WNDS

Alex Sandro wasn't playing in that game due to suspension; Danilo was also missing for exactly the same reason. Both players had played brilliantly in the first leg, and their absence was a critical blow to Porto.

The relative lack of goals provided by Oscar and Willian (in particular) becomes a significantly lesser issue if Pedro arrives and performs for us; having 3/4 attacking positions covered by players who are capable of being regular goalscorers should be adequate for our needs. Indeed, having a player such as Oscar or Willian alongside them should allow Costa, Hazard, and Pedro to focus all the more on their attacking responsibilities. Form aside, Oscar could be used in the games that we are aiming to dominate/games against opponents that sit deep, where his excellent combination-play in the middle-third of the pitch, intelligent off-the-ball movement, and threat from direct free-kicks will be enormously useful to us. Willian could be deployed in the games where we are planning to play as a counter-attacking unit/games against opponents who play in a more open and expansive style, where his pace, ability to recover defensive position, and ability to break through opposition midfield lines can be used to maximum effect. There is little reason for posters to use Pedro's potential arrival as an(other) opportunity to castigate either Oscar OR Willian for their shortcomings, whether they be real or merely perceived; a player like Pedro might possibly allow us to get the best out of both of them.

As much as people like to bang on about his 'passion', 'drive', and 'will to win', these things count for very little if they are not expressed in a controlled and constructive manner on the pitch. Costa's aggression frequently appears to cause him to lose all focus on what actually matters during a game, and this can end up affecting the other players as well. An example of this would be PSG at home last season. With a man advantage, we needed to be focused and to control the tempo of the game; instead, Costa spent the game picking fights and responding to PSG provocation, with the situation becoming so heated that eventually the entire Chelsea team was getting involved in the brawling at the expense of managing the game properly.

It's so frustrating, because on his day Ivan can be a genuine beast of a player, but he seems to be a player who NEEDS to be feeling the pressure in order to perform to such a high standard; when he is guaranteed his place in the team no matter what (as he currently is), and/or the game being played is not 'do-or-die', he loses almost all focus and discipline. I find it unbelievable that Mourinho is willing to ignore this.

It needn't be a question of replacing an out-of-form Fabregas with either Ramires or Mikel; as I mentioned above, Mourinho could perhaps consider switching us to a 4-3-3 formation with Oscar and Willian occupying the two CM positions whilst Moses (a natural right-sided wide player, unlike Willian) plays on the right. This would allow for Oscar AND Willian AND Moses to feature in their favoured positions/roles on the pitch whilst having a less detrimental effect upon our possession and attacking play than that which occurs when we play either Ramires (concedes possession far too cheaply and lacks technique) or Mikel (unambitious passing coupled with a lack of mobility). I don't believe that Oscar could be any worse than Fabregas (in current 'form') when defending, and he possesses similar levels of ability to Fabregas when it comes to linking play in the middle-third. Willian has the pace and stamina of Ramires, but supplements this with genuine technique. True, neither Oscar nor Willian possesses Fabregas' ability to play killer passes in the final third, but they would make up for this (in part) by offering the team a significantly greater level of dynamism and tactical flexibility than Fabregas and Mikel are able to, and all while still enabling us to maintain possession relatively well (unlike when Ramires features).

The moment when Ivanovic simply allowed Routledge (Montero's replacement) to run in behind him onto a through ball without even making the SLIGHTEST effort to track him (despite being in the perfect position to do so) summed up his overall performance today.

Fabregas offered us nothing at all today (poor passing, minimal defensive effectiveness, poor set-piece delivery, no mobility or dynamism), and should have been the player removed following Courtois' red card. I also think that he should be dropped for the game against Man City; he under-performed against them last season (even when he was having a good run of form), and he's been poor in almost all of our most recent matches, including the one today against Swansea. He just doesn't look ready for competitive football at the moment, and I'm not sure that we can afford to have him in our starting 11 against an opponent of Man City's quality; he's looking worse than a passenger. I think that we should play 4-3-3 against City, with Matic as the lone DM behind a box-to-box CM duo of Oscar and Willian (as in pre-season against PSG) and a front three of Hazard-Costa-Moses. Anyway, hopefully Fabregas re-discovers some form soon, because when he's playing well he's a huge asset to our team.

Oscar has been the best player on the pitch so far, with Matic not far behind. Costa, Willian, Azpi, Cahill all pretty good. Hazard and Fabregas have both been very average; Ivanovic awful.

We were poor in the second-half. One reason for this was Ramires' awful performance in the pivot, another was Fabregas again being given the 'opportunity' to display how unsuited he is to playing as a 'number 10' in our current team. Our first-half was good/very good, but as Barcelona were using some of their worst/least experienced players during that period of the game, I'm not sure that we can take much from it. An excellent pre-season work-out, though. I hope Costa's injury isn't too serious.

Alex Sandro is a very good player, but there is simply no reason for us to buy a LB of such quality at this moment in time; Azpi will be first-choice LB so long as Terry is playing at CB, and any other player will simply find themselves in the same position as Luis was last season. Not only would we end up overpaying for a second-choice player, but we would also struggle to keep such a player happy with the limited amount of game-time on offer to them.

I was impressed with the Oscar-Willian box-to-box CM combo; it worked very well in this game.

