Chelsea 0-1 Fiorentina, Preseason friendly: Post-match reaction

The best part of this game:  preseason is over.  Hurray!  We can finally start the real thing on Saturday.

As far as today, another 90 minutes of conditioning and match sharpness under the belt, which is good.  We're also far less cynical than Fiorentina, which pleases me.  La Viola's professional fouling was easily in midseason form already.  Not much about Chelsea was in midseason form and so we "lost."  If you care about preseason results and such.

A few other thoughts.

• We were excited to see Bertrand Traore get a start at right wing and Cuadrado to potentially rise to the occasion as a right back.  Turned out Mourinho had something different in mind, using Cuadrado in his usual right wing spot (with expected results) and deploying Traore as emergency left back.  The young man took to his task with plenty of enthusiasm, if not quite much proficiency.
• Deep crosses to Remy or Falcao are probably not the way forward.
• Asmir Begovic is a pretty good goalkeeper, in case there was any doubt. Unlucky a bit on the goal, when the ball squirmed away from underneath him.
• Fabregas played in a shirt with the gold PL winners' patches.  He was the only one to get to do so.  (As pointed out on Twitter, he actually had a shirt with the PL font rather than the fancy CL font that everyone else was wearing; Fabregas had entirely the wrong set on!)
• Another so-so showing from young Loftus-Cheek.  Eden Hazard seemed a bit uninterested as well.
• Quietly, Kurt Zouma has had a very good preseason (except for that out-of-control play in added time today).  Less quietly, so did Victor Moses.  Until he limped off with an injury today.  The spirit of Marko Marin still haunts us.
• Chelsea decided to actually come out and play in the final 10-15 minutes, once most of the first-choice players were on ... created several decent chances, but missed them all.