#1035 | Chelsea’s Guard of Honor for Champions Man City #CFC

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When you sell your car on Vroom.com, you get a price instantly and they'll even come pick it up. Simply put, Vroom is a better way to buy a car. So if you're a motorhead and you're looking for something unique or you're a busy parent who's always on the go, and either way, if you don't have time to shop for a new car the old way, don't hesitate. Just visit Vroom.com. You can buy a car from Vroom entirely online, so next time you need to buy a new car, just grab your phone, go to Vroom.com, and check out thousands of cars. This is Joe Cole. This is Ruben of the Chic and you're listening to the London Blue Podcast. All right, Chelsea fans, welcome back to another episode of the London Is Blue Podcast. This is my major because Nick and Dan and gentlemen, this is my pacing. There's only one. Two matches left. One more match this week and then final and super Sunday. I think I'm more excited for it to be over if I'm being completely honest with you. Of course. Congrats, man city. Yeah. Hey, Arsenal won. Hey, now, now, can we just say, and I tweeted this the other day, caught a little bit of traction. So I'm shouting myself out mostly. But the fact that in the season where Tottenham and Arsenal were fighting it out and they're doing their thing and that they both capitulated so hilariously at the end. Sperzially what three or four spots I had about a sector being in fourth for mostly year. This has been absolutely heartwarming as Chelsea fan. And while we are not very good, the fact that in their greatest season in 20 years, Arsenal still won as many trophies as we did. Two thumbs up on it. So once they got into first place, there was only one week until they blew it in the last four that they weren't in first. So they were three percent of the season. They were first by week three. They were in first and wrote it had a blip in week 22 and then wrote it again, which is funny because if you see man city, they're just the shark lurking underneath the surface the entire time and then shark attack. That's just Erland Holland, actually. That's just he's just down. But then his jaws at the end. Yeah. So we can talk a lot about that. But unfortunately, we're gonna have to save it because it's just a Manchester City match review. We're gonna be looking at a quick recap of Chelsea's performance in quotation marks against the champions. Look at whose stock is on the rise ahead of the summer window as we've started to do more recently. And then around over the latest reports on Chelsea, including some rumored destinations for current players, that's right. It's not all about ends. There's a lot of outs this summer. So to kick it off, as we always do Dan Tepchuk of the people, the three word match review. Yeah. Ringo with Holland didn't score. That's right. Did not score against Chelsea this season. So if you want to talk about one positive stat of note, that's a good one because he scored a lot and a lot against multiple teams. Gris with the WeWatch City TV. It did feel like that at times. Michael with the blah, blah, blah, in terms of ways to describe the match, which feels about right. Alan with the beaten by substitutes and fits with thanks for the memories. Thanks for memory. Tricky. Tricks for the memories. Blah, blah, blah, blah. There you go. Fall boy interface. Brandon, take that. I will. I'm going to take it and avoid it and continue to move. I said, you're welcome, City. That's right. We really, really rolled over on this one for you. So you're welcome, Nick. What about you? We there yet? Question mark. Dad, are we there yet? Almost. Very close, Dan. Lastly, catered the coronation because you don't really remember catered is on the day. You don't remember the individual catered. We were just there as the backdrop for city celebrations and we didn't mess it up for him. So they had a great day. Wonderful. We didn't spread it where the tux is, Dan. That would have been a nice little serving tray. That would have been. Well, Simon Johnson did have the tweet that Chelsea were doing the extended guard of honor, which felt absolutely right for the way we were just letting them stride through the middle of the park for large parts of the match. Just clapping the entire time. Yeah. What he say is like 25th minute and Chelsea are still stuck in their guard of honor or something like that. Yeah. Tough, tough, tough. All right. Well, we can go ahead and say a huge thanks to Charles, who joined Patreon and Apple podcast, the five service of CPT, that three from the US. And again, continuing to drive that four, 4.9 rating, we're getting close to 3k would really love to reach out by the end of the season. So we have something to celebrate because that's where we're at is Chelsea fans. So if we could unite amongst that, I think that'll, that'll bring some joy to people's lives. And if you were like, Hey, guys, you produced a shit ton of podcasts last week. You are correct. We did produce a shit ton of podcasts. I would go back and listen to the Chelsea youth or column crew special with Chelsea youth. That was great. Brandon and Phil breaking it all down at the end of the Academy season. And then there were two lit Tinkerman episodes that were published Friday and Saturday. So if you're not a Saturday listener, typically, go back during your week, go listen to those. They're really great. Joe and Seb, the late Tinkerman are doing a great job on that. So just want to shout those out. I know we produce a shit ton of content. It's hard to keep track of sometimes. Just go back in your feed and click play and do your thing. You're welcome. Enjoy it. Just don't miss it. That's the big thing. Don't miss the goodness. But we're going to jump into the match review here. It was Man City. This past Saturday, the 21st of May. There it is, Dan. There it is. We've been asked pre prepod Nick. Are there anything to worry