Very possible he will scrape top 4 and he has a very good chance of leading us to Europa Cup success...qualifying for the CL via 2 comps. Also very unlucky to lose (via a penalty shoot out) the league cup final having been the better side vs England's finest side.
Pochettino, Unai Emery and Ole Gunnar Solskjær are all praised but there's just 1 league point between the 4 clubs and we're not blessed with the attackers the others have.
Is that a terrible return from your first season in English football having inherited a team that failed CL qualification and that already had ownership of a flawed character?
If an overweight and drunk Usain Bolt still beats my 11 year old in a race is that still ok?
I'm far from defending him mate 
I see the finer detail but will the club look at the bigger picture?
Bang on B, was planning to put something similar up myself. It’s a toss up between Us, Spurs & Arsenal as to who has the 6th best squad and those two are blessed with goal scorers. As a collective this current group couldn’t be more flakey if you wrapped them in yellow foil and printed Cadbury on the outside.
Fans and media alike have been over evaluating this group of players all season and the bile and pure hatred being directed at Sarri is disgusting.
Comments such as 'I wish he would die in a plane crash' and the '56 years a supporter, worst manager ever' have crossed my path.
Okay 
Nothing like a bit of perspective! I take it the 56 year supporter has early dementia and has forgotten the delights of Hurst, Blanchflower, Shellito, Hollins & Porterfield?
Precisely mate. ![[^]](../images/smilies/approve.gif)
TBH, D, once that transfer ban came into place I saw Sarri as a leaver. I just don't think he can safely manage us through 2 transfer windows. The faith I had in him was very reliant on him getting his players in. Expectation won't be high during the ban so I'd have a JT/Frank combo in. This isn't me being sentimental...I truly believe they can give the club a huge boost and buy us some patience - strangely lacking outside of the boardroom under this man. The problem with employing those 2 would be they would be backed 100% by the fans and then the players will be called out when a game goes adrift!!!
I feel for Sarri but he doesn't seem to be able to move away from his keep ball and take a more direct route to goal. Strikers aren't scoring because the service is woefully slow and predictable. Basically, Sarri is very rigid in what he does and doesn't seem to be able to tactically adjust easily. Danny Drinkwater may not be everyone's choice but surely he offers a little more than the hard-working Kovacic? Totally ignored by Sarri, which I can't quite understand.
One good thing under Sarri, RLC, CHO and Barkley have all improved. Great to see RLC save the day yesterday...that's me being sentimental
Sarri has his blind spots but all managers do even the great ones. If I was JT/Frank I’d swerve us until there was a clear pathway from our youth set up to the first team otherwise they would be working with very limited resources and talent pool.
I’ve felt for a long time that we have been approaching a huge crossroads where we could not carry on playing in the defensive manner we have in the last five seasons with so much reliance on individuals of the class of Fabregas, Hazard & Costa to provide and score goals.It was obvious to me that the previous level of financial resources are not available and therefore we will not compete for the best players. In order to at least maintain a position in the top six we have to change the style of play to try and keep the ball as our rivals now have the better impact players who only need one chance or one mistake by the opposition.
Personally I think he’s on the right track, we are certainly no worse than last season and will probably end up with more points. The problem has been the intensity levels but I think that is a player issue as opposed to a Sarri issue.
What annoys me is that with so much still to play for with seven games to go along with the Europa League as well, why people spend their energy getting on the man’s back just because he didn’t bring on an 18 year old sulky kid when he’s trying to win three points.
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Chelsea don’t spend the money they did on the players they got in, and a supposed top manager, just to scrape into the top four, though, B.
Tbh C, I think Sarri has done just about all this squad is capable of. It's very reliant on Hazard and when he stutters we stutter. I was never a huge fan of Costa but at least he was his own man and demanded attention. It's all very robotic these days, sadly. All about flicks and tricks now - we need some muscle.
It's not at all but we live in an era of short termism and hysteria, with no room for balance or nuance. It seems you either have to hate the bloke and everything about him and think he's the worse thing ever to happen to this club, or you have to absolutely love him and everything he stands for and back everything he does. You aren't allowed to sit in the middle anymore.
You hear some of abuse he gets off his own fans, and you wouldn't expect right-thinking folk to be like that towards their worst enemy, let alone a guy who's just trying to do a job the best he can. But logic goes out the window with football fans.
