Blue Armour

That's what we always hear when it comes to Essien. Face it, he's 30 and this was probably the last season for him to be of some use to us. Mourinho will use him well for his own needs, but he's not going to play regularly at Madrid.

Suppose Mikel get's injured. Who's going to be the central defensive mid? Romeu has barely played a game since RDM took charge, and he's the only real candidate for the task. The rest, like Ramires and Raul, would be swept aside by the stronger teams we will face.

What was the purpose in "loaning" him?...Its not as if we're too strong in the Central Mid positions..If they wanted to get rid of Essien, they should have sold him and looked for a new CM. Horrible move.

True this match is definitely not the end. (They'll have to wait till December for that. )

Its not the defeat, but the nature of it. On a day, any team could lose, but you should lose with dignity. Really disappointed with the way RDM refused to change anything until the 80th minute.

Hopefully he will realize that he CAN ditch the double pivot from time to time. We had the team setup for counter-attacking, but ironically enough we got hit on the counter.

Forgettable match. Its clear the team didn't do its homework on Falcao. Move on.

Selling Sturridge now would be beyond ridiculous. If he has to be sold, do it in the January window, if he hasn't signed a new contract by then. Right now we need to stockpile all the talent we have, just like Man City did with their forwards and how Man Utd did with Berbatov.

I suppose you want us to play with a false no 9 when Torres becomes unavailable? That player with just one year left on his contract isn't exactly useless...

It says OPTA on the bottom of that pic. Must be one of their stat apps.

Is David Hirshey, Morgan Pier's alias?

Then why couldn't he have brought him on for Torres for at least a few mins? Its hard to see Sturridge being happy with only 20 or so mins from 3 games. (Not to mention that these fixtures took place within the space of a week). He didn't even use all 3 of his subs. With the size of the squad we have now, I don't see how we can keep everyone happy without some kind of rotation.

Its odd that he didn't get even a single minute today. He could've come on for Ryan during the last few mins.

Moses is an EXCELLENT addition to our squad...But the truth is, its a bigger risk for him than for us. I just hope he can get enough playing time to further his development. Like xpetrchecx said, we should also try extending Danny's contract and sell either Malouda or Benayoun.

Oriol to start the first game of the season, with hardly any minutes during pre-season? If its going to be 4-2-3-1 it will be Mikel and Lampard in the center again...with the only possible change being Essien for Mikel.

In all honestly he did not have a good game against city, losing out to more than one attacker (like Nasri for their third goal). But am not too worried. He can easily play a lot better than how he did that day.

Even though he has to face the same media glare that Torres did, he thankfully doesn't have the burden of scoring goals regularly. It should be easier for him to settle in, provided he manages to remain in the starting eleven.

And that's where Mikel's critics fall short. There aren't too many quality DM's (like a Davids or a Makelele) out there. Of course you could argue that Javi Martinez and Tiote are good candidates for a double pivot, but there's no chance in hell we'll get them over here for a decent amount.

This debate over Mikel's use is pointless. Right now he's out of form, and hopefully Romeu/Essien is picked ahead of him in the next match. (and the following matches until he regains his sharpness)

Agreed. Solution below: And no, I don't think Oscar will be able to fix the double pivot.

Tbf, our front 3 was so good at the time they all kept interchanging positions, with even Drogba moving out to the left/right wing from time to time. Anelka was essentially a roaming forward also serving as a make-shift playmaker (as we had no Mata, and Deco wasnt always available)..Those were the good times (until the following season when opposition defenders had our front 3 more or less figured out)....

Only in the first half of the season. We started banging in the goals, only after we switched to 4-3-3 with Malouda on the left wing.

3-4-3 isn't essentially a new formation for us... Its basically how our 4-3-3 used to look when we attacked. The holding mid drops back between the centre-halves and the wing-backs push forward. Problem is we don't have a good wing-back on the right-hand side. Bosingwa's gone, Ferreira is slow. Even if Ivanovic were available I wouldn't play him there. The only other options are Bertrand (the best one IMO) and Ramires.

Needs to sharpen up again. He lost Nasri for the third goal, although the game was ruined before that...

I don't want to start the blame game this early, but Mikel didn't have a good pre-season. I don't think I would have picked him for this game based on current form.