about? Dan? No, no, but it was Sunday, May 21st, Dan Sunday in the Premier League, not at Stanford. Chelsea, at the Eddie Hot Stadium. You are absolutely miserable right now. Manchester City one, Chelsea, Neil got that right goal from Alvarez in the 12th minute. So we're going to go ahead and turn over to Chelsea to run it back with the official highlights. Thank you to the Chelsea in the fifth stand up, the only official out from Chelsea for letting us use these. Go subscribe and a download if you haven't. We'll be here back. Alvarez, really. It's the most important thing to go in front. And it's really Alvarez against Chelsea again. That's all lovely balls sterling. What on what here can he find a finish? It's a really good chance for Chelsea to draw that ball. It's a good ball and Conne Gaga at the back post. It's the post. All two is left in loads of space. If he gets his head up, really, still he hangs onto it. Now he plays it to Hall. Now the go with the Swinger Lewis all the way to the 50th effort with his weaker foot. So close to his first city goal. Sterling on the count of the Chelsea. There's a head of it. That's two space again, left side for Hall. That's where the ball's going. That's Hall again. He's going to go for goal again. Turn the way by. It's quite snappled the rebound. Here's Sterling. Another chance for a heam sterling. Can he take it? Sterling! Oh, as it crept over the bag, it was so close. Like a lot of it says. They go on for now. They're going to go for two. Chelsea say handball. Now the goal's given. We know what happens nine times out of ten. When the referee comes over to the monitor. He only needs one look. He's saying no goal. Handball. That's good. Good cross as well. Nice. Nice. Keep going. All right. Line up time. Dan, let's see if you can tip toe your way through these murky waters. Look, one game for Ivo Mendi. And then it's Kepa back between the sticks. West Pafana, Tiaco Silva and Trev Chilba as a back three with Azpul Quetta and Louis Hall on the wings. Enzo and Ruben Loftus-Chik with Connor Gallagher in the middle. And then it was Kai Havertz and Rahim Sterling up top. You saw Michaela Mujrick and No Na Mataweke come in in the 69th minute. And then you saw a double sub in the E first minute for Lewis Hall coming out for Caleduko Bali and then Chumquameka making a crazy appearance. Very wild to see him back in Atlanta. For cool. All off to chic. What? Yeah, that did happen. And then you saw Christian Pulisic came into a Chelsea match. I do believe someone indicated that was not going to happen before the end of the season. In it's doesn't matter. Still Dan was looking at me while saying that. Yeah, right. Stand you really nailed it. You feel good about that, do you? I feel great. Yeah. Okay. We'll talk about Lampard's comments after the match. So say a couple of those players. But overall, I actually think Nick, that sheds more light onto the lineup and maybe the decisions they went to again. We're going from back three to back four. I'm sorry, back four to back three. I even talked about it. It's like, Oh, look, the team starting to settle in like. Trevo looked good as a right back, a traditional right back. You're right. Now let's make him play left center back today. That'll really keep Mona's toes and like, he's never played a Lewis Hall before. It's just like this, the end of the season is just really starting to like hurt my brain. It's painful. Yeah, it's painful. The guys on NBC were talking and I could kind of see where they were coming from, although it was a little frustrating between all of the city coordination, Chelsea or horrible talk. They were like, well, do we think that like Frank and and Poch are talking behind the scenes about who Poch needs to see play to make a judgment call on and stuff like that. And maybe that is happening. Maybe I'm naive, but it feels secondary to the team just going out and performing. And I mean, if that is happening, if you are trotting out Kai Haverts, if you are trotting out as P if you are trotting out Ruben Loftus cheek or whatever. So we're doing tryouts mid season now. Like that seems very odd to me. And again, it's entirely feasible that I make for landing and I even this one particular instance, but I would hope that isn't the case. And but I also can understand why people are frustrated that they aren't seeing Madawike the they're seeing mudrick because as Dan as illustrated, some of these subs made a huge impact on the team. So it's like what the hell? I mean, according to Matt, he doesn't think there are going to be any conversations between those two at this point. And so I think I think you're okay with that take. How about this a little bit surprising? We had 1.23 X goals there 1.09. So is this like NHL where if you get to overtime, you each get a point, but someone still wins. We had we had four more shots on target. We had almost the same amount of total shots. I mean, I don't think this was our worst performance of the year. Do you guys like it was not great, but it wasn't the worst. No, I mean, one team did rotate extremely heavily. And so far score has a 3313 formation. So that probably was a thing that we hadn't seen before. Like classic Pep, I did look at foot mob Dan though, too. And they said three, two, four, one, either way, city came out just in a very interesting situation in a shape and look, there's some big numbers on the field. 