We beat City three times last season going toe to toe everytime, Lukaku arrives and we tamely lose twice. With Lukaku tamely lose to Juve, without him we absolutely smash them.
He's not the only problem but he's very much the biggest.
Thomas Tuchel | Gone to & from Bayern (In Summer)
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He's not the only problem but he's very much the biggest.
Has he been sacked yet?
Grant in would be the sensible move.
Grant in would be the sensible move.
This is hilarious.
Is he as much as a problem as Werner was? How about Ziyech? He has been poor.
How about Alonso? He's been shocking at times.
How about Mounts form?
Lukaku hasn't been at his best but no way is he your biggest problem.
Give it Guus ‘til end of season.
Mitchell? Think he's waiting for the West Ham call.
We won the biggest club tournament with all those player's. All of which bar Alonso contributed big clutch goals in the latter stages. Do you honestly think Rom will do likewise this time?
This is hilarious.
Is he as much as a problem as Werner was? How about Ziyech? He has been poor.
How about Alonso? He's been shocking at times.
How about Mounts form?
Lukaku hasn't been at his best but no way is he your biggest problem.
All of them even when poor have some use as they fit the style Tuchel wants to play to varying degrees (for example even Werner on a really bad day would still press the shit out of a defense and stretch them with his pace, for example taking Ruben Dias with him for a hotdog to give Havertz the freedom of Porto) Lukaku doesn't press, has woeful movement, can't keep possession, is woeful in the air and can't even hold up play. Unless he's scoring he's contributing absolutely nothing positive to the cause.
And furthermore, even if they were as big a problem as him on the pitch, Rom's price tag and ego bumps him up higher overall.
Bees gif
Oh come on... This is such a lazy attempt at finding correlation where it doesn't even exist. If the only thing that stood between Chelsea and total league domination was Lukaku, then it would be a really simple solution then for Tuchel.
These days you can't win the league if you can't go toe to toe with the big sides, a team that parks the bus against the top clubs isn't gonna win the modern Premier League. That's not a personnel thing, that's Tuchel.
Why do we keep pretending that City didn't play a weakened side for two of those three?
Never said it did, there's a thing called middle ground you know?
The reason City are so good is they have everyone involved in the build up, pressing side of things and the reason we done so well against them last season is we matched that. The reason it's reversed so heavily this season is we've been practically down to ten in those phases.
If we still had Conte or Benitez in charge then I could understand the logic of getting him but to get him for a system that requires ball retention and pressing to function to it's fullness was a massive error of judgement.
So did Chelsea, in both games before the CL final.
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Only parked the bus againt City. Went toe to toe with Liverpool.
The Tuchel is a defensive manager narrative has to be one of the silliest things I've ever seen.
But this isn't about just City is it (and if so, that's on Tuchel for not dropping Lukaku or not finding a way to beat Chelsea with him). My post is about Chelsea being 13 points behind City midway through the season. Is Lukaku the biggest reason for that deficit as well?
No that's City setting a pace no-one can realistically live with? They're on a fecking 12 or 13 game winning streak now. I've lost count. Yeah maybe we could have done better to keep the gap to 6 or 7 points but that's the standards we're talking about here. If we turned a couple of those annoying draws into wins we'd be 4-6 points better off. That's still a sizeable gap they're unlikely to give up. With or without Lukaku, we're not matching their relentless pace.
Frustrating.
Losing to City is no drama, but the game plan by Tuchel was once again a disappointment, the game at Stamford Bridge had already been.
There is still no plan B.
Not able to take a risk and put a defence of 4.
Lukaku, Pulisic and Ziyech should not have started today's game.
In fact they are 3 players who should be found a way out of the club.
Either as a sale or involved in player swaps.
I accept losing but I don't accept not trying to win, only after the goal conceded was there a tenuous reaction
And we were the ones who had to win the game.
That's not how you play against City.
We have to stay in the top 4 and it will be good that Tuchel starts to try different things and remove from the field who doesn't and won't work.
Tuchel, wake up!
Losing to City is no drama, but the game plan by Tuchel was once again a disappointment, the game at Stamford Bridge had already been.
There is still no plan B.
Not able to take a risk and put a defence of 4.
Lukaku, Pulisic and Ziyech should not have started today's game.
In fact they are 3 players who should be found a way out of the club.
