Viper22

He's still the best manager around ATM so I think it would be a little silly to sack him. Klopp is only proven at 1 club (and had one hell of an awful final season) and is just as mental as Mourinho, he'll be the media plaything for their precious soundbites just as much. Ancelotti has already been here once and while he is proven around the world he's shown at all of the clubs that he struggles at formulating plan B's and reverts to awful negative football when under pressure (remember our 2nd season under him?). Simeone has also only managed at one club and while he looks good for the future it would be a bit of a risk to take the gamble on him. He's also as much of a hothead as Mourinho. Who else is out there and actually gettable? Pep looks like his talent lies with taking over already successful clubs, winning a few trophies and butchering the teams balance over 2/3 years. De Boer? I just don't think we should jump the gun and sack him just yet. He's looked frankly clueless at times (especially Saturday with the whole Willian, Ivanovic and Matic bullshit) but I still hope that he can turn it around himself and stay at the club for a long while. Thing is though, he HAS to drop Fabregas and Ivanovic for RLC and Baba respectively now. It HAS to happen. If it doesn't then he's playing with fire and if he does get sacked he'd have no-one to blame but himself and his raging hard on for big Serbs with rounded arses.

How were the post season matches anything to do with Jose? That was a money making exercise 100% and was completely down to the higher ups at our club. If Mourinho could have a say i'm sure like any other manager he'd rather have let the players have an extra 2 weeks rest than a pointless tour that does no good.

Why give someone so ill-informed, full of hate and dripping with hypocrisy the time of day? He's not famous nor will he ever will be, his opinion matters about as much as that of my cat. Ignore him and don't waste your breath even discussing the cretin.

Hmm. Maybe I should sneak in the house and find the photos of Jose Mourinho and Ann Widdecombe in an uncompromising position on Ivanovic's computer and delete them then.

Going to watch this live!! If I see Ivanovic in the starting lineup I will endeavour to sneak into the dressing room and cripple him. Weird feeling, never gone to a game looking forward to a specifically player playing or not playing more than i'm thinking about the result ATM.

Don't think he will, but if Mourinho gets sacked he'll have no-one to blame but himself. Everyone is droppable (Fabregas, Hazard, Terry, Cech, Lampard, Drogba, Costa, Willian, Matic) but fucking Ivanovic. Sort it out Jose, you're tarnishing your reputation by constantly sticking with a shit player who's spent most of the match blaming other people for not getting into space before letting a player past him without even a sniff of effort. Never ever hoped for a player to get an injury before and I'll probably get stick for saying it but I'm genuinely hoping that he gets an injury soon so Mou has to drop him. It's the only chance we have a successful season.

Stoke are horrifically out of form ATM, West Ham have only won 1 game at home all season and Leicester just conceded 5 against Arsenal. I'm not overly worried about any of them tbh. And I never said easy . I said winnable, and they really are.

Well tbh we are now undefeated in 4 games and the only game we didn't win of those 4 is the one against Newcastle and that was the first point we've picked up in 4 visits there. So I would have taken a point at the start of the day. I have faith that the team has shaken off the sluggish start from the ridiculous shortened pre season (thanks to that bloody stupid post season tour) and given the following favourable run of fixtures can at least get a record of something like 9 wins, 2 draws and 1 loss from the next 12 games which would be 29 points which would leave us on 37 points at the halfway point of the season which after the horrific start we had wouldn't be bad at all.

Our next 11 league games: Southampton (H) Aston Villa (H) West Ham (A) Liverpool (H) Stoke (A) Norwich (H) Spurs (A) Bournemouth (H) Leicester (A) Sunderland (H) Watford (H) Lots of home games in there that should be fairly straight forward, some winnable away games and really tbh the only tough game there will be away against Spurs. Imagine if (like we should as the champions) we come out of that run with 27-30 points or so, that will immediately rocket us up the table and suddenly all will look rosy. I genuinely have faith that we'll drop a maximum of 5 points over the next 11 games which will put us very high up and make everything look much better. Hopefully either Ivanovic gets injured or Mourinho comes out from under the gypsy curse Ivan's mother put him under to never see him as the problem because that seems like the only way he'll be dropped and we'll be far more solid at the back without him!

