paulw66

He's better than Zouma and AC. And right now he's better than Tomori too Can cover left back too. Rudiger, Ake, Tomori, plus a world class centre back would be a good set of options.

Lots of Ake rumours doing the rounds. For £40m I'd take him back in a heartbeat. Can cover left back and centre back. Good ball player and an eye for goal. 10 goals in 92 PL games for Bournemouth.

Need him back, big time. You're right though. who to pick next to him? This game is a dangerous one. Lille have zero pressure and just can out and enjoy themselves.

I am not sure anyone said that, but there were plenty who said he was no long term solution, which was and is true.

Saw a rumour today that Koulibaly is unhappy at Napoli.......would be all over that despite his age.

If you have a Chelsea defender in your fantasy team, you need to have a word with yourself.

It might be a bit harsh, and maybe it is because of injury / inexperience.....none of that helps us though in the short term where we need some output. Standing here saying we may have a player who will be good enough in 6 months time doesn't get us any points. Not his fault entirely, but as Frank said last week, if he wants to get starts, he has to add somethng in the minutes he gets. A winger coming on with 20 minutes to go agaisnt tiring full backs is just about the ideal scenario, but his imapct at the moment is close to zero.

Some things of note that have been festering over the weekend 1. Us and Norwich are the only two teams to have zero points from losing positions in the league this season. When we concede first we lose. Points to a lack of charcater from the players and or poor in game management from Lampard. 2. Our reluctance to make any sort of tackle is really holding us back. As I pointed out in another thread, our recent 3 defeats have yielded zero yellow cards and against West Ham, quite incredibly, zero fouls. 3. We keep chopping and changing the defence, as obviously we dont know what the best 4 is....... I think I would rather we stuck to a 4 and gave them a run of games and see what happens. The constant change of personnel isn't working. 4. Zouma is too clumsy and AC is too weak for either to be first choice at a club which has our ambitions. AC has really regressed since playing in a 3 under Conte. 5. We have tried 3 different left backs in the last month. Again, I think I would rather we backed one and gave them a run. Personally I think it has to be Emerson. 6. With Pedro out of favour, and CHO not adding anything, our lack of options in attack is hurting us in terms of being able to change a game (see point 1). The drop down from Tammy to the next CF is also too big. 7. When we win a corner, we may as well save time and just give them the ball back. It was the same last year, none of our defenders are a threat. Long gone are the days when JT, Ivanovic or even Cahill would bail us out of a poor performance by coming up with an important headed goal. We had 5 corners on Saturday, and at least 3 were the perfect trajectory, far enough away from the GK, over the first man and head high in between the posts........we didn't get near any of them. 8. Why are so sh*t at this time of year, every year? 9. January could be interesting.... Centre back has to be a priority, then forwards, hopefully 2 of them.

If Ajax beat Valencia, a point is fine. Not that we should play like that. I can't see us keeping a clean sheet, so we need to score twice at least if we want to win.

Michael, can you do something?

Quite. He really didn't deserve to lose on Saturday.

Two away defeats and no yellow cards One home defeat and no fouls conceded at all Incredible

Agree 100%

Willian..... For Who? The ghost who came on for him in the second half?

Top form? He offers nothing. He came back from injury two months ago. The most over hyped youth product I have ever seen