Either as a sale or involved in player swaps.
I accept losing but I don't accept not trying to win, only after the goal conceded was there a tenuous reaction
And we were the ones who had to win the game.
That's not how you play against City.
We have to stay in the top 4 and it will be good that Tuchel starts to try different things and remove from the field who doesn't and won't work.
Tuchel, wake up!
It's insane isn't it??
But we knew before the season that with City (and Liverpool) in the league, the days of winning the league with 80 points have long gone. I'm guilty of this with United too, to be fair, but did you think Chelsea would win the league this season being the best of a (more mediocre) bunch?
I'd had hoped we'd put together a title challenge. Lukaku was never my choice in the summer, but once he was here, I'd hoped his goal scoring record matched with CL winning Tuchel having a preseason with the squad would have closed the (frankly sizable) gap between us and City. I even thought United, having strengthened in the market after finishing 2nd, would win the title this season. Shows you what I know.
But yeah, I can't wait for when Pep fecks off out of the league, so we can go back to talking about normal title races where a draw here and there isn't a fecking death blow to your title hopes.
They looked to be working on something promising with Werner, Havertz and Mount as a front 3. Now Lukaku's come in and it's been disrupted and they're back to square one in how to play. Awful signing.
I'm unconvinced Pep leaving the league will be the good news Fergie leaving was, not in the short term atleast.
It took a combination of about 7 years and some unprecedented boardroom incompetence for the principles he build at Barca to erode and there's no signs of Bayern slowing down (people can say Bundi tax but they only ever done 3 in a row twice before he turned up). Heck at Barca he built such a good machine even he then struggled to stop it.
I fear Pep leaving will only be the beginning of this.
No lukaku isn’t, he has only started 9 league games and has 5 goals. I reckon if Lukaku started every game for us the gap wouldn’t be so big.
So did we.
I am surprised that Tuchel mentioned Lukaku specifically as a player who couldn't keep possession. Lukaku barely saw the ball. Besides the miss on the one on one chance, I can't remember him having a touch. Kovacic and their FB's were lauching the ball forward, but the passes were often nowhere near the space Lukaku was running into. Either Lukaku and the rest of the starting XI had different ideas or Tuchel hadn't prepared Chelsea well enough. Anyway, Tuchel looks as if he wants to blame someone to save himself, and the target is, justifiably and conveniently, Lukaku. The next episode of the Abramovich show will arrive soon.
Nearly every time he touched the ball it was turned over.
The service excuse is a cop out (and only ever used for shit strikers, only time I've ever seen it used for one of our players to this degree before was Torres). Drogba, Costa and even an ageing Eto'o often had little to go on in big games but found a way to make the difference at crucial moments. Lukaku had a chance to somewhat justify putting up with his shit first touches, non existent press and inability to hold the ball up early in the second in half and he blew it. When he's that much of a non entity in general play then you have to score at a very high rate to even remotely justify his inclusion, especially in potentially season defining moments like that one.
Lukaku only had like 4 touches. Why is there not more smoke for your shit midfield and wingers (looking at you, Ziyech and Pulisic) being unable to hold onto the ball and hurt City in transition? If you wanted a miracle worker up top then signing Lukaku was an idiotic decision. But he's there.
They were also crap but there's one crucial difference. They both were held to account hauled off and will be starting no more than the Plymouth game for the foreseeable future and that's if they're lucky.
Lukaku lasted the 90 and will likely get rewarded with another start on Tuesday.
I think Havertz or Werner deserve more chances to challenge him (are they injured/down with COVID?)
They both had Covid in December.
Werner's competition is Pulisic/CHO but Kai should be playing ahead of Rom, absolute no brainer in my eyes.
Tuchel is trying to make the best of the Lukaku situation. Even if we want to sell him, he has to be playing for us to get any value at all from a deal. The best thing we can do is get him back in to form if he's not then fitting well with us can at least sell him for a reasonable amount.
City are very good defensively, never going to get loads of clear chances against them. He had one opportunity to shoot in the first half which he had to take on, trying to be too clever or lacking confidence I don't know. Ziyech was also pretty dire yesterday, especially through ball attempt in the first half, not helping matters.
