The Chels

Why so? Valencia won the league with 77 points which shows you how poor their competition was (in second place was Barca with 72 points). Atletico won it with 90 points and had Barca/Madrid breathing down their neck with 87 points. Both teams had European distractions and Atletico made the CL final whereas Valencia won the Uefa Cup (which is a lot easier and less draining).

Spain are playing a friendly against Germany on Tuesday I think. He might play then.

Didn't Spurs only get 3 points fewer the following season even after selling Bale and buying lots of dross? He had a good season but his qualities are easily replaceable, although his goalscoring perhaps less so (doesn't score many for Madrid, mind). Real are stupid and would break their transfer record on anyone. I think they overpaid for him by £40-50m.

Who actually parks the bus against Tottenham? Long shots can be useful and very impressive but they also can be very inconsistent and frustrating. As mentioned earlier in this thread Bale is very much a 'does nothing for 80 minutes, scores a screamer' type player and that means he will never be worth anywhere near the quoted prices (can't believe how much Real paid for him) because if he doesn't score he'll have ended up doing nothing. Bale is brilliant against teams like Bayern and Barca who press up very high but what does he actually do against more defensively resolute teams like Atletico (apart from a tap in) and what would he do against us in the CL? Very little I'd wager even though he has a lot less focus on him compared to Ronaldo.

Bale is lethal with space but against parked buses what else does he offer apart from long shots?

They were both at fault (Iva x2 and Matic from the set-piece) for the goals conceded.

David Silva. Best player in the league IMO.

Hmm either way it'd be the football equivalent of your mate's girlfriend dumping him for you. If he doesn't go to Bayern it'll be because of his loyalties which means I doubt he'd come here either.

Aren't Schurrle and Reus good friends? Don't think Reus would want to come here if he knew he would be forcing Schurrle out.

He got the assist for Torres' goal and I don't remember him making any costly mistakes.

Just look at our recent results against them. Bogey team.

The greater the expectation the greater the disappointment! I'm quite pessimistic on match days tbh so a bad result doesn't hurt as much.

You're always really confident before every match. Draws/defeats must hit you hard.

Well our defensive system doesn't look great with Cesc at CM in the big games. It's surely easier for him to press high up the pitch (where his end product is also much better than that of our other AMs) than it is to defend against top teams from the CM position.

All three FBs might play like last year

Tongue in cheek but we played them twice last season and took 3 of their players. You should really know their actual name by now!

Well you clearly aren't an expert since you don't even know what team he used to play for! And no he wasn't widely considered one of their best players just because he crossed a lot

So he can basically make as many mistakes as he wants but won't be dropped because he's big physically? A tall CM next to Matic - we were very close to getting one of those in the summer (Tiago). Shame it didn't go through because a Matic-Tiago pivot would have everything and I think that would have enabled Cesc to be pushed further up in big games. And like you say perhaps it'd have encouraged Jose to select our more defensively solid FBs!

Do Zabaleta/Kolarov get beaten more easily than Ivanovic and do they swtch off as much? Defensively Luis and Azpi are better than him and their pressing is better too although Azpi is the best at 1v1 defending. There's not that much difference between the three overall so I think that it's only fair they play on merit and if someone continues to make mistakes they should be dropped.

The reason he plays in CM is to help dictate the tempo and play which is important against the smaller sides. Against the bigger teams, away at least, we usually play counterattacking so he's made to defend a lot which isn't one of his strengths. Instead I agree that he should play as a number 10 in those games as he can make use of his excellent final ball which our other AMs don't offer so readily.

They've both been doing it for years. Surprising that Jose's not addressed it.

I'm sure Ivanovic was in position for that chance as he was the one backing off. But yeah they are nowhere near the team of last season.

The 'moaning' took place in the post-match thread because once again, going defensive after taking the lead almost cost us. We could barely retain possession and kept gifting the ball back to them but in the end that mattered not, mostly because they're shite.

Sterling's effort. That could have gone anywhere with a lucky ricochet which is why I don't like defenders backing off.

I don't understand how his passing is so inconsistent in every match. Yesterday he must have killed at least 3-4 attacks in the first half by failing to execute very simple passes but he also made some very nice passes like the ones to Ramires and Hazard.