I wasn’t remotely worried before about Chinese football, which I considered a bit of a joke, even when the 30+ers were being lured there for the big final payday.
But now if you have players still in their ‘prime’ going there like Oscar, rumours of Javier Pastore etc., it changes the whole complexion. It’s never been a worry about the financial might of China while the reputation hasn’t been there, but it will now be increasingly credible for top players to move to China, and have some sort of defence against accusations of ‘just doing it for the $$$$’ (should they even care of course, but for some they will feel being mocked in their profession). Not to mention big name European managers like Cannavaro acting as a further pull factor to their mates and former colleagues.
Sorry if there’s a Chinese football thread somewhere and I missed it. Anyway what I’m saying is previously I would’ve put Ozil/Sanchez moving to China this summer at genuinely 0%, but that’s clearly not the case now. We could become the first Premier League side to get seriously hurt by the Chinese league in a transfer swoop.
Also I still can’t name or be bothered to look up a single Chinese club side.
If you’re going to give credit to Wenger for the win today then what about the two shambolic loses previously?
I’m simply being realistic in the last few big games the team has shat the bed against opposition that aren’t playing as well as Chelsea are, why would it be any different against them? Because we beat them when they were playing shit?
They are dominating the league and getting clean sheets for fun, as we are now they would beat us too and with ease most likely.
Please, Chelsea barely had a sniff at goal against us. They tried to play football against a superior bunch of footballers and got punished. End of. If they came and parked the bus like WBA did, well them they might have gotten a result.
What you’re not grasping or choosing to ignore is that the Chelsea that we beat and the Chelsea that are dominating now are two completely different propositions.
Yeah because we fucked them with no lube. Conte realized holy shit I’ve got Matic and Kante in midfield maybe I should change the way we lineup. So he caught lightning in a bottle for now. Still not convinced they will have a different result against us head to head. IMO with the formation change, it reminds me a bit of when Sherwood took over at the scum and they started playing a 442. It worked for a while because teams had not seen it for a while but it got figured out eventually. This is just a more prolonged run and not a surprise because Chelsea do have one of the most expensive/talented teams on the continent.
He’s taken a team that finished 10th last year added Kante, Luiz and Alonso plus Batshuayi (who might as well be the kit guy) and look out how dominant they are. Talking about “lightning in a bottle” is sour grapes and nothing more.Yes they’re benefiting from not playing in Europe but at the end of the day they stiill have to show up on the pitch and get the job done. They aren’t just winning they are getting clean sheets for fun, something that is the stuff of dreams here.
Are you the one that was saying “tweaks” could enable Wenger to lead the team to the title? Now Chelsea do exactly that and it’s oh they just haven’t been figured out yet.
Oh and when all else fails bring up the fact they’ve got an expensive team, like we didn’t almost spend £100mil in the summer.
You do have to admit though, even if you completely ignore the fact Chelsea have gotten better. We have got considerably worse?
I’m really starting to dislike watching us again and it’s very reminiscent of the football we were playing last year. We really need to do something drastic in January, I’d personally give West Ham whatever they want for Payet in the hope he could provide some much needed creativity.
tbf you’re making the situation look worse than it was. The current chelsea team is still for the most part the same team that won them the title the season before and not a mid table struggler that he completely reinvented. I’d even argue their squad is on paper better than it was under Mourinho.
That doesn’t take away that he is doing a great job but one season underperforming also doesn’t mean that their squad isn’t good.
My reply to this would be a lot of what PPB just said. Your post is way Ott and full of hyperbole. This team, and a slightly improved version of said team, just ran away with the league a year ago. They aren’t a mid table team and it’s very apparent they just wanted to get rid of Mourinho, thus the bad performances. This us a club that’s been spending 100m for what? 10 plus years now? Us spending that once isn’t going to get us into that ballpark. They are performing insanely good right now, historically good. They’ll regress was my point.
