Amblève.

Praise the lord's birthday!

This forum makes it look like a team that's playing the majority of the 90 minutes in their opposition's half can't win anything at all.

Working that transfer fee up I see.

Can't really fault him for that, though, as he shouldn't have been in those situations to begin with. Oscar's defensive contribution the first 30 minutes or so was abysmal.

Zouma didn't even play vs Fellaini 1-on-1 more than on maybe 2 or 3 occasions. Instead Fellaini was drawing Ivanovic in and Zouma was wandering around and giving up space in front of our box. Instead of taking advantage of United's non-existing defensive midfield by starting Ramires (who could have helped out Ivanovic and Oscar on the right flank as well) we rather sat deep and allowed United to play their game in our half. Why was that so ultra necessary? You can't seriously tell me that we couldn't have done more harm to United if we played a more-dimensional midfield. There were dozens of occasions where one more attacking threat would have done wonders for the team on the counter. And yet we still were praying till the last second that United don't score some shit goal like they did in the first fixture... More often than not we're giving ourselves a harder time than our opposition does.

Nobody thinks that. Or did I miss someone's comment that we should allow our opposition's best players to shoot from their preferred spots?

I didn't even mention tiki taki whatsoever and you're talking about extremes again... it's as if there's only Barcelona-esque offense and Catenaccio defense lmao What about a solid 2:0 win without allowing United to even get started (like they did yesterday, partially due to Zouma starting and confusing the hell out of everyone...)?

Why is this talk always about extremes? Can't we be solid defensively while being able to control the game in the opposition's half for 4-5 well played attacks/per game, too? Or is one of those things ALWAYS exclusive? This is the main point I don't see anyone addressing properly without talking in cliches.

You're beating a cremated horse now. The haters were wrong yada yada yada, Mourinho is never wrong yada yada yada, fans have no right to speak their frustrated minds yada yada yada. I swear, this forum's been challenging HFBoards' level of unoriginality lately.

Gif signatures are causing crashes for my internet browser on my tablet so I hope something can be done.

The way he kept going after the 60th minute or so when it was already clear he was done for the day was amazing. Simply amazing. Obviously his passes were sloppy and his runs always a tad off but jeez - he still worked the United defense and managed to win some balls and even get a few fouls. Absolute Chelsea legend.

Maybe you're focussing too much on his past mate. His style may be unorthodox but this season his biggest mistakes are not even close to as bad as Courtois'. Think we might differ here quite severly though since I don't think that Lloris is anywhere near the top-3 this season . For me it's De Gea, Forster and Courtois in that order (I'm strictly talking about performances this season which is why I don't think Cech deserves to be here as he hasn't played enough games, even though his actual ability is top-3 worthy).

I wouldn't say that DDG is worse than Courtois. Judging by their actual abilities they're pretty much even, though, De Gea's been less prone to stupid mistakes this season AFAIC.

As soon as MikelGOD entered the pitch the game had CHELSEA WIN written all over it.

If we lose you have a legitimate reason to get hammered.

Workrate and balance tho

If Ivanovic finds out about this he's gonna break some legs

Ovrebo is that you?

And I responded that buying Cesc himself was unnecessary because having a traditional 10# in Mata wasn't the crux to our problems.

I don't follow your logic here. How does having one not so fast player in Mata playing the #10 role generate any problems if all the other players around him are speedy and mobile? As far as I know, Costa, Hazard and Willian are all above average quick for their positions, Matic is impressively mobile and smart and the player next to him would and should IMO be the same.

That's not how it works, though. Mourinho obviously has a saying in which players and player types he'd prefer but at the end of the day it's the scouts who recommend the players to Emenalo etc who then does the same with Mourinho and his coaching staff. Mourinho would have no life outside football if he was responsible for watching video of other teams' players (as a club of such huge mangnitude we're scouting whole Europe), analyzing them and comprehending all data until just a small pool of players remains. Obviously that's a simplistic explanation but in general that's at least how it works at clubs in Austria.

You know, how about signing a real pivot player who doesn't need defensive protection like Cesc...? Just like every other team does it instead of having your #10 fill holes for one of your pivot players.

One thing that baffles me while reading through this forum is that people want Zouma to play in midfield vs United and completely ignore that we somehow have to generate offense ourselves as well. For what it's worth, I'd expect the same people to criticize Jose for his "negative approach" if we played Zouma while getting completely outplayed. Playing Zouma in midfield simply to have someone to deal with Fellaini (whose danger after a few good games I think is overblown to some extent anyway) would basically mean giving up the game for United to dictate and us sitting deep. Not to mention that we'd restrict our counterattacking game, too. But that's just me talking rational things so who cares.

Why is Mourinho still getting credit for "keeping the books balanced"? Do people in 2015 seriously still believe Mourinho is negotiating transfer fees and salaries?

Liked because of this part.