CHOULO19

Sad but true..

Was back in the starting line-up after fully recovering from that ankle injury. He played 90 mins in Boro's 0-0 draw with Peterborough.

So you claim to have foreseen that every Juve player will under-perform tonight and that arguably the best keeper in the world will make two amateur mistakes? Please tell me what will the lottery numbers be this week! I was arguing about players and teams ability in general not performance on the night that is extremely unpredictable.

So Southampton are a better team than us?

This does not prove that Bayern is better. Juve are having their worst performance all season on an individual level. Bayren have been gifted all their chances by the shambolic passing by Juve they have not been anything near brilliant.

Juve have been pethatic so far. Lucky it's only 1-0.

NEVER joke about...spaghetti!

FORZA JUVE!!!

That settles it then! We definitely should not sign him.

Torn between Skipper who I always nominate, and Ja1 who deserves recognition for his insight on the youth players. Went with Skipper in the end.

He wasn't exactly kissing the ground!

Apparently he had a minor operation according to Rafa. I know he said 2 weeks but I have a feeling it will be bit more.

Completely agree with everything in there, just saying that he's consistent at what he does best which is rare among players. And tbf, every single one of players (bar Azpi maybe) has been inconsistent.

I've tried to stay out of this debate today, but Mikel's biggest asset has always been his consistency. His ability to make 50+ passes in every match at a 85+% accuracy is why he's good.

This is more of a wish list than "likely" ins and outs. Don't think we'll have any major targets before we confirm who our next manager is.

Shame, he's such a nice guy..

Boring 0-0 draw will do. We have to save our best players for the league especially after dropping points in the weekend.

No of course not, he just wasn't up to his standards today.

He was good in one-on-ones but like I said, his positioning was way off at times. He allowed people, especially Welbeck, to get behind him too often. His passing was inaccurate as well especially in the first half.

What does this have to do with Mikel? This is why this thread lacks intelligence at times, because people insist on making their posts about other posters instead of the actual topic.

Disagree with the first part for reasons I've mentioned countless times, but regarding the bolded part, I never defended his performance in the Southampton game, but I will not stop posting my opinion just because I missed one match.

I'm usually the first to praise Azpi but he was probably our worst player today. So many missed passes and his positioning was off. I'm sure it's just a one off match, though

Yes this thread has been lacking a lot of intelligence in the past dozen pages, including posts defending Mikel by myself because the discussion had turned into a cat fight. And we're back to the lack of intelligence....but thank you for taking a couple of sentences in my post completely out of context

Finally, a good intelligent argument! First of, I was not criticizing you for bringing up Kalou, just saying that I can't go into detail in the debate so we don't go off topic. About the first part, although Brown and O'Shea were hardly 'starters' for utd, especially in their latter years, but I can't really argue (intelligently) against some of the other points you made. I'll concede that you proved that Mikel could have been average or below and he would still have been a starter and that we could still have won everything we did. Fair enough, but the key word there is "could". I think you'll agree that your post did not by any means prove that he was average. I admit I go over board defending Mikel because almost everyone goes over board bashing him, but I honestly don't think it's fair to call Mikel average. I'll be the first to admit that he lacks a bit of mobility and his reaction to the game is always a bit slow. But having said that, Mikel, on the other hand, is the best passer in the league for the past 4-5 seasons. No midfielder has played more passes than him or had a higher accuracy (Scholes beat him in a couple of seasons but he's semi-retired now). He also has one of the best ball retention skills in the league; he can keep the ball under immense pressure. He is also excellent at closing passing angles and forcing opponents to play the difficult ball. This may not be glamorous, but I think it helps the team immensely. I know it's not saying much because of the lack of quality in this position atm, but I think it is fair to say the Mikel is in the top 3 DMs in the league. As for him "helping the big boys", that's unfair as well. Mikel was a key player in both of our 09-10 and 11-12 seasons. We could not have won those trophies without him. Go back to Carlo's first season and watch especially the matches against the "big four" when we won all 6 games scoring 13 and only conceding once. Mikel was immense in all of them. He was also our best man in Munich last season. Mikel is not a world beater, I never claimed otherwise, but he's a good player, currently one of our better ones. We have much more pressing issues in our squad. The bashing he constantly gets by some is ridiculous, imo. That's why I go over the top defending him.

I thought he did very very well after coming on despite the lack of help he got down that flank. So, is he back to being the next Ashley Cole now?!