Tomo

Did anyone actually expect better than what we got last night? Our worst CB combination we have had at the club for a long time, a Mikel and Lamps pivot along with 3 AM's who have never played together. The performance came as no surprise to me so i won't be losing much sleep over this one, it has no bearing on what could happen at Arsenal or in any league match.

Feel free to correct me in i am wrong, but im pretty sure Cappello won the league in his last three years as a club manager (international football is a completely different kettle of fish). Unless you are thinking he lost his mojo during his time at Roma? it was a miracle he won one title at that club, it would be the equivalent of Everton winning the prem.

I hope Vermaelen plays this, he is such an over-rated defender and always has an absolute nightmare against us. I would go for Luiz and Terry partnership, against Arsenal we need a defender who will proactive, Cole at left back, yes he offer's fuck all going forward these days, but we are better at the back when he plays, Azpi has done ok there, but it is becoming more and more obvious he is out of position with every game passing. I say back to the Ivan-Luiz-Terry-Cole back 4, statistically this is our best defensive combo by a mile. In midfield Ramires and Mikel, mainly because i want Mata to play, and Mata playing with Lamps in the pivot against Arsenal away is asking for trouble. Attacking mid, Willian, Mata, Hazard. Up front, Schurrle. Lets do this. One game we are going to take every chance we get, and i have a feeling it could be against Arsenal.

I think he's a good player who will have a good career, just not with us. When we signed him Oscar and Hazard were not here, and would probably (almost certainly in Hazard's case) have not come here if we didn't win the CL and had to go Europa, meaning KDB would have probably come in as early as 12/13 and established himself. But the thing is Willian and Schurrle offer something different in extreme workrate and a bit more width, which compliments the Mazacar while De Bruyne is practically an extended version of Mazacar. Unlucky for the lad, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

I think what has become apparent is we wont be getting instant success under Jose this time. Well i say that, we might get instant success in terms of trophies, mainly because this season has a best of the bad bunch air about it, and that team could well turn out to be us, but playing in the dominant way we did under Jose last time will take a bit off time this time round. Remember how bad Liverpool were under Rodgers this time last year? they were in the bottom half toe to toe with Norwich, now they are the in form team in the country, Mancini had an average year in 10/11 in build up to his title season in 11/12. We are playing like shit but still getting results and hanging in there, ask United fans, that formula usually ends well. If the Guarin and Zouma rumours are true, that also shows that Jose has atleast identified the problem, and is trying to fix it, it's easy to say well he could have done that in the summer, but Mourinho was been manager off Real Madrid during our 3 years of struggles, so he didn't live with the problem week in, week out like we have. Now he has had 6 months off it, he is trying to sort it out. We always ask Roman to be patient, yet we can't think past the middle of the next week, it's well within our capabilities to grind out 7-9 points in the next 3 games then go into January with new players. If we win at The Emirates we will either be top or joint top having played average on the most part, that is not to be sniffed at. Changing manager's will just mean the same problem starts again, i will make a proper judgement when we get under way next campaign, after Jose has had 3 transfer window's and a whole season to sort thing's out. We have all the foundation's to become a top team again, as soon as the balance issue is sorted, we will be fine.

The thing with Arsenal, is i have not dreaded a match against them ever since Jose turned up the last time, they have a massive inferiority complex against us (and Man.Utd) aswell as issue's mentally. Arsenal have been good this season but against both us and United resorted to type and looked utterly toothless. Arsenal had a testing week, and failed. The pressure is on them big time for this, lose this match, top spot is gone with away games at West Ham and Newcastle quickly coming around after that, do i believe that will play on their mind? absolutely. We have faced Arsenal before on poor form (like last season at The Bridge) and beat them. They have won a mere 4 times against us in 9 years and 22 games, there's a reason for that.

