The Skipper

Don't know why you're comparing Kovacic or Rabiot to MVG when they're clearly different types of players. The former two are DLPs/registas whilst Van Ginkel is a B2B midfielder.

Phenomenal, good luck Marco.

Completely different types of players...

That's sweet! Originally from Ghana pal. What does your position entail?

Delighted; just been voted as the president of the African-Caribbean society at my university. Great times ahead.

Think it'll be a three man midfield of Luiz, Matic & Lamps with Oscar and Hazard flanking Eto'o.

Yes we do need a DLP and he can play as a DLP/regista, he's been used as one before and pretty successfully. That's his true role, just that the Inter manager has been moving him about a lot. Oliver Torres is more of an AM than this fella IMO.

Kovacic - Matic pivot would be wonderful.

That run he did when he skipped past about 4 players and made the last defender sit on his ass, he really should've shot. Way too unselfish.

Tbf, half the moves he broke down were due to him not having any options in front of him. Thought he was alright today.

My MOTM for today, very big reason as to why we controlled the midfield today, tackled well, pressed well, sprayed the ball excellently, made the right decisions at the right time in getting forward into the box (unlucky not to get a goal IMO). Keep it up Frank, this is exactly what I want from him in his performances.

An emperor on the pitch. Julius Cesar.

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.