OneMoSalah

Think we need to build a statue of Mikel outside the Bridge*****

He has had an interesting season so far for West Ham. I was a bit skeptical when he went there but hes been a huge plus for them, giving them a platform and balance. Hes playing more in a disciplined role than his last season at Arsenal and quite frankly he could be useful cover for Nemanja Matic since everyone rates Mikel so poorly..... Thoughts? No way will he return to Barca in the summer, they have Busquets, Rakitic, Iniesta, Xavi, Rafinha all there and he probably won't get a game.

Is it Armaggedon already?

Well for one Mikel does nothing wrong for goal 1, hes in a position where he can intercept a cross towards the penalty area if it comes to him and clear it/start an attack. For goal 2, he goes out of position and tries to take the ball, loses it and our back 4 are then exposed. So you set yourself up to fall there really. Hes much much better at blocking passing lanes, positioning himself, making interceptions and reading the game than anything else in my eyes but people seem to complain when he doesn't run about like a pure nutter, trying to steal the ball high up the park, which if he does that means hes not vacating the space in front of the defence (is Cesc gonna do that? No) and even when he doesn't try to do that and sits vacating spaces (to protect the back 4) he gets criticized for not going into challenges or not running enough. Football isn't all running anymore and in quite all honestly it never has just been about running. I was reading an interview that Jamie Carragher did with Xabi Alonso. Alonso mentions Pep and how he tells players like Gotze to stop running looking for the ball in training and just stand still where he is (presumably he meant a space between the lines or between two players). Its the same for players like Mikel trying to counter that. If he can stand in a space that dangerous attacking players like to get into and block the pass or get there If you can read the game well enough you don't have to run 10 yards to make a tackle on a player that you tried tackling before and missed, you can just be in a position where you can take it off them with very little ease/intercept a pass. Anyway as much as that might be a load of shite or whatever, the guy can't win, be it from pundits or people on this forum, there is always a problem with Mikel.

Have to be honest, not taking the 3 points at Old Trafford now looks a quite result bad in my eyes albeit a draw at Old Trafford is not a bad result in the slightest but United are gaining momentum, won't say they will win the title or even finish top 2 but they could make it uncomfortable for us or City because they seem to be able to get results in games they are second best in.

Remember when people said Ramires would be Matic's direct replacement if he was injured/suspended? Can't say I didn't tell yous all Mikel would play if Matic couldn't. He was a controlling figure in the game for us I thought, when we had the ball he kept it and moved it well in comparison to Cesc who had a bit of a weird day with some poor passes and a poor completion rate for him if I remember correctly.

If Salah and Schurrle don't start this one fuck knows if they will ever start much more this year.

Honestly drop Oscar or Willian and give this boy a chance to play because the two of them were pretty poor against Newcastle and Sunderland.

Yes we have Ramires, Mikel and Ake who is a young lad. You don't need fucking 3 world class midfield players in a set up where you predominantly play with 2 central midfielders. Rami and Mikel are happy to play less regularly as say Pogba would. Pogba wouldn't even be a direct replacement for Mikel so it shows exactly how much you know about football as hes a box to box midfielder.

Needs a rest but also needs to up his game at times still a bit inconsistent. With Ramires back fit maybe he will get a bit of a rest and we will use Cesc higher up.

It is posts like this that make me laugh at some people on this forum. Mikel has a good performance, his only PL start this year and gets criticized by some moron who wants us to sign Paul Pogba to take Mikel's place on the bench when we already have 2 class players who will start ahead of him. Fucking brilliant idea son. Too complacent, not enough urgency until we scored. When we were on top of the game we really had to score, it always has to happen. All this talk of not being known as the Invincibles?? Since when did that make a difference, teams always try to beat us, its football for fuck sake.

Really this result makes it much much more of a title race, City are gonna hammer Everton now likely no doubt this result will fire them up even more. Makes it much more interesting though and for neutrals exciting. Also anyone thinking we can now kick on from here now that we have lost this potential invincibles tag should be feeling daft, it was hardly pressuring our players or coach...

