WNDS

Against sides that are more open and/or attacking, Oscar is one of our most important players due to his spatial intelligence and ball-winning ability. However, he is probably the attacking player I would consider benching against sides that are going to play a low, compact defence and look to counter. He's less comfortable in tight spaces than either Hazard or Willian, and he doesn't have Schurrle's nose for goal. In addition, he doesn't have the pace to recover his position when we are countered against. Having said that, I thought it was a big mistake by Mourinho to take both Oscar AND Willian off when we had neither Matic nor Ramires on the pitch. To my mind, this team must ALWAYS have at least one of those four players on the pitch, whatever the situation.

What's the point? Mourinho will always play him no matter what, and it's his decision that matters. A few of us have recently vented our frustration at the lack of rotation of our full-backs on the Luis thread, and all that really needed to be said about this issue has been said there. Ivanovic is a very good full-back with useful physical attributes, but he plays with real complacency at times. It costs the team, but not his place within it, so he remains complacent. This happened last season as well, and will continue to happen until Ivanovic feels under a bit more pressure to perform. Some players don't handle pressure well and crumble, others (like Ivanovic) seem to thrive on it. If it's made clear to him that his place in the starting 11 is not guaranteed, I'm fairly confident that we will once again have him performing to the very high levels we know he can produce.

Hazard was poor in the second half, but he is obviously exhausted. In almost every game up to (and including) the game against Maribor away, Hazard was beating men for fun and playing with real drive. In terms of raw stats per game he's actually been slightly more productive since then, but has been half the player in terms of general performance. He's lost some of that incredible acceleration and can no longer go past players with the same ease. Mourinho has insisted not only upon starting Hazard in almost every game possible, but also upon making him play the full 90. Why? So he can 'stat pad'? There have been more than a few games in which we have entered the final 20 mins with a commanding lead/performance; Mourinho simply has to haul him off in these situations and trust the other players to see the game out, but never does. The result? Hazard's performance level is dropping just as we are entering the most congested part of our fixture list. Please rotate more, Jose. You have a very good, balanced squad; use it.

All Willian does is run without doing anything!? Opinions, opinions, sure, but this is just flat out wrong; whatever the raw stats say, his defensive contribution was immense against Tottenham. Talk about completely dismissing the importance of work done off the ball; you make it sound like he runs around the pitch without any tactical discipline. His work with the ball in the attacking third of the pitch is questionable, but his running to block opposition passing lanes, his closing down of opposition players in possession, and his brilliant tracking of the man on the overlap when helping out our defence really shouldn't be. I can think of few attacking midfielders at this level of the game that are as capable defensively as he is.

Given that this is Willian we're talking about here, there will be more than a few games this season where criticism of his lack of general attacking threat is justified. On Saturday, I thought he was just about the only attacking threat we had, however; the few times we threatened he seemed to be involved. He hit the post, set Ivan up for a good chance, flashed a shot just wide, and even sent in a few decent deliveries from corners which could have led to Cahill/Terry winning us penalties. He DID fade badly from about the 60th min onward though, I'll give you that.

Willian will probably never be a consistent attacking threat for us so long as he is being deployed on the right of midfield. At Shakhtar he was almost exclusively used on the left, and his role within that team was similar to Hazard's current role with us (an inverted winger/wide playmaker). He didn't score much, but he tended to set up loads of chances from that position. His game has never been about beating his man on the outside and then whipping in dangerous crosses, which is how most right-footed right midfielders play. Some of you don't seem to realise the MASSIVE difference there is between being a right-footer on the left and being a right-footer on the right. When on the left side of the pitch, a right-footed player will find it much easier to dribble infield with the ball (the ball is shielded from the defending players by the dribbler's body), much easier to participate in quick passing moves (their right instep is in a better position to enable accurate forward passing when they are facing infield towards their team-mates), and much easier to take direct shots on goal. Just watch Willian when he comes deeper or moves infield to receive the ball when on the right. If he plays a pass, he's often either trying to play it forward/infield with the outside of his right foot, or he simply passes it back to our defenders with his right instep. When he tries to dribble infield, he gets dispossessed quite frequently because his right foot (and therefore the ball) are more exposed to the opposition's defensive players. It's a similar situation for Schurrle (another right-footer), even though he has never been anything close to a playmaker. He almost always played on the left for Leverkusen, primarily so he could cut inside and take shots, but also because it allowed him to mask his average passing ability. When he plays on the right for us, his passing is often poor, even in games where his general performance is good. Ultimately though, Hazard is far too good to be moved from the left, and Oscar's role at CAM is too important for the overall balance of the team, so Willian and Schurrle will just have to keep up their efforts on the right. It would be cool if they could do that without game-by-game criticism from some on this forum, but I won't hold my breath.

