CHOULO19

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!

We were all kinda waiting for him to cross the line in any way so we could ban him I was wondering who Richard Dawson was!

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.

This is country, not a teenager! What would they gain from that?

Just a terrible April's fool. Why would we "she" say it's tight? If it was "This is so big, or long" then fair enough...Wait, what are we even arguing about?!

No one wants war, atm, certainly not nuclear war. NK are just using this to gain political leverage.

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

Not buying this whole WW3 thing. The international political climate is just not ready. The Russians will probably give them a slap on their ass and tell them to not do it again..

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

I wish I knew your wife. I'd love to threaten you about telling her about some of things you post around here! :P

True, but I think that feminist movements, at least in this part of the world, seem to be targeting every aspect except sexuality. I even think some feminists don't believe in their right to have sexual desires. Such is the strength of social norms, to defy even such simple logic especially in the parts of the world where the Islamic religion has a big influence.

I think everyone on this forum knows that by now!

And that would be the case in an ideal world, but our societies have long been male dominated. Females were never viewed as equals who have their own desires, especially sexually. Even when societies evolved towards more sex equality, females were still regarded as valuables that should be protected against male strangers and their platonic image preserved. There's also the fact that females are the ones to get pregnant.. ..all in all, this makes female sexuality still unaccepted by most societies which makes females themselves not fully accepting of their sexual desires and fulfilling them.

That is why we never get girls around here!

I was too! It's actually just an article about something called female masturbation class.Never knew such thing even existed..

I am honored you would post a meme that has my name in it...please don't do it again! It's just http://www.xkcd.com/ you'll find plenty of that stuff there. @Stingray, will like this one:

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

It doesn't mean we can't fantasize:

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 never asked you to

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.