WNDS

Matic appears to be done for if Mourinho remains; the two of them completely ignored one another when Matic was subbed back off.

Simply ridiculous that he didn't get subbed off today, particularly given the way that Mourinho chose to humiliate Matic.

Going by Mourinho's post-match comments at Newcastle, I would anticipate that Begovic, Azpilicueta, Ramires, Willian, and Costa are all guaranteed starts (fitness permitting). Beyond that..... .

I think that there is little chance of such a midfield getting us a result away at Porto in the UCL. You've got two very inexperienced players in there, alongside a tactically undisciplined Ramires and an underperforming Hazard; it's extremely unstable.

Agreed. The threat of Maccabi choosing to play extremely defensively is almost certainly why he has selected Fabregas to partner RLC instead of Matic.

Mourinho is probably hoping that a high defensive line combined with the work-rates of Oscar and Willian in midfield will offer our pivot enough protection.

He CAN 'be shit for this season because of what he has done in the past'; I'm willing to give him that. Just not while he is featuring as our first-choice RB.

Mourinho simply needs to focus on getting the balance of the team right, because it's non-existent at the moment. Once that has been done, we can then begin to deal with issues relating to our limitations in attack (and think about bringing Fabregas back into the team etc.). A starting 11 like the one above should hopefully give us a good base from which to attempt to recover some form and improve our team-wide defensive play, WITHOUT completely sacrificing the team's ability to hold possession and create chances (as Mourinho risks doing if he turns to Ramires/Mikel instead).

He might as well do that, though: the loss of technical quality is minimal (unlike if Ramires is selected), the midfield has more pace about it (unlike if Mikel is selected), AND we gain a threat from direct free-kicks. I mean, could Oscar/Willian possibly be LESS useful in defensive situations than Fabregas currently is? I don't think so.

Sure, I agree with that. I think it's all the more reason for us to start playing a more mobile and dynamic line-up, though. If having a total of 6/10 physical outfielders in the starting 11 still isn't going to cut it when it comes to winning the physical battle with the opposition, then Mourinho should simply change his player selections and game-plan in such a way that we find some other means to dominate games more readily. I think we have the players in our squad to play a brand of football with more emphasis upon mobility, dynamism, and box-to-box play.

No physical players?! We started the game with Terry, Zouma, Ivanovic, Mikel, Matic, and Costa in the line-up. If anything, our problems appear to be down to a lack of mobility and dynamism within the team rather than a lack of muscle. I want to see: Begovic; Azpi-Zouma/Cahill-Terry-Baba; Matic; Oscar, Willian; Hazard, Pedro; Costa tried-out as soon as possible. I'd be surprised if that line-up played worse than one containing both Ivanovic and Fabregas at the moment.

Does anyone still want to dispute the view that we do not rehearse ANY attacking play in training? It doesn't seem to matter what four players we play in the attacking positions, they all end up looking clueless in the final-third.

Fabregas has played better in possession today, but offers NOTHING to any aspect of our defensive game when playing as a 10: he leaves the defensive-midfield completely exposed. Mikel is no improvement over Fabregas in the pivot because he is incapable of offering us the one key attribute that Fabregas lacks: mobility. Ivanovic has been awful so far: surprise! For all that people have bashed Willian's attacking contributions over the past few games (and done so with justification), our attacking play in the final-third shows little improvement without him. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we NEED to have one of either Oscar or Willian (or both) on the pitch in games such as these; they are the only players in our squad with playing-styles that are sufficiently well-rounded to allow them to link our play together and contribute to both attack and defence. Despite all of the above, I'm actually quite optimistic for the second-half: Everton's defending (Stones aside) has not impressed me. We can score more goals here.

Although I'm trying to be optimistic, this is pretty much my worry. Our central midfield is totally lacking in dynamism, and that will become a real issue if Ivanovic performs terribly at RB once more. I'm just hoping Martinez's decision to pack his own central midfield at the expense of the wings ends up playing into our hands.

His levels of productivity for Brazil haven't actually been that bad since Dunga became manager: 2 goals and 5 assists (plus 3-4 'pre-assists' on top of those) in 16 games. If he was registering goals/assists at an equivalent rate for us, he'd be ending a full season with around 6 goals and 15 assists in all competitions. If only.... . Still, it was heartening to see him looking much more assured when in possession of the ball than he has done when playing for us over the past few games. Mourinho should give Oscar a chance to nail down a place in the starting 11 against Everton, and then start Willian in midweek to allow him to an opportunity to carry some of the form he's just been showing for Brazil over to us.

He's actually had a very good international break all things told: a decent all-round performance against Costa Rica, followed by a superb one tonight (in the first-half, when the USA were still somewhat competitive). That said, he probably shouldn't start against Everton as he'll likely be suffering from jet-lag after a whole week spent in the US; Fabregas (who I actually think deserves to be dropped ahead of Willian at the moment) will be fresher, and Oscar simply merits a start. Have Willian down as a guaranteed starter in the midweek CL game instead, whatever happens at the weekend.

