cosmicway

It appears that finding the net is the biggest problem now. Somehow we ought to hodge-podge things till the end of the season, 10 matches and we are 6 (or 7 or 9) points ahead. With better quality of opposition we might still be ahead but certainly not with such a point difference. Tibot's performences of late are the equivalent of two attacking goals. He almost saved Southampton's penalty too. I 'm unhappy now Schurle is gone. He had fresh legs and could be useful and he was not like Saleh who really never made it. The element of speed in attack is missing. I am very much of the opinion that United will be a very daunting opposition next season. Maybe others too - it' s a question of budgets but the reds are on the way back after two years in the wilderness and they have money too. United had the highest attendances when they were playing in the second division (the Frank O' Farrel year).

City are useless. Dunno about the other two. Could pose a threat. We need a mini revival - two months are left. If it is like last season's last two months it does n't look good. United by the way are next year's champs 100% the way things are now, unless serious reinforcements are brought in by Chelsea.

UTD 3 up against Spurs. We cannot score against girls these days. Something is amiss. A lot of unnecessary intricacy in our build up, no long range shooting. Only Oscar tried a shot deep in the second half and that was n't long range.

Against Ivanovitch it was more of a penalty.

Schurle was certainly better than Cuadrado (from what we see from him so far). Hazard's main preoccupation is outside the box. That leaves Costa who does n't look the player to create the miracle -like Bayern's Miller does for ex. He is a reliable one, if found in the right place at the write time but he can't pull things out of the fire I 'm afraid. Willian is a little fellow. How can he score ? Only with his long range shots. It's the pattern, weeks now. No goals, dried up. The first half in which Southampton should have scored four is a different story. The defense was at sea. No person to person marking whatsoever. That was put right in the second half even though Southampton managed to create some more dangers.

Second half was different. No more players lost in the pitch, but divorce from goal scoring. Cuadrado fail today. If it was Willian some more chances.

We scored one but man to man marking is gone. They look too tired.

HT: Courtois 1 - Southampton 1

Sour grapes continues. I will tell you the reason: Whatever the critisism, the match was ours and we flopped in the last minutes, twice as well. It looks less awful if it is something clear, like with Atletico for example. The French were going to feel the same if in our position.

Manchester City RIP

I subbed to Juventus forum and wished them to beat Olympiakos Piraeus 7-0. But that was that. Also Anderlecht last year and they told me "don't have any hopes with us". I don't make other clubs supporters unhappy.

PSG at the same time improved and I can't really use a dynamometer to give precise measurements in Newtons ! I have already stated that I 'd like to see faster action by our attackers, like Real for example (in those days they play seriously). The endless litany of back passing does n't work.

You -for the sake of argument- want Chelsea to beat PSG ? So what tactics would you adopt ? And you don't have Didier Drogba at the age of 26, you have the present crop of Mourinho's players. The anti-Mourinho talk is gone too far. You wanted us to score in the first half ? So did I and ok suppose we did. Does that finish you off and therefore it was Mourinho's fault ? The truth is you were lucky.

These are endless arguments. Somebody said to Alf Ramsey once after England had played Scotland "did you watch Charlie Cook, that Chelsea player nearly won them the match", to which Ramsey replied "no, he lost the match for them" - because England had won 1-0. It can be argued that the placid Mourinho system worked, and we went ahead by 1-0. Major fly in the ointment was the Cavani open goal chance we allowed before that. But they equalized. Same story -action replay- in extra time. 2-1, almost 3-1 then 2-2 ! Given the 1-0 and the 2-1 it's not as if we were left with so much time to increase the score. Of course I 'm against this system because it was bad in other occasions too, namely Everton and Burnley. But can you tell for certain that if we had gone 1-0 up after say 39 minutes rather than 81, we were going to do better in the end ? All in all I fail to understand the lamentations when last year we had a 3-3 aggregate result again against the same team and when in fact they rank well in Europe, at this level (we can't take it away from them).

Good report. Placid performence, that's what it was. Forgot to mention Diego not passing the ball to Cesc after the 2-1 to kill it. But I don't entirely agree when he says we were so stunningly brilliant in the same match last year. Just luckier.

