Chez

looked a definite pen to me. Have to say the pulling of shirt on Vestegaard for the corner not long afterwards was also not picked up. VAR having a bit of mare.

not a great ball back by Salisu.

get the fuck in there. We are playing pretty well.

Bertrand ball watched a bit. Bloody good save from McCarthy, but to no avail. Shame. Good start before that.

Not sure the changes and line up matters that much. There isn't a huge drop off from our first eleven and the reserves. If it means the likes of Tella avoid injury and we can attack Brighton and Bournemouth games, it's a wise move. Not sure why the keeper needs to change though. Maybe he doesn't want Forster confidence knocked by conceding a hatful? Not quite sure how you beat City unless you have the talent the likes of Liverpool and Man U have and are able to go toe toe with them. Even Liverpool at their best (when they beat city) could only press them for a half. Palace caught them on the break brilliantly, but we don't have either the ability to go toe to toe or the pace and skill on the break. Where does that leave us then? Five at the back, defend for your lives? I'd like us to go for it, not surrender before we start, and press them as though they were an average side. But they are not an average side though are they... Our players are going to have to work their socks off and hope we get lucky. Conceding early will kill us.

I was interested to see what his injury record was like since coning here. 10 games missed in 2019, none in 2020 and 6 games missed so far in 2021, but currently out for a few weeks you'd think. Considering the type of injuries he has picked up, I think has come back incredibly quickly, perhaps too quickly, from injuries this year. I think in recent times he has lost his sharpness and that has contributed to his form falling from its best. Not sure there is any long terms concerns though.

bumping this earlier post by SuperSAINT

that was what was reported in Get French Football News. Who knows how accurate it is.

if they have an obligation to buy, we probably have an obligation to sell.

maybe not, but it's not 0% interest until 2025, so unless we start paying it off immediately the debt will grow...to over £100m by 2025.

6 million euros coming our way if they stay up then. Helps pay the interest on the loan.

at last, a thread I can claim to be ITK.

if the two recent offside goals had counted he'd be on a good run right now. If's and buts though I guess. The one-on-one chance didn't look like a man brimming with confidence, despite having already scored. On another day we are really going to need him to score there. He has to step up now. I wonder if the pace fo Tella might open things up a bit more than Ings does.

I went to pretty much every game, home and away that season, except that one. Never seen us come back from two down at half time away from home to win...ever. Was gutted to have missed that. Still gutted now.

As I continue to keep telling my Forrest supporting brother in law to this day, "you signing McGoldrick enabled us to buy Sir Ricky Lambert. Many thanks for your million." What makes it even better is that my brother in law used to come to lots of Saints games with me and he thought McGoldrick was utter rubbish, lazy, useless etc. so it was wonderful when they bought him from us. To be fair, he subsequently bet on Saints to score three and Rickie to be firdst scorer, which wee seemed happen a lot when we were in the third tier, so he made a bloody fortune. Swings and roundabouts.

Agree. He's not a right back from what little I have seen of him. If he is, then at 20, he should be able to slot in now in our hour of need for three or four games. As he hasn't been thrown in, he must be a CB otherwise the 2 year deal makes no sense to be at all to me. If he is a CB, then its pretty exciting news that we have give hi a two year deal. We have a woeful record of bringing CBs through. Stephens obviously was acquired at a young age, so you can argue he is or isn't a product of our youth system, but other than that? It would be great to develop another.

It's not just a high line, we are actually playing for offside. No one moves and we rely on attackers timing their runs badly. We don't follow runners, we just stand there. We have done it all season. Its a tactic that Ralf must have installed as we do it religiously. I've moaned about it all season, but to be fair we haven't conceded once (I think) and I wonder if any other team can say that? However I would suggest that not conceding several goals has been down to nothing more than pure luck. There have been some incredibly tight offsides and huge batch of incredibly good chances, many of which I thought the opponent should have scored or done a lot better. Maybe that has all been factored in to the decision to do this and I guess its hard to argue against stats...

in the first teams games he has played in, he has certainly looked like a CB playing at right back to me. If he is a right back and still can't get a game when we are desperate, then you have to wonder why we offered him a new two year deal.

Playing a CB at right back has really killed us. Not only does it make us vulnerable against pacy wingers, but we offer next to nothing going forward. KWP was having a wonderful season. We haven't just lost a little quality and balance, we've lost a huge piece of what made us good. I have no answer to that problem. When is KWP going to be back? We really need Ings to find another goal or two out of nowhere. We create little. I am not sure we ever did create a lot, but he seemed to find a yard and a finish from somewhere. Without those goals and the set piece goals where are we going to get goals from?

This tactic of not bothering to defend free kicks and hope for an offside is an absolutely shit show. I've said it all season, its pure luck that we have not conceded a hatful of goals. We have three centre backs in the side. Why do we need to gamble in this way. Defend properly.

when a CM get injured and we don't replace like for like we become wide open and crumble. Likewise not having a like for like CM replacement available to substitute a tiring player has cost us time after time. When Romeu got injured I feared the worse. When we didn't bring Juka on we as good as handed the victory to Leeds. I don't know if he would have changed anything, Ive not seen much of him, but I do know that our other midfielders are not cut out to run a game. That's just just one issue. We have a lot of others...but they are well covered in this thread. We are painful to watch. I'm hopeful we can turn it around. Not sure how Ralph turned it around last time, but he needs to repeat the trick.

Agreed, but you still need to be brave on the ball and attack with pace and purpose. I watched the Everton vs City game during the week and they were backs agains the wall for a lot of the game, but when they got the ball they moved it well and were a threat. The six defeats has knocked the stuffing out of us. Hopefully we can take a bit of confidence into the Leeds game - we need to be positive, not sit and wait for them to make chances.

the quality of finish for both goals shows he is an extremely talented footballer. Hopefully he can show a bit more. He faded badly in the first games and he didn't really dictate much today at all.

Could Chelsea have been less stretched? If you were happy with the amount of possession we had and the chances we created, that's fine. This was a million miles away from some the displays we have seen in the past year where we go toe to toe, are brave on the ball, attack with intend and cause opponents problems. We were meek, which is expected after so many defeats, but anyone thinking we have turned a massive corner is mistaken. We need KWP back in the side quickly. Playing Bednarek there is basically giving up.

they created quite a lot of very good opportunities, but the final ball was absolutely terrible. So yes, in terms of MOTD clips, which require an actual shot at the end of a move, maybe little, but that's not the whole game. IMO we were very fortunate at times and on another day we might have been behind. It was much more about their failure to execute than our good defending. I'm not saying it could have been another 9-0, but there are games agains the better sides when you get the run of the green a bit and that helps to avoid a big defeat. Second half we were better, but created absolutely nothing. This was not a good display. We competed and held on, not much more.