I agree with pretty much all of this, except for maybe the part about Fabregas' contribution during the first half of last season; unlike Costa, whose rate of goal-scoring dropped-off quite considerably after the first two or three months, I think he made hugely positive key contributions to the majority of the matches we played up until around January of this calendar year. I definitely agree that many fans seem to have forgotten that Hazard was actually playing superbly for the initial months of the season, even if he wasn't getting the stats for himself to show it; Fabregas and Costa WERE getting the stats, and so their contributions were noticed far more readily. Only Hazard, Terry, and Azpilicueta maintained the high individual standards that were set during the first half of the season, and Willian was arguably the only player in the starting 11 to perform better in the second half of the season than the first (he made a very important contribution overall, but was our most replaceable player in the starting line-up over the first few months). As such, a narrative has developed that Hazard was at his best in the second half of last season, when it was actually a case of others around him dropping their levels of performance from January onward. Even against PSG Hazard's individual level didn't actually drop all that much; he was simply limited in what he could do because he was the ONLY outfielder who was playing well that game, with even the otherwise in-form Terry, Azpilicueta, and Willian giving poor displays. Anyway, my own initial post yesterday was praising Hazard for managing to turn a very disappointing all-round display into a match-winning one. The ability to do this on a more regular basis when he's off-form is pretty much the ONLY thing he needs to improve upon at the moment. Given that he is generally a very consistent player who is not off-form all that often (and is generally capable of playing well whilst the team itself isn't), it's not something he should find himself having to do with great frequency.

It's not just about the goals themselves, and I'm not demanding that Hazard becomes the next goal-scoring phenomenon in World football. It IS my view, however, that Hazard does not make enough decisive contributions when he is playing poorly. A player's ability to make positive and decisive contributions to a game irrespective of the form that they are displaying is what generally marks them out as belonging in the very highest tier. Ronaldo and Neymar exemplify this: I'd estimate that around 1/3 of the time they play, their all-round game is fairly poor; they nonetheless manage to fulfill their primary function in the team and score extraordinarily often despite this. In Hazard's case, accepting that he is not likely to transform himself into a goal-scoring machine, what can he offer a team if he is off-form? His touch will be letting him down, his passing will be sloppy, he will be dribbling into players rather than dribbling past/around them. The only way to overcome these problems is by adopting the correct mentality and thereby continuing to attempt to affect the game in a positive manner, continuing to attempt risky passes in the attacking-third to assist team-mates, continuing to take up dangerous positions on the pitch etc. These are things that Hazard does not tend to do when he is having a bad game; instead, he seems to be content with simply being a 'cog' in the machine, and starts playing tidy but safe/unambitious passes to the nearest team-mate whilst rarely even making the attempt to dribble past his man. It is when this happens that people begin to comment upon Hazard 'disappearing' from the game, and the opposition themselves begin to feel unthreatened by him. The very best players rarely 'disappear' from games. They might well make fools of themselves as they continue to mess-up their passes, miss simple chances, and trip over their own feet when dribbling, but they continue to attempt to play their own game regardless; they retain faith in their own abilities; they continue to believe that the NEXT time they attempt something will be the time that they pull it off.

Credit to him for doing something he rarely does: scoring from open play despite playing badly. His relative inability to do this is what currently separates him from the very highest tier of attacking players. He needs to make it more of a habit like Ronaldo and Neymar have.

I'd play Courtois; Azpi, Cahill, Terry, Baba; Matic; Oscar, Willian; Pedro, Hazard; Costa as the starting 11 in this one. This line-up probably won't end up improving our on-the-ball performance levels by all that much (if at all), but it SHOULD increase our team's 'nuisance factor' quite considerably by allowing us to control space on the pitch more easily. One of the biggest issues with the team at the start of this season has been the ease with which the opposition has been able to play through our CM/DM and RB areas. We NEED to have more athletic and dynamic players occupying these areas of the pitch until such a time as the team's form has improved; if/when this improvement has been made, we can then begin to play with more confidence when in possession. Playing Oscar and Willian together in the centre of the pitch should make us considerably more dynamic and tactically flexible, particularly if we play Azpilicueta and Baba as the full-backs.

Kenedy helped win us the league today? Fantastic! I don't know why everyone's so pissed off at the moment if that's what just happened . In all seriousness though, he DID look very promising.

Like Fabregas, he is a player who simply MUST be dropped; it's almost like playing without a RB at the moment.

Needs to be dropped. Now. He isn't showing any signs of improvement so far, and unlike other out-of-form players like Willian, Hazard, and Matic, he has done absolutely NOTHING positive in any of our matches so far. He's creating few chances, delivering awful set-pieces, passing really sloppily in the middle-third of the pitch, and offering us little in the way of defensive solidity or mobility to compensate. We can't keep bending-over backwards to accommodate him when he's in such terrible form; it's just not worth it.

Oscar has been cut from the Brazil squad for the upcoming NT friendlies; I would therefore assume that he is still carrying an injury of some kind.

No worries. I'm really jealous of Juve for managing to sign the guy for the price they did. He's a good defender with excellent technical abilities, and he would have been a fine option for us at LB when shifting Azpi to RB. Of course, I'm willing to give Baba Rahman time to show us all what he is capable of, but I feel that he will need to develop aspects of his game quite a bit further before he stands a chance of being a regular in our starting line-up. Alex Sandro is, on the other hand, close to the finished product: a more defensively reliable version of Marcelo (minus some of the attacking ability).