didierforever

Oh yup. I had forgotten all about zouma's french connection. Even more reason to start him.

not to sound cocky, but how about a bet on it?

Cech Azpi zouma JT luis Matic rambo Willian cesc hazard Costa Cech for the obvious reasons. Zouma has now had aguero and lukaku in his pocket. Lets see how he does against zlatan. Defensively solid in the mid and hot them on the wings where they are weakest. Also trust in LUIZ. An away goal is the minimum he ll do for us

Good performance. One of our better performances in the last couple of months. We were pretty unlucky not to be out of sight in the first half itself. Second half was a little iffy but we made it home with 3 well earned points. Some really brilliant performances from willian, hazard, cech, zouma but MOTM was matic.

everyone has been very good. but just missing that bit of luck. everton doing a "job" on us though. making us go wide and making us put balls in the box which they are having no trouble with.

that is one fast mother fucking team.

stats!! really? willian has 1 goal, but right now most of us would take willian as a CAM than oscar. you should probably watch cazorla's performance against city and this season in general, to see how good he has been. the number of times eriksen has bailed spurs out and changed the match. oscar has not even been close to them in performances. while you have highlighted most of oscar's positives, you have neglected most of his negaties (no doubt its so easy for you then to make your point). you said oscar was not in the team for creativity but for his his facilitator role, which has been poor at. for a team that relies massively on counters, he is hopelessly poor in it. and then his main problem - consistency. i honestly dont think any of cazorla, eriksen, silva are half as inconsistent (lets not even talk about the iscos and kokes of the world). his contribution to the team is so less in the attack that his supposedly good numbers seem to be lacking so much that people have wanted willian to replace him. so all in all, not as easy as you think.

Facilitator - is he? Someone who loses the ball more often than not when under pressure.Score goals ans assists - his return is no where near to the expectation. Counter - I can safely say that he is our weakest link in counters. Destroys our counters. Plug in holes- really? More often than not we play against teams with a low block with even iva playing as a winger than RB. His best performances are against teams like swansea who like to play their own brand of football and gave space to us. Press high and win tackles - something which he is really good at and one of the main reason why he would be hard to replace. Still, I think people sometimes forget that he is an attacker whose defensive workrate is a mssive asset. He is not a defender whose attacking prowess is an asset (that's iva). His general play can sometimes be shocking be it passing or holding the play up (which considering that his main job in the team is not to provide a creative impetus makes him redundant). I hope he can prove me wrong by atleast improving his consistnecy and his basic play, but I also won't be suprised if he is dropped tonight for willian. I would like to ask a question here. Do you think we would lose anything if willian Starts ahead of oscar today? Or do you think we would miss anything if we sold oscar for 30-40 mil and used that money to buy pogba while shifting cesc as a no.10 (maybe a bit in pressing) but anything else? I honestly don't.

Hazard maybe but cesc not at all. Cesc has far more defensive reaponsibilities than oscar. Oscar's general position on the pitch is much higher up than cesc. He looks to be doing so much defensive work cos half the counters that we are exposed to are cos of his give aways. Cesc on the other hand has been a proper DLP for us this season. (I maybe understanding you wrong here if you meant to say that oscar's responsibilities are not those of a no.10). In that case what is his role in the team? Defensive cover against burnley and leicester and qpr? Cos I don't see jose employing him tactically in any big match which tells us that jose definitely doubts his defenaive abilities. Oscar has additional defensive responsibilities (definitely more than hazard and understandable), but he is still our no.10 and I have no doubt jose expects goals and assists from him.

oscar is "supposed" to be our no.10, so i would think he will be asked to provide us the proper link up play which i no.10 should. hold on to the ball so that matic-cesc can join the attack, not screw up every counter by cheaply giving the ball away. he has done none of them. he has been a passenger most of the games he has played with little to no effect. even when he has got a goal, his performances have been awful (newcastle). while his workrate is good, he is still definitely not as good defensively as willian. all in all, oscar currently, is not even the best option as a no.10 for us. either of willian/cesc can easily displace him. jose already knows how poor he is in big matches (which he starts only if we got no option), and i think if he continues down this road, i will be suprised if he will be here next season. people can point out to the "balance" that he provides, but thats just another excuse. like i said, the supposed "balance" that he provides can be provided as well by 2 options currently in our squad. this is his 3rd year in PL, and he has had a lot of time and gametime to get set, unfortunately there is no improvement in him, and infact, his consistency seems to be getting worse.