82 Rika Lewis, 80 Cole Palmer talking some NFL receiver numbers out there. Yeah, Dan, some of them were burning our players as well as receivers burning center back or got a cornerbacks rather in the NFL. A little tough. One random stat this time not coming from Opta, which it really should just be Opta's placeholder. You found this on Reddit, Dan? I did. Yeah. User time wave. Put a comment together saying we haven't scored a single goal against Man City since our Champions League final. I'd heard that too. Yeah. Yikes. Look, from a trade off, we kept it close. Probably the right trade. Probably the right trade. However, Lee. Well, yeah, and I would say this too. Like during that time, city has beaten us one nil in the league, one nil in the league, two nil in the league cup, which we know we rotated like crazy because we have that injury situation for nil in the FA Cup right after the World Cup and one nil in the league, one nil in the league. These are not trouncings in the league. They're usually really tight games. And of course, Chelsea and her to cool were the perfect foil for what Papen City were doing because we were so tight defensively and we had the right structure to kind of open up space behind their backline. But even since then, it's not as if they're Maurizio, sorry, six nilling us like that's not what's happening here. And I think it's important to put that in context because they are the best team in the world right now. They are going to convincingly win the Champions League final. They're going to beat the absolute snot out of United in the FA Cup final. I don't think there could be any doubt about that. So Kaku plays the spoiler. It's minute winner. Dan. All right. Enough out of you. But they're the best team in the world. And like if you if you really look at how they played against us in the league, yes, they rotated everybody because they have other shit to play for and we don't. But like, this is this is not them beating Arsenal four nil a few weeks ago. Like, you know, that's true. We put up a decent fight against them. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. The photo of the city bench today was it was pretty funny. Yeah, you kind of like, but you knew that was going to happen. Right. So that's why I didn't captain or captain Erling Holland in fantasy. Prevently duh. That is but that's the right that they've earned 100% 100. I still have two cup finals to play for. We have fuck all to play for it. Like that's and this is gordiola to a max being like, okay, I'm going to have you rotate because my stars are saving themselves and understandable. So I'm going to say, you know, Riko Lewis, go show me you're going to stay on the team. Go show me you can play at this level. Go show me that you're going to fight for the badge. All those things like this just played into his hand and obviously we'll get into it here in a second. But yeah, Chelsea didn't, I don't know, we didn't get it across the line. But you know, what were your expectations at this point, ladies and gentlemen, like it just not that was not our role to play the way the season is gone. So anyways, we're going to take our ad break and we get back jumping into the first half, see what we can pull out of that when thinking of the sponsors and we'll be right back. Bet you didn't see this coming. I'll be ready to hear editor Jake's voice for a while on the ads. Ha ha. This time we're coming with shady rays kick off the new year with new gear built to last. Our friends at Shady Ray's have you covered from the sun to the slopes with premium polarized shades, customizable snow goggles and more. Shady Ray's is a world class sunglasses company independently built that'll have you thinking you're wearing some of the world's top brands that you already know, durable frames and extremely clear optics. 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Back we are first half Chelsea, we're able to keep city at bay at least 10 minutes, right? And obviously Alvarez get the goal. I wasn't a big fan of that goal. That was pretty soft. Obviously, it's one mistake. And this kind of opened me up into like a bit of a cup of spiral day. And I don't know if we want to go there right away, but a little bit of sloppy from Chelsea and of course, city being in such good form they are were clinical and took advantage of it. It was not ideal. None of it was ideal. So we can just get that out of the way. Hard take, Jan. Thanks. Again, I don't know if anyone was coming into this conversation expecting that Chelsea were going to do anything different than just try to hold off and keep them at arms length as long as possible because the same problems we've had for the entirety of the season are the same problems we're having in game week 36 for us. Just the way it is that this this team, even with rotation, even in bringing other players in Nick just continues to be the same team. They are who we thought they were. Yeah, I mean, look, this was a spacing issue to them extreme, right? You play back for for three straight matches and then you revert back to a back three Trevo only playing a second match at left center back. Tiago Silva in really bad positioning if we can just be honest about it. They're the space between those players you could have driven a bus through. And it turns out who Lee and Alvarez is a fucking good player and that he effortlessly put it past Kepa to put it in the back of the night. I don't blame that one on Kepa. Do I think he should have got a hand to it? Of course, but like the the bad deed was already done at that point. Tiago Silva was in really bad positioning, couldn't cut off the pass and once you put Alvarez is on goal, it's it's blouses. I mean, that that kid is good. I mean, they got him for for pennies on the dollar or two last summer and I was like, fuck, like, we got to get better at that sort of buying than we have been like we absolutely have to. And you know what, they made us pay for it. And that is football. You know, they were going crazy. I think because they are not the starters though, like that city press got it was almost non-existent. The rest of the match, like they they weren't really hard at us in the first half. And you know, Lee Dixon was really enjoying piling on via the NBC commentary every time that we would do something not so great. But you know, I think we actually weathered that storm pretty well. Like, you know, you've seen us this year, Dan, when you give up a goal early, the team kind of drops its head and goes into a shell and doesn't fight back. And