Sheva.

2-3, Pedro is weirdly clinical.

Torres will play because of his pressing, and the hope he will work as hard as he did against Bayern, City and Spurs.

Barca trying to go level with Atletico, are down 2-0 at Getafe.

Lol Adebayor will make AVB look even more stupid every game.

Soton score. Spurs playing some weird team with Dembele and Eriksen in midfield, Lamela and Sigurdsson on the wings and Adebayor + Soldado upfront.

It failed twice, at Juve and at Man utd. It would actually not surprise me if we use it again for this game, since it makes perfect sense to only try it in big games away from home... according to our managers at least.

Azpi and Bertrand are our best options atm, but Mourinho doesn't trust the latter at all which is a shame. IMO he's very solid and more than capable of playing a lot of games. We will surely address the LB position soon though and if Azpi keeps doing his job at LB, just maybe he will bench Ivanovic.

Despite our not-so-attacking fullbacks, Ivanovic is always forward, and we concede a lot of goals from his side. And yeah Mourinho won't go with 2 attacking fullbacks, which is why i'm still hopeful Azpi takes the RB spot from Ivanovic and does the attacking. Then we can get anyone to stay back on the left.

True, they also have 2 very very attacking full-backs that make it work, just like City.

I posted a while ago that whoever we sign will indicate what type of midfield Mourinho wants. And with the rumours of Matic and Guarin over someone like Cabaye, it looks like we will be end up with a defensive + energetic pivot, like Man city. This also means creativity problems will still persist, especially with Matic.

Our squad now is better than at this stage last season where we only had Torres as striker and Oscar was still adapting and playing average. We used to rely on Hazard and Mata for inspiration every game. Yet we played better football - occasionally it should be said - than anything we have done this season. We put 8 past Villa and scored 3,4,5, several other games. I was expecting an improvement this season with a better manager, and more depth, but attacking wise we have somehow regressed. Defensively though we were doing just fine till last few weeks; now everyone panics when the opposition enter our half, and make silly mistakes.

Heard he participated in training earlier, good news for Mourinho, bad news for Cole.

You don't know what you got, till it's gone?

IIRC, Maiga's last 2 goals for West ham have come against Chelsea and Spurs. Not bad... if they weren't a year apart

Cabaye is the best player on that list, and he's not exactly "available" Guarin is not the only decent CM in Europe, but when you start taking into account how much players would actually cost (fee + wages) whether he's cup-tied or not, and how they would fit into this team, there's not many names that come to mind.

I just read Mourinho is now "considering" going back to defensive football - Lol. Are we really playing any different than what we did under "defensive" Rafa last season? for sure we're scoring less goals, probably conceding more too.

I must have missed something, who's available for that price?

No one is asking him to play great, but he has hardly been decent any game he started. And we're talking of games against inferior teams and players. Maybe he really does need a consistent run of games to play well, but he surely won't be getting that here.

Deserves to start against Arsenal, 5 days for him to recover from today.

We can't score or defend, it's getting ridiculous. But January is almost here, we can try to fix it, or don't do anything and hope we luckily make top 4.

He doesn't do anything better than the other 5 am's, rather have a young player as that 6th option who comes with no drama and happy to play whenever

Thank god Mourinho made a positive change and brought on Hazard, or we'd be even more fucked.

Luiz, my oh my.

Fuck me, i really love this Azpi guy.

Ba should come on first. Oscar later on.