didierforever

2-3 years away? i think romeu and josh were 2-3 years away even 2 years ago. they are not magically going to become "good enough" to play for the first team in a single day. remember what romeu had done against city 2 years ago? we have a lot of potential in our youth players and that potential will come out only if they are trusted and given a chance to prove. look what matic has been able to acheive in 2 years' time. also mvg is already good enough to play. if he was not then tell me why mourinho took a decision of putting his name in the CL squad but not essien. this cleanly indicates that mou thinks mvg was more than ready to play a part for us this season itself. so as i see it, next year we will have mikel, rambo, alonso(?), mvg with the option of romeu, josh and lamps or essien for the squad role. there is no place and absolutely no need to go out and spend big money on a midfielder (that is if we get alonso, if not then splash the cash on witsel).

if it had been some1 like kalou who would have had a game like kdb did, then my oh my!!!, hell would have risen on this forum...

great. hope he lives up to what we have seen of him...

IF there is actually a match played to save the earth, DD should be leading the line. only other guy i would even think of is zlatan. big games, u need players who turn up and give everything they have aka DD.

we have the likes of romeu, chalobah, josh, ginkel on the fringes along with rlc and baker in the academy, why do u want to buy a squad midfielder. plus matic will come for close to 30-35mil. no way. i would rather that jose trusts our youth.

ok. A+ team and A team . the points is, its very tedious to keep writing "i hope willian, etoo, kdb, mata, azpi, bert, essien, mikel get some playing time"... every time.

after what happened yesterday, we SHOULD be winning this. newcastle played their first team, 120 minutes of hard-fought football and in the end were knocked out. they have to be tired and a little de-motivated. plus we have been on a great run(touchwood) and our first team have had a nice week's rest. we should not be dropping any points here.

another away game... wtf!!!... that too if we get southampton, that would be a real hard match. i would have taken the mancs at home rather than southampton away right now. the mancs are so far behind and have so much ground to make up in the PL that none of the managers would even have had the balls to risk playing their A-teams. and our B-team is definitely better in quality than either's. on the other hand, southampton will play their first team, and it would be interesting to see us cope against there fast, high pressing game. i just hope we win against schalke, top the CL group, so that our B-team can get some playing time.

TS for iva and your team would be perfect...

no. would be a poor signing. would be another stop-gap signing. he will turn 32 in never, will be back from a 6 month lay-off, moreover if we buy him, i dont see us buying a long-term solution in summer as we have some options in this area in rambo, lamps (maybe no extension), essien, mikel, mvg, chalobah, josh. for a short-term solution this might work but not the most ideal signing for me specially considering his age and recent injuries. better would be to sell ba and mikel in the window, generate some funds (if needed) and buy bender/witsel.

the draw will be after tonight's games or after the southampton-sundeland game?

MOTM for me. should get more of a look into the 1st team.

???? how??? arsenal's GD is 11 and ours is 10. if they draw and we win by 2 goals we go on top by GD. if we win by 1 goal we would be 2nd as arsenal have 20 goals compared to our 16.

tricky fixture. i feel we lost 3 points here last season due to defensive short-comings.this time around i hope we can thrash them and continue this great run. the team i would play is cech iva cahill JT bert rambo lamps hazard oscar schurlle torres. the same one that started against city.

brilliant performance. one of the best and the most complete performances i have seen this season. totally dominated the proceedings and showed those wankers who's who. schwarzer - good game. never in trouble except for the ryo chance. good performance. 8/10 azpi - what the hell was he doing there for the goal!!!! a good performance and congratulations to him for his forst goal. 8/10 cahill - anothere solid performance. he is showing that he can be and will be more than just a squad player. 7/10 luiz - a much needed solid performance. did what was required off him rather than trying to do everything. 7.5/10 bertrand - what a game!!! what a performance from him!!! MOTM for me. i honestly cant say any thing wrong about that performance. had ryo in his pocket all night long and he must have won the ball back about 10-15 times individually. even when cazorla shifted to the wing after ozil's inclusion, he was untouched. simply magnificient from bertrand. he has been continously performing well and he has given a shout for some regular first team football. 9.5/10 essien - very confused about his performance. he let people run past him (ramsey and wilshere) but i can remember atleat 3 instances when he literally bulldozed past those 2 in the mid. defensively was a little shaky but his runs were brilliant. the only problem in his runs was the final ball. he seemed confused to take a shot or just play etoo in or pass it to the wings. but a decent performance considering that he has not got any minutes so far. 7/10 mikel- a very mikel-ish performance. but some of the one touch that he, bertrand and essien played during the 2nd half to get out of tight spots was fabulous and great to watch. went ahead well and covered essien well too. 7.5/10 kdb - i have not seen much of him but the amount i have heard about him , he dint do justice to it. he seemed to be switched off somehow. some of his decision making was appalling. his movement or lack of it was weird. i specially remember a moment in the 2nd half when mata had the ball on the Left wing, kdb stood right in front of the D with koscielny marking him and dint make a run to drag him away so as to space for mata. in the end mata had to play the ball back and this was just one incident. very off-colour. he will be our 6th choice AM unfortunately. 6/10 mata - good game, great goal!!! and what an over the top celebration. his performance lacked that little bit of zing that u expect from mata. anyways his play on the ball was decent. runs were good but the final ball dint really pay-off at multiple times.also he was good defensively when we went 4-3-3. 7.5/10 willian - really impressive!!! best of the AMs. very direct and gave monreal a hell of a time on multiple occasions. defensively he was IMMENSE. 9/10 etoo - good link up play but a tad slower than necesaary to cos that serious problem. his shots were just not good enough (one of them going out for a throw-in). defensively he was great. it was literally like we were playing with 4 AMs, he was so deep at times. 7/10 subs - ramires - he is RAMBO. nothing more needs to be said. also i atlast got my wish to see a 4-3-3 with rambo-mikel-essien. i still remember in 2010 when essien was still bison, ramires used to run around like a mad-man and mikel was his usual self, i always thought a 4-3-3 with these 3 in the mid would be great to watch. today i got my wish after almost 3 years and it was decent. ba - good hold up play but i feel for his own sake and to get some real footbal he should leav in the winter. kalas- just a couple of minutes. he ll get his chance soon.