It's truly ridiculous that some posters are whining about buying players who are Barca/Real/Bayern 'rejects', all the while demanding some flashy, big-name, big-money signing without even knowing for sure if such a player is genuinely available or even able to improve the team outright. Look at what Mourinho did with Inter in the 2009/10 season: he made a brilliant, wonderfully balanced, versatile TEAM using all manner of 'rejects' from various 'bigger'/'better' clubs. Sneijder, Samuel and Cambiasso were Real Madrid 'rejects', Eto'o and Motta had both previously been at Barcelona, whilst Lucio was viewed as something of a joke at the time of his sale by Bayern. This virtual army of 'rejects' was then complemented by good/very good (but mostly unspectacular) 'system' players such as Goran Pandev, and went on to win everything in sight. Prior to that season, the only players in the team viewed as being genuine 'big names'/'world-class players' were Eto'o, Zanetti, and maybe Sneijder. NAMES and HYPE do not always matter when it comes to winning trophies (although they CAN be very useful at times); what DOES always matter is having a well-balanced team consisting of players that complement each other well and are capable of following the manager's instructions. This is not some great insight on my part, but I still feel the need to post it, as it seems that many of you are being blinded by the Real Madrid-style idea of 'star-power'. Our team has enough 'stars', anyway (Hazard, Costa, Fabregas, Terry, Courtois, maybe Matic); what it is currently lacking is genuine balance. Both Oscar and Willian are very good 'system' players, but I do not believe that we can improve our performance in the CL with BOTH players in the starting line-up. We need another goal-scorer in the AM to allow for more variation in out attacking play, but that goal-scorer does not necessarily HAVE to be a 'big name', merely someone who will get the job done; I don't know if we are actually in for Pedro, but I DO think that he has the attributes required to do this for us.

Reus doesn't appear to be on the market, Griezmann is currently not much better than Pedro overall, and Gotze would likely end up having the same issues with Mourinho that Mata had. Isco is the one player you've listed here who MIGHT both be available and be able to address the needs of our current team; I don't think that he would be played on the right if we were to get him, though.

Because as soon as the 'Big Three' realise that Reus is on the market 'for that sort of money' they will do anything to acquire him. There is no chance that we could win such a bidding war, and even if we could, Reus would likely have a preference for one of the 'traditional' superpowers over us.

Vids and stats are only of limited use when judging a player, as you've already acknowledged above. Head off to Pedro's thread on the main Barca forum, though, and you'll find a number of posts over the last few pages praising his link-up play in the final third etc. Most of those people have watched him for years, and know all of his strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, whilst I DO think that there are other players out there who may be capable of allowing the team to improve massively (Reus, Bale, maybe Isco etc), these players appear to be unavailable to us at this time, and so it seems that we shall either have to go for players like Pedro, or otherwise simply purchase no further attacking players at all. Pedro is technically gifted, a good short passer, a decent (but not brilliant) dribbler, and a fairly reliable goal-scorer with intelligent off-the-ball movement. Add to that the fact that he's a pretty fast player who is capable of using his speed effectively, and I think he could serve us (very) well as the 'goal-scoring AM/RM' that we've been hoping for. Schurrle and Cuadrado haven't worked out for us due to their relatively average levels of technique and passing ability, whilst Willian possesses the technique required but fails to be a consistent attacking threat for us on the right; Pedro could potentially offer us a blend of their various qualities/abilities when playing on the right, and so provide us with genuine balance across the AM positions.

This vid below shows some of Pedro's 'highlights' from 2014 (possibly the worst calendar year of his career so far). I think there's plenty here to suggest he could be very useful for us, and not just because he can score goals from the AM positions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRgxEKERums

Despite not possessing exceptional vision, he IS actually very good at picking-out clever passes in and around the box to create openings for others. His passing is less effective/imaginative in the middle-third of the pitch, however.

I know, right? No team could ever hope to win the CL with Pedro in the starting line-up......

Turan's most recent season WASN'T as good as the two seasons previous to it, but then Atletico's 2014-15 season as a whole wasn't as good as the two previous to it either, with the majority of the players performing to a level considerably worse than that which they were able to reach in 2013-14 (e.g. Miranda, Gabi, Koke).

???. Arda Turan was a VITAL component of the 2013-14 Atletico side (pretty much a Simeone 'untouchable'), and they missed him badly when he was unable to play in the CL final because of injury.

The problem with Douglas Costa's introduction (or rather, Willian's removal) was the negative effect it has upon the team's tactical shape and positional discipline. Prior to the substitution, Brazil were in the lead and exerting SOME degree of control over the game, even though they were not playing particularly well. After the sub, Paraguay completely dominated both the midfield and the game in general, due in large part to all four of Brazil's attacking players pushing MUCH too high up the pitch.

Brazil lost control of the game when Dunga subbed Willian out in the 60th minute. He wasn't having the best of games individually (a bland 6/10), but by dropping deep into midfield to link play together he was allowing Brazil to exert some level of control over proceedings. As soon as he went off, Brazil were playing what was in effect 4-2-4, with Robinho, Firmino (later Tardelli), Coutinho, and Douglas Costa all playing very high up the pitch; Fernandinho and Elias were left ridiculously isolated, and so were utterly overwhelmed in the middle-third. The result of all this was that Brazil were not only exposed defensively, but were also unable to mount any genuinely coherent attacks, even with the game becoming very stretched and open.

I don't think that there was ever the 'danger' of us buying Douglas Costa once we had Cuadrado; it was a choice between one or the other in January, and we chose the Colombian. Let's just hope that it pays off for us in the long term.

Because the player we bought instead of Douglas Costa (and for a similar price) has done brilliantly here so far .

But.... but.... weren't we all told a few months ago that he was the sort of player ('mediocre Brazilian from a joke of a league') that no genuine top-tier team in Europe would ever consider buying, even as a squad option . Still, with the fee reported to be around £27m, Bayern are taking a huge gamble.