To be fair if it required a bid of £36M rising to £58M to prise him away I'm so glad we didn't do so. Even if he turns out to be a Ronaldo-esque signing for Utd I still won't be too fussed as it would've been a huge risk for a young, unproven player that could have gone any way with his development. Also I doubt Monaco were planning to sell him so likely weren't accepting bids so I wouldn't be too pissed at them. It was probably just when Man U pressed the panic button and offered them silly money they had to accept. Like Newcastle with Carroll or Liverpool with Torres. Had silly big offers they had to accept even though they were not planning on it. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, we just need to be realistic and remember that even though he was good before he was worth no more than £15-20M. And signing unproven young players for £40M is a highly risky way of doing business. Remember too it's hardly like we needed him. We need a CB, not a ST! We have Falcao as a stop gap for a year, Costa our no.1 for the foreseeable future and Remy is a quality back up. Then with Mourinho now showing some faith in the youth players hopefully we'll see Bamford and Solanke get chances to prove if they can convert their potential into ability.

Lol. You cannot judge a player after 4 damn games. Look at Macheda. Whether good or bad you cannot judge a player after just like 200 minutes of game time. He looks good, he looked good at Monaco too, but let's wait a while before judging him eh? If he'd scored 0 in these 4 games it would be unfair to call him shit, just like it's moronic to call him shit like "The next Henry" after 4 games too.

The top 3 of the Bundesliga is stronger than the top 3 of the EPL. Bayern>>City>Chelsea>Dortmund>>Wolfsburg>>Arsenal. You talk about Europe but other than Bayern no German teams have consistently done well in Europe. Chelsea are consistently good and Utd are when they're actually in Europe. But the mid table and lower tier teams from the EPL are far better than their Bundesliga counterparts. Bayern walk over teams regularly, so do Dortmund. Chelsea and City very rarely have easy games in the Premier League, even against teams who are shit and/or out of form like Newcastle, Stoke etc.

For me the ranking of strikers in the world ATM is (and has been so for a year or so): 1) Suarez 2) Aguero 3) Lewandowski 4) Costa 5) Cavani 6) Benzema 7) Ibrahimovich Lewandowski has hardly lit the world up since joining Bayern but is still a great striker. Aguero and Suarez are markedly better IMO though.

That might be the best stat i've seen in a while. Finally getting goals from everywhere in the team after last season it was pretty much just Hazard and Costa. AND JT and Falcao aren't on there who will definitely chip in with a few throughout the season.

To be fair using the word 'son' looks as if he's talking to Jon Fearn. You know, the other physio that made the same mistake, was shouted at the same, didn't act like a child and has now returned to his job at the club? The one that no-one gives a fuck about for the exact reason I mentioned in my original post - because he's not an attractive woman. Mourinho's temper tantrums are nothing new. We all know that he's a tactical genius but can at times be prickly at best and downright childish at worst. I said myself that his anger went too far but as I mentioned above it obviously wasn't that hard as Dr Fearn is now working at the club once again. As for the more than we both know going on behind the scenes - agree entirely. But we're on a forum here to discuss our opinions on the subject . While I also agree that he probably overstepped his boundaries let's just remember here that us losing games is going to result in him losing his job, no-one else (including the medical team) so I do think it is his prerogative to be annoyed if he thinks someone else's mistake may cost him his job, although he did over-react.

Good at what she did so I'm sad to see her go but she's a moron for making it personal with that stupid facebook post. Now refuses to come back to work and leaves the club, a little bit childish methinks. Everyone can get criticised when they make a mistake in the job and she should have dealt with it professionally rather than petulantly. While Mourinho was obviously a little heavy handed with his anger at the time he didn't say anything disrespectful after, just that the medical team shouldn't be so naiive. Hopefully this non-story dies now and all of the hand-wringers with their faux-outrage can stuff off because we all know no-one would have given 2 shits if this was a bloke and the only reason such a big thing has been made out of it is because she's an attractive woman.

Begovic, Azpilicueta, Matic, Zouma, Pedro and Hazard should be rested as they're pretty key to the team now for various reasons. For me: ------------------Blackman------------------- --Ivanovic-----Papy-----Terry-----Baba-- --------------Mikel---------RLC-------------- -Traore-----------Oscar----------Kenedy- ---------------------Falcao------------------- Subs: Beeney, Aina, Clarke-Salter, Ramires, Swift, Musonda, Remy. Don't really mind about the COC this season, we won it and we have bigger fish to fry this season and can't afford injuries to key players when we're only just coming back to form.

Just saw that this is Ivanovic's 61st consecutive PL start xD. So ridiculous it's unreal.