I actually think we did fight back. I mean, obviously, we'll talk about a couple of big moments coming up here. But you could have you could have seen this team go in a complete opposite direction. I was happy that they didn't for the most part. Well, even the players that were called upon in this game by Pep Palmer in particular, I think was giving Chelsea a lot of trouble on the right hand side, particularly with Aspie and Fofana struggling a couple of unfortunate passes that did not connect with a Chelsea blue. They connected with a city blue, the the blue of the sky. It was like it was planned for the day, the type of commentary that we were getting about how perfect it was and how everything was falling for city in this day and in this match. But I think Brandon, it really wasn't until like the 30th minute or so when we started to kind of find all the right spacing, we were getting our ability to kind of play him further forward. We were finding a couple of opportunities. We certainly had the one shot, you know, in the 33rd minute concerts, a big chance. Like we worked our way back into it after going down, which from a resiliency standpoint, which is nice to see. Yeah, I am for sure, you know, heads didn't drop, right? I think that that was good. Chelsea knew that they probably did have an opportunity if they could sneak in by city. This is the chance you would have imagined that it would have been Reheam Sterling, the most motivated out there having just been well on that team, not 12 months ago. But I think he knew what he was giving up to come to Chelsea and clearly had other ideas of what he wanted to accomplish and 33rd minute he could have could have done it. I mean, he had, he had, he had, he had the opportunity. He had a few today too, but you know, like credit for getting in the right position. Everyone is fans simultaneously groaning as it didn't come off yet again. And I think that that's probably kind of summed up his season a little bit, right? I even think to like Dortmund woman there, Nick, he had about three breakaways and even when he had like an absolute one on one, the keeper and he got towards the top of the box and he just, he could make a decision. He just didn't know what to do at that moment, which is weird because we bought him because he's a veteran. He's played in big games. He's a big game player. He'll be a leader and unfortunately the season's been so shit that it's curbed his his superpowers. Yeah, I mean, he had that one kind of one on one with their backup keeper where a confident regime Sterling would have easily chipped him and put it into the back of the net and hit it straight at it or take I believe it's his name. And I just, I don't know what it is. I think Poch is going to have to put an arm around him and a lot of the attackers, frankly, and figure out mentally what's going on when making decisions one on one with goalkeeper. I mean, there have been no shortage of big chances that we have missed this year. I think we have the most big chances missed in the whole Premier League by a fair it's a distant margin. And that has to change. I mean, early Holland on his own has more goals than we do as a team in the league this year. But that's, that's just not sustainable. You want to know why we're on fucking 12. It's that like we can't convert chances. We couldn't convert the chance when when Connor had it against the post kind of crashing the back post like it's, it's a real problem. And yes, team has scored goals over the last couple of weeks, but you know, you only get so many of these chances of game and the good teams bury them Alvarez buried his they didn't have a whole lot more, but they won't. We have as many goals as you're right. 36 36 were level on goals with Holland, but everything Southampton wolves. They're under him on that one. So just, you know, thought I'd point that out. You know, yeah, I think I'll save the cup of stuff for KSL. I've already kind of been compiling notes and things like that. But my hint into that is if his best season makes me feel like city's backup cool keeper is better than him based on the day. It's not that's not a good look for him. And so it just makes you wonder how many other people could we potentially have to fill that role because we've been let down time after time, even though we had a pretty good start to the season. A second half made some changes, right? Little shake it up a little bit. See what we can do. We had the first save Mujyr coming in with Madawak in the 69th minute. You're like, yes, attacking pace, Dan, directness, like let's go. This is aggressive. And, you know, it was, was for a time. Madawak continues to show some of his flashes, but, you know, neither of them could really get into it. And if you look at the stats, they definitely say our left side was far stronger than our right side throughout the entirety of the match. I don't know if you felt like you could make a difference. I mean, the lazy argument is well, Aspie's old, Lewis Hall is young, Lewis Hall ran aspie didn't. But I felt like Aspie ran, he put in the effort. But I guess it just looked like Lewis Hall is more effective, maybe with like the triangle of Reheem Ruben in Lewis. Yeah, that feels right. The combo that Lewis was working with felt like it was doing a little more to try to move the ball forward to try to get into space. I think, again, it was just the repeat of problem is not getting up into the box. Problem is taking the shot and getting it into the back of the net. And again, I don't know, just give me the first choice goalkeeper. Don't give me a backup anymore. I never want to face the backup because somehow they play exceptionally well on the day. Just continue to find a way to make our lives absolutely frustrating. But I mean, look, Mujricka Medi went away getting minutes, makes a lot of sense. There are players who are contracted with the club for a long time. You have to continue to get them opportunities. I mean, there