Henrique

Falcão must replace in 2nd half. This referee is so weak, Im sure will show Costa a second yellow in the first opportunity.

That was a penalty and the red card was unfair.

FA referees can be a joke.

Amazing line up.

William is injured, so Hazard must play, despite his poor football this season.

Falcao must start this one. Falcao + Costa in the front. Matic; Fabregas, Oscar, William; Falcao, Costa.

You praised a post that Barbara said this topic was quiet after the result. Support is different from posting here, I think.

Winning this game is far from a great achievement. The start of PL is really a big deal. So you expect people to praise Mourinho for beating Tel Aviv? Even if he the team defeats Arsenal, people won't be here praising him as much as they criticized, and the reason is very simple: Mourinho is getting criticized for the whole picture, they are not taking about isolated results, but about a situation that many people saw coming (at least people who never get the idea that Cahill is world class, Terry as good as 2005, Ivanovic boots being holy, and Azpilicueta being the best LB of the Europe). If Mourinho change things, I'm sure people will be here praising his achievements, but I'm not talking about a couple of positive results.

I've been saying this for years: the talk about PL being the strongest in the world is completely nonsense since 5 years ago. The quality of the league is getting really shocking. I don't think the problem is the lack of quality from players, but it seems PL is stuck in tactical terms. Wenger don't know what he is doing for almost 10 years. Mourinho is completely outdated. Van Gaal is also a very conservative manager in terms of ideas. Pellegrini might be a decent manager, but I don't think he represents the best of the best. PL is set to lost its 4th place in UCL, due to poor record in recent european competitions. Something is really wrong. Think about Chelsea last season. For me that team was unispiring and incredibly weak. The team went to easily win the league, and that speaks loud about the lack of quality. Teams from 2003 to 2010 were ate least two times better than the one from last season, who is one of my least favorite teams from last years. I still believe Mourinho was the main reason PL became the strongest league of the world years ago. He raised the bar really high. At this point he is happy with Curling Cup, he even said it was the most important thing in his life months ago, and he is happy to say if he is a champion in England, nothing else matter. Perhaps getting poor results in England will make Mourinho a great manager again, because he will realize he must change many thing, otherwise he will turn forever into the mediocre manager he is looking in recent years, and even in England "where people love me", he won't be that special anymore.

To be honest I'm not sure why you should be happy with the shocking quality of english teams in Europe. It speaks loud about the quality of the domestic league.

Indeed. I'm expecting the usual Azpi, Cahill, Terry, Ivanovic; Matic, Fabregas; Hazard + 2 players; Costa in the game against Arsenal.

To be honest if there wasn't a "massive difference in the perfomance" in a game against Tel Aviv, Mourinho should be sacked minutes after the game. Waiting for the Arsenal game.

UK press keep saying Falcao failed to make any impact, when he never started a single game, and usually play for 15 minutes when Mourinho press his "i dont know what to do" button. He got as much goal as Costa, who is loved by british press for being a "street fighter".

I was watching ESPN Brasil days ago when they were discussing what happened with the once amazing Luxemburgo, easily the best manager in Brazil in 90s and early 00s. Right now he is no more than ordinary manager with poor records in past 7 years. What happened? Any manager in the world is succesful as long as they can make the players do what the manager has in mind, so one guy in the program say one of the problems with Luxemburgo is the players of this generation just don't see him as great manager. Some players like Rivaldo, Roberto Carlos and Cafu saw Luxemburgo as the best manager they had work with, but a player like Neymar won't respect him as a great one. Perhaps its the same thing with Mourinho. I don't believe a player like Hazard, Oscar, Fabregas, Diego Costa and other guys respect Jose Mourinho in same way Terry, Drogba and Lampard did. While in England, Mourinho is like a God for the british press, outside UK his status is really different. Italian teams are well known for tactical discipline and pragmtaic football, so Mourinho had no difficult in imposing his idead in Internazionale. But lets look to our current squad, most of our players are from Brazil and Spain, two places where the words "arrogant" and "defensive" are more associated with Mourinho than "genius". Even Hazard is a different kind of player. Remember that months ago Hazard said Robinho was one of his favorite players. I'm sure Hazard just doesn't see Mourinho as this football genius and in his ideal wolrd he just want a manager with a different approach. The situationg only gets worse when the results are not coming. The players start to think even more the manager is not as good as he think he is, so it gets even more difficult to control the squad.

If people who really understand about the game were rulling the club Mourinho would be sacked at this point. But it seems that Gravoskaya girl is the one playing the cards, and according to reports she was the one responsible for Mourinho return and for his stupid contract extension months ago. I see Mourinho keeping his jop even the club can't even reach the UCL next season.

The fact is: since 2010 Mourinho became an ordinary manager. PL trophy last season was more Roberto Mancini than Alex Fergunson. Its clear he doesn't know what he is doing. His line up today was a joke. He will be sacked depending of the Arsenal's game result. I'm sure he is so obsessed with the idea of not losint to Wenger, he will come up with a ultra conservative approach.

He will be fired soon if the team lose to Everton.

Definitely, NO!

Your football knowledge is simply shocking if you think Costa is even close of being the 2nd better striker in the world, specially when you consider him to be a better striker than Aguero. He is not even the 2nd best striker in PL, since Sanchez is better in my books.

Its ridiculous when you think Spain pretended to be the dominant NT team until, lets say, before 2014 WC, and they had to "import" a brazilian striker to led their attack in a WC in Brazil. I mean, he barely played for Spain before that WC, but was the main striker for that tournament. Im sure Spain will discard him soon, because his perfomance has been sub bar for NT.

indeed.

Mourinho is not a manager to build a long term team. Since he came back the team usually is very uninspiring in the market. He definetely doesn't know whats going on around. Matic, Fabregas, Pedro, Costa, Felipe Luis. 3 players coming from La Liga. 2 of them Barcelona rejects, and one of La Liga's top scorer before he joined. Matic was an ex-Chelsea player. The only player was a little different was Cuadrado and he was a disaster. He tried to sign a decadent Rooney for a huge amount of money 2 years ago, and almost paid 40m for an unproven CB, a move that would put to shame PSG/Luiz/40m. I really doubt the club will see Mata, Hazard or Oscar in near future. Instead I expect Sergio Ramos, Rakitic, Benzama, Ribery, when they are no longer good enough to start games for Barcelona, Real or Bayern. Swansea just bought Ayew for free, and thats unbelievable, because the man is just better than Cuadrado, Moses or William.

Your post is really good at this moment, because right now the "lack of balls" excuse seems even more ridiculous at this moment.

Mata was player of the season two straight seasons and was discarded as waste months later. You are right when you say is "carried" the team last season, specially when he was scoring goals when the team barely created. He won many games for this team. To other side, its really hard to remember a Hazard's great performance in a big game. I remember 12/13 FA Cup 2-2 against United. 2-1 victory against Liverpool 2-1 13/14, but he is yet to play a great match in a UCL game, as an example. Team is in a difficult moment, perhaps the worst moment since AVB era and he is below bar, and that not what you would expect from a player who is "better than Ronaldo" in the words of his manager.

Vintage goal from Falcao. Killer istinct. Really hope he is starting to recover his form. Scoring goals like that is what great CF are about, not being angry or starting fights.