Pizy

They'll apparently have a couple of their best players out like Silva so maybe we have a chance. At least I won't rage and have my weekend ruined if we get shit on since our season is now meaningless. Would be nice to beat this lot, though. If nothing else, show that we aren't a million miles away from City.

If that's true I wonder if we'll see Pato playing behind Costa. Or maybe RLC at #10?

I've never even heard of him

Barkley isn't really the pure #10 I'd want personally. Lanzini just signed a contract like a month ago or something and I'm not sure about him yet anyways. Moutinho is nearly 30 now so I'm not sure if he's what we need. I'd really love to see the prototypical, creative, classy #10. A player like Özil, Eriksen, Mata in his prime with us, David Silva. I think Pjanic could probably be that and I'd be delighted if we signed him to replace Oscar.

Just our terrible luck that the season where we'll finally may get rid of Oscar and we won't have CL football to lure a world class replacement. Imagine being able to make a play for Isco or James or Reus to replace Oscar. Don't think we can now. There are still plenty of very good players out there that are an improvement on Oscar, though, who would jump at the chance to move here. Just struggling to think of any right now off the top of my head.

I kind of disagree here. I think Liverpool have a fantastic chance of winning the thing. True, they're terrible defensively, but so is every other side in Europe. This being their best chance of silverware in a while and with their hopes of top 4 gone they'll be gunning for this like mad knowing that it's a way into the CL now.

Unfortunately I can't compare them as I didn't watch Juventus regularly. Judging by what his former superstar players like Pirlo and Buffon have said about him we may have the perfect man to bring us forward. All comes down to how much the board and owner back him in the market.

Is that Firmino singing in your avatar?

This is spot on. Mou is cold when it comes to players. He has his favorites that he'll never throw under the bus or freeze out like Didier, Lamps, Cech, but he's ruthless with most players if they "wrong" him on the pitch. Klopp seems to genuinely love his players and care for them whereas José treats them like assets or tools.

I hope Conte can make our squad of divas and slouches have this sort of ferocity and will to win at all costs that Liverpool's average ones have. A load of fighting spirit and excellent coaching can raise the level of decent players to great heights. We've seen it this season with both Spurs and now Liverpool. Pochettino and Klopp have 2-3 good players in their teams and the rest are average, but they're fantastic managers who lift everyone. Imagine what you'd have if you combine a top manager with top talent who is willing to fight like hell. We have much better players than either of those two sides. Hopefully Conte brings them around.

You may be right, but he will have success in Manchester regardless. May only be a season or two he'll be a pain in our ass still.

Klopp doing well with Brenda's players, too. If he's able to recruit some class players to replace the average ones like Lallana, Moreno, Joe Allen etc he'll have them challenging for the title within 2 years.

Imagine if our players played for him like Klopps do for him. He'd still be here...

Dortmund lost their heads and completely shut down thinking it was over. Klopp didn't allow his players to quit. Klopp should be able to recruit real top quality players to Liverpool this summer which they haven't been able to do in a while. Yet another team that we'll have to contend with in a rebuilding year. Tough times ahead.

How can a side as good as Doetmund be so shocking defensively? Atleti may truly be the only elite side in Europe who can properly defend. Embarrassing if they lose this from the position they were in.

Meh. Knowing our club recently they'll sell Hazard, Courtois, and Costa and keep the likes of Ivanovic, Oscar, Cahill etc around until they doom another season for us.

The positive feeling of us finally wanting rid of Oscar is overshadowed by their article saying we'll still be using the "one in, one out" transfer rule and that new signings must be funded by player sales. Just fuck off with that! No way we're getting back to challenging for the league with that business model unless we're selling 3-4 of our best players.

Very well put. We need to stop spunking huge cash on average players. Or settling for the second or third option on the list the manager will give the board for any given position.

I predict that this will be yet another situation where the new manager will "try to get the best" out of Oscar and we aren't even thinking about selling him at this point.

Hope our board and Roman were watching City last night. They need a wake up call to show them that there's a potential there for Chelsea to get left behind if huge investment isn't made this summer. They're already miles ahead this season and will only get stronger. City have a poor season last year and what do they do? Spend over £100m on attacking talent alone. For two players! And another £50m combined on Delph and Otamendi. They still finished in a CL place and felt they needed that sort of investment. We're going to finish midtable (maybe even bottom half) so we're going to need to spend at least that much or we will become Liverpool or Spuds of recent times where we'll be battling with the likes of West Ham for 5th/6th and looking with desperation at a CL place. A club like City who already have a core of players like Aguero, De Bruyne, and Silva and play much better football than us are going to take a big step up and become even better starting next season. They have the potential to leave us so far behind that we won't have a hope of catching them for years. Nevermind that we'll also have Mourinho to contend with. This will be the most important summer in our history. We have the manager. We now need the club to decide if they want to reinforce its status as one of Europe's elite or become an also-ran and watch City, United, Arsenal, and even the likes of fucking Spurs, Liverpool, and West Ham leave us behind.

Costa and Willian will be back so at least we'll have some watchable quality in our attack unlike the Swansea game. Hazard was training in the last pics I saw from a Begovic tweet so maybe he'll be on the bench for this? KDB is nailed on to score and Aguero always shits on us. I think Guus will continue to experiment with the team and play some of the ynger players so I see no way we win this one against a City side with high morale after today's result and that are desperate to hold on to their 4th spot. They need this one whilst our players can't be bothered anymore.

Let's just pray they aren't so tight in Conte's first summer or we won't sniff the title or even CL football for years and years like Liverpool.

Don't know if I'm willing to go that far. Mourinho certainly had a lot of control in his first two seasons, clearly. This past year, though, the board and owner had become obsessed with FFP, balancing the books, and became content with the squad. We know as fact that Mou wanted a few top class players to improve the team and if things were totally up to him they'd have been signed. The board were either incompetent with some transfers (Stones) or straight up didn't try or left it too late for others. Still place most of the blame on the board myself.

Would also be easier to stomach if our own Belgian star didn't have an abysmal season... But I 100% guarantee all of you that Oscar will still be lining up next season as our "playmaker." A playmaker that rarely scores, contributes almost no assists, has no creative vision, and has one good game against a random, shit team for every 10 matches he plays.