Styles

I've finally figured it out: Oscar = the Brazilian Dirk Kuyt His offense is purely a bonus and shouldn't be expected. He's a defensive-attacking midfielder.

Damn, all that experience. What's happening guys?

Get a Brazilian passport.

Did Torres ever score in three consecutive games for Chelsea?

The King saving us the embarrassment legend

It reminds me of the days opposition teams used to let Kalou do whatever he wanted and completely ignored him and double/triple-marked our better players. It's easy to understand why some demand Hazard scored 50 a season: the rest of the AM are so bad we need a superhero to do 3 players worth of work. The argument right now seems to be "well the senrior players are playing bad so the kids obviously couldn't do any better". Just nonsensical really.

What does it say about our squad that Matic/Hazard are going to have to come on here?

Boga would certainly, he has better close control and dribbling ability than all 3, he'd commit players and open up space. But hey, experience is so vital, he can't be trusted. And Baker has better technique than Oscar and I mean that seriously.

It really is overrated. All that experience and they still struggle to make the team play better against a League 2 side.

Christensen has been good and so has Ake for the most part (besides the yellow card frustration tackle). What makes you so sure Baker and Brown couldn't do the same? If you can't see the problem here is we're getting nothing from our entire AM department then I don't know what to say. Baker and Brown couldn't do any worse than them at this point.

Just imagine Hazard gets a serious injury and these 3 plus Willian are the AM

But they have so much experience!

What's Oscar doing here that Baker couldn't? What's Schurrle doing that Brown can't?

Pretty disjointed attack so far, although our 3 most uncreative and poorest passers are in the 3 AM positions today so it's to be expected.

Baker has been very unfortunate not to start or feature so far. And he's not so inexperienced that the game has to be won comfortably so he can get 10-15 minutes; he's more than good enough to start against Shrewsbury. Seriously, what's the point of Oscar starting here tonight?

The last thing we need is a close game and Matic and Hazard having to come off the bench. Hazard having to come on against Bolton was bad enough.

Good analysis by Neville and Carragher on MNF: After we take the lead we completely abandon the tactics that allowed us to go ahead in the game. Neville is being way too kind to Mourinho when he says it's the players making those decisions themselves. It's almost certainly instructions from the coach; there's no way you go from 55% possession to 25% against a 10-man team without instruction or what happened on Sunday (was it the players who bought on Mikel and took off Hazard etc? No. It was Mourinho.)

That's the way I see it too. We'll be very competitive in Europe though so it's not all doom and gloom; if our key players can stay healthy and with some luck you never know.

I agree - Fabregas doesn't have the agility and close control that those players have and it's why I think he'll be easy to shut down/have minimal influence against the elite teams in Europe. However, he's a good player in his own right and will almost certainly help us win the league this season. And considering the likes of Oscar and Willian (attackers who play a lot of minutes) contribute so little in terms of creativity (virtually nothing at times) we need Fabregas' creativity and assists more than we need a Modric.

26% possession against a team with 10 men no less.

That is just so bad; it's even worse than I remembered it. It should be the most simple of simple passes and yet he completely and utterly destroys the chance. That's the kind of pass you expect even average players to make with their eyes closed. Inexcusable stuff really.

Christensen is lightweight now but he's not a small player and will put on size as he gets older. He's listed at 6'2. Technically he is exactly what you're talking about, his ability to pass and bring the ball out is superb.

If Mourinho wanted a certain playing style/type of player he would almost certainly have it. This is the team Jose wants.

I love a good troll job tbh But anyways, back to the topic...4 passes in 30 minutes