didierforever

so today was cahill's fault??? ohh he must have pulled cech 6 yards out of position and made etoo lose balls in great positions which made stoke counter.

once again, free flowing football is not equal to good football and wins. chances come and go, and we had to pay for all those missed oppurtunities. on the other hand, we made one mistake and stoke made us pay. some very poor football from the defenders especially in the first half, and probably the first time and jose's subs worked against him than for him. cech - for me cech cost us the game. stoke were beyond poor and dint have a sniff but that hopeless, horrendous decision to come for the ball and then get caught in the no man's land gave them exactly what they wanted. its not the 1st time this season that cech has screwed up. a look in for schwarzer. 3/10 azpi - very poor. got owned by walters. every time stoke attacked down the left flank, it seemed they would score. probably one of his worst performances. 4/10 JT - was probably the only defender who could say, "i dint screw up". even though even he let stoke players turn him inside out a couple of times. definitely needs a rest. 7/10 GC - had a brilliant first half and then everything went downhill. crouch was his man in the corners. could have and should have done better for the 1st and 2nd goal. 5/10 iva - let assaidi go inside him very easily. crossing was poor and was almost a brake to our free flowing football whenever the ball went on the right wing and touched his feet. tried to create something by going inside muniesa but simply ended up losing the ball. 6/10 rambo - should have scored atleast one, could have scored 3. poor finishing and another player who looked fatigued at the end of the match. need a rest. kdb in the pivot against bucuresti. 6/10 mikel - was quite good today. dint let stoke have a sniff for 42 minutes. broke endless attacks and even did his share in the attack. was very suprised when he came off. poor decision by mou. 8/10 schurrle - the only positive of today. from the 1st minute it looked like he would score. workrate was out-of-the-world. if only his shot hitting the bar had gone in. 9/10 mata - brilliant link-up play. central to some phenomenal football. its not suprising that we have played some smooth football when he is on the pitch. but somehow we tend to concede more too. 8/10 hazard- was not involved in the goals but had a good match. his final delivery could have been better a couple of times. and why he dint take a shot another couple of times is beyond me. 8/10 torres - should have scored. those 2 hazard thru balls may have a little late in coming but anyone of rooney, rvp, aguero, negredo would have scored. his instinct if finished. 6/10 subs - BA - very uninfluential. could not pose a real threat to the stoke goal. 5/10 lamps - was decent when he came on. linked up well with mata and hazard to create half chances but sadly we could not take any. 7/10 etoo- abysmall. what a poor decision to take him on and take schurrle off. jose got it hopelessly wrong. 2/10 in the end, it was the fair result. if u dont take your chances at this level of football, u will end up miserable. well played to STOKE, though!!!

marin, moses, kdb.

i hope this does not become another global embarassment.

jose is the manager. he has set his philosophy but it is on the players to actually implement it. or am i supposed to believe that every1 will workhard cos jose in the manager? i dint see that happening against basel or newcastle. for me, torres worked hard, did everthing right except for his main job (hence the 6 out of 10). i am not making any excuses for him missing his chances but i wont take away the positive he is giving to the team.

what excuse!!! he missed a sitter, did i deny that??? read what i wrote for torres again. but missing sitter does not take away everything else from what he did on the night, just like it dint do so on the night against city. only difference was he played a very similar low cross, schurrle made the right run and scored, today hazard dint. and then against city he got lucky due to his workrate and got a goal, today it was not so.

ba did more cos he was not playing to break down a defence. the chances were coming thick and fast and we should be converting such chances to make our lives a little easier. on the other hand, torres' workrate was good. i remember the moment when willian lost the ball on the wing and torres covered for him and then even after being on the ground tried to put in a tackle. as i said to @younameit, his link up play was decent. torres could easily have finished with 2 goals and 1 assist (the low cross).

i dont do the obvious things. the guy played out of the world today. anything less than 10/10 is a slap on his face.

the table is really starting to take shape now.

his link-up play was good. he held the ball well enough. took on players. i remember his low cross across the 6 yard box which hazard should have scored from only if he had gambled to make a far post run (which i feel a winger should always do and some1 like schurrle would definitely have done).

it was one match guys!!! move on!!! if we concede from a set-piece in this match, i will be suprised cos after today's game, jose would make sure the defenders get a nice hearing to especially against a team like stoke. still, set-pieces or not, stoke are formidable at home, no matter what. it is never an easy game at the brittania. cech azpi GC JT cole rambo mikel willian mata hazard BA. ba must start, no doubt about that. we need to win some aerial balls and atleast be some kind of a threat from crosses. also stoke dont give many chances so its important that our striker takes the 1v1 against begovic. willian-mata-hazard showed some fabulous chemistry and i dont see any reason to shake that up. too often we have seen lamps putting in a fabulous performance but absolutely poor in the next match (specially mid week ones). i feel he would be a little tired for this one too and the game is on saturday (they are coming thick and fast). iva looked exhausted to me. he deserves a rest but he will probably play this one and get a rest for the midweek CL game.

i love winning, no matter how they come. and in the end, the only important thing is that we got 3 points out of this game, and are still pretty much in touching distance of arsenal and are 2 points ahead of city. next week city play away to southampton and arsenal play against everton so we have a real chance of opening a gap with city and closing the one with arsenal. i felt the performance was brilliant. in attack we were great but thats football for u. u can play great football, but still screw up by doing the basics wrong, like not defending the set-pieces well. cech - could not have done anything for the 3 goals. all 3 of them would have been amazing stops if he had. an average performance from the big man. 6/10 iva - he is TIRED. he is working his socks off but he is looking tired. jose must have seen that and noticed it too specially towards the end of the match. his crossing has improved brilliantly, which is a good sign. i felt he should have done better for the 2nd goal in trying to get his foot on the ball to clear the immediate danger. also, he got caught on the ball again to create a situation pretty much like the wba's 2nd goal. 6/10 JT&GC - an off day. they both got owned by ALTIDORE. i mean how is that possible. JT was shocking for the first goal. i mean to let a ST turn and shoot inside the box, is criminal. GC lost his man for the 2nd one who ended scoring the goal. hope they got this out of their system and now we can have a string of clean sheets. 5/10 azpi - good performance. some really good runs off the ball to give hazard that split second of time. good interceptions too. 7/10 rambo - LIKE A BOSS!!! though again, should have done better for the 3rd goal. but i have to say, this guy is the BACKBONE of the team. hats off!!! 8/10 lamps - that run for the hazard goal!!!! just goes on to show that class is always class!!! really good performance but sometimes i want him to take the risk and try to spray the ball better rather than playing rambo in. 8/10 willian - i felt he was not that good. lost a lot of balls. specially in the first half, got bullied off the ball a couple of times by dossena. that attempted cross to hazard was really poor. but credit to him for the 2nd half performance. held onto the ball well, or atleast better, was a constant threat on goal. 7/10 mata - oscar has been our player of the season so far, but if u want to play possession football, mata should very well be in the team. worked hard off the ball too and his vision was just great. the only thing that annoyed me was that he seems to be taking the easier option of passing/crossing/chipping the ball to another player when he can go for the kill. well atleast sometimes he should. 8/10 hazard- WHATTEY PERFORMANCE!!!! now this is HAZARD bitches!!! this is what he can do!! all those people who ridicule when hazard is called on for an average performance or even an above average performance is cos we know what he can do, what he is capable of!!! simply destroyed sunderland today. now, i hope he keeps is up!!! we have a string of difficult matches coming in arsenal (a), swansea (h), pool (h), southampton (a) and we will need his brilliance to win most of these. (should i really even bother giving a rating!!!) torres- if u cant finish and put the ball in the net when 1v1 with the GK, with the GK on the ground, then there is no point. there was another chance from a corner when any1 from rvp, rooney, suarez, sturridge, aguero, negredo would have put it in. well that is the difference between a comfortable win and a win like this. otherwise, his general play was good. 6/10 subs - ba - should have scored. should play against stoke. his aerial threat would be much needed. 6/10 mikel - should have cleared the ball for the 3rd goal. schurrle- N/A.

there is a difference in being biased and being what phil is? i love DD, i love him to death, but that does not mean that i say that he is better than CR and messi or zidane.

if u truly still believe phil is not a troll and that anything he speaks should count, then i give up on u.

win is a win. an off day for defense but what a performance from eden. hats off!!!

we have 3 good ones. set-pieces are defended by the whole team, not just by the cbs.

we are missing too many chances to put the game to bed... just hope this does not come to bite us in the ass

we are missing too many chances to put the game to bed... just hope this does not come to bite us in the ass

any streams?

good team. expected except for mikel for lamps and schurlle for hazard.

why not song. he definitely would want to play football again and that too in the position he desires and not as a make-shift CB. 10-15 mil for song is a great deal. moreover he is 26, and yet to hit his prime, he has already played football in PL and would not take that much time settling in and also would minimize the risk of things not working out.

LOL...

oscar and hazard are the "mostly" guaranteed starter while schurrle/mata/willian are the ones who are rotated. which is the perfect scenario. you need strong back-up players to win leagues and that is what we have. remember when we used to play 4-3-3 in say, 2009-10. we had the likes of ballack, deco, anelka, joe cole/zhirkov on the bench. or in recent times u can look at bayern at be amazed at their bench and the number of quality AMs and CMs they have got. all said and done, i still accept we have 1 quality AM (probably KDB) more than needed. piazon for KDB would have made for an ideal squad.

2? thats like 4 AMs for 3 spots. we are lucky we are not injury-hit. i mean look at arsenal. they had podolski, walcott, and oxlade injured right at the start of the year and had no cover what-so-ever in their 3 AM position except for ozil, santi and wilshere with gnabry getting a bit of a look in. to be honest we will be fine by selling 1 of the AMs. the 6th ranked AM (kdb in the current scenario) will never get enough play-time that his talent would demand and will always be unhappy. on the other hand if KDB's spot goes to some1 like piazon who is not expected to start many games except for the odd cup game and CL dead rubbers, then it would do very well for the squad mentality.

playing well is on players. it is not jose's fault that our players probably react better to the hair-dryer treatment than to the normal motivation speech that i expect jose would be giving at the start of the match. -jose dint put in a poor line up against cardiff but he did do a good job in changing the match with his subs. -same goes for norwich. we conceded in the 60-odd minutes. went 3 at the back, changed the the tactics and won it. -newcastle was not a bad line-up but an overall poor performance on the team's part. (dont tell me u dint want mata to play that match after his performance at the emirates.) -the only PL game i can actually think where he did make a mistake was tottenham and yesterday. and in both those games he rectified his mistake. jose is doing his job my affecting the result of the game and that too in a good way (almost always), now it is upto our players to put in a good performance.