The Skipper

Defending is a lot better but the attacking prowess naturally declines.

What has he done? FFS

City do the same pretty much, but have Aguero coming off Dzeko. It's going to be a tight game.

We don't have a pure passer in the pivot, shouldn't really expect that from them. What I should say is the pivot is defending well.

Pivot is playing well.

It doesn't help because we need an initiator in midfield but we don't have it, that's why we need to rely on our defenders (especially Luiz) to make the forward passes.

Great start.

No point in replying, lets just enjoy the game okay, and try not to blame everything on Luiz.

He's not the biggest culprit, he's just the scape goat.

No one has said Luiz hasn't been bad this month, get over it. We need a big performance from the WHOLE team as a defensive unit, not just Luiz.

Lets all pick on Luiz because its entirely his fault our defence has been so poor these last few weeks...

So, Rafa starts Luiz over Cahill. Must be a big surprise to some of you.

Skrtel would be a terrible signing.

I'll be the first one to admit that Luiz has been terrible over the last month, but that doesn't mean he's a terrible footballer. Luiz has shown to all of us, even though not consistently, that he does have the capability to produce excellent performances. I try to be positive about every player - I liked Kalou as a player, never really slagged him off because his role was as a squad player... People expected our Salomon to produce world class performances whenever he played but I never had that sort of expectation about him, he was a quality squad player IMO. Luiz's case is obviously different as he's obviously meant to be a first team starter - but I feel the media crucification of Luiz being a poor defender has actually gone to a lot of people's head, and with his poor performances recently people do the math and think "Oh wait, Alan Hansen is right" but no... I think Luiz is a really good player, his only problem is his inconsistency and that'll come with age. I'm willing to stick my neck out and say if we stick with Luiz now and let him mature for a season or two we will have an excellent defender on our hands. That's just my opinion though, and I can agree with the criticism thrown at Luiz but some are way over the top - e.g. to blame all of the goals we conceded against Atletico on Luiz is ridiculous IMO. Our defensive organisation has been poor as a team for weeks now but people seem to shift all the blame to Luiz unjustifiably in my opinion.

They do need to win or draw to top the group I think, so maybe we could expect something. I think it's going to be a draw though.

In none of those pictures can you say the goals were all solely Luiz's fault. This is my qualm with people criticising Luiz. Every goal we concede is his fault though right...

This has been posted twice in the thread already mate...

He doesn't even have coaching badges.

He doesn't even have coaching badges.

The "mistakes" will significantly reduce this season over time, he's just going through a rough patch like any other player does.

Defenders do not reach their prime till later in their career. I believe we still haven't seen Luiz at his best yet.

Problem with Sturridge is that since he gets so few minutes, he's over eager to impress - and that's why sometimes he'll take the wrong option and shoot.

On a serious note though, Lewandowski has a long long way to go before he's considered world's best.

2 extra strikers, okay I can see the logic behind that especially if Torres leaves and Lukaku goes out on Liam again which I think is very likely, but Cavani AND Falcao? Come on...

His performances with Liverpool suggests something rather contrary.