didierforever

i would have them both back. 40mil for those 2 seems like peanuts. whats worse is always knew both of them were very good. lukaku had his shortcomings but still should have been given an oppurtunity instead of buying etoo. putting torres ahead of sturridge was just blasphemy.

sorry but one pass per a match proves nothing. there was a video compilation of mikel that would make him look like messi. what this video does not show that for every 1 sublime pass there are 5 times where he tries this pass and loses the ball or just simply loses the ball under any pressure at all. his "vision" is only good when he gets ample time and space. in his early days at chelsea, teams were not sure of how to play against him. they defended with a lower block concentrating more on eden and costa which gave cesc the time and space to run the show. remember when we all wondered why his performances in "big games" was so poor. well, this was because big teams pressed and never gave him an oppurtunity to settle on the ball. now that all teams have started doing this, he has been totally and fully exposed.

cesc and gundo should not even be a comparision. literally no area where cesc beats him.

even if we buy all 3, i really doubt if it would improve us. i feel our problems STILL stem from our midfield. need a good partner for matic. (i say still because since 09-10 or since ballack left, we have had the same issues). i mean when fabregas is the "engine" of your team, you are going to have a lot of problems. need that to be changed.

i still play fifa13 so that i can have both sturridge and lukaku in chelsea.

not fair. i can bet more than 50% of the thread has been filled after sturridge's departure (and about 50% of it by me. )

KDB in place of oscar, a proper CM in place of cesc, bertrand as a LB, lukaku in place of falcao competing with costa. thats how it should have been

oh dear god!!! what is it with jose/chelsea and washed up strikers? etoo, DD, falcao. cant we for fuck's sake buy a proper technical striker instead of going for the "experienced" striker.

the stats that you have shown, mata has the highest pass%, 2nd highest key passes, highest crosses, 2nd highest long balls and 2nd highest through balls. mata played as an attacker in valencia and under AVB. under jose, mata was playing to cover for iva. the person who got the freedom was hazard, not mata. there is a massive difference in that aspect. so obviously this has to be taken into consideration. for example - playing mata as a right winger against luke shaw and lallana who were probably the best left wing combo in PL at that point of time, made no sense. most of us on here knew that mata should not start that game as a RW. there was no way in hell that mata was going to have a good match. why? was it because lack of effort or lack of motivation. no. he simply is not a player who can be played on the wings for defensive purposes. it is one thing to play a CAM on the wing and totally another to play a CAM on the wing and expect him to be defensive. obviously its the managers fault. KDB had said something like "you dont talk to jose, only jose talks to you". jose is our manager. he is as much responsible for the tactics as he is for keeping the players happy and in the loop of why things have been done the way they have been done. if there was no dialogue, then it is only the manager's fault. also, again - it cant be mata's, kdb's, lukaku's, bertrand's, luis' etc etc fault. i would rather look at the one person common in all of this as the guilty party. if chelsea wanted to be FFP compliant, we should have sold hazard. 