manpe

I thought we had the crown since 19th May.

A club desperate to sell will take whatever others are willing to give, they are in no position to play hardball, but they can definitely bluff. It's either sink or swim.

Rastafari movement speaking about nature... yeah, I can see what Malouda actually meant by retweeting this.

Oh ffs, the most annoying part is that Ramires is viewed as a winger. I hope that's only Eddie's view, not Robbie's, but there's little to suggest that.

Cech, provided he's still a regular after John and Frank step down. If not, then Cahill or Ivanovic. No other real contenders, but we may sign some.

24.9 ~ 25

and max 30% of them will make a first team appearance

no vid no proof

You miss the point. This game was one of many in the last ~2 years. We often look lost against big teams with established game plans. Too often I've heard commentators saying we play without purpose or direction, I don't like to hear that but I can't disagree with it either. I don't think it's solely about attitude, and even if it is, then our players' mentality is too complacent. We get to point A again, because we haven't had a manager who's had a chance to establish his style. And somewhy when we hit a rocky patch, it's really bad and hard to get out of. Our team has been too inconsistent in the last few years, we can play either brilliantly or terribly.

Everything that he said makes sense. Aggressive pressure on our midfield has often worked for the opponents, because we are often static and slow in that department, hence the frequent backpasses to goalkeeper, who has no other option but to hoof it and we naturally lose the ball without DD. To counter it we should start exploiting the spaces left in the final third by their high press more effectively, which other teams often do against us when we go further up - a quick pass to the striker/attacking midfielder/winger and quick combinations in front of the backline without giving them chance to properly recover. That is the reason why I think Mikel and Lampard pivot isn't a permanent solution - Lampard, when under pressure, can't hold onto the ball and opts for the safe backpass... while Mikel, who can hold on, plays mostly horizontally or not quick enough directly, so the opponents can drop back and anticipate the forward pass, in which case we need to start playing positional attack again, which hinders our quick new attacking players in a congested area and tempo.

Ferreira to win it in his only appearance

Love it how he calls them his teammates, not ex-teammates

Are you serious? Probably sarcastic But if not, then how can you call Russia a civilised western country? Throughout history they've opposed themselves to west. And Russia is the leading country of neo-nazis, it's an extremely xenophobic and racist nation. Anyway, like everything else there, their football league is corrupt.. that's where they get the money.

Meireles was our "Ballack" last season. True, a more flawed version of him, but nonetheless. Ballack was also often labelled a flop or not good enough, but everybody realized his worth after he'd gone. He was our midfield workhorse who didn't seem to have any objections to being a stand-in squad player, and to be honest, you can't find many better squad players than him. He is the type of guy you want to throw in to harrass the opposition and cover more miles. We will miss him once we realize that we have to play our fatigued starters in less important Capital One Cup games, when we lack options, when Lampard realizes he has no more competition, or when injuries screw us over.

What? Meireles has left? What were the club thinking? We have considerably weakened our weakest position with the departures of Essien and Meireles. Who do we have now? Mikel, Lampard, Ramires and the lost son Romeu... this midfield won't last the whole season unless we revert to 4-3-3, I see no players there who can play in 4-2-3-1 consistently in an honours challenging side. Playing Oscar there will murder his potential and won't benefit us in defence, which is shit as it is.

Fuck.. I liked the idea of him being as far away from Barcelona as possible.

Lampard has been written off numerous times, I can't even count. Yet he's always found a way to come back... actually it's his pattern, he always starts the season slowly, he said so himself. I am tempted to jump on the bandwagon, but I'm more cautious now with things involving Lamps, because he's proven us wrong before. One thing is for sure, he's a year older than last season and at his age every year counts, so he will keep getting slower, that's inevitable. And there is also the matter whether he suits in the midfield two with Mikel in an offensive shape.. and the answer is no, not on consistent basis, they're too slow together.

Yes

I don't care about the skysports deadline show, but I'm watching purely because of the female presenters. Is that wrong? They sure know how to lure and keep viewers.

The competition was originally played over two legs, one at each participating club's stadium, except in exceptional circumstances; for instance in 1991 when Red Star Belgrade were not permitted to play a second leg in their native Yugoslavia due to the civil war which was taking place at the time. Between 1998 and 2012, the final has been a single match, played at the Stade Louis II in Monaco. From 2013 onwards, various stadiums will be used. The following venues for future UEFA 2013: Eden Stadium, Prague, Czech Republic 2014: Cardiff City Stadium, Cardiff, Wales 2015: Mikheil Meskhi Stadium, Tbilisi, Georgia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Super_Cup#Venue

The Super Cup has always been held at the Stade Louis II stadium. This year will be the last one there though.

It didn't feel like revenge to me tbh. I had actually forgotten about that 2009 tie. We fucked ourselves at that time, we had an advantage and couldn't capitalize on it. Yes the ref was a wanker throughout, but it was he who gave us the hilarious 1 man advantage and we still had to resort to penalty appeals even when we were dominating them... and Iniesta should never have been in position to make the shot, that was another fuck up from our side. It always feels good beating them just because they are considered the best. But I didn't see it as revenge so I won't vote. After winning the trophy I was thinking more about 2008, that finally we'd corrected the mistake. When you think about 2008 and 2009 and the manners in which we failed, you just can't help but think that it wasn't meant to be. I mean such unluck 2 years in a row and now we had all the luck in the world just as the "old guard" was about to collapse?

A clean sheet, finally!

Somebody learned a new word today, good for you