i think most of the questions u r asking, i answered to those in my last post to robguima. as for luiz, in the last season, i feel he was brilliant as a midfielder. i have said that in the DL thread too while arguing with tomo. he was in a brilliant moment and we were playing a style of football which suited him. we were playing a very open game (compared to what we are right now). carvalho's example again comes back to the point of having that support from midfield. we had one of the best DMs who had the position itself named after him (makelele), later we had essien who was thought to be the next makelele. also JT was in his prime then, much quicker than he is now. i feel a lot of things are different between carvalho and DL. i feel, DL's understanding of the game and defense in general in better compared to carvalho 's but he is also more error prone. also JT-carvalho formed the most amazing pair as a CB which DL-JT have not even come close to. what JT-carvalho had was special and expecting that again would not be right. i feel it is more than just football that can explain their understanding, balance and composure with each other.

it is roman's club but he has entrusted mourinho to do what is best for the CLUB. not for himself. but as u said, we already have had that discussion and lets not go there again. i admit about the play of style and sooner or later we will be playing an ADAPTATION or a modified version of barca's game. but at this moment, can we? for me, more important than having a ball-playing/ball-winning defender is having a WC pivot. rambo has been phenomenol this season and had a very good season last time but i feel he is some way off being called WC. lamps is no where near a wc DM, he is not even a DM. the examples u give about barca, BM and city each have midfielders who would walk into world XIs. for me the problem is not in defence but in mid atleast about the point u r talking. Till then, till the point we are still in the transition period and until we get an identity of our own, and actually find our feet, we have to make do with what is best for us for the moment. cos winning is as important a part as is the football we play.look at arsenal, some of the best football was played with fiberglass and yet no trophies and moreover the lynchpin of their team moved on. hence, we have to find a middle road and for me, right now, GC is a good enough fit alongside JT.

pretty much our case last year when united won and had to play another at SB for COC. we played about 5 first team players and pretty much lost our way on league after that.

its not just the weekend though, is it? they have pool on saturday, dortmund on tuesday and united the next weekend. plus they have a major chunk of squad players like (podolski, walcott, aoc) injured or barely out of injury and in no state to start. playing with a strong XI will be suicidal and i wont mind because it would mean arsenal slipping in PL and CL.

roman may want whatever he wants... this is jose's team, and i have no doubt what-so-ever on who will be calling the shots here. also i have no doubt on the kind of football jose wants to play. also please, tell me the midfield of those teams that are winning international tournaments. its basically spain who has won a WC and 2 euros and barca who have dominated europe. tell me there midfield its xavi, xabi, iniesta, silva, fiberglass all together... we have mata(bench material for spain), hazard (3-4 years away from his prime), oscar who is playing awesome right now but was hopelessly missing during large chunks of last season. add to that lamps (a 35 year old CAM) who is now playing as a CDM. u have to look at the kind of play those teams play compared to ours. barca can afford to give away 2 goals cos they know they can hit 5, not so much for the PL. we are here comparing apples and oranges.

so u wont take into account the league messi plays in (LOL liga) where even soldado had what 30-odd goals... a league where ribery anyways has 4 matches less to play plus about 3-4 matches less to play in the domestic league too??? messi's personal performance, this year, has been no where near ribery's.also goals are not the only criteria to judge them...

so what criteria are u judging on some1 being "better" than the other. what does "who is the better footballer" even mean. this is what the ballon dor official site says The FIFA Ballon d'Or is an association football award given annually to the player who is considered to have performed the best in the previous year. it is and it has to be about performance. in 10 months this year, so far, 2 months there was no football and for about 2 months messi has been injured. he was average-bad in all the big matches (classicos, BM, super-cupa) meanwhile ribery has been phenomenol. be it in the final, semi quarters, uefa-supercup against us or generally through out the yeear.

my friend just told me that. wenger confirmed that hayden would play. so probably that is a direct swap for frimpong. also he says gnabry seems to have a niggle and he is being accessed.

AMEN TO THAT... kill those arse-anal 3-0 atleast.

here in lies the problem. ramos, puyol, pique, hummels play in teams that actually WANT their defenders to be pro-active where as i seriously doubt that about us. i totally agree with what phildriver has said (only on this thread though), that defending is all about the back 5 being on the same wavelength and defending like a unit. barca, bvb have a very different ideology from ours and it is simply wrong comparing their defenders to ours to prove a point. it wont be the other 10 players who will adjust and mould their-selves to luiz's style of play. the change has to come from luiz himself.