Useful Idiot

I always though Cedric's 1v1 defending on the ground was pretty good. He obviously struggles against tall players in the air and can be out-muscled by powerful players like Lukaku but his timing of the tackle was always very good and he rarely got beaten by pace or skill when in position. Going forward he is patchy. His crossing is hit and miss, especially when he delivers on the run. I don't think he's been bad for us, but he's certainly not as much of a threat as Bertrand has been on the other side when fit.

What a pile of ****

We paid a lot for Boufal because he has superb technique and off the back of an excellent season when he scored for fun. We paid a lot for Elyounoussi because he had Champion's League experience and a decent record albeit in a poor domestic league. Someone obviously thought he might be the next Mane. We paid a lot for Carrillo because our manager wanted him, we were desperate for a striker, and there is little value in the Jan window. We paid a lot for Hoedt because he had experience playing for a good team in Italy although he wasn't a nailed on starter he did play a few games. We paid a lot for Vestergaard due to decent finishes in the Bundesleague and Champions League experience, along with our central defenders being awful at heading the ball. All of these transfers were risks. Some players don't adapt well to English football and none of the above have fully managed to. I still think Boufal has the ability to do it, even Carrillo might be OK in a limited sort of way, he just cost us far too much for a player with poor technical ability and no pace. Elyounoussi I have no idea about, really. He actually created a decent number of chances in his first couple of games, but since then he's been getting progressively worse. Maybe he's completely lost his confidence? If anything Hoedt seems over-confident and lacking badly in concentration. I think he'll never really succeed in the Premier League. Vestergaard has got a little bit better but he's always going to be slow off the mark and have the turning circle of an aircraft carrier. He might be OK with the right defenders along side him, but he has some definite physical limitations to overcome.

Target only did well for Koeman when playing as a wing back with Bertrand playing at left-sided centre back. He's not a big step up on Danny Fox defensively. Gets beaten by pace or trickery virtually every time. He has a great cross and works hard, but is a bit lacking in agility and is pretty slow to turn or recover from errors, especially when defending 1v1. Overall, he's a good wing-back but a poor full back.

Austin, Long, and Moi were utterly useless. The first two don't even look like footballers most of the time. Their touch is bloody awful and neither of them can pass reliably. Targett is beaten far too easily when 1v1. Looks completely unsuited to playing as a full back. He seems far better as a wing back. Vestergaard and Stephens either need to play together a lot more to get some understanding, or preferably both play in a 3/5. Both have plenty of weaknesses in their game. Cedric was OK. Better going forward than Valery but not as solid in defence, particularly when the ball is lobbed up in the air. Gunn was alright, nothing he could have done about their goals. Slattery played OK, JWP was good. Redmond MOM.

Austin is rubbish at playing football. He seems to be having a competition with Long to see who is worse on the ball.

Could be 4-4-2 when defending, 4-2-2-2 when attacking with the wingers drifting inside. Not sure who the ball winners are in midfield, though. JWP might have to get through a lot of work, I've not noticed Slattery break up play much for the u23s.

That **** Moss doesn't even bother to make the Chelsea players stand behind the line on that free kick. Despite Vestergaard pointing out they were cheating.

Moss is such a ****

Playing pretty well. Valery looks better defensively than he does going forwards. JWP has been pretty decent this half. Romeu good. Armstrong's worked hard but has been lacking when he has the ball. Redmond has done OK, Ings has worked hard but had few opportunities to hurt Chelsea. The back 3 have all looked decent, especially 吉田 and Vestergaard. John Moss is a very poor ref. Gunn has looked very good.

Ward Prowse couts double?

He's the best midfielder we have at breaking up play. Lemina and Hojbjerg are box to box players, while Romeu is a proper defensive midfielder. If we move to a midfield 3, he's the best option we have to sitting at the base of it and win the ball back.

He did make one massive blunder where he tried to take too many touches and was robbed in a fairly similar fashion to the way that we eventually conceded. We were very lucky to get away with it. Bednarek looks like he's pretty much OK at most things defensively. He seems fairly strong, reasonable in the air, his tackling is OK, and his positioning is alright. He seems fairly mobile, but not outright quick. His touch occasionally seems a bit suspect and his passing isn't great so in the systems we have been trying to play where the CBs start the play, he doesn't seem to fit that well. One thing I will say is that because of his average first touch he seems to have less time on the ball, flap a bit when closed down and has the tendency to make the wrong decision, but that seems equally true of Vestergaard. I would say he had the potential to get better defensively with match practice and coaching, but to me he looks like a player who would become a good 3rd choice for most teams rather than a nailed on starter. For us, I think there's not much to choose between any of the CB options we have. I think the choice will come down to how the manager wants us to play.

