CHOULO19

Regardless of the luck involved in his goal, I think it is clear to anyone who watches Zulte that he is their best player. Technically he is on a different level. And his teammates know that and always look for him during attacks.

I think Jose would have become used to that by now!

Basically, we need to pray for Zenith or Olympiakos.

He started tonight?! Wish I'd known. Would have watched hi instead of Zulte

I think it was. I think he just accidentally clips his ankle. Unlucky, but a foul and hence a red card.

Hit the nail on the head. And I know that it has become boring to keep saying this, but I can't help but think that managerial stability has a lot to do with that. Say what you want about Wenger, but all his players fit his style/philosophy while we, in the past two years, have gone from AVB's high-press/high-line to RDM's....errm...let's call it "tactical freedom", to Jose's counter-attacking football (didn't mention Rafa because he was not involved in any transfers). It is no wonder that Jose still doesn't know what his starting XI is; we don't even have 11 players that fit the same style!

I've watched a big part of his games with Athletico since he moved there and I think @lionsden makes some valid points. I don't think anyone can doubt that Thibaut is a great talent, but I also think that you can't use his stats with Athletico to prove much because they have arguably the best defense not just in Spain but all of Europe. The only time I've seen a match Thibaut had to make save after save after save with Athletico like Petr did against Bayern, Basel on Tuesday, the first half against Schalke in Germany..etc was in the Copa Del Ray final last season. There were several games that I watched last season where he didn't have to make a single save throughout the match. That is of course not his fault, and he, of course, should receive some credit for how good Athletico's defense has been because he is part of it, but I don't think that it is enough for us definitively say that he is already good enough to be first choice for us when we have someone like Petr Cech. That said, I agree with @edetarod, that the only way to find out is to try him here at Chelsea. I think we are well beyond the stage of not giving him a chance here. If he stays he will certainly get a chance to prove that he should be our first choice keeper, as he rightly should. But I don't think it is wise to get rid of someone as good as Cech so hastily for Thibaut simply because I don't believe he has yet proved that he is on the same level as Petr already.

Beat you to it

Just scored against Wigan in the EL. Keeper made a right mess of it, though.

There is a reason for that ,though, which is that in the last year he has proved himself as one of the best players in Africa with his performances with the Nigerian NT.

31 degrees f***ing Celsius in the end of November! Why won't the summer weather just fuck off already!!

Congrats to John and Victor for winning the Nigerian Sportsman of The Year and Footballer of The Year awards respectively. http://www.chelseafc.com/news-article/article/3554155/title/moses-and-mikel-win-nigeria-awards

There are a lot of "theories" about him having attitude issues. Good to hear his manager saying otherwise.

Luiz should be fit as Jose said he'd probably be back for Southampton, but I doubt Eto'o will be. Muscle injuries are usually at least 2-3 weeks.

http://rutube.ru/video/aef0e3a3b09aaa0894d80394d87e4558/?ref=logo See the replay at 1:36. It was supposed to be an easy palming over the bar with one hand, but he completely misjudged the the flight of the ball. I think he thought t was going over without his intervention and just took his eye off it. EDIT: Here is what I meant by he misjudged the flight of the ball:

LOL Come on, that was as bad they get. If you see it from the other angle, he just took his eye off the ball and it passed next to his hand. 99/100 times he saves that. But it doesn't make him any less of a great keeper. It's just one mistake. He's a younger keeper, he's bound to make them. Hopefully he'll have a great game next match and regain his confidence.

There is a reason why the Basel manager switch Salah away from Azpis side yesterday (to great effect unfortunately). He did very very well in several one-on-one situations.

Do they have to put the directions to the toilet over the most important moment in the club's history, though?!

Would be a huge blow for us if his injury is a long one. His movement in the past couple of games was perfect for what Jose is trying to implement offensively and his defensive work-rate is incredibly. Torres gives us physical presence but can't give us the work-rate and movement of Eto'o. We need both of them fit for different types of games.

He was playing alone against Basel the first 25 mins yesterday! Did brilliantly to keep them out. Shame he didn't get the clean sheet in the end.

Easy to criticize Jose in hindsight, but the truth is, very few criticized him for starting Frank before the game after the performance against West ham. Jose had every right to stick to what worked in the weekend. Hopefully, in the future, Jose will learn from this game and take into consideration that Frank can't play box-to-box for 180 minutes in three days.

He did NOT have a bad game. He was one of our better players yesterday (granted that's not saying much with yesterday's performance). Defensively he was excellent. Lost count of the times he won the ball the back on the edge and around our box when Frank and Rami were easily bypassed in midfield. He made many clearances from the box and won most of headers in the air in midfield not to mention the goal-line clearance. Offensively his passing was not up to his usual standards, but the argument about him "slowing our transition" makes little sense because what we needed yesterday was to slow down the tempo. Everyone else, especially in the first half, was just gifting the ball back to Basel with long aimless balls and hasty passing decisions. We needed someone to calm things down in midfield and keep the ball. Mikel did it at times but should have done better (and should have had more support to be able to do it better). Bottom line is, if it weren't for Cech, Azpi and Mikel yesterday, the scoreline would have been much more embarrassing.

Granted Iva was the obvious main culprit, but Cahill didn't exactly cover himself in glory in the goal: In an ideal situation, he should have been 2-3 yards deeper, on level with JT who holds the line. But in this case, he should also have realized that Basel did not have any strikers here and the main threat on his side was Salah making that run outside of Iva and so he should have even been a couple of yards deeper than JT. Again, Iva is obviously the main culprit, but if Cahill's positioning was correct he could have recovered. I'm only bringing this up, because only 2 minutes before the goal, he got caught out by a similar long ball while he was terribly out of position (except that time, the runner was between him and Iva) and we were let off the hook by a bad first touch by the attacker. His positioning issues are a disaster waiting to happen against teams with good runners. Look, I understand your frustration, I'm criticizing him as well, but do we need to stoop to the level of insulting our own players? Let's keep the discussion as civil as possible, please.

Yes, Mata would have fixed Cahill's chronic positioning issues, made Ivanovic a RB, stopped Rami slipping and turned Frank 27 again.. Let's be realistic, no one man could have saved us when 6-7 players had a bad game. But luckily we are qualified and this game will be forgotten by Feb as long as Jose learns the lesson here: ROTATION. Especially if you have a 35yo who played 90 mins 3 days ago. GTFO!

I think we saw the best and the worst of Romelu today. The most important thing today, though, is that he helped his team take 2 points off Liverpool.