The Chels

Don't think he gives as much composure as we'd expect. Watching Atletico play this season Tiago has been absolutely amazing even against the likes of Real. I'm still disappointed that we didn't replace Mikel with him.

I wonder if you can bet on Villa scoring from an attack on our right wing. It's almost guaranteed.

Shrewsbury player and Chelsea fan https://twitter.com/bennburtonn

He's really not that vital to set pieces. He helps but we have Terry, Cahill, Costa, Matic, as well as Luis who could more than hold his own in defending them. He is first and foremost a defender and I don't understand why he is constantly forgiven for making basic mistakes, positional ones and switching off. Hazard and Schurrle have been publicly criticised by Jose for doing so but they're wingers. This is Ivanovic's job FFS but he provides an outball (our goal kicks are regularly aimed at him) so he will probably never be dropped. I even expect him to play against Bolton tbh. Sigh.

Jamie Redknapp, who knows a lot more about him than the rest of us, said Lampard would have been very happy to score against us. And personally I don't think he was as upset as he made out - nothing a look at his bank account wouldn't fix anyway.

After we went 1-0 up they had a lot of possession but didn't really look like scoring: it would be either a moment of brilliance on their part or a mistake from us. Sadly we obliged with the latter but against 10 men we should have taken the initiative. I think bringing Oscar on would have been a good substitution. And also, what made Lampard's goal worse was seeing Drogba coming on for Costa as that basically ruined any chance of us scoring again.

Defensively he was great today but once again offered nothing going forward. Obviously that was partly due to our tactics but even when he tried to pass the ball forward, on at least a couple of instances it went out for a City throw-in. When it was 11v10 he finally got up the field but his cross was completely tame. I really can't see why Luis doesn't start.

Lol at the commentators and pundits saying Costa was bullied by City. He played as a lone striker against 2 CBs - how did Aguero and Dzeko fare?

Schurrle makes one defensive mistake and gets singled out in the post-match interview by Jose. Ivanovic regularly makes many mistakes including not tracking Lampard, but continues to play every game (even though we have 2 better FBs) and is never criticised. A liability yet also undroppable for some reason.

Since when does stopping a promising counter attack where our RB is up the field constitute giving away a stupid free kick? Ramires gives away plenty of those but this would not have been one of them and the yellow card would have been well worth it, not 'needless'. Jose actually mentioned it in his post-match interview: https://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/football-costas-hamstring-tests-mourinho-052222484--sow.html

He's nowhere near being world class lol. Gomis was bullying him only the other week!

Azpi should be competing with Ivanovic for the RB spot. Luis is our best full-back.

Cesc is probably going to be slated because of his missed chance and how he lost the ball for their goal. Ramires really, really, really should have fouled Draxler though in that counter attack. He wasn't even on a yellow card. This is where having a brain would help him.

Getting completely out-sung by the Schalke fans (of which there weren't many) was also a big negative. Atmosphere was awful.

We had a great defensive system - the defence itself is not exceptional. Luis could easily replace Azpi's defensive work and offer a lot more going forward. Azpi and Ivanovic have hardly been solid defensively, both regularly getting beaten and Azpi quite often failing in maintaing the offside trap (Leicester's 1v1 and Swansea's 2nd goal come to mind). Azpi's attacking threat is non-existent and even when he cuts in onto his right foot his delivieries aren't great. I don't understand what adaptation Luis has to do: he's played and excelled against the very best in Real Madrid and Barcelona.

Zouma and Baker will definitely not play.

I don't remember us playing a 4-2-3-1 against Everton. Cesc played mostly deep next to Ramires and Matic in a midfield 3 just as he did against Swansea second half. Either way there wasn't much difference between the two at all.

The Cesc-Matic-Ramires trio looked poor defensively against Everton as did the Cesc-Matic-Oscar trio in the first half against Swansea. It was only when we played with all 4 in the second half against Swansea that we looked more secure. I'd still like to see us try Mikel-Matic-Cesc though.

He's been very good going forward but not defensively imo. He gets skimmed rather easily, and he comes inside too much not closing down the opposition winger quickly enough. This affords them lots of space which led to Swansea's first goal, the Routledge chance which almost went in and Naismith's goal for Everton IIRC.

Probably basing it on the highlights. They showed pretty much all of Swansea's good chances in the first half but only one of our FKs (because of the Costa incident) and our goal.

Yep he's one of those players better without the ball than with it. The same could be said of Oscar.

I'm pretty sure that's a fake quote lol

Defensively woeful.

I'd much rather have a 24-year-old Hazard than a 30-year-old Ronaldo in either case to be honest. I reckon Ronaldo was just being diplomatic there - he won't want to play under Mourinho again, especially not at Chelsea.

I'd put the figure at 0%. He'd cost a fortune even at 30 years old, he loves United too much, and he clearly doesn't like Mourinho as a manager or person (Fabregas had never actually played under Jose so that was different).