When i see Bayern, Ribery and Robben are always busting a gut to get back when they don't have the ball, protecting Rafinha/Lahm's and Alaba's backside, while the fullback's return the favour to the R+R and offer overlapping support on the attack. The trick to being a great team these days is defending and attacking as a team, the days of defender's doing their job and attackers doing their's are well and truly over.

Ribery and Robben do 'extra work' and it's one of the main reason's Bayern are as good as they are. Barca became as good as they are due to their work off the ball instead off on it, Southampton are overachieving miles ahead of their station for exactly the same reason. Sometimes it is exaggerated how much, but balance is important in a team, do you know what's stopping City being as good as anyone? Pellegrini doesn't make his attacking midfielders work off the ball, yes they will get some fancy stats and a few 5-0 beating's, but in this day in age, to be a dominant force in football, mainly players have to be good at both aspects of the game. It's funny because despite us being quite average and them amazing at times we are still above them with harder fixtures (City have all the top 7 away still to come bar Chelsea). I mean i keep reading how Azpilicueta should play ahead of Ivanovic because he is better going forward (same with Bertrand/Cole), yet the same people shoot down any suggestion of the AM's having to be good off the ball saying, it's completely contradictory and rather hypocritical.

Willian----2 of Mazacar --------Schurrle--------- The (temporary) solution?

Lukaku's not the one that annoy's me, in the long run the Everton move was the right move for club and player in the long run. The one that bugs me is Sturridge, as much as i try to not go on about it on here because the spamming off his thread every single time he scores is annoying, i still can't understand why we didn't play him last season as soon as it was obvious Torres was never going to be 'back' (well it was obvious long before then, but you get my point). That, or not taking the plunge and activating Cavani's release clause, or going for Negredo. Oh well could be worse, we could have Soldado.

We won't

Form book goes out of the window for games like these, we lost to QPR, Swansea and drew to Southampton before we faced Arsenal last season and drew to Brentford and Reading shortly after. We will win, mainly because people think we will get hammered (we almost always win or draw being the better side in those circumstances) and we have been like a team possessed against these lot for years, regardless of form. 1-3 Hazard double, Luiz free kick.

At the end of the day, this has gone past the point off which one is better out of the 3, we are basically picking off the lesser off the 3 evils, i have my opinion on which that one is and im sure most know who, but like i said it's gone beyond that. The debate now should be which one stays on as numero tres when Lukaku and a new forward is in/

The OP of this thread.

He does when he feels like this, but this is just hilarious that you say it like he always does it. I have seen Torres on a lazy day and he puts the Malouda of 10/11 in the shade.

While you are right in the fact that those two are nowhere near good enough for us, the fact that you are saying this with a Torres avatar is making me seriously giggle thinking off the irony.

We will win or at worst draw being the better team, for sure.

This game has no correlation to the Arsenal one, we will have probably 8-9 changes.

Getting really fed up of the match day live thread, for once we didn't have Phil Driver and Chelseasmessiah spamming, we had Zoro and BMK filling in to cover On the game, there was probably a few places up for grabs at The Emirates, and Cole, Mikel, Schurrle, De Bruyne and Eto'o did themself's no favours whatsoever.

So im guessing we lost the 2012 CL final purely based on the fact we lost 4-1 to Kenny's Liverpool 10 days before? Jesus.

Yes because football really works like that

Did anyone expect more than this? 3 AM's playing together for the first time with a Lampard and Mikel pivot, we were never going to be playing great today. Although our defense looks better with Cole, coincidence?

They also between each other got us on a run of 2 wins in 12 games, but hey atleast we performed more party tricks, who needs results, eh?

And we won the return leg 2-0 to dump you out of the competition. Are you sure it's Liverpool and not Arsenal you support in England? they tend to gloat about winning a leg despite losing over 2 (Bayern last year, Barca 2011).

Guarin in January. Summer Essien and Mikel move on, Witsel comes in. Next season: Witsel, Ramires, Guarin, Lampard, Chalobah, MVG. If only.