MrExcalibur100

Next game against Tottenham. Cole = LB Azpi = RB All the opposition has to do is stop the 3 behind the striker from playing by sitting deep and we look clueless. Where is the width from fullbacks? Cole should have started against West Brom and today against Fulham. This is how you open up these sort of teams. Add to the fact we have Torres up front and a CM in Ramires who can't pass or hold on to the ball. It's not rocket science. Cole has been blacked out since he attended to the Arsenal party. It's sad to see

Moses is a better player than Schurrle and should not have been loaned out in the first place. More stupidity from the Chelsea board. Schurrle is physically weak. He gets bullied in this league. Plus he's not that talented of a footballer.

Schurrle (he really is not that good of a footballer in general) is poor, Ramires can't hold on the to the ball. NOTHING, nothing from our fullbacks means we can't open up their defensive formation. Last season, we had Cole/Bertrand on the left and Azpi on the right, with Luiz is midfield and our attacking play looked so much better. Am I the only one seeing that Iva and Azpi RB, give us very little in these sort of games? We are struggling to create anything against the worst defense in the league because the set-up is so freaking disjointed. Azpi has had his run at LB. Time to play players in their natural position. notice that anytime Hazard, Oscar or Schurrle receive the ball in wide positions, NOBODY supports them. Why can't Jose see this? Ok, it might make us more solid defensively, but we create fuck all.

Who is supporting them though. You can't expect those 3 to create spaces on their own, when Fulham are happy to sit back. That's why we need fullbacks attacking. That's what City do with Kolarov and Zabaleta. Our attacking build up has been poor all season.

No width, and Fulham happy to park the bus. Schurrle has been awful. Ramires can't hold the ball and pick up a pass. Nothing from Brana on the right. Nothing from Azpi on the left. It's easy for them to defend against us. Poor stuff so far. I fear they might score against us.

I disagree. Any time Azpi gets it, he always checks back to his weaker foot. I'm not buying that Cole is finished. He was having problems with his rib, but he's ok now. He played well against Stoke in the FA cup and should be playing more. Azpilicueta and Ivanovic offer little to our attacking play. The best solution against smaller teams is Cole LB and Azpi RB. Small things such as this can really make a difference in our attacking play. We don't look threatening at all. We haven't looked threatening in a while. Only making suggestions

We have to be patient, but again the fullbacks giving us nothing attack wise. Nothing from Azpi or Ivanovic so far. Compare to what Kolarov, Zabaleta, Clichy, Sagna and so on give their teams.

He's impressive and very solid, I like him a lot. But please don't tell me he gets forward better than Cole. There's a clear imbalance there. Especially against teams we are expected to dominate. He hasn't overlapped and offered decent support so far. Waiting to be proven wrong.

Which game was that? Hull? He only got beat once. Certainly not every time. Cole needs to play more, it's that simple. Azpi is not a LB and it shows.

The sun is definitely a factor. It's making it hard to pick out passes.

It's a catchy song, and it declares our undying hatred for Spurs

The Azpilicueta thing doesn't really help our attacking play anymore. He keeps checking back to his stronger foot. Why has Cole been exiled from the squad?

Shocking play from Torres there. Should have been 1-0.

I don't know why Schurrle keeps taking set-pieces. Torres wtf are you doing???

Sun in our defender's eyes = not good

I think Jose knows what he wants. People say he's a Mourinho type of player, but Mourinho's Madrid team didn't have a Ramires. Mourinho has proven that he can win with different types of players. If he doesn't have a Drogba, he can work with a Higuain. If he doesn't have a Makalele, he can work with a Xabi Alonso. He has his systems and ideas, but you don't win what he has won by buying clones. Don't forget about van Ginkel. The kid was our best player in pre-season. I was surprised by how quick and strong he was, and how many interceptions he was making, how many plays he broke up. His passing range is also impressive, and he scores goals too (ok, he didn't show that in pre-season, but his goal-scoring record is impressive). He is that 8 we were talking about the other day. I know Mourinho rates him highly, as evidenced by the way he talks about him. I have very high hopes for Marco and his style of play supplements Matic's perfectly. The kid is a "crack". Either that or splash the cash on a world-class CM, but that cash needs to be spent on a CF. I didn't like the way we played against Galatasaray. I didn't like it because that's not how big teams play against teams like that. It angered me far more than the City FA cup result and I don't believe for a second that Jose sent us out to play that way for 90 mins. We just didn't have the quality in the midfield to retain possession and have any sort of tempo. Iman (who?) and a washed up Melo dominated us. Only God knows what will happen against {Modric/Xabi/Di Maria} or {Fabregas, Iniesta, Busquets} or {Kroos, Thiago, Lahm/Martinez}. Cech probably also didn't trust that pivot, because he kept on thumping it, and thumping it to oblivion. Oscar as a CM, I don't like the idea, tbh. Oscar is a 10 and Mourinho has already declared him to be HIS 10. He also said 4-2-3-1 is his favourite formation, and that formation suits a high pressing game the best. It's difficult to press the opposition high up the pitch with a 4-3-3. Plus see what happened to Anderson at Man United when Ferguson changed him from an AM to a CM. Oscar's playmaking will develop, I'm confident about that. He just struggles to create his own space, but has no problems playing with space. He looks so much better when he has space on the wing. But these things come with experience. It's not easy to be a number 10 in this league because those are the players that suffer most from teams that park the bus/plane.

The only thing they have in common is that they're black. Matuidi can actually pass a ball and he is very composed in the final third.

Luiz has already caused us four points in the league this season at CB, and he hasn't even played there a lot, against Everton and against West Brom. He should never start at CB again, except maybe against smaller teams at Stamford Bridge. I doubt if Mourinho even trusts him anymore. I know I certainly don't. With the way Cahill has been performing in the last two years, if the guy was Brazilian, German or Italian, people would have been calling him world-class.

Yep, plus he's English too, which is a huge bonus. I dunno, his style of play reminds me of Jermaine Jenas. He's just a more talented version. The physical and toughness aspect is what seperates him from McEachran. He's a bigger talent than Josh, IMO. Has more to his game too.

You like arguing a lot. Swift's technique is just as good as those players.

John Swift

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1975408-jose-mourinho-would-take-manchester-united-job-this-summer-if-moyes-got-fired No words for this. I always knew Stan Collymore was an attention seeking wierdo, but I never knew him to be a stupid person.

My first topic created, so I'l begin with this. It was the year that I first fell in love with this great club and what an epic season it turned out to be! Success in the Cup winners cup against Stuttgart and winning the league cup at Wembley, all this while arguably playing the sexiest football in England. We also did ok in the league, but our challenge petered out when Bates inexplicably fired Gullit, who was doing a fantastic job. Why Bates did it, we will never know. Gullit won us the FA cup in the previous season and had us playing some lovely football. He brought in top quality international players that season (the likes of Zola, Di Matteo, Vialli, Lebouf.....all Chelsea legends today) which is precisely what took us to the next level, leading up Roman buying the club. That's why I start with this one. And oh, it was also the first time I went with my brother to the Bridge to watch us play against a mediocre Spurs side. We won 2-0. Too young at that time to fully appreciate all of it, but I haven't looked back since :blue scalf: :blue scalf:

This guy is overrated. Has anyone actually watched him play before? If we want a world class striker, we have to go for the likes of Cavani or Diego Costa. Nothing more, nothing less.

4 goals conceded in 15 games. We haven't looked this impenetrable since he left us. Tactical mastermind.