The Chels

In the PL at least it will probably be one of the crappier teams away like Newcastle, West Brom, Villa.

I agree. I don't think Salah's too bad - he's good enough for 5th choice AM but so are the English lads and surely our own academy players should be priority.

I knew as soon as Hazard came on that people would be saying 'Chelsea needed Hazard to beat Shrewsbury' even though he was on for less than a minute.

To be fair I think every neutral watching was cheering on Shrewsbury and you can't blame them.

He's really surprised me these past few games. We have 3 strikers all capable of scoring, wahey!

Zouma has a really good leap but his timing is awful. Must've mistimed his leap at least 5 times in the second half.

Probably in case they equalised right at the end and it went to extra time. Not sure why Drogba and Oscar had to play the full 90 though.

Hazard has to save us every match. All our other AMs are pretty crap offensively.

Luis hasn't played much this season so 5 games in two weeks is a big ask. Also no Cesc on the bench to pick up his 5th booking which means he could well miss the Liverpool game.

Yes Jose was clearly referring to what fans posted on forums instead of noise and support in the stadium...

3/4 is a generous estimate. If he gets it past them they usually recover anyway before he's decided what to do with the ball.

Graphics of the stats explained in this: http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11095/9537924/monday-night-football-analysis-gary-neville-says-chelsea-need-killer-instinct

I'm sure they were a lot more definite about it than that - 'is set to start'.

Are you suggesting we weren't able to take control at 11v10? We clearly decided not to.

Right... And how about against 10-man City?

Some interesting analysis on MNF about the game. LVG ran our midfield ragged in the first half but Jose fixed it in the second half. Neville said we should've gone for the kill (like many of us have said) but he thinks it's more the players' mentality than Jose's, which is debatable.

I agree. The first one-on-one chance RVP had against Courtois was because Terry didn't push up quickly enough and the second time was Mikel not pushing up quickly enough. City play the high-line offside trap really well whereas we can't because of the lack of pace at the back (mostly Terry, as good as he is). I said something similar in the Zouma thread. I think Kalas/Christensen have higher ceilings because they're technically very good and would be able to play themselves out of danger/build from the back (unlike Zouma) but Jose's already chosen Zouma as the one he wants to develop.

Yep and Azpi will be available for Liverpool.

If Jose hadn't subbed him on, Luis would have been marking van Persie and he might have actually got to the ball first. Bringing Zouma on just for his aerial ability wasn't the best idea.

Yep.

I found it funny because he's always singing Ivanovic's praises (although he did criticise him during the match for having his hands behind his back and just backing off Januzaj) and he made it out like Di Maria would have a lot more success against Luis, the weak link, when I think the reverse is actually true.

Well counter attacks leave you open if you lose possession from them which I guess has been an issue. Against Man City last year our counter attacking was phenomenal yet against them this year it was completely rubbish (save for the Schurrle goal) and against United it was also pretty horrific with the wrong deicision being made left, right and centre. United themselves weren't much of a threat but I'm thinking more towards the Champions League because we won't get away with sitting on 1-0 leads like we have tried to do in the big games this season.

LOL remember when the DM came up with their exclusive that Courtois would be starting against Burnley (shock horror). We either misinformed them that Costa was starting or more likely they just guessed.

I don't remember the exact time but I knew 'park the bus' mode was initiated when the defence just booted the ball back to them without even thinking of countering. I'm not suggesting we should go gung-ho but if we sit back then we should at least try to counter attack. Continuously giving the ball back to them and dropping deeper and deeper without even thinking of attacking is the most nonsensical approach yet one that we adopt a lot.

Atletico have 6 clean sheets in their last 7 with Moya (who doesn't look particularly great). It's no wonder then that with Courtois plus their defence (basically the whole team lol) they almost won a La Liga and CL double. His clean sheet stats are taking a bit of a hit here though!