The real thing is why this is pointless. There’s actual stakes and you’d always end up practising penalties in training anyway before such games.
Richard Keys will be happy about that.
For me Partey was the standout performer, couple of interceptions, calmness under pressure and vertical passing, if he was a new signing, he would be talk of the day
Missed the match yesterday, saw the highlights this morning.
Getting a lot of conflicting feedback online about it. Some are losing their shit(in a bad way) and others being very optimistic. Not sure if people are being disingenuous about it though to serve their bias.
I trust OA more than I do the rest so what exactly happened yesterday?
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We played well. Defended horribly as usual. Vieira and Partey were sensational. Timber also. Ramsdale saved a pen 
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I felt we were very open at the back and didn’t create enough. Could be down to the line-up Arteta chose. Vieira, Nketiah up top. Even though Vieira had a good game, he’s completely different to Saka.
Rice had a forgettable game, looked uncomfortable in Xhaka’s role. Will definitely need time to adapt in that position.
Best performers:
Partey, Vieira and Martinelli
With the pre-season we’ve had, and current injury problems I fear we won’t hit the ground running like we did last season. We’ll see.
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People saying that V****a played well. Is it April Fools?
Cry more 
Think Vieira, whilst did good stuff, had far to many bad moments.
Eddie was superb, chasing everything, working hard.
Partey was brilliant in the middle, so cool and comfortable.
Thought Martinelli was out most exciting player, whenever he gets the ball you can sense something is going to happen.
Think Rice struggled in that Xhaka role, box to box almost, didnt look fit, looked lost
As soon as Havertz came on you could see the difference, think im going to enjoy watching him, looks a class act. Silky on the ball, very agile, always where he needs to be.
Saliba did well but could have easily been sent off.
Felt they countered us as soon as we lost the ball, our RB and LB were both coming inside which left them space on the flanks as soon as they got the ball. We cannot do that in the PL
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I get that last year we had a good pre-season and that carried over into the season but we’ve had good pre-seasons that preceded indifferent seasons and bad pre-seasons that didn’t have any bearing on the seasons that followed.
People have read way, way too much into our pre-season games this year.
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I can’t think of anything less relevant to how your season will go then uncompetitive fixtures where the team is heavily rotated and different things are tried.
It’s a fitness building exercise, a chance to experiment and never played at the intensity a competitive game is played at.
It’s bizarre that people put so much stock into them
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For me, it is hard to take too much from pre-season. I cannot recall many times we had our starting/best 11 on at the same time, so at times attack and defence felt disjointed.
I was at the game yesterday and haven’t seen the highlights but imo:
- Partey & Martinelli looked sharpest from those who started. Nketiah worked pretty hard and made a couple runs where ESR should have found him (even apologised after)
- Vieira looked average, some good moments but overall meek and I don’t think RW suited him.
- ESR seems to have lost a lot of his confidence/spark, would make a decent run, etc. and then pass backwards, we need him to regain the confident for one touch forward pass
- Timber was solid, great on the ball and composed
- Rice needs to find his feet, looked ineffective, even though he got a decent run through & shot off that was deflected off target.
- None of our forwards were busting a gut to get into the box, a few blind crosses when no one was in the box.
In closing, I wouldn’t take much from the game overall as it felt like a lot of the players never got out of first gear
I’m always reminded of that season that Chelsea lost every single one of their preseason games, looked absolutely ghastly, and then won the PL and the CL.
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I feel the same, not because of the pre-season we’ve had but more because it will take time for the new players to learn Artetaball. Of course, not having Jesus and a fully fit Zinchenko will not help either.
What season did Chelsea win the CL and PL ? Because I certainly can’t remember it.
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Well they won one of them that season.
City under Pep tend to have slow starts(for their standards) as well, don’t they?
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I think the only thing you can really take away from preseason is whether your squad is healthy.
The injury to Jesus is a huge worry for me because it puts us right back in the position of testing squad depth. I have very little confidence we’ll see Jesus until after that first international break which means it’s probably Eddie up top even if Trossard has shown himself to be a better option imo.
Havertz can play there too if needed
Chelsea don’t win titles, they buy them. 