MHL 47

Right now I'd take ABB (Anyone But Benitez) Klinsman, appears on the face of things to have done well with the USA, he and his family are very settled in California and has refused jobs in Europe based on that. He resigned/was dismissed at Bayern after disagreements with the board there, and generally they are supportive of Managers, so all things considered I'd say he's not even a live candidate.

The players are good enough, there's more than enough quality in the squad this season to finish in the top four. This is considering that the two Nth London teams have fallable squads and those red scousers are inconsistent. The squad may not be good enough next season, but that's another conversation. What's lacking is obvious, leadership, tactics, motivation, belief - The majority of most of those come from the Manager, he sets the tactics and tone, the players we've got will know a good-un or a bad-un or in fact a wrong-un. My guess now is that they've come to their own conclusions and the motivation and belief is going. Hence a reason why we can't hold onto leads. they know the tactics are crap and a few are trying too hard to do to many things. Players play to a system set by the Manager, professionals are trained to follow the rules and the majority of time they'll do so. Sometimes having the wrong man is worse than just having someone the team has some empathy with. So in summary, we're good enough if we have the correct leadership - We've not got the latter so unless that changes soon and some belief is instilled I think we may be royally f****d.

There, it's correct now. :-)

Never been that creative really so the best I could come up with would be something like singing - "Stand up if you hate Rafa" etc and then turn your back to him. If the majority of the ground stood up and did it, it could have a really decent visual and vocal effect. The turning of your back to him would also demonstrate our feelings too.

I've 2 Home STH and the 2 Away ones. My seats are in the MHL as you'll guess and tbh there are a number around me who just like to moan, however we're playing anyway, but and here's the 'FSW Factor' kicking in, even the lads who are alright have had enough. They/we weren't happy in the first place with his appointment, but at home especially we've been consistently poor, save the Villa game and the first half against Arsenal, where in my view they didn't turn up, as soon as they pulled their finger out we looked mediocre again. I'm not one for stating "well I've paid my money, that entitles me to boo or voice my own feelings". Booing any player is almost always counterproductive, however I and a good few around me are discussing how we can show the club the level of disgust we have for this bloke and how the club appear to us to be treating him differently than most of our recent managers. It's my choice to spend the money watching football and I do it willingly, I do wish however there was a decent way of getting messages to the club that our loyalty is being stretched to the limit now. How is he getting away with not being removed from the position beggers belief, anyone in the recent past would have been! If it's because whoever makes the decisions feels we're better off with him than without him, think a bloody gain. He's a disaster and it'll get worse.

Away STH, don't get much of a choice, apart from just ripping up the tickets and spunking the dough. I understand how you feel, although it's the home games I'm getting to the point of thinking 'with that twat in charge, do I really want to go' - I still do though! It's just repetition after repetition of the same or similar mistakes, generally slow build-up play and lack of movement apart from Mata and Hazard and now to a lesser extent than under RDM, Oscar. As a wise man once said: "All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes". - Winston Churchill This man is most certainly not a wise man, and he's doing nothing to dispel that, in FACHT (sic) he's proving it - To our clubs cost.

Kids, groins......... a sentence containing those two words belongs at Arsenal!! I think I'm minded like yourself, the situations gone beyond mattering who's available to be brought in now, either on a temporary or permanent position, we just need to change the 'scenery'. The Fans will instantly change demeanour, out of sheer relief at seeing the FSW disappear over the horizon, never to darken our clubs door again.

Last night walking away from the game (pretty stunned TBH), an 8-10 year old Reading fan was singing 'Champions of Europe, you can't win a game'. Out of the mouth of babes, occasionally bursts out some wisdom, and he was right. This useless lump of lard is taking us farther and farther away from any sort of 'success' this season. I've given up on winning anything now, success now will be fourth spot. We've some magnificent players and this idiot can't use them to secure wins from 2-goal winning positions against relegation candidates, he must go and now. As an aside Mata was simply magnificent last night, as soon as he was taken off we surrendered a deal of possession to them and this brought them onto us. Another tactical masterpiece of a decision.