are others like, you know, Gallagher, I thought had a strong day out. And there's some questions about why didn't Chuck Omega star? Like Chuck Omega's also coming out like cold. And Gallagher has come in putting and attacking performances today, just where he's at from a standard point is at a higher level of Chuck Omega. And so I think you have to bounce this in some way. And it's like, Jenga, you know, 10, 15, 20 moves in Nick. It's not perfect. It's not super stable. But you do have to take into consideration some of the blocks and every, every selection you make means something else has to move around. And you have to add some level of individual who's played at this level before with maybe someone who hasn't had that opportunity and give them a little bit of shelter. Otherwise, you might risk giving them a really rough day out. Yeah, I mean, of course, I think there's an argument to be made to give all these guys a lot more playing time than maybe what we're seeing right now, right? Like, I understand why people are frustrated. Because basically the minute that we want against Bournemouth, the season was over, right? We were safe and secure. And, you know, why not give some of these young cats a rollout to get them ready for what the level is. And of course, against City, the level is high. And we know because Chukumeka has played against City in both of the the League Cup and the FA Cup. And he played relatively effectively. I mean, he got a scored in the League Cup against them that, yeah, I think people are frustrated. I think they wanted to see a lot more of Mudric. They want to see a lot more Metawake. They want to see David Datcho-Fafana get a run out. They want to see less of your ZSAs, less of your whatever's, right? But it's, I also understand if you're frank, like it's been such a bad run that you just, you don't want to go down five-nil to City because you threw an inexperienced team that doesn't have any sort of gel to them out there to slaughter. Like, I don't think that's good management either. And so I don't know, Brandon, like I'm kind of caught between those two thoughts because I certainly would like to see Chukumeka play the last two games of the season. I would like to see a lot of the subs play a lot more. But I think Frank is kind of looking at this going, my managerial year might have just put me out for a long time from people being scared to hire me. And I don't want to go down in total flames. Right. I think when this is my guess, I think when Frank took over, he thought there was like a 5% chance. If he went on a good run, he might get the job. Right. That very quickly evaporated. Very quickly. Minutes into a tenure. From everything we've heard from inside the camp, right, that's been reported is that it's a bit of a message Chelsea right now. I don't think that's going to surprise anybody for obvious reasons. This is the fourth-ish manager of the season. The players are tired, right? They are over this. Understandably so. They are in a fortunate position to play football for a career and make a shit ton of money doing it. But even they have like limits to the disaster. So now Lampard has to come in and go, all right, I'm going to charge it around, charge it around. It's not working. And now he goes, all right, well, if I can't convince people with the results, right, winning three points, I got to figure out another way to spin this and then it's good. And so he was being maybe a little bit too honest right here. And I get it. Like if I'm him, Dan, I 100% am going to start positioning myself as like, look, I'm doing the best I can here. It's obviously a tough situation. I've got ideas, but you know, it's just not the right time to maybe implement some things. So I'm just trying to play it safe and keep the keep the ship afloat at this point. And what that means is Carnes isn't really going to play much, right? I don't know why he got called out Chuck Omega perspective, but like, pull the sick hasn't played body shield didn't play for a long time. Still isn't playing like Trevo just recently started playing. He's had a lot of different choices to make. And it's can pretty been pretty consistent. My confusion is all the chops and the changes. I think that's what he's going to need to answer in these interviews. Not why did you not play a young player like Chuck Omega? To me, I think that that's not the question he's going to get in his next job interview. Yeah, it seems to me that this came on the back of the news that he didn't get the refused kind of the call up to stay at Chelsea versus going with the England under 20 squads for their matches. And so I think that's where the question comes from. But it is something where I don't know why we refuse the call up because seemingly I don't see him getting minutes until the end of the, you know, before the end of maybe the last match of the season, given the fact you're also trying to see is Gala going to going to be someone that you keep around next year or is he going to be one of the players that you sell to offset the books? Like there was a lot of consideration for some of the other players who played today too, not just Chuck Omega. And so I get Frank's answer, but also like maybe not the right wording when kind of you're talking about it from the lens of the job. I think it would be better maybe to frame it back to the, you know, look, we've got a lot of players that we're trying to get opportunities for. We're going to get as many as we can in the right moments. And you know, I'm like, that might have been might have avoided people taking criticism with the way that he worded this. Hey, cover your ass policy in full force. It is really getting to the point where nobody can win at this rate, unfortunately. So let's go ahead and wrap the season as quickly as possible. We're going to take our last ad break when we get back. Moving on to summer stock watch. Single sponsors and we'll be right back. Are you missing out on your favorite shows because it's not available in your region? Trying to keep your private time private. Well, let me introduce you to Nord VPN. If you board of the US Netflix, why not just take it for a spin in the UK using Nord VPN and a clickable button. You can do just that. 