Quote Originally Posted by selassie View Post
I expected us to get a beating last night, it was a non-contest, we were defeated before a ball was even kicked. Our form and general confidence has pretty much gone and the team we are seeing now is performing like the Arsenal of last season. Arteta certainly has a part to play in this, he is just repeating the same things now with the line up of the team and the tactics, he is expecting to see different results which clearly isn't happening. This team even with everybody fully fit is not good enough to go to City and win, especially a City who are now in top form.

City are great and all that but we have made it very easy for them with our recent form, we have dropped points in unexpected places and have performed way below the level we maintained earlier this season, our form nosedived from the Liverpool game onwards.

Despite the above, it has been a successful season in terms of my personal expectations of the team / squad. To maintain this standard going into next season with the added bonus or headache of CL! We need to invest in real quality, as others have said, 2 CM's, a CB that is good enough to properly challenge for a starting place and possibly a LB if Tierney goes. The squad as it stands is clearly not strong enough to mount a challenge next season in PL and CL, we have to buy ready made players like Rice, Caicedo if we want to maintain this standard going forward.

P.S. Agree with what others have said about Arteta use of the squad, it's become a bit of an issue now, changes most certainly should be made for Chelsea, especially offensively where you could argue 2 of the 3 starting players (Saka and Jesus /or Martinelli) could and should be rotated with the likes of Trossard and Nelson. I would also rotate Jorginho with Partey, Partey has been really bad in this run-in.
Again - an excellent post. And the analysis of Arteta's big weak spot in this thread is spot on. It's so disppointing that we 'armchair' analysts can see that the manager's bullish perseverence with a system that the players have lost some confidence in; is not suited to every single game and has been worked out by other teams over the course of the season - not to mention unsuited for second choice players - but the manager refuses to accept this and change things up. It's also self-defeating that he insists on playing his 'favourites' while potentially able back ups who might at least add a little variety are discounted as starters.


What I would say is that last nigtht was not a time to suddenly change things. West Ham away and Southampton at home should have been used to tweak the system to see whether more protection could have been given for Holding - alternatively leave him out (eg Zinchenko at RB; White at CB and Tierney at LB, and Jorginho alongside Partey) but this opportunity went begging.


We saw this 2 seasons ago - when we started to look so rigid and ineffective and ball progression to our forwards dried up. And we are seeing it again now - albeit with a system that has served us well until it really counted. The players last night need to have a look at themselves, but our collective loss of confidence is not just down to 3 disappointing draws - its the players realising that our set up is flawed and lookign a bit tired. Arteta's refusal to change things up looks passive and fearful, and if our players look scared - which they did last night - this has to a degree been transmitted by Arteta.


One final point. If ever we wanted evidence last night as to why Citeh sold us Jesus and Zinchenko - it was there last night in neon lights. Its lamentable that these so-called 'winners' that were bought to take our team to the next level went hiding last night. The real question is not their talent (albeit that Jesus is showing that he is not a reliable goal scorer), but their mentality. And that is a worry for sure.