Saturday 15th September - 1500 Kick Offs

[RandoEFC+]

Quiet second halves all round.

[RandoEFC+]

My fantasy defence...

Robertson conceded 93

Mustafi conceded 91

Cue Huddersfield equaliser (Wan Bissaka)

[Guest]

Happy with the win today. Apparently Newcastle were better in the first half but we were better in the second. Perhaps this was a game we wouldnt have won last season.

[LFCMike]

Is that four 2-1 defeats against the top sides Newcastle have played so far? Although it's not good getting beat, narrow defeats against sides like that aren't going to decide their season and they can probably take some positives from these games. Obviously they need to start picking up wins against teams outside the top 6 though

[Dan+]

15 hours ago, Dan said:

Bournemouth away.

We're pathetic here every year.

True to form. Disgrace.

[Cicero]

Hazard 5 goals in 5 games 

Safe to say hes going to enjoy playing under Sarri. 

Giroud is a gem. Truly a team player.  Can understand @6666 fascination with him and the pivotal role he plays for the France national side. 

[LFCMadLad]

8 minutes ago, Cicero said:

Hazard 5 goals in 5 games 

Safe to say hes going to enjoy playing under Sarri. 

Giroud is a gem. Truly a team player.  Can understand @6666 fascination with him and the pivotal role he plays for the France national side. 

You fucking hated him when he first signed 

[Dave]

Wilfred the GOAT

[Dave]

1 hour ago, RandoEFC said:

My fantasy defence...

Robertson conceded 93

Mustafi conceded 91

Cue Huddersfield equaliser (Wan Bissaka)

I have had at least one player on the bench every week that's scored.

[Cicero]

41 minutes ago, LFCMadLad said:

You fucking hated him when he first signed 

Did I? 

Was probably disappointed we didnt get Dzeko, but dont think I was upset over getting Giroud instead 

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 hour ago, Cicero said:

Hazard 5 goals in 5 games 

Safe to say hes going to enjoy playing under Sarri. 

Giroud is a gem. Truly a team player.  Can understand @6666 fascination with him and the pivotal role he plays for the France national side. 

Why wouldn’t Hazard enjoy playing under Sarri? I’m not surprised in the slightest that your best attacking player is looking well settled in Sarri’s system - he’s probably been wanting an attacking coach for ages.

[Stan]

Well that was entirely fucking predictable. Never win at Bournemouth and always feel like mentally we approach playing them all wrong. 

Not seen the match but from what I heard defence was fucking horrendous. Perhaps @Dan can confirm. 2 Centre backs and Pereira were the players who I heard were shite. Morgan getting sent off could be blessing in disguise. Means Soyuncu or Evans (or maybe both if we go 3 at the back) could play next week vs Huddersfield. 

Don't really give a shit about the 2 consolation goals as they mean square root of fuck all but it is incessantly frustrating we can never beat these, and simply exasperating that we got hammered today. 

[The Artful Dodger]

Hazard is so good. Best player to watch in the world imo. 

[Bluewolf]

Caught a bit of our game around the 35 minute mark and after Cardiff scored it looked like we might have been getting a bit bullied on the ball but was interesting to note that the team upped their game and got stuck in to match them rather than folding... Some nice football on show today, very quick one or two touches and always pushing forward.. Nice to see Hazard get his hat trick.. 

Still not played the likes of Liverpool and City yet but we are getting the points on the board which will be handy in the event of a stumble somewhere along the line.. They all seem to be enjoying themselves with this new lease of life under Sarri 

[Chaaay AFC]

3 hours ago, Cicero said:

Hazard 5 goals in 5 games 

Safe to say hes going to enjoy playing under Sarri. 

Giroud is a gem. Truly a team player.  Can understand @6666 fascination with him and the pivotal role he plays for the France national side. 

Would rather we kept him then blow all that money on Lacazette. Can be frustrating at times, but he is an absolutely brilliant player.