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My link Nord VPN dot com forward slash London is blue to get your subscription started today. All right, we got a couple players we want to talk about here, making their case to stay or become more of a crucial part of the team next season. On the rise, we've seen Lewis Hall absolutely come in as expected and do the damn job. Right. Ever since we lost chili B. Cukarella at this point, you're like, well, what do we do? Do we play aspia left wing back? Do we see if Ruben can do it? And maybe trouble. Oh, yeah, we got Lewis Hall, a left footed center mid in the academy who also debuted who also toilets is a left wing back. And he's done well, Nick, right? Is he flawless? No. Has he been better than most? Yes. Like from an emergency option. He's above average. Definitely. I mean, he's a Premier League player. Let's just flat out say that he has the technical ability and the drive to make it in the primary league. I think if Mauricio Pochettino is looking at his tape this season, that is a young player that you can work with because I think he's already at the level. I mean, not only has he played in the primary league, much more than we thought he was going to do. He's played well. I mean, he doesn't get scared taking players on. Of course, he's not a left back or a left wing back. So his defensive position can get a little dicey at times. Like that's something that, you know, whatever, I look past because the point in the season that we're at and all this other context that we've already thrown in. But as a player, again, very unlucky to score today from left wing back, right? I don't know what it is about our wing backs having better shots on target than our forwards. But here we are. And I just I think the world of this kid, like I can't imagine how difficult it's been for him, Dan, to come in and be a part of this absolute colossal shit show that there has been this year and to be asked to play a position multiple times that isn't anywhere close to what you grew up playing and to play at a Premier League level. This is the third time he's faced city this year, by the way. And I think has acquitted himself relatively well in those games. To me, this is one that I know we're going to have as a conversation point for KSL. And again, I have to iterate. If I'm Maricia Ponce, you know, I like a lot of what I'm seeing. It'll be interesting to see when you think about, you know, Monson coming back with Lewis Hall there, can you move on Cucarea potentially during the summer? There are going to be a lot of decisions that we get into from a KSL perspective. I mean, there was the only the one disallowed goal where it went off of Mars's arm where Hall really got done. But outside of that, you weren't seeing mistakes happen on his side of the pitch. And in general, like he was looking to find ways in looking to advance the ball. And so just in general, happy with the performance, happy with what he did. And happy to see more of him. And we'll figure out where that is next season, whether that's with the Chelsea first team or on loan or some other configuration. Yeah, he needs to be challenged in the full men's game next season one way or another. And I don't know, depending on what happens with with Chilbon Cucarella, if if you keep both, then he needs to find minutes elsewhere. If one of whatever reason, one of those two are not here, brilliant opportunity to to deputize. It sounds like Dan was watching Ian Matson's IG live. They're good, Dan. Nice. You know, board on the weekend, you got to find something to do. Yeah, I just a special shout out for Enzo, just for someone who worked his socks off. I know he got slated on American commentary a little bit, not really sure why. He's going to be here forever. The price tag will continue to be the reason why he is called out. And that's just the situation. Well, lazy punditry does not win awards. Ruben Loft is chic. I don't know. Like, great for him. Is it a little bit too late? Is it not consistent enough? Seems to have been pretty healthy this season for the most part, which is good. He's he's we know he can go box the box at some points. Nick, he was running past Man City midfielders like he was able to break lines on the dribble. And so I don't know. This is now the seventh season running that we don't know what to do through. Veen Loft is chic. I mean, like, let's just put it out there. The reports are that he's going to sign for Milan in the summer AC. Yeah, AC Milan, you know, enter his enter, right? But I think the what this performance made me feel like is nostalgic for his 2019 form when he got a real run that that spring under sorry on that left hand side was able to drive the ball forward was able to make a lot of plays out of that position. I think looked pretty solid defensively. And this is this is a player that I know that there are a lot of split opinions on. And rightfully so he's not always been consistent and he's certainly not been healthy. And I wouldn't call him a defensive wizard. But you can have all that as an argument. And I will take his driving of the ball ability. Like his his driving ability is better than anyone else in the team for me. I just don't know of anyone else in our squad who can keep the ball like he can moving forward and bully people when he wants to, right? The great question is why doesn't he do this all the time? Fair enough fair enough point. But that was kind of my take on him today. And you know, again, I if he moves, I'm going to wish him well and hope that he does great in the future, just like we have with almost all of our former players. But it made me a little nostalgic, Dan. That's all