Sheva.

Liked what i saw from him in the first half today, good control and beating people with ease. But i don't think he had a shot, which is the frustrating aspect of his game. There's 2-3 shots there for him every game, but he doesn't want to take it.

Yep

That was definitely Mourinho's orders. He was playing like a 3rd CB, and hardly ever went past the half-way line. Ivanovic on the other hand was given the license to bomb down the wings.

We won't sign him for sure, but a very good player and a constant goal threat unlike some of our other AM's.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2501392/Chelsea-keeper-Thibaut-Courtois-stalls-talks-World-Cup-bid-replace-Petr-Cech.html Daily Mail say we've offered Courtois a 2 year extension, but he wants to wait until after the World cup, and also wants assurances he'll be no 1.

Toure > Pitroipa > Mikel. The list is poor because the big name African players are old now, people like Eto'o and Drogba. And the teams doing well like Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Egypt etc have a lot of young little-known players.

It's because of Rooney though. He was very good at BVB, any other team he will be starting in his favourite position and showing what he can do. He still does alright whenever i've seen him, and has been getting more chances lately.

Not in terms of quality, but style of play. Kagawa is a classic no 10, Hazard is a winger/inside forward. Like comparing Ribery and Ozil etc.

Look at Schurrle, Hazard, Oscar and Willian and you won't compare any of them to players like Silva, Ozil, Kagawa or Mata. What those players have is great work-rate, pace and trickery. So we can score goals on counter and through individual brilliance, but not a lot of creativity there.

Our team is good enough to win the league, our manager is one of the best around. Transition is an excuse for losers.

We destroyed them in 1st half, but only Mata scored. As usual teams respond eventually at home and they made us pay. And Cech gifted them a goal. Take our chances and we will win this.

Cech; Ivan-Luiz-JT-Cole; Ramires, Mikel; Hazard, Oscar, Schurrle; Ba Eto'o has been doing well, but we need Ba's aerial ability and strength. Schurrle's direct play will come in handy and i like Oscar against that physical West ham midfield.

I said it on another page before but, before Mata joined the club we had a clear problem with creating chances, it's why we went out and spent 23m on him. And since then while the issue hasn't been completely eradicated - because you still need something from DM and on the wings. Mata has more than done his fair share of creating chances for others, and when Torres wasn't scoring, he added goals to his game and had a quite ridiculous season - stats wise - last year. 20 goals and 30+ assists. In tough games against the likes of Stoke, West ham and West brom at home in previous seasons, Mata has almost always had an assist and helped us open the door. Mourinho needs to make him an important part of the team again, because he still has a major role to play for us. He can be a liability in big games when you need people working hard and defending, but that's why we have all those other AM's. But there are games for players like Mata, and yesterday was one of them.

Not Oscar. But you're right, every other important player for us under Rafa can't get into the team now, or are playing weird.

Fair enough. But 65 minutes into the game, Lampard was far and away our worst player. Lethargic in everything, wouldn't say tarnishing his legacy, but can't say he's helping it with performances like that either.

You keep saying this, but isn't 65 minutes enough to know who's doing well and who should be replaced?

WBA should have kept the ball, i know easier said than done but normally when you keep giving the ball to your opponent it's only a matter of time before they score. And we really should have scored before that "penalty". Ba's glorious miss, Willian's chance and the scramble that fell to Mata.

Mourinho for some weird reason plays Ivanovic as the attacking fullback. Haha.

The only positive is we can't possibly play this bad forever. One day, Mourinho will change something and we will play some sexy football again. Not expecting it to be soon though, stubborn man.

That was unacceptable, instead of spending 20 minutes trying to win the game, we instead were trying to get a point. Ugh.

You're not going to blame Mata? who as you put it last week was the reason for everyone's bad performance, and leaves a huge gap in midfield

Key word here is he's playing together with Oscar. Mata started the season as 2nd choice, fair enough. Oscar was really good at the start, so Mata couldn't get a look-in, fair enough. But the job of back-ups is to come in as part of rotation or when the player in their position isn't playing well, yet 95% of the times Mata has started in meaningful games, it has been alongside Oscar. And they both share the same position and make our already average attack worse. So Mata as usual gets the blame, and back to the bench.

Mata did it last season, when he was playing every game and had the confidence of the manager. Now he's in and out of the team, can't put 1 foot wrong or else back to the bench. Like TorontoChelsea just posted on the match thread, Oscar has 0 assists in 11 games. Around 9 of those he started and played the full game. You think it would be the same if it was Mata in his place? definitely not.

Buuuut Mourinho only cares about the workrates and tackles!!

Players can come in and change games in 15 minutes, but that was a chaotic game, we had only 1 person in defence and everyone in attack. The only way we were going to score was from a mistake or set-piece.... or luck. Anyway i never said Mata was the answer, but Oscar doesn't play like a CAM which is what we need in games like today. It's why we bought Mata in the first place, and his assists so far in his Chelsea career show he does his job.