Las7

No we need to stop pumping balls forward and play it out of the defense along the ground

Cech needs to stop pumping balls forward....

Let's spank them - bring some tears to Buffon's eyes

Pretty unlucky....

Seems Sturridge is training!

There is another consideration when comparing Torres and Sturridge. How often they get dispossessed when we are attacking. In the limited time Sturridge has played he gets dispossessed on average 1.3 times per match(due to loosing the ball to a defender or misplacing a pass leading to a turn over); Torres gives away possession on average 5.9 times per match. Also Torres is the player in the team with the lowest passing percentage at 70.1% on average. Sturridge in his two full games is 89% against United in the Capital One Cup(20 more passes than Welbeck* or Hernandez) and 85% against WBA(a game in which he made more passes than Moses and Torres). This shows that despite the tag of a greedy player who never passes - statistically you are off the mark. Just a very bad decision maker sometimes. He had 3 key passes against United(third highest behind Mata and Hazard naturally); two key passes against WBA(as many as Moses & Mata had) *Welbeck did come off at the 98th minute but he was still at 30 total passes compared to Sturridge's 56 http://www.whoscored...nchester-United http://www.whoscored...-Albion-Chelsea Sturridge: http://www.whoscored.../Players/23736/ Torres: http://www.whoscored.com/Players/4056/ Whoscored is an absolutely great site for nerds like me If Sturridge is unfit I'd prefer we start Hazard but hopefully the rumors are not true

Can't know since it has not been tested, lets see if he fails - we don't have much to loose at this point.

Spot on - every other team has given their strikers a fair amount of time on the field and fair amount of rest. We've played Torres 1600 minutes and last five, six matches he has been getting worse. Meantime our supposed second choice striker has 190 minutes on the field leading the line. It's what I've been talking about even during Danny's injury - he was on the bench for our first 7 matches and had 20 minutes up top. Had we played him earlier we might not be in such a slump and he might not have been lacking match fitness. A run of games is what most strikers need, can't expect all of them to be like RvP and hit the ground running, after injury, after holidays, after extended bench time etc. Chicarito has nearly 3 times as much game time and he is 3rd choice at United; and all his games he has played as a striker - not on the wing. Dzeko twice as much time - all games as striker, 3rd choice at City. Those are our rivals and even though Balotelli and Welbeck are struggling this season they are still giving those two plenty of chances to find form. Our policy in terms of Rotation is awful, what happens if we need to play Marin(suspensions; injuries etc) - no clue haven't seen the lad, he is gonna be mighty rusty.

Same people that were coming up with a variation of excuses? Either weeping in the room looking at their Torres poster or deleting all their old comments in Torres threads

Play 4-3-3, Oscar further back than normal man marking Pirlo again and allowing Mikel and Ramires to help out our full backs. Hazard and Sturridge free roles interchanging positions with Mata behind pulling the strings: -------------------Cech-------------- Cesar----Ivanovic--Cahill---A.Cole -----Ramires--Oscar--Mikel---------- -----------------Mata------------------- ------Hazard-----------Sturridge---- Just hit em on the counter and sit deep the rest of the time, with no Torres to slow us down it might just be a good decision.

If you make posts like this, don't expect me to keep quite:

I'm still behind RdM and feel he should stay till the end of the season! But his fate will be decided during in the next 15 matches, if he continues to persist with Luiz and Torres, doesn't find a way to improve our defense and we end up dropping off and getting into a scrap for 4th place; fail to qualify out of our CL Group it will simply mean that this transitional season is all he is going to get. The next Month and a Half is key - if we continue playing like this I will NOT be surprised if he is sacked by new year. If we end up 3rd in the CL Group and loose some more points - even my support will waiver. I personally don't think Pep is the guy to take us forward - I'm not 100% certain whether what he did in Barca will translate to our club very well. But if he is the option Roman is looking at - he is by far one of the best CVs in the business, it's just his mentality which worries me. He had mental fatigue while being coach of his child hood club - imagine the fallout if he doesn't start well at Chelsea and the type of pressure he will be under.

Can you bugger off in a corner and punch yourself in the face

I think he needs managerial backing the way he had at Bolton, there he knew that even if he wasted a chance no one is going to scold him or drop him so there was less pressure. He had about 50 shots during half a season at Bolton 19 of those shots were on goal and 8 were converted. That to me seems like a pretty prolific and clinical striker. I've always known our fans are somewhat retarded, case and point - last season I was at the West Stand when we were playing Man City. Sturridge got a lot of abuse, yet he setup Raul's equalizer and won a penalty for us, he got less of a cheer than our fans gave to Torres when he was warming up. Towards the end of the season he was even booed. Now some "fans" are writing how they wanted to punch him in the face after the WBA game - the double standards are making me sick. I've been annoyed at Torres for over an year, yet never felt like I would ever boo him or Bos; Malouda; Kalou etc at a game - never though anything he did on the field warrented a punch in the face, maybe a smack on the buttocks from RdM but that's about it.

And other people would prefer punching one of our players in the face and obviously punching Sturridge in the face after tonight's game is a natural reaction.

I get the feeling Robbie brought off Torres to keep him fresh for Juve I have a bad feeling we are going to starting with 10 players again on Tuesday

Looking at your avatar your comments don't surprise me

Tonight was Moses's third start I believe Sturridge's second game playing from the start Romeu's 3rd game. In the end none of I think they weren't awful, but they were obviously lacking match practice. On the other hand you have Luiz and Cahill playing every week and somehow always find a way to gift our opposition a goal. I think Romeu played well, but I understand RdM brining him off we needed a win. If we had a favorable result he might have played even longer. Moses I though was playing really well in the first half but in the second half he went off the boil. Sturridge's finishing is the only thing which is lacking. When they play a bit more they might be able to show a lot more than we saw today - match practice does wonders.

I don't think anyone meant he is more clinical than Torres - just more likely to create goal scoring chances with him in the line up

The question is should Sturridge play until the winter transfer window or we should persist with Torres and his link up play - to me this is an easy question.

Sturridge needs to get a goal otherwise I don't see RdM dropping Torres

Should have scored that Danny... at least he got the shot off and forced a save but that should have been a goal

Thank god we are gonna finish the match with 11 men

Fucking hell... now Long assists

Well I think we should bring on Oscar for Torres at the start of the half and play him behind Sturridge. It's like playing with 10 men at the moment.