DYC.

10's are anything but rare on whoscored, I've seen it happen so often. But very impressive stats indeed, quality player. Spanish midfielders dominate world football.

Busquets and Adriano aren't exactly regular goal-scorers haha. Adriano's goal was insane.

Haha I can watch him score goals like that all day. Talk about accuracy.

Haha I just love Busquets. Great fake shot. 3 great goals really. Haven't enjoyed a game this much in a long long while.

Yes. Right now, Mata is the best option for the playmaker role.And I'm still counting on a top four finish definitely. Something would have to terribly wrong for that not to happen. Arsenal and Tottenham have serious issues as well.

Very harsh. Mata does have a rare ability of being decisive, even if he isn't playing well. And he's done so in big games as well. It's just easy to focus on his flaws as there's no one else to take over when he doesn't play well.

I agree he's no playmaker. Not of the highest level that is. I think he's much better as a left midfielder/left forward and he has what it takes to be world-class in that role imo. Not your typical wide man but with his great crossing, terrific positional sense, a quality eye for playing the final pass and his goal-scoring ability (also able of picking players out from deep positions), he'd be great.Oscar is the real playmaker in this team. But he needs time as he's not at the required level yet.

And we saw how much Van Persie on his own could do for a team simply not good enough to compete for the major titles last season, which was my point.

I absolutely love Pellegrini. But I don't think he's high-profile enough for the club. He'd need to win the CL with Malaga. And even if he managed that, he'd get sacked after a few poor results so yeah.

Unfair on Mata. There are only a handful of players in world football who can look good in a disjointed team on a highly consistent basis. Not only does he have to start attacks, he has to finish them off as well. And so often, the other players just aren't on his wavelength. I'm personally surprised at how well he has done in this team actually. I'd love to see how he'd do if he had someone to share the load with on a consistent basis. Mata isn't up there with the likes of Messi, Iniesta and such but he's not too far away from them.Drogba for example played some terrific games for Chelsea in his last two seasons but he also had a lot of games where he looked absolutely awful, which I'm convinced had nothing to do with his age.

Guess the previous manager couldn't do much about some of the poor results under his tenure. Who knew.. This has been a season filled with embarrasments and it's only December. I expected a bumpy ride but I didn't expect the bumps to be this big. I can only hope the men in charge have their eyes open and recognize our faults. Haha who am I kidding. They'll probably buy Falcao and think all our problems are solved. This is not good.

Come on Chelsea! Can't allow this to happen.

That's what you get playing at the tempo of a team from the 70's. We're supposed to be a PL team, sigh.

The coach needs to tell the wide men to stretch them a lot more. Also the Ramires-Lamps combo simply doesn't work, we need Mikel in there for sure. For Ramires if it was up to me, would also allow Lamps a bit. David Luiz has been great.

I'm shocked. He was awful in his time here in Holland.

True, we need a holding midfielder. I'd take off Ramires for Mikel.

It's because he's our new John Terry!!We're far too narrow and the passing is just too sloppy. Awful display on the ball so far.

It's sad every player wants to be a #10 nowadays. Eden has been playing to his strengths in recent weeks and it's paying off. He's a all-round wide man rather than a genuine #10. Maybe in a few years.

Tackling includes standing tackles, which makes it very important for a player in any defensive role imo.

I understood what you said. When you click on the defensive tab, you can see their stats for tackles, interceptions etc and they are similar, which is of course impossible if Kevin truly did have a far higher defensive work-rate.

That's funny. I've also watched him play at Bremen and I don't see what you see. The stats suggest something completely different as well. His work-rate is 10 times that of Lamps? http://www.whoscored.com/Players/48/ http://www.whoscored.com/Players/73084/

I said attacking midfielder not #10. Lamps is a attacking midfielder but he's a CM. The position a player plays on paper is irrelevant, it's all about how he plays on the pitch. Like Lamps he starts from central midfield to join attacks constantly. Most of the time he just strolls back if the ball is lost and does little defending. His presence in the defensive third is also rare. And that's why I wonder how he all of a sudden knows how to defend when he's only played on the wing and in a similar role as he's playing now in his entire career. But If you're telling me you believe he can learn how to defend (at the required level of the role) then that's a completely different story of course.

I didn't follow Verratti at Pescara but I don't think any coach in the world would move an attacking midfielder (looking at your post, I assume he used to be a attacking midfielder?) who is performing to a deeper role. Which wasn't the case with Pirlo for example. And that's my point, fixing something that isn't broken. But let's just wait and see. I'm just glad he's performing well and hope he keeps it up.

Of course it's possible. But I personally don't see it happening tbh and I don't see the use of it. He clearly enjoys playing in the way he does now and has been doing in his career. Players usually get moved from more attacking roles to deeper roles because they can't handle the pressure in advanced positions and/or lack effiency (or with older players it's when they decline physically) but that's clearly not the case with Kevin.

That's the same as me saying Mata can play in the double pivot, his current role is just the role he's been asked to play. Kevin has always been a offensive player. But of course you are allowed to believe he can play in that position.