There's more reason now for further abuse, S***s lost, Red Scum from Merseyside got done as well, if we'd won it'd have been almost the perfect day.I honestly don't think we'd be any worse off if he went right now. I can't see any positives in keeping him a moment longer. Oh and we're badly missing Moses, mind you with 'The Incompetent One' still here we'd need Jesus and his Dad as well as Moses to get us out of the mire we're currently in.

I told you he was rubbish, it'll get worse before it gets better. We're losing the away form now, with sterile performances and players clearly not bonding at all with him. JT can't even look at the twat, no-one was taking a blind bit of notice of his instructions today, most pretended not to listen.We've had 'The Special One', now we've got 'The Incompetent One'! I'd agree that perhaps not spending may be encouraging, it possibly suggests that Roman's had it up to the eye-teeth with tubby and the other imbeciles and will keep his wallet closed until he gets other people in place.

He was sacked for telling Gourlay to f***-off, I don't recall any statement from the club regarding "moving forward", the usual "thanking him for his service" rhetoric but that was it.Crap decision that it was, made by an individual who had his own non-footballing motives, but that's what happens when it gets personal and Wilkins lost control momentarily and gave the twat the opportunity. He'd have made the perfect DOF with a certain Portuguese Manager.

Get him out now, before he can 'hail' any success he thinks he may have had in the role. Let everyone know how much of a 'disappointment' he's been and therefore do all that we can to prevent him getting a job at any club sufficiently big/attractive enough to potentially come in with bids for our more talented/valuable players. There's more harm/risk now in keeping him then giving him the Spanish Archer (El Bow) right now. He'll never be popular (he had little chance anyway!) and he's lost our home form for us, we will not keep the run of away form going - City, United, Liverpool away still to come. At home we're slow, spending too long building up our attacking movements and having too many touches of the ball before moving it on. He's destroyed any form Oscar had and to be honest I can't think of one player who I can say "he's improved under Benitez". The only positive I can attribute to him is seeing slightly more of Moses, but that's at the cost of the form of Oscar. He also can't help himself fiddleling with team selection. Anyone, in his position with a couple of brain-cells to knock together wouldn't change a winning side, what'd he do last night - let's leave Ivanovic on the bench, he was a warrior up at Stoke! Who'd you want competing with a big lump like Lambert, another big lump like Ivanovic! who's strength is that he plays for the love of competing for the ball and physical contact. He must know he's at best now looking for another big job after ours, so you'd play your best team, get the best result, run the least risk for yourself. You're not too concerned with long-term health, fitness of players etc, etc. He just can't help the constant changing, it cost him the title and his job at his beloved ex-club in Rat City and he's not learned. I'd say more fool him, but it's costing our club so more fool our board/owner for appointing him.

PG wasn't coming here, there were probably two English Clubs with a similar structure to Barcelona, Man Utd & Arsenal - neither of them had a vacancy and neither of them would 'dispense' of their current Managers to offer him the 'gig'. Bayern will let him have autonomy over footballing issues, he'll get the odd comment in the Press from the President, Chairman & Vice Chairman (all ex-Bayern Players, take note Roman), but that will probably be all he'll have to contend with by means of 'interference'. The best solution for us right now and as a short and medium-term fix is Jose. He 'gets' Chelsea and will change the 'poisonous' atmosphere with the fans that we currently have, in an instant. He'll get the team and tactics sorted quickly, and given support will get us the players we need to strengthen the squad. Next problem is the Board, Gourlay for my mind has been over-promoted - a Financial/Commercial Director at best, a Chief Exec/MD - no chance. The structure is wrong and the people advising Roman on football matters need to removed and the Manager left to identify targets and a Board Member appointed (ex-Player, Nevin's not a bad shout, Ray Wilkins would be my choice, he's calm, level-headed, non-confrontational and could work well with Jose, but as long as Gourlay is about that won't happen) to advise the CE/MD of those targets, cost of acquisition etc for approval. The 'Clown' we currently have needs removing ASAP, don't want him anywhere near the Real Madrid or any other top club, the sneaky b*****d will only come back and prise our best players from us, especially as he's been able to have an 'up close and personal look' now. If he's removed mid-season that may well be viewed as abject failure and other top clubs will be even more reluctant to take him on than they've been for the last two and a bit years. It'll be down to the main man as usual and I hope that time has healed whatever the rifts were that lost us Jose, also that Roman has now learned that pride and identity are almost as important qualities as managerial ability.