Could have gone either way on account of that. The rule was introduced in 1964 I believe, to make European programs less congested (before that there was third match in neutral country). Also to make football tactics less defensive. With the new rules of 1991 -no back pass to the keeper- maybe it's no longer that useful, but if scrapped then they will have to play more matches. As it happens scoring away has become crucial. Back in the sixties-seventies if you won 1-0, 2-0 even 3-1 at home and if you were n't the better side on paper, the bookies expected you to go out (lose 3-0, 4-0). In 1976 AEK Athens beat Derby County 2-0 in Athens. Everyone was positive Derby were going to respond with a 3-0, 4-0 victory. Did n't happen, AEK won 3-2 again but that was how they measured things those days. I don't really like the away goals rule. It's coin toss.

I never expected us to win CL really. Back in 2012 same time of the year I said to my friends "it's only Barcelona and a giant killing act cannot be ruled out". In 2014 well, we came close to be one of the two finalists. This time it's Bayern-Real and Barcelona again and with modest expectations we 'd have to get two of them. We / PSG need to up our game considerably to have the measure of those three - realism suggests. So let's win the PL and then regroup for next year's CL. Let's also shut the faces of the anti-Chelsea press !

The press journalists compete now who will write the best anti-Chelsea article. They don't even care what happened yesterday and how, the idea is "write whatever takes the peoples fancy". The anti-Mourinho bias is evident and their game deserves to be called. It's just like a bit of Goebbels propaganda from old. Mourinho failed But it was 3-3 last year and 3-3 this year, with the away goal going the other way. Can Mourinho be a hero against PSG in 2013-14 and a fail in 2014-15 ? The truth is they lost their good chances -through Cavani- then but this time they did n't. Mourinho parked the bus In fact they dominated for 12 minutes out of the total of 120. Granted that 6 out of those 12 minutes proved crucial, this is not parking the bus, whether one thinks Mourinho should have employed some different tactics or not. PSG are like Bradford-Maribor-Apollo Limassol They should n't-would n't be able to cross the centre circle. Not on English soil ! Never ! But Mourinho -again- allowed them to do so ! Diego Costa can't do it anymore So, alright. This player should be playing in Abu Dabi or Indonesian team. Now that the dust has settled, the blatant anti Chelsea bias has to be exposed.

Never mind what he says. But I don't like one day users. If at least he was a Lyon supporter to wish Chelsea good luck ! I mean I am myself member to forums and I don't take part. But in those cases it's a shelved interest of some kind that makes me become a member. Like racingtwits the one I liked very much and never found time to make posts. I never sub for one day to harangue and then go away.

It's inaccurate. We did not play defensive - like in the Bayern match. They had the ball, they kept possession for a couple of 5 minute intervals, so we had to defend, what else is there to do ? The problem was lack of aggressiveness in attack. The target was an itchy-bitchy-teeny-weenie 0-0 and we kept passing the ball around. PSG outplayed us for a little while before the 1-0, from 80' to 83' and from 112' to 115' (their two goals as well).

Barcelona was in a stage of reform when that happened imo. Between us, the aggregate was 3-3, but last year's it was also 3-3 and you went out. I hope we meet again.

We never said Luiz was such a bad player. Otherwise we were going to send him to a poorhouse, not sell him for 50 mil. PSG I 'm afraid will need a big basket to put in the goals they concede after they are drawn against Barcelona - Bayern. I wish you to play against Real though and eliminate them because they are clowns and fix matches.

Wrong footing by Courtois in the 2-2. Should have been easy to tip it over the bar - like he did with Luiz's freekick. Luiz's header, the 1-1, was unstoppable.

It's the image making. Barcelona are the "repressed Catalans". Real is the team of Ferenc Pushkas. Bayern have the Franz Beckenbauer good guy image. The others are small guys anyway.

The system was tightrope across the Thames. And they did perform with 10 men. Not usual -Chelsea against Burnley lost their marbles. But I 've seen it before.