Blue Armour

Not just Cesc, but he links up with Hazard also with ease. He may not be the no. 10 like Mata, but he's an important cog in this team I feel.

When they don't get the ball through the middle when they want it, most of our strikers drift out wide to at least try and stretch the opposition defense. Like didierforever mentioned, its happened with Torres aplenty before. Hopefully Fabregas will start playing more direct passes through the middle like he did in midweek.

True no. 10 or not, I feel our pressing from midfield works a lot better with him on the pitch. With him and Matic working in tandem, Fabregas is almost completely free of any defensive duties. Oscar's tackling is probably much better than even Ramires' right now, even though the latter is supposed to be one of our more defensive minded midfielders.

He looked genuinely happy today on the pitch for the first time in weeks, and you could sense the confidence as he attempted more runs at defenders.. Not really the cool as ice, carefree player that many think he is.

Remy on the wing against Arsenal?

But what about last season against Arsenal when he assisted Costa..?

What about Dzeko..?

In fact I would be strongly against benching him. Going from player of the year to the bench after a few matches will be terrible for his confidence. It might be tough to do on the pitch.., but hopefully the rest of the team can start increasing their output and lessen the pressure on Hazard.

We couldn't hold onto the one homegrown player who really shined during pre-season. Typical.

Even if they supposedly got into a bust-up, I find it amusing to think about what they would actually say to each other. Would either understand what the other was saying? lol.

You should post more often, mate..would take 10 of your posts to one of the others on this thread atm.

A 2nd placed team in the league vs. a 17th placed one. Their mentality will be a lot better than ours coming into the match. If our players are caught off-guard like they recently have been, this match is going to end up being a struggle.

Mourinho may be responsible for a lot of problems with our play and starting 11, but I disagree with the fact that he just 'fucked up' the squad. Given his way, I'm pretty sure he would have held onto ALL those players you mentioned even if it was just to keep them as bench players. The limited squad is down to the club. This isn't 2009 anymore when we could have players like Essien, Ballack, Deco, Belleti, Carvalho, or Bosingwa come off the bench to make a difference. Mata and Luiz were sold to balance the books, and bring in key players like Fabregas and Costa, who did their job last season. KDB and Cech wanted to leave because they wouldn't be happy on the bench. Filipe Luis leaving was down to poor rotation, I agree.

Yes, you don't knock down a player by just bringing up his limitations and completely ignore everything else he has achieved. A lot of the posters seem to be complaining because Diego's unable to turn things around when the rest of the team is playing like crap. They're forgetting that Drogba himself wasn't able to run the show alone back in 2010/11 when Carlo's team went into a slump. Granted Drogba didn't have full fitness due to the Malaria infection, but things didn't really pick up speed again until Malouda regained some form and Lampard returned from injury.

So what? Diego's temperamental, just like Didier Drogba was. Didier used to go down at times sometimes even halting our attacking play without getting a free kick. If ever, Costa stays on the ground less often. I know things are not looking good for the team atm, but lets not get carried away here. Costa is pretty much the same striker he was last season, albeit without sharpness, but given good service, I still trust him to do what he did for us last season. Put the ball in the back of the net.

Its hard to be the one motivated player in the group when everyone else is losing their heads... Costa's no Drogba, but he could still turn half chances into goals in the previous season. Costa's ineffectiveness in front of goal is just another symptom of our play this season... Mourinho after today was saying that we were punished harshly for mistakes made in defense...but what about our lackluster play up front? That can't be just down to simple "mistakes" can it?

Apart from the last part, I can pretty much agree with the rest of your post. Everyone supporter can have an opinion

Not too mention our defense of the CL title...our club holds a lot of good records, but then there are infamous ones like these, lol.

Insanity. - doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Out of curiosity, was he even on the bench in this game?

I'm especially worried about City eclipsing everything we've achieved so far. They play beautiful attacking football, but we used to get results. But now we don't even have that. The only shield we have against them our CL win. We desperately need to add 1 more CL win to put some distance between our achievements and theirs.

Probably that, knowing how he generally shifts the blame to someone else. The board haven't covered themselves in glory in this transfer window, but that's no excuse for a team playing like this.... No chance up front, goals galore conceded and no results..whether you have board backing transfers or not. That's just poor

Finally, the moment we've all been waiting for.... A match were he just might drop Ivanovic. EDIT But knowing Mourinho, he will start him again in hopes of getting his form back up by playing decent against minnows.

Heh...we were all hoping that he would have been dropped a couple of games before..he's only dragging his name and Ivanovic's in the mud by starting him over and over.

Only because, there's no ready replacement available on the market and we don't have an asst. manager with a bigger name. If this was RDM right now, he would have been gone right after the end of this match.