Whether anything will actually change, I'm not sure. However it needs to and quickly, the ill feeling is toxic at games now. At games fans do have a moan, but it's rare that there's wholesale booing of players and a Manager.That's where we're at now, and no team will thrive with this level of ill-feeling. You know my sceptical views of RB abililty. Right now we need someone who'll pull everyone in the same direction, Rafa will never be that man, hell I'd even consider Terry Venables over the bloke right now and until we can get clarity as regards a non-interim manager. Far from taking pressure off Torres, all this appointment seems to have done is heap a different set of pressures onto him. Massive fail on the clubs part.

I would guess that Zenden is used by Benitez as an intermediary between himself and the players. If RB had the slightest clue about the club he'd realise that Zenden wasn't exactly Mr Popular when he was here. Plus all I can picture is the twat doing that silly dance celebration when Sunderland won at the Bridge, which I realise is personal but it still rankles.

During RB tenure two teams have played with predominately 11 men behind the ball and let us have easy possession in our half but closed everything down in their half, especially the last third of the pitch. Benitez's tactics have failed twice now, he made the wrong call with team selection and wasn't able or willing to admit this and change things around early enough. This isn't a scenario Chelsea haven't had to face on multiple occasions previously and have mastered the majority of the time, he seems stuck in a small number of tactical scenario's and if they don't work, we don't win. There was the opportunity last night to take off a full-back and replace them with Mata, Hazard. This was evident within the first half-hour. It seems clear that he has no passion for us and this can come through in the players when faced with scenarios such as last night. An example of the passion we seem to be lacking, recall the TV interview by Geoff Shreeves with Drogba and Cech just after the CL Win, Drogba says something like himself, Frank, John, Petr have been at Chelsea for eight or more years and we try to show the new players how to behave, perform like a Chelsea player, never give up, fight to the end. He and the others got that mentality from Manager/s they'd worked under here. The Interim seems to me to not have this mentality. I wonder how many texts, calls Benitez has had over the last 10hrs taking the mickey? I've had plenty, it's this empathy with the fans that he'll never get here.

What's the saying about making the same mistake repeatedly? Well RB keeps on making the same ones time, after, time. Whatever goes through his mind regarding leaving out our most creative players against a side who were fairly obviously going to just play in their own half, he's not learned yet and because of his inflated opinion of himself or his massive ego, probably never will. He sets the tone for the team and with that selection, the tone was set I.e. rest a few, we'll be OK, it's QPR. Well QPR came, only wanted to defend, they were awful going forward, but fought and fought and were organised. We however were slow, lethargic and to be honest looked like we hadn't worked in training using this team line up. This was a massive wasted opportunity and he takes the majority of the blame. 5 points at home dropped against arguably the two worst away sides in the league, no goal scored either. He's a Managerial Genius? Or maybe Arry's right, he's just a dope!

Just as one or two very bad results (Fulham and Wet Spam) doesn't make him the worst Manager/Coach in the world neither does two very good results. Credit to him today, you can only beat what's in front of you and we did, very well. I'm still of the opinion he's not the right man, and everything today went our way from the early goal to Benteke not understanding the offside rule, that's the only way I can come to terms with how many times he was offside and when thy did have a decent 15mins spell nothing came of it. Let's see what we made of against sterner opposition before making too many positive judgements.

You're completely right, however I needed to cleanse myself with one last response after those few bits of contact.

Still not answered the question then? Never thought you would, because you can't. As you're keen on applying 'types', I'll have a stab at picking a type for you, try Narcissist. Try RAWK for their JM thread, they're still bitter about them personally abusing him at the Carling Cup Final and being told to shush! A bit of advice that you might well take heed of.

