The Modern Day Chelsea Blogsite

Saturday 31 March 2012

15 goals should be Torres' target

I wrote in Febuary that time had run out for Fernando, but under Roberto Di Matteo he has started to find some short of form infront of goal and has actually managed to score! A lot of tweets are going round saying "7 goals/15 assists, not bad for a flop".

Technically they are right, for an actual flop that's not a bad record, not a great one but still. Torres however, is not a flop, he is a proven goal scorer in the Premier League with a 50 million price tag, so a record of 7 goals and 15 assists is bad.

He should be the highest goalscorer in the Premier League, admittedly formations haven't been favourable to him, which is why the new 4-2-3-1 is starting the bring the best out in him. But never-the-less, his record in front of goal is bad, and however you want to dress it up, Torres should be scoring more.

Too put a good light on a bad season, Torres needs to score another 8 goals for his season to be considered "not bad", with Drogba looking likely to leave at the end of the season, Torres need to prove that the club don't need to go out and buy a replacement for the Drogs and the only way he can do that is by scoring goals.

Don't forget to follow me on twitter @samsungbridge and @deanmears.

Up The Chels!

Friday 23 March 2012

How to solve a problem like Gareth Bale

Phone Andrew Lloyd Webber, we don't need him now, there will be no BBC 1 show for this problem, because I think I know, how to solve a problem like Gareth Bale.

The solution is quite simple really, don't let him get anywhere near Bosingwa. So, if he starts on the left, Ashley Cole starts on the right and when Bale tries to go down the right hand side, Cole is swapping wings with him with the help of the two holding midfield players.

Swapping wings is a tactic used by many sides who play 4-3-3 as it unsettles defending teams and creates new angles for wingers to attack from. So why don't defending teams swap full backs to counteract this? The new angles created by a right sided player on the left hand side would be blocked by a right sided defender on the left hand side.

Think about Barcelona when Cole was out and Bosingwa played left back, how quite was Messi?

Bosingwa has come into a lot of criticism recently for this performances and his slack defending allowed a Nasri cross to almost catch out Petr Cech and with Bale's pace and direct running I don't really fancy him against Bale.

If Di Matteo plays 4-2-3-1 like he has done recently, he can use the two holding midfield players to sit in and right back and left back while the two come across the pitch to change positions, meaning for a short while they sit in the holding roles until they can move across. It's the perfect flexible formation and could stop Bale.

If anyone remembers an old Bolton tactic where Kevin Davies would go to Cole on goal kicks and would beat him in the air, to counteract that, John Terry would go left back and Cole at centre half when they played the ball long.

With Lennon out, Chelsea only have to worry about pace on one side of the pitch, meaning they can focus on stopping Modric's midfield work and focus on their own attacking game. But keeping Bale quiet will be a key point if we are going to win this game and get our 4th place hopes back on track.

Thursday 22 March 2012

More fans priced out of the Bridge

After seeing @CFCaway tweet this picture of the ticket prices for Benfica away, I was left feeling pretty sad at how Chelsea's working class fans are being priced out of the game by the men in suits looking to make as much money as they can.

It doesn't come as a surprise to me, it's been happening ever since Kenyon took away cup games from season ticket holders, I would hate to see the cost of attending every Chelsea game for a full season, it would probably go a long way to spending a lottery win.

I've been around Chelsea with people who sell tickets for games, at the FA Cup final against Manchester United in 2007, a Chinese man brought two tickets for a £1000 pounds.

Football started as a working mans game, on a Saturday afternoon when they clocked out of work, sadly today, football is a rich mans game, at any time other than 3 o'clock on a Saturday. Ticket prices have been a problem at Chelsea for a long time, even for games of little significance (Genk at home) but sadly there is nothing anybody can do (not even the Chelsea Supporters Group)

Now, where did I put that lottery ticket?