Sanchez on Ivanovic is going to be a bloodbath. Call me out from behind the sofa when it's all over... COYB!!!

Ditch the god damn 4-2-3-1 and move to a 4-3-3. -------------------Begovic--------------------- ---Azpi------Terry------Cahill------Baba--- ---------------------Matic---------------------- -------Oscar/Fabregas---------RLC-------- -Remy-------------------------------Hazard- --------------------Costa---------------------- Subs: Blackman, Zouma, Ivan, Mikel, Oscar/Fabregas, Traore, Falcao/Kenedy.

Looks like this was a good time to be away on holiday. Haven't seen any of the Everton game and frankly I don't want to. By the sounds of it at least 3 of Kenedy, Oscar, Baba, Traore, RLC should be starting. C'mon Jose, stop pissing about and sort this shit out, it's not funny anymore.

Out: Luis (£12M) Cech (£10M) Kakuta (£4M) Romeu (£5M) T Hazard (£5.5M) Salah (Loan, £3.5M fee) Cuadrado (Loan, £1.3M fee) McEachren (£750k) Chalobah (Loan, £175k) Drogba (Free) Omeruo, Pantic, Hector, Nathan, Christensen, Manea, Solanke, Angban, Marin, Baker, Brown, MVG, Davey, Boga, Kane, Davila, Kalas, Ake, Cuevas, Moses, Bamford, Piazon, Delac, Houghton, Feruz, Atsu, Wallace, Pasalic (Loan) Total Recieved: £42M In: Pedro (£19M) Baba Rahman (£14M) Kenedy (£6M) Begovic (£8M) Manea (£2M) Pantic (Free) Hector (£4M) Djilobodji (£4M) Falcao (Loan) Total Spent: £58M Overall Net Spend £16M. So we sold a World Class GK, a World Class LB, a raft of youngsters for low fees and released Drogba. We signed a Very Good RW in Pedro fair enough but other than that we got Begovic (Good but still a step down from Cech), Baba (Decent with potential but a huge step down from Luis), Falcao to replace Didier (Not bad) and 5 youngsters for a net spend of £16M!!!!! WHERE IS THAT CM WE HAVE NEEDED ALL DAMN SUMMER???

We've been playing 3 at the back for the last year and a bit tbh every time fucking Ivan is in the starting lineup. In reality though playing 3 at the back is a great tactic but you need really specialised players to do so. You need 2 relatively quick CBs to play LCB and RCB, you need 2 wing backs that are ridiculously hard workers, a player to play in the DM position that can get between boxes very quickly and assist the front 3 when going forward or they become very isolated and a very fluid and settled back 3 and 2 x DM setup as they need to switch positions/push each other into other positions frequently when in the defensive transition. If we were going to play something like a 3-4-3 we have a fair few players that could work in the needed positions: -------------------Courtois------------------- ------Zouma------Terry------?????------ -Willian--------------------------------Azpi- -------------Matic--------?????------------ -------Pedro-----------------Hazard------- -------------------Costa---------------------- But Fabregas would not work in that formation in any way, shape or form. We'd need someone like Pogba or Witsel to fill that CM role alongside Matic and we'd also need another mobile CB (not Cahill). If we signed Witsel and Stones for example to fill those holes then yeah it could work, but it would be tough coaching this into the players as they'd have to adapt their styles of play pretty dramatically. In the system I detailed above Azpi would have to learn to go forwards a lot more than he currently does, as the front 3 would have to be fairly centralised without any kind of CAM so he'd have to provide a lot of the width from attacking plays or risk Hazard drifting wide and leaving Costa very isolated up top by himself. Matic, Willian, Zouma and Hazard would slot into this system perfectly IMO and it would probably help JT by having 2 young, mobile CBs that are good on the ball either side of him to take that problem out of his mind and let him focus more on organising the back 3 and stopping the other teams striker from getting any clean ball. This would be a viable tactic if Mou decided to go for it but we'd struggle if players fell out of form or got injured and we may also struggle against teams that play 2 strikers up top. Would be a pretty drastic change if he went for it, and not at all in line what he's done with the rest of his career. Would be interesting to watch though!!!

I'll be honest i've never even heard his name before. But I trust the board and our scouting team so we'll have to wait and see I guess!!! He'll be coming in as 4th choice CB I assume. If the fee is around £2M or so then there's no risk associated I guess.