Waterfall

While I wholeheartedly agree with the second part of your post, that wasn't the point I was making. You are right in that if it's a foul, it should be called one anywhere in the world, but that's often not how it's called in England. And that seems to be the point Di Matteo's making. So there's no need to be offended by his comment at all. He's not saying Hazard dived. You really are reading too much into it IMO

That doesn't mean RDM thinks Hazard dived. It says "you need to try EVERYTHING to stay on your feet" which means even if it was a foul and not a dive you might not get awarded a penalty in England if you didn't try your hardest to stay on your feet It also doesn't mean that RDM made a statement against foreign players. He's just explaining how calls are made in England. It's really hard to be disappointed in RDM when he's handled himself so well since taking over. He's tried so hard to be politically correct in every single one of his interviews, and that's no easy task considering all the shit we had to go through both on and off the pitch.

I usually prefer complete players with good finishing ability to great finishers with less complete game, but when you have Oscar, Mata and Hazard, the latter would be awesome. I think we are title favourites if we get Falcao in January

If we get Neymar, Oscar probably moves to Lamps role to allow Neymar to play his natural position of LW or I guess we could try Neymar up front.

Although Frank did well, I would like same lineup as Arsenal game. We could use Ramires' athleticism

You have got to be kidding me

I honestly think people are saying this will be a hard game just for the sake of saying it. Norwich have been absolutely terrible, and we should be able to rest a few of our key players. If we can't rest our players against Norwich, we'll never be in position to.

Is it just me or does Branislav being the furthest man up the pitch so often worry you a little? Not a criticism, but weird as it seems to be happening a lot more this season.

Great line from BBC's McNulty:

1 in Community Shield that even the FA doesn't take seriously 1 vs Reading that shouldn't even have counted because he was offside 1 vs Wolves Reserves team who were losing 4-0 at the time Performance-wise, he was also invisible/terrible against Atletico, Juventus, Stoke, QPR, Wigan and even Wolves today - running into defenders, losing possessions and missing sitters. "It was like playing with 10 men" like Gullit said. 4 to 5 in 9 sounds good, but not really. He was good against Newcastle, but from what we've seen I think it's more likely that goal was fluke. I hope he has another good/flukey game this Saturday, but at the same time I think it's totally justifiable to say that he's been shit. If he was any good last 20 months, I would agree with you that we are being harsh.

While the signs are promising, let's not get carried away. This was against a very poor Wolves reserves side.

Damn that was a bad miss, but it wasn't the worst in the game

Nice cross from Azpi and Bertrand looking good so far (11 minutes in)

Didier in his first few seasons showed signs of improvement and flashes of brilliance whereas Torres has shown neither other than the goal against Newcastle. Also, just because Didier struggled in his first couple of seasons and went on to become a club legend, it does not mean Torres will or can do the same. There have been more times where players who were craptacular stayed that way than where the managed to salavage their career. The argument of "service" does not even matter either if you consider players in shit teams still score better than him. Honestly, it's not worth giving Torres his 100th chance when we have a young striker who's not arguably better but genuinely better than him.

It's quite amazing how many excuses get made up for a 50M striker who can't finish to save his life. So what if he only missed one clear cut chance today? It's bad enough that he missed the only chance that would have made our life so much easier, but it's far worse that he's missed countless chances so far in his Chelsea career. Fuck movement and work ethic, if you are satisfied with those, get Mo Farah to run for 90 minutes. I am tired of seeing a below-average striker who can only run into defenders and lose the ball. No need to have him and crowd the already-crowded central position. Bring on Sturridge. Better goal scorer, more versatile, younger and English. There's nothing that Torres does better than him

I am happy for him and he's indeed a very important player for us, but the discussion of our best player does not interest me too much. As long as players pull their weights and perform their respective roles, I am cool.

Man of the Match today and he just signed a new 5 year contract. Yes

By the way, you know who could do a job for us? Fabio fucking Borini.

I've been laughing off the Torres apologists who have continued to blame the system, but I'm starting to realize that they may be right. He can't play like Drogba and he can't play possession football in front of Mata, Oscar and Hazard either. However my conclusion in contrast to the apologists is that we should **** get rid of him then.

I'll start with the positive: he made a couple of nice passes. Then the negative: that was about it. If a couple of decent passes is what we want from our striker, we can play Hazard up front.

Torres being a false 9 is not a joke. It's reality. I would honestly play Luiz up front before I play Torres

He was done as a top player the moment he lost the only thing going for him: pace.

I think the day that Torres finally gets booed by the home crowd isn't far. He's been given enough time and chances to prove himself and he's failed to look even average. Also fuck this lack of service and suitability crap.

He's an important player, isn't he? lol

He's been great and I'm sure he'll continue to be very good for us, but I do wish at times that he becomes less conservative.