CHOULO19

Mexico were disappointing in their first match. I reckon Brasil are going to pick them apart today.

Haha. Well I'm very glad you finally decided to post on here. I hope to see more of your posts around now that the 'first post' barrier has been broken

You've waited almost two years since joining to make your first post, the least you could have done is include a link to a source or something!

You're going to have to explain that a bit more, mate

This statement probably means that he will not be banned for the first game since he said he is looking forward to being at the bridge.

I would not call Bale a "magnificent crosser" at all! Pilkington is great, yeah, but I'd still say Larsson is on a different level to all of them which is why I set him apart. On a side note, Torres has amazing crossing technique. Ironic for a man who never seems to be able to get on the end of crosses!

I don't claim to know more about Neymar than you but I have seen him enough to form my own opinion about him. Media bullshit? I've honestly never even read an article about Neymar that wasn't about transfer rumors. My opinion is my own from the handful of times I've watched him in the Brazilian league and his performances with the NT. He is free to prove me wrong, though.

Heard Southgate is the likely replacement. Would be more of a side way move than a forward one. He was a good player, but he's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.

I just can't see how it could happen. The Spanish FA has no power over the English FA.

The ban was given by the Spanish FA not EUFA and therefor has nothing to do with English football.

Just like we did when we won the double. DrogBA and Lampard goals in a 2-0 win?

Fortunately we have 4 relatively easy games in November. We should be able to get 12 crucial points there.

United in the second game is perfect, imo. They are bound to start the season slowly after changing SAF.

United in the second game?

It literally took 5 seconds for me to copy the link to that image from twitter to here and write "This was a brilliant pass". You are the one making a big deal by going out of your way to try to discredit Mikel for that and for keeping this pointless discussion going on for so long. I did not use that pass to hype Mikel's ability nor will I ever because I'm always saying that Mikel's best attributes are not in single incident but rather in overall consistency during the 90 mins. I made a casual remark that it was great pass just like I did the other day when Oscar made one, just like I would do if any of our players made either of those passes. Ironically, it would have remained a casual remark and would have been forgotten by now if some people didn't feel personally insulted when someone rightfully praises Mikel. I disagree, mate. Seb posted a very informative article on the previous page about the advantages of playing a physical DM further up the pitch which me and Kostas were debating with him.

Yes I know but I thought that a lot of people here must not have read that because they keep on posting stuff like "Roman just pay the 63m" and such..

Very true. The art of crossing is a dying one unfortunately. The only world-class crosser in the entire league is Larsson, imo.

All sort of rumors on Twitter. Liverpool, Norwich...you name it! What's the rush? Wait till tomorrow and find out for sure.

Can Roman even speak English?

Actually this makes much more sense. The rumors are most probably just his agent trying to get him a new deal with higher wages.

So our best player is still on 50k/wk while Benayoun was making 80?!! F*** football!

Didn't Mata just sign a 5 and a half year deal back in December? And why would he quit being the main man here so he would go be a squad player at best at Barcelona? Besides, Juan does not fit Barca's system in the slightest. It's why he's not a starter for the NT. There is very very little logic behind this rumor.

I'm sure I'll disagree with Barabara about this since we have totally different ideas about what a fullback should be, but for me Cesar was one of the men of the season for us under Benitez. First, the myth about his bad crossing. He is by no means the best crosser in the league, but he can certainly put in decent crosses. He made 4 assists from crosses this season (all in the PL) which is quite impressive considering our most likely player to score a header is Lampard! Crossing takes two parties, the one who's doing the crossing and the one receiving it. If absolutely no one in the team makes a run or any attempt to get at the end of crosses and give our fullbacks something to aim at, how do you expect his crosses to reach their destination. Our issue with crosses at Chelsea is with the receivers not 'senders'. Secondly, about his contribution to the attack. Yes, he cannot dribble and he's certainly not Danny Alves, but for me a RB does not have to be able to do that. If you go back to statistics of our matches, Azpi was consistently one of our most influential players in terms of touches on the ball. The reason for that is that Benitez compensated for the lack of movement and dropping back by our 3 AMs to receiver the ball by making triangles between Azpi, Iva/Cahill and Mikel to get the ball out of defense which was one of our biggest issues if not the biggest. Azpi excelled at this and was crucial to our offense and build-up play.

Can we get back on topic, please. There is absolutely no need for those pointless Mata vs Hazard 'discussions'.

So you think we can implement this while having our usual pivot of Mikel-Lampard/Ramires? Tbh, I've always wanted to see what a pivot of Mikel-Romeu would look like. I think it would take a lot of work on the training ground to be implemented as well as some stability both in the team and in the results to allow the manager to make such experiments.