with his anti long ball mouthing off ****e "nobody beats liverpool now with only long ball and set plays" even though he was 1 minute away from such a thing happening.

It was totally disrespectful and stupid, he wants a team with 1/3rd of their budget to come to Anfield and try to outplay them football wise. Pulis interview that I watched on the BBC was class, he basically said we're not gonna come here and bend over like teams do in the German league.

prob cos his teams are without exception hopeless at creating chances in open play, so a larger than usual proportion of their chances are from set pieces. and the plodding brutes he spends all his money on are way above average at converting set pieces

i bet joe kinnear's wimbledon crushed xG back in the day too btw, its not like pulis is the first to build a team around kick ball high and long, win the second ball, kick opponents as hard possible tactics

I'll give you any FPL action you want anytime up to $10K per season etc.. you never asked

this is gonna make me look like a wanker but still lol at the bolded

It's not too far from the Bentham model at Brentford and more so FC Midihiijjjtlalnandndndndnndtj or however you spell it. Brentford signed a player who could't get in Morecambe's team just because he was a set piece expert. Turns out he was really bad and can't get in the team anyway but fairplay for trying!

I have absolutely no idea if German teams "bend over" away at the big boys, I don't watch enough German football but that was basically what Pulis was insinuating rightly or wrongly.

i might buy that he is the bizaro billy beane and that hulking brutes are underrated in der markt in the same way that obp guys were underrated in baseball in the 90s and that he's taking advantage of a markt inefficiency, but there's a couple things which suggest otherwise imo. first is that he spends a lot of bunce wherever he goes,





plus the rumours were that he quit palace that summer because steve parish didnt fancy spending 30m on one-dimensional fatarses with little to no resale value.

second, stoke and palace both look a ****load better since he got booted out of the door, which imo is because spashing out on people like shaqiri (12m) and cabaye (10m) is gonna yield better football and better results than bringing in set piece monsters and/or hard men like palacios (8m), kenwyne jones (8m), peter crouch (10m) etc

That James Chester transfer must really piss the WBA board off, £8m on a defender for WBA is a lot of money. It's basically 8m on a CB who he wants to convert to a backup RB for his other CB who he converted to a RB.

Of course he left Palace because they wouldn't give him the control he wanted and the money he wanted, however you shouldn't paint Parrish as some kind of genius for foreseeing the dangers. The man who replaced him was Neil Warnock!! Eventually he got it right with the ever popular Alan Pardew lol.

I'm neither anti Pulis or pro Pulis, I am anti managers being so outspokenly against legitimate opposition tactics. Especially when they have treble, quadruple, five fold etc.. the budget at their disposal. I'm a big believer at looking at yourself and not putting the blame on somebody else. I really liked Klopp and I still quite like him but that interview I saw on BBC really annoyed me. They had like 26 shots to 4 or something, why couldn't he just say it for what it was, one of those days.

oh and its worth pointing out that outperforming xG is not in and of itself indicative of anything good or worthwhile. one could build a team around gylfi siggs by telling him to take as many long shots per game as humanly possible while banning the rest of the team from attempting to score*. the team would massively outperform xG because gylfi would score way more of those 35 yarders than xG would predict as he's >>> average at long shots.

we'd also be mathematically relegated by late feb with 2 points and a -74 GD

*those who ignore the instruction would receive a naked headbutt after the game

netspend

Also pretty good summary of Pulisball

yea i agree w u that klopp calling out pulis for anti-football is lol. like moanaidsho complaining about fat sam's 19th century hoofball but with less irony

I can't believe that you guys are debating what has gone wrong with Chelsea this year. It's clear as day that Mourinho is the type of manager that has a short shelf life at any club. The way he motivates his players with his 'us against the world' act and the fact that he sucks the life out of creative players not named Ronaldo.

He'll never be a long term manager at a club. He'll continue to go from club to club for 2-3 year stints, pick up a trophy or 2, pick up a boat load of money, and leave the place in ruins when he leaves.

james chester for 8m worst signing in football history.

if you have a worse one, come at me. just ****ing mindboggling.