nullabletype

I wouldn't play Kalou in a Sunday league team never mind Chelsea.

I'd of had Malouda off for Anelka personally. Might as well get 90 out of Torres since he's on a 3 match ban.

What the Frank!

Valencia keeper is rampant!

I like Ivanovic as much as the next Chelsea fan. I will however never understand why anybody would want him at RB over Bosingwa. Ivan's crosses aren't much better if at all, and he's nowhere near as pacey. Bosingwa has been pretty solid so far this season. For me Ivan is an emergency RB only, but a very nice CB option.

100% agree. It's all well and good people saying Mikel slows the ball well for defensive aspects of the game. That's great if we're on the defensive, but when you're constantly on the attack, which is what AVB wants from his side, what does Mikel really offer in the way of that? It's like when people talk about his pass success rate. His rate might be brilliant, but look at the passes he's making. For the most part they're either side to side or backwards. As I said before, I have no problem with him. I just don't see how he fits into the attack minded side that AVB is trying to put together.

Just watching MotD. Mark Lawrenson says that Torres never actually made any connection with his two footed tackle. He shouldn't have made it in the first place, but it annoys me that if true, the Swansea player fell to the ground holding his shin when there was no contact.

To those saying Mikel was MotM I'd have to disagree. I'm not somebody who gets on Mikels back because I think for the most part he's fine. But as a squad, Chelsea quite often play slow. Then you get days like today, where at times we really pick up the pace. For me, Mikel kills that pace when we do actually achieve it. I'm sure he could adapt to it if need be, but at the moment he just kills any speedy build up we might have. Happy with the win today, good show all round for the most part. Daft Challenge from Torres but feel the red was too harsh. The yellow for Mata was definitely not called for. Ramires stepped up and Didier and Nando on the score sheet. What more could you want?... slightly better defending on set pieces because we were exposed the exact same way last week, but I'm sure that will improve.

I used to use SopCast but since MyP2P went down I can't find any links. Where do you get them?

Literally they did. Figuratively they drew with us and had the officials do them two huge favours. Shame the latter doesn't count for anything but still. Their result against us is not indicative of their form.

I seriously hate having to stream matches. You go through loads of links, of which 99% are shit to begin with. And when you finally get a decent one, it inevitably craps out.

Fernando for me as he's starting to look like his old self, I hope this is his come back. Ramires and Mata also impressed, Anelka has really picked up these last few games too.

My point is I don't think anything about Torres's confidence, because I have no way of knowing. I was playing devils advocate when I opposed you. I really doubt, Rooney played Berbatov in because he'd lost confidence. It was a more tactically sound ball to play, which was only kept out because Cole barely made it back.

Why can't we say this? None of us know how Torres feels. Just because he doesn't score every week doesn't mean he is not confident. Fans and pundits talking about players confidence is purely speculation on their part. So if we are going to speculate, I'd say today's goal will lift him. His current form has all been leading to this point, that point being a very well taken, strikers goal. Not one person on this forum will argue that his miss wasn't grim, it was. I score those down my local pitches all the time and I'm crap. But as many have said before me, every striker misses sitters. And so in the same vain, can we not say that Rooney's confidence will have taken a hit today given that he couldn't hit the target from a dead ball 12 yards out?

You're getting called out because you don't make sense. You bash Torres despite the fact he's at the peak of his Chelsea career thus far. You then say he shouldn't be judged on goals alone when we bring up the fact he scored our only goal today. So we point out his all round good work rate and still you continue. You should want every player who wears a blue shirt to succeed, marquee signing or not. So yeah, I'm afraid you're going to find that most level headed fans want Torres to succeed. And amazingly enough, we're likely to back him even more in this good run of form. Edit: and as warnie 666 has posted above, our other forwards aren't exactly banging them in week in week out. So what do you want?

Well then somewhat amazingly your point is even less pertinent than it first seemed, because anybody who has been watching our games this season and running an objective eye over them could see that Torres for the most part has played well. 2 assists and a goal in his last two games plus his generally high work rate. But do go on...

I know, we're such dicks for wanting our marquee signing to do well and giving him credit where credit is due. The guy only scored our single goal today. Mug.

Today we were the better team, no doubt about it. Played some good football and were only beat by two goals that shouldn't have stood. I'm glad AVB has the stones to haul Lampard off. He done zip other than 2 decent passes early on. Personally I'd of seen Ivanovic or JT off for David Luiz too. JT's lack of pace scares me at times. The squad in general looked well and maybe we're starting to click. If we can play like this at Old Trafford there is absolutely no reason why we can't go anywhere else in the country and win. Torres looked well and I'm glad he got that long awaited 2nd goal. Now on his miss... Comments like this really bug me. Here we have our own fans giving Torres, who was arguably one of our best players today and our only goal scorer stick because of a miss. Fair enough it was pretty bad. But I don't see the same peaople critiquing Wayne Rooney for not even hitting a penalty on target. Quite sad really.

6'2" I believe.

A yes, Peek-a-Busquets.

I'd be more than happy to see the same starting line-up that was put out against Leverkusen. Obviously a victory would be preferable but I can see this game ending in a draw. I also don't like to compare our chances to that of Arsenal or Tottenham as we're a vastly superior outfit. instead I like to dwell on more positive comparisons like our similar results against West Brom. There's no reason why we can't beat United on Sunday but the same can be said of them about us. Looking forward to what will hopefully be a brilliant game and a nice win, fingers crossed. It would be nice to shut them lot and the media up to be honest. Not that that would happen even if we came away 9-0 winners.

Cheers. Good shout yourself for pointing out the image. I'm using it now.

Makes a pretty decent plain BG. Just made him bigger and shifted the lights so there was more going on.

The media really do get on my nerves. The Sun already have an article up calling Torres a flop in one line, and on the next talk about how he set up both goals. But it's only mentioned in passing as if it was nothing. Not so much a mention of his all round good performance and three very close efforts in the first ten minutes. I don't like any articles to centre on one particular player. But if they do insist on writing about one player all the time, then at least give him some credit where and when it's due. Edit: Happy with the performance for the most part. More entertaining than any of our EPL games so far.

Mata for me. Purely because the squad looked a bit lost after he came off. I hope this doesn't mean that we are solely relying on him though. Meireles looked good too. That ball to Sturridge was smashing.