Eintracht Frankfurt 1 Chelsea 1

[Michael Tucker]

Please use this thread for all posts relating to our Europa League Semi Final, 1st  Leg match against Eintracht Frankfurt at Commerzbank-Arena, before, during and after the game.

The Moderators will be keeping an eye on things, so let's try to keep it intelligent.

Please note that this un-moderated forum is a privilege and its abuse will result in the suspension of your account.

The match is scheduled to kick off at 20:00, Thursday, 2nd May, 2019 (Local UK time/date).

[asvaberg]

Defence - defence -defence - counter attack-counter attack-counter attack :)

A 2-0 win would be great, Giroud + Giroud

Be aware of the truly amazing atmosphere in this nice ground. 

[xCELERYx]

Going to be extremely tough coming away with a result in this one. Frankfurt haven't lost at home thus far in the Europa League despite facing some tricky sides like Lazio, Marseille, Shakhtar, Inter Milan and Benfica along the way. In fact they've only failed to score once and that was their 0-0 draw with Inter. So it's going to be important that our defensive organisation turns up if we're to have a chance, even with our own good away forward in the EL, our run has been vastly easier in comparison.

Hope we're up for it.

[Sciatika]

I'd be very happy with an away goal and either a win, draw or narrow defeat.

[Aussie1979]

1-1 draw with us getting lucky can’t. See our defence keeping a clean sheet and hopefully hopefully we can finish the job at the bridge 

[Mark Kelly]

My suspicion is that the players want to qualify for the Champions League by dint of winning this competition , especially Hazard who I suspect wants to leave a "European champion" to some degree.

Personally , I don't think we're good enough to win it , the players on a good day possibly , the coach , not in my opinion .

We should at least see Giroud come back and Hazard appears more interested when he has him as a target man .

Keeping a clean sheet will be the real test .

[Jasonb]

36 minutes ago, Mark Kelly said:

My suspicion is that the players want to qualify for the Champions League by dint of winning this competition , especially Hazard who I suspect wants to leave a "European champion" to some degree.

Personally , I don't think we're good enough to win it , the players on a good day possibly , the coach , not in my opinion .

We should at least see Giroud come back and Hazard appears more interested when he has him as a target man .

Keeping a clean sheet will be the real test .

I think you are right that some of our players are more interested in the EL cup rather than grafting in the EPL and there is a real risk that even if we get to the EL final we may not even win it.

[paulw66]

1 hour ago, Mark Kelly said:

 

Personally , I don't think we're good enough to win it 

 

Curious as to who you think is then

4th in the PL is better than 4th in the Bundesliga and 6th in La Liga, as well as 5th in the PL. 

[Mark Kelly]

13 minutes ago, paulw66 said:

Curious as to who you think is then

4th in the PL is better than 4th in the Bundesliga and 6th in La Liga, as well as 5th in the PL. 

What happens if we lost against Watford and Leicester and finish 6th , would that mean we were worse ?

I think we're a better side than we're set up to be , we are not playing to our strengths , Frankfurt do , Arsenal have too much firepower for our shaky defence .

As I said earlier , I get the impression that this is a competition the players desperately want to win , so if they play as well as we all know they can and ignore the philosophy there is of course a chance we can win this , if the desire is there , which I suspect it is , that's half the battle.

[paulw66]

3 minutes ago, Mark Kelly said:

What happens if we lost against Watford and Leicester and finish 6th , would that mean we were worse ?

I think we're a better side than we're set up to be , we are not playing to our strengths , Frankfurt do , Arsenal have too much firepower for our shaky defence .

As I said earlier , I get the impression that this is a competition the players desperately want to win , so if they play as well as we all know they can and ignore the philosophy there is of course a chance we can win this , if the desire is there , which I suspect it is , that's half the battle.

Yes, if we lose all our games, we are worse than we are now. The same can be said of any team ever. 

I would wager you have barely seen Frankfurt play, but there you go. You seem to know about their strengths and how they play. 

Amazing you are talking about Arsenal in the same sentence you are talking about OUR shakey defence