Blue Armour

At least Ramires does more or less what he's expected to do, and more than once exceeding expectations. I will still say Oscar is NOT playing bad, but just average. And that's a problem when Cesc is not in the best of form, as it puts too much pressure on Hazard. Let's just hope Willian can maintain the form he's showing now, and hope for the best. In any case starting Oscar/Ramires should be a given, considering Cuadrado's form atm.

Don't forget his Oscar winning performances on the pitch as well ;-p ,..leaves Referees with no choice but to yield to Didier

He's been lacking match practice/fitness, which is why he was much better during that run of games against Tottenham/Man Utd towards the end of the year,,.hopefully should be rectified with him making more appearances due to Costa's injury. (I can think of at least one from the upcoming fixtures where he would be useful ;-) Also, Drogba's level has been more or less like this over the past couple of years. Its not as if he dramatically went from prime Henry to old age Heskey in a matter of a few weeks. His holdup play and aerial ability up is second to no-one on the squad, and he still has good ideas to keep our team ticking. (Yes, even kicking the ball away in extra time)

But Drogba for that first goal...what a beast he was.

Well its been obvious for a while now, but it raises the question: Who's going to play on our right wing? I don't that's the job for super Ramires.

Sometimes I feel just so thankful to see Mourinho, Hazard and Drogba in Chelsea at the same time...Hazard and Drogba combining together in a match in Chelsea colors was a distant dream a couple of years ago.

I guess he might be wearing the Batman mask for the next game.

This looks like a job for Super Ramires!

Salah couldn't cope with the pressure of being a squad player here, which is why we never saw much of what he's showing on the pitch right now. The same applied to Schurrle, and to a similar extent Sturridge, who never really got a fair chance before being unceremoniously offloaded to Liverpool.

Probably not the best idea to have let go of TWO familiar players in one window in exchange for one newbie.

He must have a pretty good reserve then, to have played like this coming off a week with international matches. I guess it might be his strategy,...to gain weight during the summer and let it burn off during the season.

Man, he really did step it up in that second half, not just running at Stoke but also maintaining a high tempo when pressing for the ball. Although, still have the feeling that he's holding back a bit, and feel he could really burn defenders by getting past them. He can be that quick on the ball.

Yuck. Don't do drugs, Petr

What a match...didn't do any favors for Scolari, but still.

Hope him and Willian can bring some of this form back to the Bridge

Was just thinking back to that time in 2010, when we played Inter at the bridge. Expected them to sit back and defend their lead, but he played 4-3-3 and it was wave after wave of counter-attacking football. Really put us on the back foot

Nothing more to be said...disappointing news, this. (...although odds are that he might have rotted away on the bench instead)

I would actually judge him after the next-preseason. January transfers rarely work well, especially with the player coming from another league altogether. From the looks of it, he has next to zero chemistry with his new teammates

That kind of rule would be tough to enforce, and I doubt any club would accept it. For eg. what would happen if said English player was unavailable because of injury? But I completely agree with you on the first part. His strategy makes no sense whatsoever.

Bunch of dinosaurs in charge, and not the awesome kind. So the grand strategy for improving quality of the national side, is to place more restrictions on PL clubs and potentially weaken them. Not improving the quality of coaching. And how about this for quotes. “This is the second time in three years there’s been no Premier League side in the last eight of the Champions League, so it’s not working that well,” O really? Which club out of Chelsea, Liverpool, City and Arsenal had the most English representation? Which was the first to exit? It would be great to have good local talent in any side, but making blind decisions like these is effing stupid. The first move should be to get rid of these dinosaurs

Hardly blaming Chelsea...more like blaming the fixture list in England because of which you play a game every 3 days. Just a shitty title made up for the article by the Fail.

Oscar gets into good position and elects to shoot. I also remember something similar happen from the right wing as well, earlier in the game. Why we don't do enough cut-backs or low crosses across the goal-mouth in these type of situations, is a mystery to me.

I still maintain what I said a few pages ago. Regardless of whether Oscar has a higher ceiling or not, we were playing our best football around the time when he was one of the first choice. Our last high scoring game came, when he probably gave his last good performance, against Swansea. Mourinho is starting him in every game, probably desperate for him to recover his early season form. And tbh, we better hope that he can recover some form for the rest of this season. Some people mention playing Willian in the middle, but then that means our RW would be occupied by Ramires/Cuadrado which doesn't sound too thrilling atm.

And don't forget, Ivanovic also has a tendency to keep backing off from attackers...ala Gary Cahill. Don't want to put Ivanovic in a central position anytime soon.

It looks too obvious now in hindsight, but I had a nagging feeling back in Oct-Nov last year that we would struggle to progress equally well in CL, PL and other cup competitions..mainly because our Schurrles, Salahs, Remy's and Luis's were not being played enough to affect the results of our season. In the double winning season of 09-10, even Paulo Ferreira who was our 3'rd choice right back played a series of very good games, crucial ones at that. Essien who was the Matic of that season, was replaced comfortably by Mikel and Ballack when he got injured. Deco and Joe Cole, although out for most of the season would be brought on to influence games. That level of involvement from the whole squad is what we need if we need to achieve anything as ambitious as treble, or PL/CL double.