fair enough, but i remember watching a video of an antonio valencia run which clocked him to be faster than usain bolt. so separate video clips would hardly have been the ideal source in this case too. when comparing pace, there is no right or wrong but simply perception. for eg - i will again go back to the rambo-willian comparision. very hard to know who is the pacy one between them and i doubt if a couple of videos would be able to make up my mind.

hurricane seems to be something else. but lets wait and see. lukaku scored more than 30 goals for wba and everton (who were not so different in level last year than spurs are this year).

not that it seems he wont be going anywhere, i hope RM turn their attention elsewhere to someone like oscar. they did buy james despite of having isco so hopefully now they buy oscar inspite of having those 2. give us 50-60mil for oscar. or 30mil+isco.

i dont get what was wrong in REKIN's argument. poster A said "oscar is way faster than firmino" poster B gave the only stats available on pace anywhere to simply say that the difference in their pace is no where as much as he previously thought. if someone actually read rekin's post, he does say that firmino is slightly slower but not as slow as people would have you believe. as for people saying its easy to judge who is faster, well i cant do that for players with similar pace. i mean i know who is faster between JT and willian or who is faster between walcott and mertesacker, but i wont bet anything on who is faster between rambo and willian. all you can say is that they are fast and have similar paces.

mark my words, we will leave london 7 times from now till the end of the season!!! (if you know what i mean)

dont think coutinho is any better than oscar. definitely a better dribbler and but along the lines of workrate, defensive contribution, he does not come in the category. fortunately, we already have 2 players who easily fulfil the required criteria to play the role that oscar does - willian and cesc. one of them should be given a run.

that list included composure. i am actually suprised that someone thinks oscar's composure has improved since his passing under pressure has seemed to be worsened.

hahha,, not worth it. seems so much like a troll.

like i said, clutching at straws. (i am sure one of them being arsenal had nothing to do with it)

everton was our 3rd game of the season, they were so shit after they finished in top 6 last season. but since you are so desperately trying to clutch at straws, i will concede that whenever we have a fit player to replace oscar, he does not start a big away game. even if its an in-form soton.

somehow "he plays well" has become the same "as he assisted" these days. guess he played brilliantly against newcastle then

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/25908324- that the match i was talking about. along with many last season when we had a full squad. this season rambo was injured for many of our big games and schurrle's hopeless form gave us no option. he played united cos we dint have rambo for the game, he played spurs and i saw his defensive prowess in marking kane for the first goal. he was dropped in the game at etihad or at the goodison and any big away game where we had the slightest option.

when does that happen? once in 10 matches?

yes i saw how good he was defensively when he let that spanish player go past him in the last game. he is so brilliant defensively that jose chucks him out in every big game and play willian through the center and rambo on the wing (city away and numeros other examples). he is infact so great defensively that in away games jose has prefered to play as cesc as no.10 and dropping oscar on the bench (pool leage cup, soton, stoke).

what? let me refresh your memory. you said that a 21 year old player who has not played football at the highest level should not be our 3rd striker. i said that a 21 year old harry kane who had not played at the highest level of football is literally carrying the team. and then you came out with jose does not drop his vetrans for kids, which i have proved to be crap. you can go to the previous page and please check the facts. even after me and another person and the fact that jose started remy against city, u still persist with remy being our 3rd striker. you still have not given me a single fault in bamford's game and why he is CAPABLE of being our 3rd striker. its clear that you have not even watched him ever. so why dont you discuss something or someone that you do know about. and again, for the 5th AM we have gone from mata to salah to brown. so things are are changing here.