The Skipper

Always ruining Hazard's brilliance.

Oscar's first good game in a very long time. Tackling well, passing pretty well, linking up very well.

I hate how unselfish Hazard is sometimes. Gosh.

He has been. My MOTM so far.

Problem with Lamps is though that he doesn't always play like this. If he played like this every time then yeah he would definitely be the automatic starter next to Matic in every game but he can't because of age & inconsistency

If we were more clinical in the final third, the tie would be so over right now.

There's a proper striker.

Best possible lineup IMO.

Madrid were wank for ages in the CL.

What infuriates me the most is how he's plastered outside Stamford Bridge and is somehow always part of our media endorsements like he's our best player/face of the club. He really is stealing a living.

How can he address the needs of the squad when there is no clear blueprint or philosophy to follow? If you look at most of his signings, they have all mostly appreciated in value - so you can't really say it's his fault that the squad isn't amongst the elite in Europe atm... There are plenty of other factors that affect that, and the main one in my opinion is managerial instability.

You're completely forgetting that these teams have already had a solid core - both Real and City already had a fantastic team/core unlike us (our core was getting old and we weren't replacing them properly, making stupid signings like the Torres one); we've been in rebuild mode for years especially with the very bad signings before Emenalo came, which is why we've had to spend more. We signed mediocre players before Emenalo came through, and that is the main reason for that IMO.

You can't fully blame Emenalo for that tbh, there are so many other factors that affected this. Like I said before IMO our squad depth was superb after the summer transfer window but because we were constantly chopping and changing managers we've had no real plan or blueprint to follow, so the next best thing IMO we could've done is sign good players which is exactly what Emenalo has done. Again you're going to have to look at the managerial instability for that. Bayern, Barca et al have all had a manager with a certain philosophy that they were willing to back, we haven't until now, and even then Mourinho's philosophy doesn't really promote pro-technical players as the sales of Mata and KdB should suggest - so I don't know how you could again put the blame on Emenalo for that. Again, as I've said above, all these clubs have had a manager with a good philosophy and they've decided to build around that, so you can't compare us to them at all.

My point was though that if Sturridge was the number 1 striker at a decent club that he'd also easily pull Lukaku numbers at the age of 20, and his Bolton loan + him playing out of position here and still grabbing 11 goals attests to that. It isn't that short term to me personally because I have always believed in Sturridge's quality, he just needed someone that believed in him to show it, which is what is happening right now at Liverpool where he's been banging in goals for almost a season and a half now.

Playing out of position, as a right winger. You can't really compare what they did at the age of 20 because they both were in a completely different situation/scenario... Personally, we should've just given Sturridge a new contract instead of signing Ba, I was one of the few people saying this at the time and got blasted for it, when people on here would tell you that Ba is the better striker, which as we all know right now is not true at all. Our strikeforce should've been X, Sturridge & Lukaku, but the club fucked up.

Not really, we can look at all of our senior signings since Emenalo has been appointed Technical Director (most of these figures are from memory + transfermarkt so might not be 100% accurate): 2011/12: Kevin De Bruyne - £7m Patrick Bamford - £1.5m Lucas Piazon - £5m Gary Cahill - £7.5m Meireles - £11m Ulises Davila - £1.5m Mata - £23m Romeu - £4m Lukaku - £12m/£18m Courtois - £8m 2012/13: Demba Ba - £8m Wallace - £4m Victor Moses - £10m Azpilicueta - £7.5m Oscar - £20m Thorgan Hazard - £1m Eden Hazard - £32m Marko Marin - £7m 2013/14: Kurt Zouma - £12m Mo Salah - £11m Matic - £21m Atsu - £3.5m Eto'o - Free Willian - £30m Stipe Perica - £2m Christian Cuevas - £1.6m Schwarzer - Free van Ginkel - £8m Schurrle - £18m I've crossed out the players I think were unnecessary/bad signings, and if you look at that list it's nowhere near as bad as you've tried to make it out to be, there are a lot of great signings in that list IMO.

Agree with most of that post except for Luiz & Zhirkov having little or no resale value. We still recouped most of what we spent on Zhirkov, and also Luiz hasn't really been under performing up until this season - yet he's still being quoted at going for at least around the price we bought him for. Everything else I agree with though, like you said it is amazing how he never gets any credit whatsoever but as soon as things aren't looking on the up the unjustifiable complaints about him start flocking in. He's done a good job here.

I meant that after the summer transfer window we were probably around 2 players away from a complete squad (when we still had Mata, KDB & Lukaku before he went out on loan). The squad depth was strong at that time, and the only thing we needed then IMO was a Matic and maybe a top class striker. As the season has gone on though it became more clear that we needed a midfield maestro next to Matic, and also needed a new LB since Mou doesn't rate Bertrand or Cole. I agree that that became quite obvious as soon as we got Matic. So maybe you could push from needing two signings to complete the squad to maybe 3, which still isn't as far off as you're trying to make it seem. I always say it's a shame that we let both Mata and KDB go because I knew Oscar was going to suffer burn out/ a drop of form soon due to the high amount of games he's been playing over the last two seasons. Before we sold Mata and KDB, the depth in our AM strata was one of the best out there. Willian, Hazard, Schurrle, Mata and KDB is a very strong group of players IMO - all of these were signed under Emenalo - but Mourinho wants to take the squad in a different direction. He's reduced the quality of our AM strata by sending out two of those for various reasons and bringing in Salah (whom I didn't want to begin with) so if you really want to blame anyone for the quantity over quality theme in our AM strata, then it shouldn't be Emenalo but rather Jose. Or you could look at it in this way; we bring Lukaku back, ship off Torres and Ba, renew Eto'o's contract and get in 1 top quality striker, so next season our strikeforce would consist of X, Lukaku & Eto'o, which is very strong IMO. I was talking about needing two/three after the summer transfer window but obviously because the squad has been rejuggled since and with certain players underperforming it isn't the case anymore. As I've said before, you cannot blame Emenalo for that because as TOPTB mentioned above me, our transfer policy since he's come in as technical director has been so much better than what it was before he came.

Disagree. Emelano is so easy to blame but many are forgetting that after the summer transfer window we were only a CDM and ST away from having the complete squad. We clearly had a budget for a striker (Rooney, the one that Mou wanted) but we didn't get him and Mou thought Eto'o's signing would paper over the cracks for this season, and it was also Mou's decision to loan out Lukaku. Mou gave the heads up for the Schurrle signing (he said this himself IIRC) and the Willian signing was also under his approval. He then sold Mata and KDB (two very solid squad players at the very least) and brought in Salah, a typical Mourinho player. Honestly we were fine but Mou wants to build the squad in his own style hence why we got rid of Mata and KDB. If we just brought in Matic in January we'd be 1/2 players away from a complete squad (ST, LB). You can't really blame Emelano for Mourinho trying to build the squad in his image. It seriously annoys me when people want to blame Emelano for the squad make up when he's clearly working in tandem with Jose, trying to create the squad that Jose wants.

Anonymous again today, but don't blame him when you've got a tree who doesn't move in front of you.

Phenomenal for 70 minutes, wank for the last 20.

Take a chill pill pal. I don't think it was intentional, watched it a few times, but it was definitely a horrible challenge. Like I said before, he had an okay game today but the red card just put a downer on it.

Ramires was alright today but he deserved his red - I don't think it was intentional though as he was running at a high speed.

I hope people stop "feeling sorry" for this fella or try to defend him, he's a disgrace. Broke down our attacks countless of times, never made the right runs. We were basically playing with 10 men on the pitch to begin with. How this man earns £175k a week is disgusting.

Shit happens. Move on.