MrExcalibur100

Who said Matic can't pass again????? Henrique, I'm looking at you. 4 assists for Matic already. More than Oscar and Willian combined in the PL all season.

INSANE PAS FROM MATIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Poor from Ba. He always misses decent chances when he's given a chance to start.

I smell a goal for CFC

Nice subs my Jose. At least he's finally seeing how ineffectual Ramires is in these sort of games when the onus is on us to win

Fuck Pellegrini. Which team is in the CL semi-final?? Chelsea Which team is built around young players? Chelsea Which team is built for instant success? City. Which team just spent 100 million with zero net spend last summer on new signings? City. Which team has Aguero, Dzeko, Negredo and Jovetic as it's four strikers? City. If we win, we will be 2 points clear of them with them having 1 game in hand. I think all things considered, Chelsea is having a better season than City this year.

You can't moan about a player on his second start for the club and first away match. Get a grip. He's scored in his last two games. What more do you want?

This is what Jose was talking about when he said we can't be favourites this season. We just lack a lot of experience from our creative players and wingers. All these guys are very young. Willian, Schurrle and Salah are also playing their first season in English football. I think that matters a lot. Plus obviously our really awful strikers (of course, I exclude Eto'o)

Exactly. Salah is blameless. Only his SECOND premier league start and FIRST away from home, yet he's the only one that looks like scoring. WTF is Ba doing??? And Willian?? They've been 10x worse than Salah.

People were raving about his performance (and rightly so) against a very poor and "open" Stoke team, but has Willian ever played a good game against a defensively disciplined team? He is also a very harmless player. Scores or creates goalscoring chances once in a bluemoon.

At least he's getting himself into goalscoring positions unlike Ba and Willian.

(1) Our entire attacking/creative force is new to the premier league (Salah, Schrurrle, Willian) and they have to learn to play against defensive organised teams. (2) Ba is a lamp-post up front. He's a pretty average player who has looked better than he is because he's scored goals against tiring teams when we are winning. (3) Swansea are also dropping very deep and giving no spaces. (4) And there's zero support from full-backs. (5) Our set pieces are poor. Schurrle keeps taking them, but I've never been impressed with his set-pieces. Lampard and Oscar are our best set-piece takers (6) We miss the quality of Eden. He is by far our best player and this is another reason why he must be the CFC player of the year When you put these things together, it's difficult to create chances and it's difficult to get any chances from set-pieces. Very disappointing so far, but I'm confident we will win.

I feel bad even replying to you. 3 assists in his last 3 games from DM. Probably the most incisive passer in our team behind Hazard. Do you even watch football at all?

He really is shit isn't he? If we had sense, we would sell him while he still has the reputation of being a good player and use the money to bring in another CM.

Matic is more useful than Ramires in this kind of game because he can at least pass a ball. Also, if it's attack vs defense we should bring in an extra striker instead of subbing out Salah.

Now we see why Hazard is our best and most important player. Ba is not doing anything too, he's like a lamp-post. Also, set-pieces very very poor without Lampard.

This is why we have to smash the fucks early on and give them no confidence.

Atletico Madrid (like us) are very good at pressing the opposition's attacking players high up the pitch. I imagine that we will play a 4-2-3-1 with Schurrle, Oscar or Willian behind the striker. (Assuming Hazard is injured) None of those guys are very comfortable when they are pressed. Like someone said, we might need to start Demba and go direct in order to by-pass their pressing, but that's Jose's job and Mourinho has already dismissed this way of thinking as "reactive" not "proactive". Safe to say, Matic is a HUGE miss in this game because of his ability to play sharp, accurate vertical passes and to play-make from deep. If we aren't going route one, and we start Eto'o/Torres, then Oscar needs to drop deep and try to dictate tempo. He won't get a lot of joy higher up the pitch. I also have a hard time also seeing where a goal will come from for us in the away tie. Without Matic and Salah, we aren't playing to our full potential, but still we persevere. The fact that the second leg is at the Bridge is a good advantage for us. Eden will be 100% back as well and Eto will be fully match fit. If we come through unfazed (not another stupid 3-1) then we will finish the job at home.

