Tomo

So to get this right, you come on here to moan about Courtois alleged lack of loyalty and calling him a rat for potentially wanting to move, but at the same time you would happily bin off a boyhood Chelsea fan like he's a piece of crap?

There's a difference between being negative/constructively critical and acting like we are on the verge of relegation to the Conference south.

They would quickly get over it when he flops harder than Torres.

You know you can win trophies without being world class or even very good? Unless you rate Wigan 2013 or Greece 2004 higher than Chelsea 2008? And no this team wouldn't be as out of their depth, in Munich we conceded about 20 clear cut chances, it was the most one sided CL final ever.

Well the core of this bunch held their nerve twice in title races, that alone suggests a hell of a lot off mental ability. Napoli would probably beat us more times than not, but i feel we would do it a lot more than the 2012 side would.

Defendings actually his strongest asset.

I would say being outplayed by an Alex McLeish team on our own patch is a lot worse, that man doesn't know the meaning of the word attack yet cut us open at will. As embarrassing as the Watford game was, they have a good squad and capable players and manager, that Villa side didn't. The flaws you mention in this squad also existed in 2012, and unlike now, we didn't have a core of world class players to compensate. The reality is the situation we found ourselves in during 2012 in CL, we try that another 100 times and we don't as much as get past Napoli on 99 occasions. Our current situation is not great, but a solid transfer window (big if i know) and we have a side capable of challenging next season. 2012 even with the CL win and arguably our best window ever following suit, we still needed a good few years to get back on our feet again. Imagine if we kept our best players this summer and found similar quality to 2012 versions of Hazard and Azpi, id go as far as saying we would be 2nd favorites right behind City.

4-1 at Anfield to Kenny's Liverpool, 3-1 at home to Alex McLeish infected Aston Villa off the top of my head, could even say 3-0 at home to Sunderland the year before or the pitful run and bad displays we had vs United. Go back to the match threads from the AVB and Carlo second season time and many our players were accused of lacking effort and character so lets not rewrite history here. This team while flawed are a whole lot better than our 2012 team, we were rubbish, the CL was devine intervention.

ok, you've had your fun, who are you?

Don't get me wrong, i don't care and the fact it was so unexpected made it 100000x better. All im saying is we benefited from a hugely unique set of circumstances and all the happy coincidences in ways we are unlikely to see again.

In a hypothetical world, us winning it this year is 100x more likely than another 2012 story, that victory went against the laws of physics. Go in a similar situation 1,000 times Napoli knock us out 990 times and Benfica would 9.

Even with all the heart and desire on the run to Munich 2012 we were outplayed and second best most of the time, we literally got ALL the breaks at the times we needed them the most.

In the second half he was good, the first he was horrific.

I see a new era of posts claiming were shit in terminal decline while all our rivals are amazing and do everything right is well and truly under way.

Are they? The TV deals has bridged that gap somewhat. Not saying there won't be any consequences but we'd still be raking it in.

Last season has given Conte extra credit in the bank, had this been his first season he would have been long gone by now.

Wasn't the going tough in the run in to the 2015 title? And even last year to an externt. 2015 especially you could visably tell the players were exhausted and running on empty yet kept getting those results. Funnily enough they have made lighter work of it twice than our last team did in 2010. Do i think they are as strong as the last bunch? No, but you don't piss two titles with a bunch of pussycats, especially given we were up against (on paper) superior sides.

These same spinless players that won two titles under extreme pressure? And the previous lot had some embarrassing big game results after Jose left.

He should be banned from the final 3rd, his decision making is beyond horrendous, he makes Ramires look like Hazard in that regard. I'd love to know what people saw in him as a winger.

He never went more than 3 games without a start here under Mou, not 100% sure on the exact figures but i would imagine Mata's starts come at a similar ratio at Old Trafford.

We won't know until we have a season like that. Given how he clung onto AVB until things became untenable suggests that he would probably accept a season of building IF there was evident signs we were heading somewhere promising.

He's doing the exact same thing with Mata at United he did here, rotating him. The only difference is, Juan is accepting that role this time round instead of rage quitting. Maybe those player of the year awards got to his head.

Baka was very good upto and including that game, whats happened since with him is truly bizarre.

If it goes to pens, given Caballero's record, do we pull a LVG and switch the keepers?

If anything, tonights score will allow us to be more adventurous at the Nou Camp, atleast initially. We have to score a goal so effectively Barca scoring first won't change a great deal in terms of the context of the tie.