He is unfortunate is some respects because he's followed some managers who have worked wonders here and done jobs that have perhaps never been given the credit they deserve(d), and in comparison it looks like he's failing. He's also unfortunate in that he's joined a club with expectations that are so high, based on the number of trophies won over the past 15 years, which doesn't account for the fact that in the cold light of day, when you look at it from the outside with a disconnected perspective, we are currently pretty much performing at par, for various reasons. I think a lot of fans are still stuck in the days of when we were by far the biggest spenders in the League and you had nowhere near the level of competition at the top as what there is now, especially given how drastically different our spending/transfer policy is from the first half of the Roman era, so you can't judge him the same way we judged Scolari etc. back in those days.
When you consider that many of his critics also criticised Mourinho, Conte, Ancelotti, I do think our support has got to the stage where they will literally never be satisfied or allowing of anything less than perfection anymore. It's one thing having high expectations and high standards, but when they're not necessarily aligned with realism, then these types of fans are never going to be happy.
I don't hate the bloke or everything about him - and I'd be delighted to be proved wrong but I don't think he should be our manager. the fact that we are 1 point or whatever it is off of 4th isn't a reflection on him as much its a reflection on the state of 4 clubs who are 29 points behind the top spot.
I don't agree logic has gone out of the window. I don't think it's illogical to ask a team to be flexible or play their players in the right position or to see beyond the end of your nose and recognise that you are making your job harder in so many ways by not blooding quality youngsters. I don't think it's impressive to belittle your players in front of the media.
We're not the 80's Chelsea when being sht but having a laugh with it is enough. It's not a badge most want to wear anymore. We are just as likely to drop further behind the top 5 as we are to cut what will be a near 40 point gap at the end of the season. Being a little less sht than others isn't good enough when you have the resources available to be better than them.
It's possible FFP and our lack of ground redevelopment/reluctance to move is now coming for us and this is how the future looks. Certainly been a 'tightening of the belt' around SB. I think where are in 2019 is where we will be for a few years to come tbh.
What we see on the pitch is a reflection of how far we are behind off the pitch.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying every critic or criticism of him is wrong, it’s more just a general observation about the comments and reaction to him on social media and the like; it feels like people have to be in the camp of wishing him all manner of vile things to show how much they hate him and think he’s a cnut, and if not then you’re in some kind of cult where he can do no wrong. I get that nowadays this kind of polarised and extreme opinion isn’t unique to Chelsea, Sarri and football, of course, but it does seem like rational debate is getting rarer (all the more important this site stays live as it keeps me off having to venture into the depths of Chelsea Twitter!) Why are people wishing death on a bloke who they think is not doing a good job managing their football team?
The vitriol I’ve seen aimed at him at times is staggering. I’ve not been a lot this season but some of the anger and hate I heard at the Arsenal away game just felt crazy to me, and I know from speaking to non-Chelsea fans (many of whom aren’t necessarily admirers of Sarri) they find the actual hatred, surprising and bizarre as well.
Again it all comes back to the same point, for me. The resources available aren’t what they were. The club is drifting. We’ve only qualified for the Champions League one of the last three (maybe now four) seasons, this is not the same club as a lot of fans still think it is anymore. Gone are the days when even runners-up was deemed failure. And there are things outside of the club’s control that have contributed to that fall from grace too.
For all Sarri’s flaws and faults, City are on a different level to what we ever were, in terms of spending power, and they also happen to be well-run enough to have put a proper plan in place to get one of the very best coaches in the world on board and involved in a project. Our board hired a project/philosophy manager, however you want to label it, with little or no thought given as to how they could help him best achieve those longer term aims. Why bother? If you wanted a pragmatist, don’t treat Conte or Mourinho like cnuts like they did when they were here, and give them the backing they asked for and earned.
Liverpool (and Spurs, relative to perhaps where they ‘should be’) haven’t just become the teams they are now overnight, they’ve invested time and money in projects and backed managers who have yet to deliver silverware despite years at the helm. They’re clubs (generally) pulling in the same direction and we’re years behind them and City in terms of building a team, despite only being a point behind Spurs!
If the plan was to carry on as we have been for the past few years, with a Frankenstein's monster of a squad and trying to squeeze some sense of it all (as Conte sucessfully did but only in the short term before last season went the way this one's has - something which too many people forget) they should never have hired Sarri. That’s not his fault, he’s just doing the job anyone who paid any attention to what he did in Italy would know he was going to do (and presumably those who employed him did their research!) As cfcww has alluded to, the transfer policy has changed for the most part so much from the early Roman era, it’s clear that they’ve wanted so much to get away from the style of football that actually earned us all the success and try to win things a different way. That was never going to happen overnight. Or in one season. Or without a major squad upheaval. Basically, without a coherent plan in place for the club to point to and follow! It may never happen at all with this manager and on the whole, performances haven’t been good enough for too long now, but to blame him for everything instead of just the valid criticisms that should be aimed at him, helps nobody IMHO.
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