Joe Cool

God forbid we express our opinions. Yes, I would love to be proved wrong (in terms of him not being good enough), but he'll really have to up his performances/attitude for that to happen. What's with the condescending attitude?

You'll have a tough time finding people who will think of Mikel as a legend besides you and a few others, but have it your way.

To be honest, I haven't really had a problem with Mikel until this season, mainly due to his bad performances and piss poor attitude. And yes, this club doesn't give a fuck about our opinions. This is the same club that sacked Mourinho, Carlo, RDM, and appointed Benitez, so what's your point?

Not just the Southampton game. The last two times against City he's shown that against clubs that pass and move sharply, he is easily exploited. The fact that Luiz offers 100 times more than Mikel has ever done offensively plus the fact that it's not even Luiz's natural position makes it quite excusable for him to be caught out of position. But when Mikel's role offensively is quite limited and his main job is to be shielding the back 4, it's really a slap in the face for him to be caught out as much as he is. At least Luiz looks arsed when he's playing and doesn't make disparaging comments about the Europa League and then proceeds to play like utter wank (the Kazan game). As The only place to be stated, maybe Mikel's poor performances could be excusable if he actually looked like he gave it everything he had week in and week out, but we all know very well that that has not been happening.

I never said that there was a problem with him losing the ball. That's one of his better attributes. With the thing of pass accuracy, you're going to have a high pass completion rate when none of your passes are adventurous and either go sideways/back. However I'll give it to him. He's good at retaining possession. The biggest problem is that he gets bypassed so easily in midfield unless we are parking the bus and all our other midfielders around him are also staying back (which is why he did so well vs Barca and Bayern). He never bothers to track back and gets caught out countless times, especially by quick counter attacking sides. You can try to throw out as many statistics that you want, but no amount of statistics will change the fact that defensively, he's poo. I remember in the Southampton game, he was up front pressing their centre backs countless times for whatever reason. Then they manage to play the ball into midfielder and guess what?? They have countless time/space on the ball! On top of it all, he never ever seems arsed to track back and try to get back into position. His mentality and lack of defensive awareness is too piss poor for him to be a reliable holding player for us. Yeah... Kalou managed a good 40/50 games almost every season before he finally fucked off... does that mean that he was good enough? lol

Okay, he's not as good as Makelele and probably never will be. Fine. But that does not excuse the shambolic displays that we've seen from him over and over again. I hate to beat a dead horse with a stick because I've repeatedly explained why he does not deserve a spot on the team, so I'm just going to leave it at: A. He's shit and B. his "commitment" is appalling.

Were you and I watching the same game? Nearly every long ball from City's half somehow made it straight to Tevez/Aguero/whomever with loads of space because Mikel was caught out of position repeatedly and staying way too high up the pitch (something we also saw in the Southampton game). Then not to mention the fact that he never seemed arsed to get back once they did have the ball in such a dangerous position. As I posted earlier, you compare his positional sense and discipline (or lack thereof) to Makelele, who was also quicker and quite a bit better on the ball, and you'll realize that Mikel simply is not good enough. Add his shitty fucking attitude to all this, which makes him definitely not good enough.

United weren't all too great on Sunday against Arsenal, mainly because of the fact that they have fuck all to play for at this stage. There's no excuses here, we gotta get all three points. It's definitely doable, but it just depends on which Chelsea shows up.

Even effort aside, people don't seem to realize that Mikel just isn't good enough for the club in terms of talent. Just compare him to Makelele, who not only was a shade more skillful and composed with the ball, but was also many notches above Mikel when it came to positioning and discipline. This obvious lack of ability, combined with the fact that Mikel has shown a disgraceful lack of effort time and time again, should make it quite apparent that if we want to become serious title challengers, there is no way he should be anywhere near our starting XI next season.

The only place to be.... by a country mile.

Apparently Suarez got booed the two times his name was mentioned lol

Fair enough, I thought he was just referring to the people who haven't been particularly impressed by Oscar this season.

Why should be be immune to any criticism? Before his goal (which was very well taken, don't get me wrong), he was awful, something that we've seen a bit too much this season, and you can't even blame being played out of position for those horrible few touches/passes. Obviously, it's a bit far to compare him to Kalou, but to tell his critics to shut up is quite unfair.

I have quite a bad feeling about this match.

Tottenham deserved fuck all from that game, great play from Wigan, a bit unlucky near the end but oh well, I'll take the two points dropped.

Not particularly. He disappears in big games nowadays and lacks the vision/discipline of players like Xavi, Pirlo, or Alonso, which is why he fares so poorly in the pivot. It was a lot better for him when we played in the 4-3-3, because that gave him much more freedom to get forward due to the two other central midfielders covering. If we're to use the 4-2-3-1 effectively, we need to get an actual creator in midfield

Back to the game, I would prefer saving Cole for our match against Swansea, as he probably won't be 100%. Like someone before stated, league is the absolute priority so it would be great to give the likes of Mata etc a rest but I'm highly skeptical that Rafa will do that.

Guys can you please ignore him? Clear as day that he's a troll, so the best that you can do is to stop feeding it.

He's had his fair share of errors in some of the big matches we've had recently, but the amount of improvement that he's shown this season and his sheer amount of commitment and effort that he shows every game really makes me believe that he'll be an incredible defender for us for years to come.

Good point, but to be honest, I rate Alba more than Abidal, despite the fact that he's a first class cunt. I do know what you are getting at however... But even then, their narrow "tiki taka" style has has been shown to be quite predictable and stoppable if you have the players to do it, which was seen even under Pep (Inter in the CL final, us in the CL semis, etc). Don't get me wrong, they were (and still fucking are) incredibly good, but best team in history? Yeah, that's a bit of a stretch.

Kind of a similar situation as Marin, both young players who have shown outstanding play, but then for whatever, have become shite. No thank you, we don't need another Marin.

Well you also have to remember the two handballs by Barca players in the first half, so it evened out. Barca were absolutely trounced tonight. Bayern focused on their weaknesses and just exploited the hell out of them. You gotta love those people calling this Barca team the best team in history. My fucking arse.

Some of you guys need to turn your frustration from the ref and onto the players. Why couldn't anyone close down Sturridge for the last 10 seconds? Why didn't Ivanovic stay on Suarez for just a little longer? Why did we fucking give up at the last fucking second? It's absolutely inexcusable letting them score with literally the last kick of the match. Obviously I'm angry with the ref and the result, but the players are the most at fault here, sadly.

You guys can complain about the referees and everything all you like, but the bottom line is that we were awful. We let them in with a bang right from the get-go in the second half and were very lucky to have gone back in front. Then after the penalty, did we have anything close to a sniff? The game was pretty much played in our half from that point on. For whatever reason, Cech thought it would be a great idea to hit it up the pitch to Torres every time, despite the fact that he would just head the ball to a red shirt. And then not to mention the fact that our defending was truly dreadful at times. Some of you just need to accept the fact that we got outplayed hard in the second half, especially in midfield.