Azpi probably IS the best defensive full-back in the league, but that alone isn't really much help for us against teams that decide to use the same defensive setup as Sunderland did; against those teams, the LB needs to attack more than defend. The LB has to be more willing and able to move into attacking positions to stretch play and provide crosses, as well as being capable of getting involved in the general build-up play with fast and ambitious passing on the ground. After this Sunderland performance, more sides are now going to sit back on the edge of their box and defend narrow against us; Azpi's game at LB is simply not suited to helping us break the opposition down in these scenarios, and they know it. Your Ronaldo-Isco/Azpi-Luis analogy is flawed when applied to games like these. If anything, Luis is 'Ronaldo' (the better attacker/less defensively sound) whilst Azpi is 'Isco'.

Azpilicueta has played at RB in certain games this year for Spain, and has performed poorly there; he's looked really uncomfortable. Obviously, the Spain NT plays in a very different style to this year's Chelsea team, so I'm cautious about drawing too many conclusions from these performances, but nevertheless I suspect that Mourinho feels that at this point in time he cannot simply be thrown back in at RB and be relied upon to perform well there. If Azpi shifts back to RB, he's probably going to need a period of time to readjust, and I'd guess that Mourinho views this as impractical given that the we're now well into the season and fighting on all fronts. Which run of games could be used as a testing ground to see if Azpi's still got it at RB? It might be too late for that now in the manager's view, unfortunately. If the above is the case, then I feel as if it could have been avoided by rotating all three full-backs (not just Azpi/Luis) more frequently during the earlier part of the season so that we'd have had more of an idea as to which full-back combinations work (and which don't) against specific types of opposition. Normally this wouldn't be necessary, but when you have 3 full-backs as good as ours, it's probably the best way to both ensure that they all get adequate game time and to ensure that we possess increased tactical flexibility.

The problem Luis has when it comes to getting a proper run in the team is less to do with Azpi, and more to do with Ivanovic currently being completely untouchable under Mourinho. Up to a point, I can understand why this is; he's one of the leaders in this team, his physicality is very useful at both ends of the pitch, and he's a direct attacking threat from both open play and set pieces. I don't agree with Mourinho that these attributes alone should make him a true untouchable, however. I find his fairly regular lapses in concentration enormously frustrating, and there are times when his play smacks of complacency. He's been at least partly responsible for quite a few of the goals we've conceded so far this season (2 against Everton, 1 against Swansea, the Schalke equaliser at home, QPR's goal etc.), but never appears to pay the price and it seems as if he doesn't expect to. Yes, Ivanovic attacks well, but that didn't save goalscorer and non-defender Schurrle from getting a complete and very public tongue-lashing from the manager after the Man City game, with Ivanovic's role in us conceding that goal being completely overlooked. If Mourinho is (rightly) going to critisise wide midfielders for not tracking their men, then why not Ivanovic (you know, an actual defender) as well? I could understand the lack of criticism and rotation of a player if the back-ups in his position are flat-out inadequate, and I'm not advocating for the adoption of a a 'one-mistake-and-you're-out' policy, but our depth at full-back is excellent, and consequently none of the three players should be given the status of 'untouchable'. The manager needs to rotate the full-backs far more frequently, and to do so in response to the (expected) individual qualities, tactics, and strategies of each separate opposing team. I mean, even Simeone at Atletico rotates his left-backs quite frequently this season depending upon the opposition they face, and Atletico remain an excellent defensive unit. In short, play Luis more!!!! P.S.: I suppose I could have posted this in the Ivanovic thread as well, but eh...., I prefer using the player threads to call for players to play more based on their perceived qualities rather than using them to ask for the player to be dropped/sold. For the record, I do actually rate Ivan highly, and would play him regularly, just not EVERY game.