I can't see three teams that are worse than us in the Prem this year. Our forwards are crap and our defenders are even worse. Our midfield is pretty good but we are so bad at either end that unless the new manager works a miracle we are going down.

I think that it's far too early to write Vestergaard off. He should be given the chance to make glaring mistakes that lead to another 6-7 key goals before anyone can judge if he is good or not.

We look pretty poor to be honest. Not the manager's fault, just below average play when we have the ball and fragile defensively without it. Our back four all look like they have problems defensively and McCarthy keeping is us in this at the moment.

Hughes played a version of 4-2-2-2 for quite a while this season. We had a problem with losing central midfield when we did it. It looked a bit better with Long and Ings up top, but it really didn't seem to work well with Austin. A lot of the clips that have been posted concerning Leipzig showed them defending in a 4-3-3 with Werner and Paulson playing as a pair of wide forwards and Forsberg playing as a kind of false striker. Similar to the Puel forward line when we tried a diamond midfield. Hasenhuttl seems to adapt his formations to suit his players, so I think he'll have a look at what he has to work with before settling on a formation.

Austin would probably have still been standing in our half unable to keep up with play.

If Hughes has dropped the attacking player who performed best in our last match and has instead decided to persist with the misfiring Austin then questions really should be asked about his competence if we don't win this one.

Offside offence: A player in an offside position at the moment the ball is played or touched* by a team-mate is only penalised on becoming involved in active play by: interfering with play by playing or touching a ball passed or touched by a team-mate or interfering with an opponent by: preventing an opponent from playing or being able to play the ball by clearly obstructing the opponent’s line of vision or challenging an opponent for the ball or clearly attempting to play a ball which is close when this action impacts on an opponent or making an obvious action which clearly impacts on the ability of an opponent to play the ball or gaining an advantage by playing the ball or interfering with an opponent when it has: rebounded or been deflected off the goalpost, crossbar or an opponent been deliberately saved by any opponent A player in an offside position receiving the ball from an opponent who deliberately plays the ball (except from a deliberate save by any opponent) is not considered to have gained an advantage. A ‘save’ is when a player stops, or attempts to stop, a ball which is going into or very close to the goal with any part of the body except the hands/arms (unless the goalkeeper within the penalty area). 1) Yoshida was out of the keeper's eyeline when Austin struck his shot and was thus not interfering. 2) The keeper was on the opposite side of the goal to Yoshida, he had to be to cover his near post when Redmond ran into the box. Therefore Yoshida did not interfere with the keeper's position. If the ball had gone behind Yoshida and into the goal, then there would have been an argument for disallowing it, but that didn't happen. Yoshida did not interfere with play according to the offside rule as currently written. If he had done, then Austin would have been sanctioned by the FA for his comments after the match. This seems to indicate that those who believe there is an 'argument' for Austin's goal being ruled out by Yoshida's position don't fully understand the offside rules as they are currently stand.

There's absolutely no way we need VAR. It would be absolutely awful to reduce the number of bad decisions made by the officials. We should be petitioning for more visually-challenged referees to take control of top-level matches instead, preferably those without the capacity to see at all, it would make the games far more interesting.

I think player mentality is a big part of the problem. Mentally fragile and collectively unable to deal with pressure. They also seem to react more slowly than the opposition. Whether that's seeing a pass, putting in a tackle or simply closing a player down, the team dithers about instead of being decisive.

Pied had a good first touch and a decent cross. After he did his knee ligaments he had very little pace, though.

He's not playing in the role that he specialises in. Under Puel he played at the base of the diamond with 2 central midfielders in front of him and shielded the defence. Subsequently he's had to play as one of a midfield pair, one way or another. His instructions seem to be to rotate attacking and defensive duties with his partner. The problem is he's not got the recovery pace to get back if he pushes forward. I think he's a really good specialist midfield anchor but a pretty poor central midfielder.

------------------------McCarthy----------------------- Cedric---ALDERWIERELD-------Yoshida-----Bertrand -----------------------WANYAMA----------------------- -----------Hojbjerg-------------------Lemina---------- -----------------------LE TISSIER---------------------- -------------MANE-------------------Ings-------------- I'd go for that. 4-4-2 Diamond with forwards dropping wide to defend and MLT with a free role.