General Premier League Thread 2025/2026

Chelsea respect the ball so much they play with 10 men so as not to kick it as often as 11 would.

I only saw pictures of the huddle. Was the ref already there and Chelsea went ahead and formed the huddle around him or did the ref jump into the middle of it? Probably would be better for Chelsea if a directive comes through saying do it in your own half and outside the centre circle, that way they can be forced to stop it instead of having to admit it’s performative nonsense and give it up themselves.

The weirdest thing is all the talk about why Chelsea do a huddle. There's suggestions that the Villa fans were annoyed by it recently, there's media commentary about why the players do a huddle, how they introduced it recently, some pundits saying it's performative etc

It's as if Chelsea have started doing the haka or something before games and nobody can get their head around it

It's a huddle, many teams do it and Chelsea didn't invent it a few weeks ago. It's not an odd thing to do, and shouldn't be the story.

The only story here is Tierney with his usual main character syndrome.

Huddle around the ball to respect the ball?

What sort of garbage is going on there. Is Eileen Drewery on the Chelsea books?

There’s a real whiff of David Brent of Rosenior.

Liverpool have a collection of issues but there are some simple questions to ask here…

Does it appear that Slot is getting an acceptable level of performance from the standard of players he is sending out each week? I would say a fairly comprehensive NO here.

Can you count the amount of games this season where Liverpool have "played well"?
I don't think it is too many games.

The simple fact is these are the title holders who spent somewhere between 400 and 500 million in the summer and they are looking like they will end up somewhere between 20 and 30 points behind this seasons winners.

Even last season, it was Liverpool's great start that set them up. As the season went on they dropped off.
I'd say Klopp did have a fair impact on that good start as it was completely the group of players assembled under his stint and even the setup was very similar.

Once Slot started moving them away from that it has been nowhere near as good.

Liverpool have a choice to make, if they believe that Slot is the man then fair enough.
From the outside looking in, I don't buy it.

Having a drop off isn't so much an issue if you bounce back but a 20/30 point drop off is a little harder to just sweep under the carpet.

Why?

For hurting people's feelings?

It's not the most professional thing I've ever seen, but calls for punishment from pundits etc is a joke. They need to get over it and stop being soft babies.

Did the ref even see him celebrating?

You said he should have been carded,yellow minimum!

He celebrated an opposition red card. From what I saw it was out of the refs view.

Unless you want a VAR review I don't see how a yellow (or red) could be applied.

Plus it falls into the 'get over it' category for me. Not professional, but get over it. The game is gone soft enough ffs.

However, he couldn't complain if he received a few heavy tackles after it! I'm sure he'd agree himself.

Liverpool have done it since Virgil became captain

IIRC he said it was something they used to do at Celtic so he started doing it every game

Liverpool have been doing it around the center circle?