[SchalkeUK]

Quote from LFC Mike : Took Sane out of my fantasy team so obviously he scores after 2 minutes. Also put Mendy in and he's not even in the squad! Nightmare

After his mental turmoil of the past few weeks and now being a dad and giving little Tobias a half-sister to play with there was every indication that young Leroy (in the words of Jack Scott) just might win! (If in doubt, google the song!)

Sometimes even the cleverest kids need a shoulder to lean on and Pep seems to have just the one.  Now watch out and put him back in your team.....

When Roy comes to his senses and starts to play Max I suggest you put him in too!  Knowing young Max I'm not sure how long he will sit on the bench without a comment - but in private and not for Twitter or crapbook!

[carefreeluke]

Giroud has done well for himself since joining and in that time he's been alternating with Morata as well. Chelsea fans especially like their strikers and expect at the very minimum that they do certain things. During the game at Stamford Bridge there's a lot of focus on the striker's performance and a certain level of expectancy when the ball is played into the their feet or if it comes in the air. There's this particular analytical nature to it which perhaps other fans of other clubs would say exists for their fanbase as well. It's particularly prevalent at the game though and it's the position to which the fans are most reactive to. It's true with hold up play mostly, anything good done by the striker in this department the fans tend to appreciate more and react more positively to no matter how good the bit play was. Equally if the striker's hold up play is poor, they are more reactive to this and you can feel this reaction around the ground. It's a position that gets a lot of focus from the fans and this can be felt and heard during the game and in the various conversations that the supporters have on the trains and during the match day experience as a whole. Like I say this probably isn't specific to Chelsea fans.

Anyway the reason I say this is that hold up play is one of Giroud's strengths and the context above is one of the main reasons Chelsea fans have taken a liking to him. Morata is the opposite, in simplistic terms Giroud's natural instinct is to come towards the ball and Morata's away, Morata wants the space in behind and in the majority of games we play we don't get that. Morata has been poor for a long while now and a lot of that I believe is down to his mentality but it's true it's good to have this variation in our attacking line. And I've always had Giroud down as a good striker but not one a top club fighting on all fronts could rely on solely throughout a season but he's a fantastic squad player and option to have that could play a lot of games during a campaign. 

[Honey Honey]

The starting line ups are just of too glaring a weaknesses to get anything in these games.

Joselu and Perez upfront with a Diame Hayden midfield  You might get away with 1 of each pairing but never both.

Bad start. Season starts next week.

[Guest]

55 minutes ago, Harvsky said:

The starting line ups are just of too glaring a weaknesses to get anything in these games.

Joselu and Perez upfront with a Diame Hayden midfield  You might get away with 1 of each pairing but never both.

Bad start. Season starts next week.

Do you think you are in relegation danger or do you think you will be ok?

[Dave]

4 hours ago, SchalkeUK said:

Quote from LFC Mike : Took Sane out of my fantasy team so obviously he scores after 2 minutes. Also put Mendy in and he's not even in the squad! Nightmare

After his mental turmoil of the past few weeks and now being a dad and giving little Tobias a half-sister to play with there was every indication that young Leroy (in the words of Jack Scott) just might win! (If in doubt, google the song!)

Sometimes even the cleverest kids need a shoulder to lean on and Pep seems to have just the one.  Now watch out and put him back in your team.....

When Roy comes to his senses and starts to play Max I suggest you put him in too!  Knowing young Max I'm not sure how long he will sit on the bench without a comment - but in private and not for Twitter or crapbook!

I get you don't know the Premier League or Crystal Palace as a football club. However you cannot slate Roy. There are reasons why Max Meyer is not starting over Kouyate. Max's moment will happen, and it's up to him to take full opportunity of that moment. Which im sure he will.

[RandoEFC+]

2 hours ago, Gunnersauraus said:

Do you think you are in relegation danger or do you think you will be ok?

I know this was nowhere near directed at me but I'd hate to see Newcastle go down again instead of pretentious tinpot wankers like Bournemouth, Watford and Southampton polluting the top flight with their mediocrity-based business models fucking back off to the Championship.

Imagine how much better the Premier League would be with Leeds, Villa and Nottingham Forest replacing Bournemouth, Huddersfield and Brighton this time next year. An actual top flight worthy of the name. One can only dream.