Blowing teams away? The last three games we've won once. Hardly blowing everyone away now are we? Drawing against Sunderland isn't too bad yes and neither is beating Spurs but losing Newcastle away and to be honest looking quite poor in long periods of the Sunderland game, the start of the Spurs game and todays game doesn't exactly convince me that we will blow everyone away. To be honest I agree with Term-X about Lampard joining City, to me its a bit of a kick in the teeth, its like he went there to prove exclusively to Chelsea he's still good enough when in reality the last 2 years he put in some sub par performances here. If you cared so much about a club and were a legend here, why would you join City who are our direct competition in the title race?

Typical Mikel starts one PL game this season and he would get blamed by some fucking idiot.

Malouda was much much better than Willian in tight spaces though but Flo seemed to play a bit more centrally as opposed to what Robben and Willian do and in all honesty he didn't dribble as often as Robben did, he had a bit more of a footballing brain and seen passes that you would expect a number 10 to see like little ones round the corner or between someones legs etc.

We have a player like that when he plays, who is more involved in attack and does defensive work as well and his name is Ramires but he sits on the bench. For bigger games if we are to go for a more athletic, balanced and dynamic midfield, using Rami at the expense of Oscar (can't see us dropping Cesc in favor of Oscar to get Rami in the team tbh) is essential if we play say Man City where they have a very powerful midfield as well as a technical one. But Matic is not a box to box midfielder who can do both things say as well as Ramires because quite frankly he's a 6 and his best attributes are probably reading the game, intercepting and tackling. He's a very multifunctional player though with a rounded skill set which makes him so good as he doesn't just tackle or always play it safe and pass sideways/backwards (like Daley Blind has done a lot of for United recently before his injury) he can dribble players while under pressure pretty well, he has a decent ping on him and sees things going forward be it passes inbetween the lines to Oscar/Hazard/Willian or long passes like the one for Salah in the Arsenal game but if he is given more freedom we lose that protection he gives us as he will then have more of an emphasis to go and play higher or play more as a box to box player when he normally sits a bit deeper than Cesc to sweep anything up and give the team a platform to build on.

Imagine if he went to QPR - and lets be honest since it is Harry Redknapp in charge there - didn't get a game ahead of that crippled cunt Richard Dunne who seems to score an own goal every 500 minutes and Rio fucking Ferdinand who funnily enough QPR don't even want anymore apparently. QPR would be a bad move, if he can't get a PL or Bundesliga move put him to Spain, different culture for the lad and if hes gonna be a CB at Chelsea hes gonna have to get more and more comfortable coming out with the ball.

Yeah but Neuer made a few poor mistakes notably by his standards last season, think two of the goals against Real in that 7-1 aggregate lose he could have done a lot lot better with and then in 2013 the Super Cup against us Eden's goal was very savable. Courtois was absolutely colossal for Atletico and I can't really recall him making a big mistake. Sure Neuer is a better keeper but it should be picked on how good they did for their clubs and country in 2014 not on who's the best on FIFA or something. Also players like Godin and Miranda should be nailed on places in that team because they had magnificent seasons.

He wouldn't even get in the 25 man squad so unless hes willing to play for Vitesse I doubt he'll come here...

Quite frankly I think it should mainly be made up of Atletico Madrid players due to the great year they had and most of their players had. Guys like Courtois, Felipe Luis, Godin, Miranda, and Costa surely have to be in it? They were huge for them. Their back 5 was probably the best in the whole of Europe last year to be fair.

Thank god you said that and not me, was about to type every fucking swearword under the sun there.

If Schalke are in anyway similar to Di Matteo's Chelsea team we should beat them. We couldn't defend to save our lives before he got sacked and Schalke nearly blew a 3 goal lead the other day against Wolfsburg. Jose will have had a look at that and probably sussed them out and if they are like that and we do play like the first half vs West Brom it could get messy. When everyones playing 110% with a purpose instead of half heartedly like the previous game against Schalke then theres no reason why we should lose this, Di Matteo in charge of them or not.

We play like we did first half against West Brom and they have no chance. None at all.

Hardly injury prone. He will recover. In Germany they have a winter break too so he will definitely get an extra bit of time on top of whatever he needs to recover as well which could help him a lot. Barca can't sign Reus in the summer due to a transfer ban and Real surely will struggle to comply with the FFP rules anyway without having to go buy Reus so I'd imagine they'd need another big sell before even considering buying Reus, even if it is just for 20M euros or whatever.