BlueLion.

Absolutely uncalled for Kevin.

I tried to reduce the size but to no avail

We could be in an incredible amount of shit...

Liverpool are having an absolute freak of a season. Based entirely on their attacking success. And fair play to them.

He's young and can be moulded into the deeper midfield role where Mourinho would most likely play him, but I see your point.

Barkley in the pivot alongside Matic sorts out the central midfield for the foreseeable future. If Lukaku isn't a Jose-type player then there's no point keeping him - but I do honestly think we'll regret selling him as much as we regret selling Sturridge. Give him time and experience and he will flourish.

Brilliant point. Over the last 2/3 seasons we've sacrificed our long term success by spunking out millions on hiring and firing managers because there was no immediate success. Now the powers at the club seem to have matured. In two-three years they will have reaped the rewards of their patience. I can't promise how many trophies we'll win between now and then because City will only keep improving, Arsenal will one day eventually get there and Liverpool will attract big names against with CL football. But we're doing our long-term prospects the world of good by filling the cracks with heavy investment in young talent, rather than merely papering them over by chopping and changing the management and playing personnel in the slim hope it'll inspire a trophy return.

Trophies are a barometer rather than an accurate measurement of success, in my view. You can have a very successful season by closing the gap on the league winners from 25 (2011/12), to 14 (2012/12), to currently just two points in 2013/14. That denotes improvement. There was no improvement in Chelsea as a team between winning the league in 2010 and winning the Europa League last May. In fact I think we regressed between that point. We are now at the beginning of the upwards oscillation and I for one am hugely excited by it. Trophies will follow.

Exactly. Not bad for starters, is it? Imagine what we'll do when José has his​ squad, not some ensemble incongruously rustled up by Ancelotti, Villas-Boas, di Matteo and Benitez.

We've done in one year what Wenger has so far spent eight years merely trying to do. That thing is called transition. Winning the European Cup and FA Cup in 2012, and the Europa League in 2013 papered over some incredibly large cracks. We've signed some incredible young talent in that time - Hazard, Willian, Oscar, Azpilicueta, Courtois, Lukaku, Zouma, Schurrle, Salah and Matic just to name a few - and we will no doubt add to that contingent in the summer when we bring in one, or maybe even two strikers, along with players like Shaw, for instance. Us not winning the league this year is a blessing in disguise. We're nowhere near the finished article, but if we were to somehow win the league that feat would suggest otherwise. Think about it logically - if we win it, we'll spend less. That's because we'd be the best team in the country, right? Fail to win the league and we have to be a little more rational and actually strengthen the squad. But the main thing about this season is that we've shown we're incredibly close to City. In fact, we're probably as good as they are, as our matches against them have demonstrated. Our issue this season is a lack of consistency, particularly against the younger sides. One thing about this Chelsea side is we're nowhere near as physical as we once were. Sometimes pace and guile will win you matches, other times you just need a catapult and a battering ram. Remember when we had Drogba, Ballack, Alex and company at the spine of the side? We've lost a lot of our brute power. We've addressed that by bringing Matic back, and with Lukaku set to return and Mourinho quite likely looking to bring in a powerful box-to-box midfielder to play in the pivot, we can strengthen in that sense as well. This has been a season of many positives. Eden Hazard has emerged as one of the very best players in world football, behind only Messi, Ronaldo and Bale and on a par with the likes of Ribery, Zlatan and Suarez. Nemanja Matic has asserted himself as one of the best centre midfielders we've seen in a very long time (have we finally replaced Makelele?). Gary Cahill and John Terry have formed the best centre-back pairing in Premier League (and European?) football. Cesar Azpilicueta has emerged from the shadows to become one of our most important players. We've seen glimpses of brilliance from Oscar, Willian, Schurrle and company, and they will only improve with age and experience. But most importantly - we've seen Mourinho come back. The sole reason people thought we had a chance of league success this season is the return of the Special One. If Rafa, or even King Robbie were in charge of this side, I'd have to be bluntly honest and say we'd have had no chance. We'd probably have struggled to finish in the top three. The man is a tactical magician, but what he has also done is disrupt every other goddamn club in England. He's piled pressure on City to such an extent they've underachieved (with their squad, they should probably be half a dozen points clear already...), he's sabotaged Arsenal's season by offering them Ba and then when it was too late to sign anyone else pulling the plug and making them suffer with Giroud and Bendtner up front, he's undercut David Moyes at every possible turn to pile the pressure on him. The bloke is a genius whether we're playing or not. Sometimes, like Saturday, he gets it wrong, but with him in charge again we will be a force to be reckoned with. If City win their two games in hand, we'll be four points behind them, and I can't see that gap being extended by much at all between now and May. That is negligible, when you consider how far we finished behind the leaders in 2012 and 2013, it denotes an obvious improvement from Chelsea Football Club. If this is a team in transition, then I am very excited to see the final product. The future is Blue.