100mil pounds easy. if chelsea wanted to be FFP compliant, we should not have bought willian (who looked like a luxury signing with hazard, mata, schurrle, oscar, kdb, moses) already in the squad. we sold mata, kdb, lukaku, bertrand, luis etc etc.. because these players were unhappy under jose and wanted to leave. getting good money for them was a good job by the board. i am sorry, but again. that just shows how wrong jose is. hazard had nothing to do with KDB. kdb is a CAM. we lost KDB because oscar was jose's "undisputed" no.10 with no merit. why? will he take the blame for this? playing for belgium is one thing and playing for chelsea is another. the world cup is a stage where a lot of big games have not lived upto their expectations. but i am still sure KDB and hazard would do something together in the coming years. barca2014/15: no cesc: CL, liga, copa barce 2013/14: cesc: nothing barca 2012/13: cesc: la liga (but mainly because jose screwed it up with RM) barca 2011/12: cesc: copa barca 2010/11: no cesc: CL, liga barca 2009/10: no cesc: liga barca 2008/09: no cesc: CL, liga, copa. xavi was regressing last year too. cesc was their xavi replacement just like rakitic. cesc was horrid in his time at barca. also, why dont you think they had any stability? the barca 4-3-3 under pep was changed to 3-4-3 just to accomodate cesc, which ultimately led to his downfall. cesc became an arsenal player from 04/05 season. he consistently featured in arsenal from that season even though he was bought in 03. is it surprising that arsenal did not win jack squat since then? i am not saying cesc should be the only one to blame, but he just is not a player around whom a title winning team can build a team. and he is also not a player who can play without the team being built around him. he just cant do the bit-part stuff like seen at barca. the lesser about oscar, the better. simply dont think he is worth the time and effort. as for RLC, he will get more engaged in a game IF he gets to play a game. how can he improve sitting on the bench doing nothing. what is a player's motivation when he sees the team getting beaten so badly, players like cesc, matic, oscar underperforming match after match and yet he cant get a game to save his life in any of the positions he can play (10, 8, 6). i know these players are "professionals" and should act like one, but they are also human. how long can a player keep "training" knowing he is never going to get a chance. forget RLC, lets talk remy. we fought tooth and nail to keep him here and look at how we are using him. atrocious. as for the kids comment. i will talk about it when does do it. jose simply likes to speak, speak and speak. when it is time for him to actually walk the walk, he shows no balls. a small squad thinking is a "short term" way. look at SAF and his squads. he always had 22/23 players and kept them happy. and i know, SAF too made a lot of mistakes, but compared to the things he did right, it was a drop in the ocean. jose seems to have got as many right, as wrong. his approach of a "small squad" is a very short term thing in my opinion. it is not lasting, and over the course of time, players will drop off due to exhaustion or the lack of motivation seeing that they are never going to be played irrespective of the situation. fair point on stones. and if we had played him as a RB, i dont think we would be in this poor a condition. also, fair point about willian. i can look at azpi and say the same thing. BUT, each player is different. and it is the manager's responsibility to mould himself a bit. i dont think jose EVER does that. also, buying kondogbia would never come under the "buying without consideration" philosophy. everyone knew that we needed a quality CM. lets just hope we can get one soon. no need to apologize dude. been a pleasure talking to you and looking at your perspective. just wish things were a bit different.

Drogba?

our manager would have surely asked him to be precise in passing, and make good decisions in the counters against spurs. he did not do that. again, i am sorry, but judging a no.10 based on his "defensive" performance is the reason we are in this mess to begin with.

a role of a no.10 in any game plan will be to play a part in scoring/assisting/at the least creating some attacks. he did not score or assisted and ended up destroying most of our attacks. we could have played mikel as a no.10 if this is what we want from our no.10.

at 31 when he was a luxury more than a necessity. muller is world class. no chance he would leave the best team in the world which is the team that has made him, leave his home country and join the likes of united or us.

i think he was simply laughing at the childishness of costa's attitude.

tactical role in a tactical game - which in normal way would mean playing a role of a "DEFENSIVE" no.10 when we were "parking the bus". pressing and defending - 2 more defensive terms. when to drop - another defensive term. i am sorry, but we are talking about a chelsea no.10 not a defensive midfielder. a team that should be winning PL and competing for CL. in attack he did nothing except for the nutmegs. lost the ball, could not pass. if we are going to play this way - which is parking the bus and having 10 men behind the ball, then oscar is an option. if we actually want to play attacking football, he is not. he was poor in this match too.

praise him for what exactly?

1. we are not changing to 4-3-3. we did not change to 4-3-3 after losing to soton and palace at home. we are definitely not changing now. 2. i think we will win against bournemouth even without cesc, like you said - we are much better than them. playing him solves nothing. it will be back to "winning ways" against the likes of walsall, tel aviv, norwich, villa and then our midfield getting over-run by drinkwater. this is exactly the time of game to give RLC the oppurtunity and some much deserved chance.

and how does that help us in the long run? we are going to visit leicester after this which should be treated as a must win if we want to make top 4. cesc is going to give his usual "dont expect me to keep the ball if the other team presses me" impression. RLC needs gametime. cesc has got his chances and he has shown that unless we are playing the bottom 5 or championship level teams, then he is not good enough. time for some one else to get a real chance.

he was poor. he did his standard "headless chicken" act. on the ball, if cesc did not, he lost it. i think you are confusing a couple of nutmegs with a "good performance". because except for that, there was not nothing good in it.

he surprised me when with his performances for us in the first half of the last season. but THIS is the cesc that i see most of the time. i cant give him any credit for norwich or even tel-aviv when i could have bet all my money that he would be having a poor performance against spurs. and its not even spurs. its literally any midfield in the world that can press him.

is he even a flat track bully now-a-days? a flat track bully can atleast play well against the bottom half and middle table teams. cesc cant. i mean all you need to do is have a half-decent good pressing mid and he is DEAD.

mata was not a great player under jose cos he was played as a RW. mata never got the protection of matic. my first impression when matic was bought was "awesome, now jose can play mata without worrying about his no.10 having to be "defensive"". but we went out and sold him, instead. THAT is a thing that will always be my biggest problem. maybe i am biased but yes, i think cesc does a brilliant job of de-stabilizing teams. that arsenal team was a joke defensively. look at barca with cesc in his 3 years and look at them now. look at us. totally agree about this. luiz as a midfielder needed to be replaced. replacing a big game defensive midfielder and a massive character with literally no one was also a massive mistake. how often does that happen? even hatim ben arfa plays a couple of world class games in a season. just like yesterday's performance, i just dont see how exactly would we lose anything if we sold oscar and replaced him with RLC/musonda. what exactly does he brings or did he ever bring to the team that people thought he was a world class potential talent? also, i can agree to many things but i will never agree to oscar's passing. almost as bad as rambo. his only saving grace is that he can score goals and that he USED to tackle around. last time i saw him put in his trade mark oscar-ish tackle was well, i dont know. i cant go that further back in time. not saying he is doing it on purpose. simply think, he is just is not that good. i dont think its "imagination". its not just one person we are talking about. its not just mata or kdb. lets look at the list of players that have left us simply cause of playing time: mata, kdb, lukaku, bertrand, salah, luis. look at what he is doing to remy. it cant always be the other person's fault. i would rather blame one person than think alll the other 8-10 players are the wrong party. fair enough on the benzema-higuain point, but in his 2 and half years here, his rotation has been dreadful. absolutely shocking. infact that rotation is the key reason why we have lost some top players. i dont think greizemann was even on our list. we needed a RW (pedro). antoine is a second striker/striker. would not have made any sense. i did not want stones cause i still think there is no way jose would have dropped GC and JT. my suspicions were confirmed with the way he handled the ivanovic situation. also, who is to blame for the stones situation. who made the deal public? who called everton "a small club" and made everton dig in their heels and tell us to get lost. now, i dont think we can get stones for even 50mil. but i still think stones was not necessary. as for pogba/CM, here i have to say that we dropped the ball. anyone remotely related to the club knew we needed a midfielder. an upgrade to mikel and ramires or atleast one of them. a player who can easily replace cesc for big games. why did not we go for cabaye/schneiderlein/wanyama/imbula/kondogbia. i mean the amount of options available in this window were immense and we missed out on all of them.

i love rambo as much as any chelsea fan. you can go to his thread and look at it. but, what do we have to lose now? top 4 is as good as gone. they are both 28. they have their uses but i think not good enough. i mean whats the point of starting either of them ahead of RLC? also, oscar is not a wildcard. he is an inconsistent, limited player who only clicks when the whole team is clicking. we need a better no.10. cesc - well. i still cant believe we actually bought him. need an upgrade.

hahahhaha.. it was actually worse that i initially first thought. i mean 50% of the time when he had the ball in the spurs half, he would have lost the ball. hopeless.

like i said before. his "form" would be decided by how he performs against spurs. not a non-existent midfield of norwich and aviv. its actually pretty simple, if a team presses cesc, he is a sitting duck.