No, I'd say that suggests people think he could do with losing some timber, he's Spanish - fact, and he bears a bit of a resemblance to a certain Spanish waiter. To your previous post, your tactic of ask another question to a question just doesn't cut it, you can't answer the original question and you know you can't. The thing is and unlike yourself I can usually back up comments I make, Jose ousting a DofF, try Jorge Valdano at Real Madrid. Your opinions are your own conjecture and have no factual basis and as such are fairly meaningless, unlike Jose's achievements. They must cut like a knife to you, especially given your liking for RB. You keep prattling on about 'a dynasty', it's clear that long-term for us now is 3 years+ and thus far since RA has owned the club we've been the most successful English club. You seriously think that'll change, even if PG gets the gig? If its a 'dynasty' you're dreaming of, there's more that needs to change at the club than just a manager.

"Disliked in Spain" - Probably because he is Portuguese and the Spanish are renown for their Xenophobic nature, he took the league title off the self proclaimed 'not just a football club' and 'best team in the world', and doesn't let the Spanish nationals rule the club the way previous occupants of the role have done."Limitations" - Are you referring to limitations such as winning 7 league championships in 4 different countries or perhaps the Champions League with 2 clubs, or the knock out cup Competitions in each of the four countries he's managed in. I'd dearly love to have a Manager with those 'limitations' right now, you're putting your money on RB, a fella who wrecked that red mob by trying to get Gareth Barry in place of Xabi Alonso, now if you want to discuss limitations let's start closer to home right now with RB. Directors of Football - The most successful clubs of recent years (the last 20 years) in the Premier League haven't had Director of Football anywhere near them, they're part of an overrated continental model of running a club. Name me one good and successful one in the UK. Of course they don't want him near them, he'll have them out of their cosy, highly paid, responsible for next to nothing jobs in a moment.

On the way up there myself, just waiting for the coach to leave the bridge. Take it easy, and mind yourself up there, it might get a bit Dooley, if you know what I mean.

I struggle to believe that Roman wouldn't have known, or been made aware of the depth of ill feeling towards RB. Therefore either he simply didn't care what that meant for a lot of fans or had other motives for bringing him in, Or was extremely poorly advised, as he may have been regarding the comings in and departures. Anyone could see we were short of a Striker and someone in midfield to act as a ball winner and shield for the centre-halves. Unfortunately we didn't and unless we become extremely resilient and willing to win the battle first and then let our better footballers do their stuff tomorrow evening, I can see it being nasty tomorrow, with Warlock sending his team of assembled thugs and delightful characters such as Diouf to stick it well and truly up us. Agreed we've managed to create a number of s**t-storms, albeit aided by some creative rule making and sensationalism. Personally the best football I've seen was the Robben, Duff team so I'm not so keen to forget the Mourinho era or method, I loved it. Nothing will change much at the top of the club unless Roman has an epiphany and decides that maybe he does need a bit of honest advice and some guidance. We can have a Chairman such as you suggest but his worth is almost worthless unless he is allowed influence (Coe is a true fan too, often see him walking in along past the old Fulham Tup, with his family). My own feeling is the model we've developed is now set and to be fair to Roman has worked in as much as we are successful trophy wise as any club in the country. Problem is all the collateral damage along the way. Still think that RB was a foolish choice, Roman may have had limited choices but this one is causing divisions that may not simply heal by bringing a new man in next season.

No doubt that RDM had slice's of luck on the way to the CL win, I'd hold that Mourinho's Grant's team was the better overall side and that RDM's achievement was the better effort of the two. I would agree that Robbie winning the Final may have given Roman a predicament relating to the next Permanent appointment, Roman did what was understandable gave Robbie a two year deal, probably only wnating him for one year until probably PG became available - Good deal for Roman, no crap from the fans about not appointing Robbie and at the end of that first season either Robbie has success and stays or he doesn't and he's let go with the second year's money in his bank account. There were some matters that probably caused Roman and the Board to act sooner than they wanted to, I'm afraid that the hostility to RB won't end and as well as what I believe to be a devisive management trait he has, you have a scenario where it's very easy for the players to become embroiled in it too as the fans make it easy for them to do so. That's why an "Anyone But Rafa" scenario may have been the best of a bad lot for us. I think it's an almost impossible job for him. Tellingly for me, there's been no Press Conference with JT, Lampard or Cech with ringing endorsements for Rafa, the odd soundbyte Chelsea TV/Website acticle but nothing with a 'chest-beating' message. However I hope I'm way off the mark and all is well, but I have a nasty feeling we're in the mire with him.