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We can absolutely still win it, don't kid yourselves folks. I don't think we will, but we definitely can. City will not win either of their games on Merseyside, I'm pretty confident of that. If they do, it's goodnight Irene. But I don't think they will. If Liverpool beat City... and we beat Liverpool...... Obviously I'm just speculating. CAN we win it? Yes, absolutely. WILL we? Probably not. We're third favourites as it stands. But there are 18 more points available to us. Pick up a minimum of five wins and we put ourselves in with a shot.

Yesterday was his worst game in about four months. I'll cut him some slack.

For some reason Torres is a monster in Europe...

Would kill me to see him leave for another English club. Please go and join Carlo, Ash!

There are some games that guile and trickery won't win - just like yesterday. Sometimes you need a battering ram. Selling Lukaku would be even greater a mistake than selling Sturridge has proved to be.

Dire yesterday. Not fit to lace Azpi's boots - or Luke Shaw's, for that matter. I was hoping a string of games would do him some good, but he's been very poor for Villa. I have a lot of friends who are Villa fans (as I'm from the Midlands), and none of them are impressed with him at all.

The straw that broke the camel's back.

If there's one player you don't mind scoring an own goal, it's JT. The amount of times he's put his body on the line for this club... only a matter of time before one misjudged jump or a massive deflection ended up going in his own goal. For a do-or-die defender, it's amazing that's his first OG for more than ten years.

Far more confident about this game than I was about yesterday's match. We'll turn up on Wednesday and there's a bloody good chance we'll win if we play at our absolute best. A score draw would be a very satisfying result. An away goal or two would go down nicely. But I expect a reaction. All our eggs must now go in the UCL basket.

It shouldn't be all doom and gloom. Did anyone expect us to win the title this season? Well, let me rephrase that - with this squad and any other manager, we wouldn't stand a chance. The only reason people suspected we were in with a shout this time round is because of Mourinho. We're a good couple of players away from being genuine title contenders. But that bodes well - we'll end up missing out by 4-6 points maximum this season. That's without a proper right-back, any truly decent midfielders (Matic aside - Lampard is too old to play consistently well, Ramires is too inconsistent, Luiz excels in some games and is poor in others, Essien was simply terrible!) and without any strikers at all (Torres and Ba are dire; Eto'o hasn't quite been a revelation but still acceptable, but nowhere near Suarez, Sturridge, Negredo, Aguero, etc.). For me that bodes well for the next couple of seasons. Get Azpi over on the right, bring in a replacement for Cole and we genuinely have the best defence in English (and European?) football. Potentially another midfielder to sit alongside Matic (someone in the Witsel mould as a box to box marauder). bring back Lukaku and sign Costa. Then, not only will we be the best side in England, we'll be as good as anyone (bar Bayern and Real Madrid) in European football, in my honest opinion. AND we have Mourinho.

Agreed on both counts. We chose the wrong starting XI. Even so, the team we chose should be good enough to beat Palace. But we under-estimated them, and my birthday weekend has been ruined! Cunts!

And we'll be third by tomorrow afternoon. Suddenly the little horse looks all the littler.

Not actually even upset about this, let alone mad. We didn't turn up, and we lost to the better, more deserving team. We'll just to have to win this instead: