didierforever

^ henrique just got OWNED. hahahah...

i like this line up. more like a 4-1-4-1. something that munich are playing these days. but no chance of us actually seeing this line-up on the pitch. no chance.

hopefully i am wrong. but whu was one of our best performances of the season, hope we can put another one of those but slim chances of that happening.

martinez??? seriously??? with FT atlast getting back to his own... all we need is a bloody DM...

i have got 2 chelsea defenders (JT, IVA) and 2 southampton defenders (LOVREN, SHAW) coupled with 1 GK of these 2 teams (CECH, BORUC) in my fantasy team. i am more confident about soton keeping a clean sheet than us keeping a clean sheet.

he does not look like the player who would be willing to sit out an entire season... so if he is not guaranteed no.1, he will leave i guess. and with both the barca gks out of contract in the summer (valdes and pinto), courtoius seems to be their no.1 target. i wonuld not mind if we can get a nice deal going here. ps - it would be very suprising to me if mou lets him go. courtois' best performances have been against RM/barca specially his performance in the copa del ray final against RM where he was just phenomenol. jose had a first hand experience of courtois' brilliance.

is he still "injured"? suprising how he is always "injured"!!!

i feel the latter is a better approach. soton's full backs (shaw and clyne are a big factor in their play, dont know if shaw is fit or not since he went out against arsenal). keeping them busy by our wingers would be a safer as well as a more attacking approach.

in my opinion, playing with this team would be a massive mistake. we dont have any natural width on the right. iva is the one that provides it, and with lallana continously running behind him, we would lose a complete wing, defensively and attackingly. also by playing 3 midfielders, we are going on the defensive. we ll be letting soton play their own game and giving them the conrtol of the match something which arsenal nullified perfectly. arsenal played their own game, pushing soton really deep, on the defensive, thru out the game.

i am not worried about iva vs lallana in a 1v1 situation. i am more worried of lallana's general play and him running behind iva continously. azpi would be a much better defender in that situation.

^ the most apt article. i still cant understand why we dint rotate. specially since we need to get 9 points out of the next 3 games in PL hence need a fresh team. (soton, sunderland, stoke). anyways what's done is done. its not fifa that u get a do over. as for people who are calling for mou's sacking - bunch of idiots.

dont think so. i have not seen any1 except for toure causing a problem for mata thru his physicality. we NEED mata for this game to actually control the flow of the game (like arsenal did) rather than playing on the counter and putting th =e onus on southampton.

the weirdest thing has been that schurrle has been a part of all of our important/big games but somehow is the first one to get the boot in the next match united, bayern, everton, tottenham (sub), city, schalke (both legs).

hahaha... u know what, even losing 12-0 might not be as bad a performance as this one. i mean after going 2-3 goals down, we ll definitely wake up and show the class we possess, also the players might play with a little fire in them.

i ll chill but just answer this one query, why has not phil being atleast given a warning to stop his antiques. i feel he is doing it purposely to just wind up people. a lot of people dont like a lot of different players but no one has that big an agenda against one particular player. which simply makes him a troll.

i doubt if there CAN be a worse performance than today.

thank god for this. really important game this one. cant afford to drop points. man city wont (they are playing at home), arsenal are playing away to cardiff, and so far cardiff have been brillaint at home in big matches. so we can extend the gap between us and the likes of united, tottenham, southampton themselves while closing the gap with arse. cech azpi luiz JT cole rambo mikel schurrle mata hazard torres. oscar looked damn tired in the game, lamps played pathetic and looked tired, iva will get murdered against lallana and would probably end up giving the ball away by dawdling on it awkardly and he is a definite "do not start" for this one. just have a feeling that luiz would be a good choice for this game. GC might get bullied off the ball by lambert and also luiz's ball play might come in real handy. i still dont get why schurrle has stopped starting after scoring a goal against city and generally being really good all round the season. his directness and his tracking back may keep shaw/clyne real quite and help our full backs too... expecting a real hard fought game.

if he starts against southampton and against the likes of lallana, he will get murdered... not kidding.

can u please start the southampton match-thread. this one is depressing, also can u look what i wrote in the lampard thread. PLEASE.

