Chelsea

[Boogs]

It seems to me there will soon be a European Super League. 5-10 years I reckon. Today's spending is totally unsustainable in the current league set ups in Europe.

[Exiled_red]

FFP as in was in the previous years wasn't perfect but at least it was doing something, with clubs like Chelsea, City and PSG being able to spend like this how is anyone supposed to compete. Typical of UEFA spend longer drawing up plans for something like this than the rules are actually enforced for

[Bender]

FFP as in was in the previous years wasn't perfect but at least it was doing something, with clubs like Chelsea, City and PSG being able to spend like this how is anyone supposed to compete. Typical of UEFA spend longer drawing up plans for something like this than the rules are actually enforced for

Platini's said:"Aggregate net losses of Europe's clubs have fallen from 1.7bn euros in 2011 to 400m euros in 2014.
BBC
so they decided to give clubs a break and push that debt figure back up

[Buzzo]

How Platini is qualified to talk about the aggregate net losses of Europes clubs.

[Bender]

Chelsea will have to break the British transfer record and pay £72m to sign France midfielder Paul Pogba, 22, from Juventus, and pay him £82.5m over five years. (Daily Express)


But Zenit St Petersburg's Argentina defender Ezequiel Garay, 28, is also believed to be interesting the Blues. (Guardian)

Chelsea are confident of completing a deal for Guangzhou Evergrande defender Zhang Linpeng, 26, although the China international will be loaned out for the rest of the season. (Daily Telegraph)

[Alex]

That's the very definition of a sensationalist headline. When do papers ever include wages in those numbers

[Roboklopp]

Trouble in paradise.

[Chazza]

Bet they spend big again before the window closes.

[RichC]

I think they're going to have to.

Wonder if Madrid have a cheeky look at Hazard

[BubbaZanetti]

I very much enjoyed watching Delaney making Costa his bitch today.

[Exiled_red]

I very much enjoyed watching Delaney making Costa his bitch today.

[marcus50bucks]

Jose Mourinho shoulders blame as Chelsea's horrible season continues

BY MIGUEL DELANEY

LONDON -- Eventually it came, even if it wasn't anywhere near as likely as Crystal Palace scoring after Chelsea had once again left so much space to exploit around their box. Yet another poor performance by Jose Mourinho's team saw the manager finally criticise himself -- albeit with a caveat, because he was also criticising some of his players.

"I blame myself not to change one of them, because I kept him in the game for 90 minutes," Mourinho said after a 2-1 defeat to Palace that also marked what is just his second league defeat at Stamford Bridge; it also came on the occasion of his 100th league game there.

Mourinho didn't name who that was, but it could have been any one of a series of players, as so few of them rose to that occasion or indeed the standard required of pretty much any game.

Branislav Ivanovic was abysmal, with Yannick Bolasie the latest in a growing list of forwards to rip him apart on the wing. Cesc Fabregas was dismally lightweight, completely unable to dictate the game in the way he is supposed to do. Eden Hazard was barely able to get into the match, a far cry from last season or Mourinho's now-ludicrous-looking claim that the Belgian is anywhere close to Cristiano Ronaldo's level.

If nothing else, it's certain that the Portuguese wasn't talking about Nemanja Matic, as the Serbian was so bad that he suffered the indignity of being hauled off after 73 minutes for 19-year-old Ruben Loftus-Cheek. The midfielder followed impressive substitute Kenedy onto the pitch, meaning Chelsea ended the match with two teenagers. That would be admirable, except for the fact that it is so exceedingly rare in Mourinho's 13-year-long career.

As such, it seems no more than a response to desperation and just another sign of how the usual pillars of Mourinho's management currently lie in rubble. You have to look only at that defensive record, which shows how Chelsea have already conceded 64 percent of the goals they did in the entirety of his first 2004-05 Premier League campaign, or the very fact that he has lost just a second home league game in the competition.