[Dan+]

We have far too many days where we just completely collapse. Some quite worrying statistics...

- We have now lost 9 of our last 13 away games in the league.

- This is the fourth time we have shipped 4 or more in an away game in 2018, and the third time in five away games.

- We have collected 19 points from our last 19 games in the league, of which only 5 of those 19 were against your usual top six sides, so we're actually on course since January for under 40 points, from a far easier than average run of fixtures.

 

Do not be fooled by the 4-2 scoreline. 4-2 looks like it's semi respectable. Our two goals were in the 88th and 89th minute. We were hammered and Bournemouth switched off a little late on. At least they actually switched on in the first place, that's more than can be said for us.

Bournemouth are a good side who if I was to be asked now who'll come higher between us and them, I'd have to quite confidently say it's them. They're more organised, have more of a game plan and play football suited to their squad. The same cannot be said for us.

We persist with Morgan and we get the usual from him - slow, cumbersome, not good enough on the ball for the system we want to play. I'm not holding the red card against him as that was absolutely disgraceful refereeing, though Maguire himself should've been a red so that's probably why he took it out on Morgan. We'll probably still find a way to play him next week

However, Morgan's situation should not detract from how bad the others were, because believe me others were worse. Maguire was a joke, what a terrible first game after his new contract. Ricardo is a risk defensively (I did think the penalty against him was very harsh), the midfield were just pointless, and I'm absolutely up to here with Demarai Gray now. He's been here coming up to three years and I still cannot tell you one aspect of his game that has significantly improved. I'd cash in on him if we can. Maddison you can see has some real talent (and was one of few bright sparks), Chilwell has progressed, Gray is a perennial 1 game in 10 player and if he's England's answer then what the fuck is the question? A Bournemouth fan rang 606 saying that England were silly to overlook Ryan Fraser and while I initially laughed, having watched that game and the difference in productivity, Fraser beating Gray's goal tally for 2018 in one afternoon it maybe wasn't as silly a shout as it sounded.

Puel is not going to be a success here unless he changes the formation and we stop turning in these absolutely disgraceful displays. They're far too frequent. Well done to Bournemouth - the better side by a mile, as per.

[Danny]

Maguire doesn't look so great in a back 4. Bournemouth look good this season, think they're going to blow a lot of midtable/relegation teams away.

[Dan+]

Our defensive set-up is absolute suicide. Two slow centre halves playing a high line and two full backs who are both quite good going forwards, but questionable defensively. Against Bournemouth's pace I'm not one bit surprised they scored more.

Another red card for us as well. Our discipline under Puel is appalling. That's something like 7 red cards in the time he's been here. We're not even particularly dirty, we're just a really clumsy, naive side.

I'm so pissed off. That was a bit of an acid test, I've been a bit unsure about us so far but now I'm quite sure we're not actually very good. I can't call it an off day when I've provided those stats - that was right out of the second half of last season.

We will catch the eye on occasion but unless he makes some significant changes to our defensive set up then we'll do well to be in the top half this year. Time to play a back three, or at least get Soyuncu in the side. My prediction is we continue to not play Soyuncu, Evans comes in against Huddersfield and is replaced by Morgan against Newcastle, which we go on to lose through some abysmal defending.

One game's absolutely killed my enthusiasm.

[Dan+]

9 hours ago, Stan said:

Well that was entirely fucking predictable. Never win at Bournemouth and always feel like mentally we approach playing them all wrong. 

Not seen the match but from what I heard defence was fucking horrendous. Perhaps @Dan can confirm. 2 Centre backs and Pereira were the players who I heard were shite. Morgan getting sent off could be blessing in disguise. Means Soyuncu or Evans (or maybe both if we go 3 at the back) could play next week vs Huddersfield. 

Don't really give a shit about the 2 consolation goals as they mean square root of fuck all but it is incessantly frustrating we can never beat these, and simply exasperating that we got hammered today. 

We've not even lead against them let alone beat them. It's ridiculous they come below us near enough every single year and we're totally useless against them every time without fail. I've no doubt they come here and get something as well.