^how is this guy still not banned is BEYOND ME. u can blame "tapa" for being a spammer but atleast he made sense sometimes if u removed all his LOLs from his posts, and yet this guy keeps on trolling every thread (mikel, lamps, mata, cahill, match-thread) and is still not even given a warning on anything. wake up @ALEX, @BLUESMASTER etc....

why is not there a southampton match thread??? just put that up already!!1

screwed up real bad today. and the defeat has to be on him. very poor team selection plus no difference in tactics of how to deal with salah&stocker who owned iva-cole even in the 1st leg.

during the start of the season jose had said that FL will be used sparingly, like makelele, what happened to that? why the fuck was he started today. a draw was a good result, was no where near to an importand/must-win game, it would have been hard for any 35 year old box-to-box mid-fielder to get himself up for this match. hence, no doubt FL was downright pathetic.

very true. lamps and rambo were giving the ball away every time they touched it. etoo could not hold the ball upfront if his life depended on it. mikel was playing literally as a 3rd CB, oscar was not in the game at all but our CBs should try and play out of our own box. brilliant!!!!

horrible performance. simply dint turn up. i feel a lot of blame has to go on to JOSE for this defeat. he should have wrung the changes for this match specially since we ll be playing southampton (h), sunderland (A) and stoke (A) in the space of 6 days. the tactics were to sit back, invite them in and then counter but nothing worked today. lamps and rambo had an absolute SHOCKER. oscar seemed disinterested and etoo could not hold the ball to bring the midfielders into the play. these result are killing us by not letting us getting any momentum whatsoever. the only silver-lining, we are still top of the group and have qualified already. cant see how schalke would LOSE to basel at their home so even if we get a point out of the last match, we have pretty much topped the group too. cech - MOTM. saved our asses from the scoreline to become a basketball scoreline. 9/10 iva- another pathetic performance. got owned by salah/stocker thru out the night. he needs to be and should be dropped for the next game. southampton are really good at pressing and i can already visualise iva costing us some points just like he did against wba by just sticking to the ball. also i have no fucking clue what he was doing for the goal. 4/10 GC&JT - a good performance. apart from cech, these 2 seemed to be the only ones who actually wanted to play the match. JT was phenomenol with his heading and GC covered iva's ass numerous times. 8/10 azpi - should not play on the left. bertrand is still a better LB and i have no idea how he is not making the team (forgive me if bert is injured). his positional sense is really poor as a LB and he gives insane amount of space for the wingers to run in, though he does close them down too. is not good with his left foot too, hence fluffed his clearances and could not force the issues with his passing from the left. also, losing headers to stocker/salah is just not done. 6/10 mikel - had a decent game. made some interceptions but his poor range of passing just could not get us out of our own half as he could not find that perfect pass.7/10 lamps - i hope every1 is down out of their lamps high from the last game. i remember he lost the ball 4 times in a row he touched it. he is done and dusted. i dont get how jose is unable to see that. 4/10 rambo - just one of those days for him when his tackling goes off, his passes go hay-wire, he fluffs the 1v1 or good positions that the team gets in. but its good that he got this match out his system before the 3 PL matches. 5/10 oscar - passenger. he was probably tired from the internationals then the whu game where he ran himself to the ground. he should not have started. infact dint see the need to start him. but a poor performance. simply could not get into the game. could be the link up man and the hopeless passing from the 3 midfielders dint help. 6/10 willian - full of running but simply brain farts of choices in passing and when not to pass. should have done well to cover azpi against the winger too. 6/10 etoo - poor. could not hold the ball if his life depended on it. lost the ball everytime he touched it just like the time he got injured. torres should be the no.1 man. 5/10 subs - torres - was a breath of fresh air. fought for aerial balls, tried to run behind the defenders rather than just standing like an idiot in front of them like etoo. but some of him decision making during the counters was off too. took players on when it was not needed and a simple pass would have sufficed. 7/10 hazard - was good. our only attacking threat. changed the game completely for 20 mins after he came on. it seemed we would nick a goal thru him at the end but it simply was not to be. 7/10 kdb - i still have to understand why iva was shouting at him after the goal. anyways not much time on the pitch to do anything. jose- tactics were alright, a perfect away day tactics, but the execution let him down. but have to say, his team selection was pathetic tonight. why did lamps, oscar, iva start is beyond me. why was not mata and schurrle specially given a chance tonight is just way beyond me. 5/10