seven ground rules attempted six one. Three dribbles attempted to succeeded. He had a little bit of what? Covertchitch prior to the back half or early parts of this season in prior seasons did really well moving the ball forward box the box, keeping in and retaining possessions, doing it both from like a diagonal perspective to and kind of the windy runs throughout the pitch, wherever there was available space. And look, the type of replacement player either as a academy promote who is going to be less experienced is going to maybe not be as maybe more mistake prone, or having to bring someone in to bring that, you know, bring that skill and ability, both have a cost either in terms of the performance of the depth of the squad that you're going to want to have for next season, or in a material dollars and cents costs or pounds and sterling costs. And so I think the thing to keep in mind is that he probably fits perfectly right now the role of a rotational squad player. The question is, is that what he wants at this point in his career and with this contract, which else he winding down? Or is the rumored move or moves that we'll kind of talk about in this roundup of news stories, is that because of a desire to start desire to play more regularly than he's getting an opportunity to a Chelsea. I think I think that's what he had to choose on his last contract extension. He chose to stay and fight and probably accepted that role. I think he's selling pretty good money. He's got that carbon premium, but I could be wrong. Obviously, I don't know all of his financials. Again, every time his contract comes up, it's like, we're in this weird flux position. He's played some minutes that probably just enough to keep him around or keep me interested. But I'm sure after watching what Tammy's done with Roma, getting to the Europe League final, what fixed on having one a Serretado, like, it might be itching. That's all I'm saying might be itching. So anyways, moving on is Nick kind of transitioned us already to reporting roundup. Some latest news and rumors and yet for Britio saying that Ruben Loptecika is potentially going to Abe Simelan. Apparently, there's concrete talks. He's the priority to target to rebuild their midfield. Sounds like he's keen on the move as the negotiation is progressing very well. We'll have to wait and see how that goes. That just means we need more midfielders this summer. Yay. And again, like part of the reason that Phil has been so adamant, and I think this is a correct opinion, if it costs anything to replace these guys, you need to have a thought about it, right? Because Chelsea are not in a position right now to go spend another 600 million pounds to replace the whole team. So if you if you're convinced as Marisio Paccino might be that Lewis Hall or Charni Chukumeka or someone could fill the Ruben Loptecika sized hole in your team and they already exist, then okay, fair enough. But if you're going to have to go recruit to replace him, that doesn't make any fucking sense. And I think that is the kind of like broader carbon pipeline line that I just want to kind of make known here that it's not as if Chelsea are blessed with a immense amount of healthy midfielders today. But yeah, you start playing a three-mid field combo and space is good tight pretty quick, especially if Mason says. Yeah, that I mean, that that is very true in which yeah, we got to get that sort of thank you for opening that wound record Portugal reporting Chelsea are in the battle for Uarte with Liverpool and Villa, Villa of all people apparently have 200 million to spend this summer dance or watch out. But a lot of people been talking about the sporting Lisbon midfielder could do a double Portuguese Portugal league swoop. It is an option, you know, with McAllister looking likely to go to Liverpool, that means that they might be less likely to go after another midfielder or might be less of a priority for them. I think his release clause is around 60 million euros. So it is not a cheap exit. And also Benfica sporting and one other club are under investigation at the moment right now for the big three porto. Yeah, the big three porto are under investigation for irregularities. So be very interesting to see if that does or doesn't change any incoming through outgoings from their perspective. So that would just be something to kind of keep in the background. But look, we need a midfielder. He would be a good option. So expect his name to get continue to link to Chelsea throughout the majority of the window as long as he's in sign for another club. But I mean, record were also the same source that we're reporting a lot of information when we were going after Enzo. And so like this is, you know, record is a good source. So it is usually briefed from the club side or from the Asian side on there. We know that Logarte is a Mendez player too. So just keep that in mind. And that Mendez definitely loves to make use of anything in his arsenal to try to get his players the move that they were looking for. Keep it classy San Diego. And then apparently a new striker for Brice Romano again on the double here next saying that Chelsea are toying around an 80 million euro bid for Dusan Vlavitch at Juventus. He's one of many strikers appreciated at the club, but no bid or talks. Apparently Barnum and United are also in the race for him. Look, if you want an opinion, I'm just saying go check out at Chicago Dimitri. He's got the stats. He's got the receipts. This guy's record was amazing when he went there from Fiorentina. And it is just the bottoms falling out. It feels like inflation has hit the prices of of Siriole strikers recently. And this is the latest culprit. I'm not a scout. I've seen him play. I think that there's talent there, but I always question the physicality coming from other leagues into the Premier League because it is such a demanding physical league. It's why some players make it and others don't. It's why early Holland has