didierforever

brilliant game!!! matic and mikel were fabulous. i expect them to start against hull specially cos rambo looked very rusty. our fullbacks were brilliant. would be unfair to luis if he has to sit out the next game after this performance. mikel had a wonderful game. his passing was great too. schurrle and salah gave a good account of themselves. matic was MOTM (as usual). costa was dreadful. looks more injured to me now than at the start of the season. expect remy to start against hull after his latest 2 performances. RLC was real good. did we get try and get him on the ball more often or was he just more involved!!!???

and the "we hate rambo" bandwagon is out!!!

nice performance... now hoping to see RLC!!!

http://sporting-tv.in/index.html

why the fuck are there so many cry babies on here!!! embarassing!!!!!!!!

GC is getting massive workload. rambo should have started.

dint christensen start in the under 19 game?

false.

solanke scored a hattrick. boga a brace!!! 84th minute 5-0.

what does all this mean for baker? he was named in the 25 this year and the last yet, i dont remember him being named anytime by jose!!!

mc nair

last man and plays the pass blind!!! could he be more stupid!!!

after seeing the line ups... getting a feeling that united are gonna lose today for some reason!!!

i dont think the players lacked motivation. just tell them to be more clinical in front of the goal. trust in their ability and go out their. NO. i find it shocking that after 400+mins of football with no goal conceded, we are all so adamant to see FL in the team. i would "rotate" more often but our main back 4 remains the same. rambo is a very important player for us. in matches like soton (A), spurs (a), he would automatically select himself. rambo. push oscar way forward (i thought he was TOOOOO deep against newcastle. we were probably playing 4-3-3 anyways to cover for matic's abscence). remy and schurrle. schurrle for sure. as good as willian's play and workrate is, his finish is just abysmal. schurrle on the other hand makes up for his lack of general play with goals. i think schurrle has been underused a lot this season. i think we pretty much played a 4-3-3 against newcastle. and in every big game, we start with rambo on the wing to provide those extra legs in the mid anyways. our rest of the away games are a different test from the last 2. stoke will be similar but soton, swansea and spurs all like to play football. they wont be parking the bus but rather trying to play football too. we need a solution currently for the stoke match. losing points there will be a massive blow and change the title race on its head.

imbula looks like such an awesome player.

a more pressing need than a good CB? we spent 16mil on a back up left back when we had a pretty decent homegrown LB in bertrand, but you think that GC forms the base of our team just cos he is HG? how does that make any sense whatsoever? the CBs do boss the opposition strikers, in case they dint it would look very much like the way costa played against the pool defenders. and i dont know what matches have you watched lately to feel that GC has been unsure in defence. lets take a look at our fixtures in november- qpr, maribor, schalke, sunderland - he has been solid. wba - untroubled liverpool - some great tackles and defending but unlucky with goal so i dont know what you are talking about. GC always defends the box or the 18 yard line. this 6yd line exaggeration just proves that you are totally and completely prejudiced against him. also, lets see this objectively. u think his reading of the game is not good. he keeps backing off, even i know that his on the ball play is pretty average, so either jose has lost his mind or you are just wrong. add to that the fact that we have the best and the most stable defence in PL and probably one of the best in the world, i think i know which to believe.

we are talking about jose mourinho here. we spent 16mil on a backup left back!!! he spent 20 odd mil for coentrao in his RM days. you think he would not have spent crazy money to get any CB that he actually wanted? a person who gives more importance to defensive solidit than any other manager in the world!!! we are rarely in position to concede cos our CBs make sure of that. it is cos he and JT do "boss" the strikers in the majority of the matches. pressing up front normally means being circumspect on the counter, add to that the factor of how high up the pitch IVA plays (which is definitely a tactical decision by jose), it normally means double the work for GC, which he has done very very well so far. backing off is a trait of GC's game. he is not the quickest and normally chooses to defend the box and letting an attacker take a shot from long range rather than committing himself and providing a goal scoring oppurtunity. you can list a couple of examples like the aguero goal as it being a bad thing, and i can give a 1000 examples of him simply holding his ground and letting our us get numbers back to defend cos of his backing off. you also overlooked his brilliant tackling, positioning and prowess in the air and in defending the box.

we sold luiz and we dint bring in any CB. we went into the season we 2 senior CBs ONLY. and you are telling me that jose does not have faith in GC and he does not feel comfortable with him? i am sorry but i simply cant believe that. GC has been solid. he had one poor match!!! which other match was he poor? against spurs it was pretty evident that he was still suffering in the aftermath of the head knock he had. if thats one poor moment is everyone's reason of jumping down his throat and calling one half of the one of the best CB pairings in the world as average at best, then i am absolutely SPEECHLESS!!! 400 minutes!!! 400 minutes before conceding a goal!!!

any concrete news on aguero injury?

city had a terrible start to the season cos yaya was playing poorly. whats worse is that city got outplayed and totally dominated by a 10 men bayern which dint have lahm, tiger, muller etc. the level of difference is not much that different. i honestly cant blame mikel for yesterday. he is a squad player and has his limitations. infact matic is currently one of the best or maybe even the best DM in the world. any DM we bring in will have some shortcomings. add to his abscence the rambo injury, means we lost our backbone and our engine. any team in the world will struggle with that. our problem yesterday was not mikel, it was cesc, costa and GC. i cant remember a single time where cesc took less than 3 touches to play a simple pass. i cant remember a single effective thing done from costa (and these 2 were the reason that we were flying so high). and lets not speak about GC's performance yesterday, the lesser spoken the better. the difference is there, and that is why we have a squad of different players with different characterisitcs. matic- proper DM, shield. cesc - DLP rambo - workhorse/engine mikel - stabiliser and a very good option to close out last minutes.

Yep. But they have different strengths. Lukaku needs service while etoo can create something on his own.I watched the last minutes (10-15) of everton and hull game. It was the same story. Everton wete happy to pass the ball among themselves rather than try and cross it to lukaku in the box. In the end, there best efforts cane from a 25 yard lukaku shot and a lukaku header from a corner which hit a defender's hand and would probably havw been a goal. And this is what is suprising. If yiu have bought a 28nil striker, you should be playing to his strengths.

to be honest. lukaku was good. that volley was tremendous!!!!

fair enough. i agree that baker/boga/any attacking youth player wont start cos we have plenty of options in that department. but i do expect a couple of youngsters in defence. we are very short of options in defence and playing this amount of football is asking for injuries. wont be suprised if one of ake/christensen starts. we will line up something like this cech azpi zouma christensen/ake luis mikel rambo salah cesc schurrle remy.

i just read his posts to get a chuckle. never fails to disappoint.

cup games are important. we need a silverware. i think the desperation around here and in general with chelsea fans comes from the fact that we went trophyless last season. a league cup win will help reduce the pressure off everyone. also, matic, cesc, rambo, moutinho and mikel for 2 positions is a massive overkill. moutinho is pretty good as a DM. has a brilliant range of passing. and most importantly is pretty solid defensively.