CHOULO19

Excellent today. Hardly put a foot in wrong. Defended very well and showed unbelievable stamina in those runs up and down the flank for 90 mins!

It always looks bad in the picture, but in real life it happens so quickly. I reckon it's a sprained ankle at most.EDIT: Now that I've seen the video, that does look nasty. I hope there's no nerve damage.. Good result, but I would loved for us to have pushed for a 4th so we could relax in Russia. My MOTM is Bertrandinho

HE'S BACK!!!!!!! No seriously, it was a great performance from him today. Very.....un-Torres-like!

Wait, are we sure it's Torres under the mask?

Never a pen for me because there was absolutely no intention, and the hand was not in an unnatural position. Jt could have done nothing to prevent that hitting his arm without decapitating it! Poor call by the ref.

I do. I have to suffer through 2 hours of Torres and Benayoun.

Anyone. I'd throw Zenden in there before I start Benayoun!

Why not start Marin instead of Benayoun?! Heck, I'd even rather seeing Lalkovic start ahead of Yossi.

Starting with 9 men again!

Completely forgot about this one

That's not true. Real life is not a video game, it is extremely difficult to get it right every time. Most of our midfielders often misplace short passes in a game and they don't even attempt one fifth of the short passes Mikel does. For example, Ramire is a terrible short passer, Lampard is pretty bad as well. The distance of the pass has nothing to do with "flowing" of the game. Arsenal, who arguably play the most "flowing" football in the league, play the least long balls. The flowing of the game, if you mean by it the quick transition from defense to offense, is a complex system that takes A LOT of training and which is based mainly on player movement off the ball. Something we've been desperately lacking since Carlo's second season here. Mikel's job on the attack is to keep possession. It's not his job to make defense-splitting passes. If the pass is risky, I would much rather my DM slow down play than possibly lose possession because when you're DM loses possession then the other team has the ball with 6-7 of your players out of position. At this level, you're going to pay for that.

Yes, yes, my opinion is completely subjective despite a lot of top posters agreeing with every thing I say and I never watch matches, only statistics, in fact I should not be placed in the same category as you as a Chelsea fan, oh great one.. I'm really not in the mood today for your constant digs at me, but I have to give it you, you're finally starting to get on my nerves, which is what you're aiming for, so well done!

I agree to an extent.I think that is something the manager has to tell him to do. He certainly has the ability, he showed that for Nigeria numerous times. We just need a manager who took notice of that and is willing to integrate that to Mikel's role in the team.

He's a bit slow to react at times, and his mobility off the ball is not the best, I'll be the first to admit that. But I do think he defends well enough because he makes up for that with his physical abilities, tactical awareness and more importantly discipline. He's not a ball winning DM (this was an absurd concept back in the 90s) but what he does is close passing angles, stays on his feet to force the error. Take the last game vs United for instance, there were three incidents in the first half when Cole was out of position and Nani had the ball running down the right flank on the counter. Mikel just stayed with him and closed all passing angles. Nani ended giving it back to our defense twice and running it out of play in the other. There were plenty of other incidents, but those just stuck out. He makes mistakes? Of course he makes mistakes. But I don't think they're as often as you make them out to be. The problem is, fans, all football fans, even pundits, judge players on individual incidents: goals, assists, dribbles..etc or on the other hand OGs, mistakes that lead to goals, bad passes..etc and Mikel doesn't do any of those. His biggest assets are his incredible consistency in his passing, his ball retention skills, and his discipline to sit deep and protect that back four all game long. Those don't show in individual incidents or in individual matches for that matter but are invaluable for the team because the name of the modern game, especially for a top team like Chelsea is "keep possession". As for his passing game being "not even that good", I know that the people who don't like Mikel tend to hate stats, but you just don't have the most passes in the league with the highest accuracy over the past four seasons by accident, you have to be an incredible passer. And again, in Mikel's case, it's not the 50ft pass, but the ability to make that 10-20ft pass 9 times out of ten in every single game. No one else currently in the league is capable of that.

Wow! This thing is tight. (Cue the "that's what he said" jokes...)

All the decisions tonight have, maybe naturally, gone Madrid's way.

From what I've heard no one in our team was anything special vs Southampton.

What's wrong with it that some papers title the article "Drogba wants Mourinho bac at Chelsea" then the next "Drogba tips special one for blues return" and it ends up looking like Didier said that he thinks/knows that Jose will return when in fact that's not the case.

I actually watched the interview. It was mainly about Galatasaray vs Madrid and how he's going to face Jose. But the media just took the parts relating to the "hot" topic atm.

That's what papers do. They create a new "trend" and they keep building it to get every one interested so that they can sell hundreds of non-stories.

To quote the great Bluesmaster: " -_____- "

Well they're favorites unless every single player decides to have the worst performance of the season..

Btw, I heard part of Drogba's interview which will be on in full on Sky today before the CL matches. The media is just putting words in his mouth. He praised Jose, but when asked if Jose will be the next Chelsea manager he replied jokingly "Maybe it will be me". It's a complete non-story, imo.

I suggest you look in the 80s and 90s because those types of DMs no longer exist. The game has changed. You can't have Roy Keans in your team any more because first the game is no longer that physical and second because team systems and player movement has completely changed. Nowadays if a defensive player goes to ground and does not get the ball, you're in deep trouble. An example off the top of my head is Newcastle's second goal against us this season when JT went to ground needlessly and we went from relatively having things under control to conceding an easy goal in seconds. That's why the first thing academies teach kids about defending now is "Don't go to ground. Don't commit yourself to the tackle unless absolutely necessary". There's a quote for Xabi Alonso who's one of the best in the world at what he does where he says tackling is not something you aim to do, but rather something you sometimes have to resort to. Bottom line is, all the good DMs today are the ones who know how to close down passing angles, tighten spaces and force the error.

Completely agree with the only place to be. I think Josh's best chance is if we get a manager who has the balls to give him some starts here. He does not belong in the championship, he can't operate there to the fullest of his abilities.