made it and maybe some others haven't. And so I hope that the Chelsea brass are going to make the correct choice on striker that fits into not only what we need from an output standpoint, but will fit the pace of play and style of the league as well. Because we don't have European football next year. Anyone who is touting their record in Europe doesn't really matter for us until we get back into that competition. So we need someone ready made for the Premier League period. This that's aren't great long story short. A tweet from 11 hours ago from Dimitri saying Vlavitch is if you look at his player radar, it's essentially the same guy. If you're in Tino who killed it, the difference is at Juventus, he didn't overperform his XG by 50%. And then he said in February night since joining Juventus over a year ago, Vlavitch scored six league goals against teams in the top half of Saria. This guy is the first human being to be constructed entirely out of red flags. Again, one opinion, one opinion. This is where I'm getting my news from to start. I'm happy to hear from other things, but it's yeah, looking a little a lot to be proven out on this one. We still got to figure out we're doing Lukaku, ladies and gentlemen, before we start throwing around 80 million bids, European, you know, Euro bids for other strikers. No day into the match. Obviously reasons for malady, but we have a little bit of movement in the table, Dan. I don't know if you want to walk us through some of the results and what that means for top four, for relegation, but there's a little bit of movement, not too much. Oh, we saw Wolves and Everton all level one apiece. You saw Villa and Liverpool also all evens one apiece. Man United beating Bormith one, nothing. Forest beating Arsenal. One nothing securing safety and making sure that Arsenal do not finish as title elect champions, whatever we want to call it, whatever we want to frame it. They didn't do it. They didn't get the job done. It's great. West Ham beating leads three to one. And so none, none, none, none, leads are potentially going down. It feels pretty good. Go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry. Brighton winning three one over the already down Southampton and the Man City beating us one nothing. And so as it stands, Man City, of course, on top of the table, seven points ahead of Arsenal with two games left to play to Arsenal's one Newcastle at 69 points alongside Manchester United, Liverpool at 66. And so looking very unlikely that Liverpool are going to be in the Champions League next season, Brighton though, making sure that they stay in a European spot alongside Aston Villa with Tottenham on 57 points in eighth place. So very, very interesting end of the season with leads right now, Leicester and Southampton in the relegation zone, huge weekend for Everton on 33 points. So they might just escape the drop and leads Leicester and Southampton. Three regular Premier League teams will be going down. Yeah. I mean, leads have been around that long, but yeah, definitely Leicester City, Southampton for sure. I think Southampton had been up for 11 seasons at this point. It was not that long ago was that 2016 when Leicester City won the Premier League like seven seasons ago. And now they're getting relegated, which is wild. Leicester, Leicester, they're in a tough spot here. They're two matches to play. Yeah. But they've only won one of their last five, drawing two as well. Yeah, no, boy, no, I was happy that Forrest were able to stay up. I think most people around the league will sing the praises of Cooper, their manager and you know, again, then beating Arsenal to stay up is just a magic touch for us. So really cool stuff and glad we were able to give them two other points this season. Yeah. Leicester take on Newcastle, I think Monday. And again, Newcastle need the points to just put it away, be done with it. So we'll see what they do. Only like weird amalgamation situation might be Dan, whereas Liverpool, if Manu and I had somehow lose to us and lose the last game of the season and their level on points and Liverpool win, Liverpool are up big on goal difference. And that would be a hilarious way for Manchester United to drop out of the Champions League. But otherwise you got Liverpool, Brighton and Europa and Villa in conference as it stands. So a lot to still play for this season. Not for us. Not for us though, but you know, everybody else around us. So anyways, we're going to wrap there. Check your content. We got a lot going on this week, don't we, don't we, Nick? Lots going on this week. And that's special. It's about time. Yep. We're talking to good old friend is our cancel again, because that's what we, that's what we do. We missed him on the show. We have two CFC central specials coming up this week. And of course, we'll be reviewing the United match, which is happening on Thursday for your Friday morning. And then we're into the last week of the season after we play Newcastle at home. We'll have the Newcastle match review. We'll do our season and review episodes while the Matt loss special and then good old friends Rick Landville and Gary Barone are coming back for their first famous CFC special. So it's going to be a packed summer for them. Really excited. We have eight episodes in a row coming out as Chelsea head into the summer tour. So it's going to be a fun June and July there. So look, 10 pods, two weeks. That's what we got. I don't know what else you can want from us. Come on. That's, that's what we have to offer. We hope you sure appreciate it. We're putting in the work, trying to get this season turned around as best we can. But anyways, that's going to wrap us up. Check us out on YouTube. Check us out on social media, all the fun stuff. And if you haven't left a five star review and you're still listening, well, you might as well do it. We'd appreciate you big time. So anyways, until next time, show scans, you know, to do keep the blue flag flying high.