He couldn't rely on the usual foundations here, which is the greater worry. If so many players are underperforming, then the problem is probably not down to the individuals. It suggests something deeper and perhaps something wrong with the collective.

For his part, Mourinho still has the explanation of this altered preseason and has already said his players won't look properly up to speed until September. He didn't use that explanation here, however, and the reality is that there still should have been some progress by now. Instead, Chelsea were as porous and as blunt as on the opening day against Swansea City.

Saturday's game didn't look like the defending champions playing at home against a midtable team. It looked like two sides of a similar level, with one of them eventually winning because they had a greater spirit and a greater cohesion. This is the deeper issue with Mourinho's management, too. If his sides are not showing his fundamental traits of defensive durability and psychological resilience, it only more sharply exposes what he lacks in other areas.

Mourinho has had a career-long problem with real creativity. For a coach so sophisticated in almost every other area of the game, his attacking ideas are rather basic. Sources at Stamford Bridge say those ideas amount to getting the ball to Hazard and largely letting it play out from there, trusting the intelligence of the attackers to do the rest. Pedro has added a bit more intelligence in that regard and excellently set up Radamel Falcao's goal here, but there wasn't much happening beyond that.

Hazard certainly wasn't making anything happen, but neither was the man most expected to feed him: Fabregas. That in turn raises a much more specific problem, and one that seems hasn't been addressed. If Fabregas isn't creating, then what is he actually doing? Because he isn't helping in defence. Once again, Matic (who is already off form) was left to patrol an entire area in front of the back line by himself, so it was little wonder that a swift Palace side repeatedly exposed it.

Mourinho attempted to address it here by removing Matic, but it remains remarkable that a coach as tactically astute in defence as him had not addressed it earlier. It became emphatically clear last season that a two-man central midfield of Matic and Fabregas could work only in open games against weaker opposition, but now even more of those weaker sides have worked that duo out.

Of course, that might be the real reason Mourinho made such a point of bringing off Matic for Loftus-Cheek, beyond trying to save this game. Their pursuit of Paul Pogba is well known, and he might have been trying to illustrate to the hierarchy that a powerful midfielder between Matic and Fabregas is a more pressing need than previously anticipated, perhaps even more important than bringing in another centre-half.

There have been some murmurs around Chelsea of growing tension regarding Mourinho and their overly tentative transfer policy this summer, and it has partly led to a lot of extra anxiety surrounding games, as the team suddenly look so lacking.

That shouldn't absolve Mourinho's management, though. Far too much of this is too far below his standards for the poor start to be just down to signings or preseason.

"The reality is that we had a bad start," he acknowledged. "Four points in four matches is a very bad start."

They are very bad in almost every area of the team, something that is even rarer for Mourinho than his trust in youth. Where, for example, was there evidence of the work done in defence over the past week? Where was that preparation? The back line has lost its cohesion, which has only been accentuated by a poor lack of protection. The midfield is not linked up, either with each other or the attack, and they just don't look dangerous.

Throughout all that, they seemed to lack the binding spirit that Palace had in abundance. It allowed Alan Pardew to add insult to injury, even if it wasn't intentional.

"We were very good," the Palace manager said. "I thought it was a cracking Premier League game. ... Chelsea played their part."

That is what the champions were reduced to. If they're not careful and not proactive, they might well play no part in a title race that is already looking daunting.

Miguel Delaney is a London-based correspondent for ESPN FC and also writes for the Irish Examiner and others. Follow him on Twitter @MiguelDelaney.

http://www.espnfc.com/blog/the-match/60/post/2587534/jose-mourinho-takes-blame-as-chelsea-lose-to-crystal-palace

[Roboklopp]

Was hoping to see some headlines of civil war there.

[danperkins]

Chelsea's next two league games are Everton away and Arsenal at home. Would be ****ing magic if they dropped points in these.

[RichC]

More than possible. 2 draws would be handy