Another thing is that he's a match-winner and a big game player. He was the star against European Champions, Bayern, though he spent majority of the game playing on the counter and chasing shadows. The star against Liverpool and his wonder goal sparked the comeback. Was unplayable in that classic game vs City. Superb against Gala as well. He also won us the points against the likes of Hull, Norwich, Swansea, Schalke and so on. If not for him, we will struggle to make top four. Some say he was "poor" from Aug-November but wasn't the Bayern match in these months? Norwich, Cardiff, Schalke, West Brom all in these months too. Was he also "poor" these games? The reality is that all our attacking players were suffering because we were still struggling to adapt to Jose's ideas and tactics. Remember how the media was already saying Jose had lost it and stuff. Hazard was getting double, tripled teamed by some teams because these teams could see we were struggling to play any sort of cohesive football and shafted our greatest creative threat. Martinez was the first coach to realize this. Also, Bale was anonymous for the first half of the season when he won Spurs POTY and league POTY, but that didn't stop Spurs fans and the PL from unanimously voting for him. Spurs fans could have easily voted for Vertognhen because he was consistent throughout, but they voted for their best player and match winner, why can't we? It will be a great shame if Hazard doesn't get recognition by the fans of this football club after his amazing year. If he doesn't win the award then what chance does he have of winning the big individual awards? It's funny how some people go for Hazard as PL POTY but these same people go for someone else for CFC POTY. Mata won this award back to back after having two inferior (yes) seasons compared to Hazard's this season. The boy for some reason is getting under-appreciated by our fans and it upsets me. I also feel deep down that he will be very upset if he doesn't win Chelsea POTY. Winning this is very important to his development as the face of the CFC brand because of the media attention such an award gets. The kid doesn't even get the attention he deserves yet compared to some of his overrated age-mates (Gotze, Neymar). It will be bizzare if Hazard is in the premier league team of the year and Azpilicueta is not then Azpilicueta wins CFC POTY. Many people on twitter are voting for Azpilicueta. I GET Azpilicueta, I appreciate his work in an unfamiliar position. He is an AMAZING fullback, but he is not our best player this season and more importantly, he is NOT a match-winner, mostly because of the position he plays. I was calling for him to be our RB early in the season when he couldn't even get into the team. I think we would be a top 4 team without Azpi in the team but we won't be one without Hazard. I also don't see what makes a guy like Cahill any more or less deserving than Azpilicueta, tbh. Azpi was not even a starter in the team till November. Hazard should be Chelsea's Player of the year and Azpilicueta should be the Player's player of the year. That is fair and just to both guys. http://www.chelseafc...yer-of-the-year (Votes) I LOVE Azpi just as the next CFC supporter out there, but I'm sorry, I'm voting for Eden.

It would be a great shame if our best player doesn't win the Chelsea POTY award. Like I've suspected all along since he joined us, Hazard has become a victim of his own greatness. It seems some people are never satisfied with his contribution. He can't have a "good" game anymore. It's either he has to be amazing or "inconsistent". Also, some of our fans have become fairly paranoid about him leaving the club even though he's shown nothing buy loyalty to us since he joined, even kissing the badge against Liverpool (whatever that means nowadays). Invariably, he gets blamed for such meaningless things such as wearing a PSG jersey and the comments about his wife deciding on his future, though it was clearly said in jest. What most people choose not to realize is that most of it is garbage fueled by the French media who are desperate for a player of his calibre to return to the French league, which he dominated. Now to may main point. Hazard has scored 17 goals this season. More goals than the likes of Ribery, Robben, Neymar, Sanchez, Pedro, Di Maria and just 1 less than Reus and Bale have. All these world-class wingers play in easier leagues too and none of them are the undisputed stars of their team. They share the attacking workload with players of similar quality. Also, these players play in leagues and for teams that make life easier for attacking players to bolster their stats in. The same can't be said about Hazard with Chelsea this season. Hazard has created an incredible (95) chances for his teammates, the highest of any player in Europe's top 5 leagues and he's not even a playmaker like the Ozil's, and Silva's! What's even more astonishing about this statistic is that only 8 of these chances have been converted to assists. This says a lot about our wastefulness in front of goal and our poor quality of strikers, specifically Torres this season. It also represents our poor early season style of play or lack thereof, where we struggling to open up lanes for the attacking players and the passing was slow and ponderous. Of course, the inclusion of Matic has improved our playing style a lot as the guy can dictate play from deep and his passes (mostly vertical) are played with ferocious pace and intent. Consider that Hazard had 20 assists last season, though admittedly, it took him 60+ games to do that. Now if Hazard played for a team that had a striker, he would probably have had 20 assists in 40+ games this season, a number that matches his extraordinary creative outlay. Then maybe the ignorant people who think the "assists" stats tells you all you need to know about a player's creative output would have a rethink. You hear some clueless Liverpool fans say that Luis Suarez is a more creative player than Hazard because he has more assists than him.

Baines is who I meant, sorry.

The only reason I mentioned Cole is because you seem to believe our defense will crumble if he was our starting left-back, a notion I completely disagree with.

Nothing pathetic. You just chose to ignore my comments and you can't disprove my point about consistency. Both Cahill and Terry are defenders which have been just as consistent as Azpi this season. I can make a huge case for either of these players being POTY this season. Name any of our attacking players that have been as consistent as Hazard. Just one.

Vote for Azpi and let Hazard win nothing again even though he has been our most consistent attacking player and our best player this season. I could care less really. The league will give him no individual award but will put him in their team of the year while Coleman will be the LB in the team of the year. Ironic really, but not so much for Eden. Under-appreciated yet again, but a slave to his apparent inconsistency. He will never be consistent till he's Messi or Ronaldo in the eyes of some even though his performances are on par with the Reus', Bale's, Ribery's and Robben's of the world.

The same guy who kept Robben in his pocket in the Super Cup? Why remember the good but not the bad? If you can't relate to my two long comments above, ignore them and know I wasn't talking to you.