City are very good defensively, never going to get loads of clear chances against them. He had one opportunity to shoot in the first half which he had to take on, trying to be too clever or lacking confidence I don't know. Ziyech was also pretty dire yesterday, especially through ball attempt in the first half, not helping matters.
Would take Tuchel here in a heartbeat.
You won at home against an unmotivated -already qualified- Juve in a game trapped between 2 crucial serie A games for them against Atalanta and Lazio. And you lost an away game to a motivated Juve in the first leg when they needed the win and you were missing both Kanté and Mount.
But sure, let's pretend that the only difference between these 2 games is Lukaku.
Actually, I got one for you. Back in 2018 we played Juve at home (with Lukaku) and lost 1-0. Then on the return leg, we somehow won the tie 2-1 (with Sanchez starting instead of Lukaku) and with Mourinho bringing Fellaini on to achieve an incredible comeback. Maybe Mourinho was a genius spotting the Lukaku problem. Just like Chelsea this season, we still finished the group behind Juventus, but that must be Lukaku's fault as well.
Needs to be sacked right away, Benitez in as interim and then Dennis Wise made permanent manager
Love how he answered the Lukaku issue. The guy loses balls and kills the rhythm of attacking combinations with clumsy touches but the issue is always the team not being enough to give him service. I hated this nonsense when he was here. Like strikers will always have the luxury of receiving the ball in finish situations. Control is important for being able to fashion chances in the box and being able to linkup with teammates who will give you service. Who's servicing a player that can't even execute basic give and gos.
A Thomas Tuchel sack watch? Exactly who would Roman swap out Thomas for any time soon?
Their best run in the league where they absolutely dominated teams and looked like the team to beat was without Lukaku. It isn't a coincidence that someone who neither is great individually technically nor plays as a team player or contributes off the ball is hurting their entire gameplan.
It's nothing new and we've seen it before, once you look past his size and finishing, there are fundamental flaws in his technique, workrate and footballing IQ which will never be fixed. That move on the weekend where he completely ignored a completely open Alonso while picking out the worst option possible is an easy example, there are 18 year olds playing for Leeds who won't mess that up.
Lukaku on 400k for four more years age 29-32 might be one of the worst contracts in football.
Other than praying Newcastle takes him I don’t really see a good solution for moving him onward. I don’t see any other club in England going for him, Inter is doing just fine without him, he wouldn’t be a good fit at PSG with Messi and Neymar, maybe Atlético in Spain.
Other than praying Newcastle takes him I don’t really see a good solution for moving him onward. I don’t see any other club in England going for him, Inter is doing just fine without him, he wouldn’t be a good fit at PSG with Messi and Neymar, maybe Atlético in Spain.
Lukaku isn't the only problem at Chelsea but it's definitely a problem to have spent so much on someone who doesn't really suit elite football. For that fee you don't want someone who has the technical deficiencies that he does. On the other hand, Tuchel hasn't really been able to do anything with Chelsea's attack. Their foundation has been the defence and midfield under him but he's not figured out the attack for this team. Last season you could say that he hasn't spent but now he has... on Lukaku.
Given he's won the CL and should make the top 4, they should give him the funds and leeway to ring the changes. Chelsea need to make a couple of signings to replace some of these signings they've made in attack
Given he's won the CL and should make the top 4, they should give him the funds and leeway to ring the changes. Chelsea need to make a couple of signings to replace some of these signings they've made in attack
Last season, they never dominated teams in a consistent basis (like City or Liverpool) and they certainly never looked like the team to beat in the league. Even in that run to the CL trophy last season, they left securing 4th place until the last day. I don't even think their form was much better than Ole's, post Tuchel arrival. Not to mention they lost to Leicester in the FA Cup final. Fair fecks they won the CL final but that alone doesn't make you a league title contender (as this season has shown). Plus when Lukaku was out injured, this domination you speak of didn't happen, they dropped points, struggled to score, had defenders scoring goals, Werner being Werner...
So this narrative of Lukaku ruining "a great thing" is nonsense, and classic scapegoatism. They weren't a great thing yet. And maybe he wasn't the player to elevate them to that, but who is that magical player out there to do that? Also, looking at how all of their attackers are underperforming this season, I'd wager the problem lies elsewhere. Maybe with the manager and his setup?
I was talking about this season when Lukaku was injured. They were smashing 7 goals with the likes of Havertz up front.