capriccioso

Too much is made of his crossing ability, or lack of it. We've lost our big aerial threat in Drogba, is it really necessary for our wingers to be hitting in 10 crosses a game?

He loses the ball too often at centre midfield. That's where we played him when we first signed him and he looked out of sorts then. Either we play a 4-4-1-1/2 allowing him to play as a right midfielder or a wide 4-3-2-1 rather than 4-2-3-1. Obviously the main problem with that is Lampard, he can't play there. Alternatively:

What I really hope is that we don't go down the route Liverpool took after Istanbul and get complacent. That squad, like our current one/the squad that won it last season, was nowhere near good enough to win something like that again, finals in 2007 or not. We absolutely have to keep investing in the team for the next 5 seasons or so. Those two trophies we won were a nice taste of caviar, but we're still in the gutter, compared to where we were in the early years of Roman's era; and we have to remember that we still have a long, hard, road to go back to the top.

Benfica away and Napoli home. He was dire around March/early April, great for us he missed Napoli home and Benfica away.

Every single one where the opponent is too good for us to attack them. I make that out to be: Man City Man United Arsenal Spurs Newcastle Barcelona Real Madrid Valencia Borussia Dortmund Bayern Munich Juventus AC Milan PSG Porto Benfica We can play our game against everybody else, but for the time being we're still far too shit to try taking on the above teams with an attacking approach. At the best, we will have to counter attack against those teams, at the worst, we'll have to bus.

I dunno, what if Bosingwa hadn't gotten injured and stayed on the pitch the whole 90? Would we have seen a clearance then? We were lucky with injuries and suspension to an extent, with the hapless Meireles and Bosingwa not being available for selection for the Benfica games.

We were one goal line clearance in Naples away from getting knocked out..

Bus it or lose it. As I've said many times, none of our attacking players are in the prime of their careers. We can't rely on them to consistently win us games.

Barcelona for all their dominance are still a fair way below the last team to go back-to-back, AC Milan 1989/90.

I know eventually someone will luck out and do it but what people have ignored is that all the recent winners of the CL- since Istanbul, at least- have needed a huge slice of luck at some point in the tournament to win it. Liverpool with the ghost goal, their 10 minute spell and the shootout Barcelona with Lehmann's sending off AC Milan with an easy draw to the semi finals Man United with wet grass Barcelona with Ovrebo Inter with those offside and disallowed Barca goals in the semi finals Barcelona with van Persie getting sent off in the round of 16 Chelsea throughout our knockout campaign

No one's going to do that. It's impossible to win back-to-back CL's while still remaining competitive in the league.

Lol, its United, they can do what they like. By far the biggest club in the world, no matter how many Barca/Madrid fanboys have popped up in the last few years. If you come from an English speaking country you're likely to support United.

Manpe RD

I have 3

Haha, it will be amusing if United miss out on him.

Can we add a 'New' in front of South Wales?

Alright lads. http://soccernet.esp...estment?cc=3436 Still sure we can afford to ghost-own other clubs?

RIP. No information on the death? Cardiac arrest, I'll bet.

There should be a penalty shootout...

Why don't one of our DM's drop back to cover when David Luiz thinks his name is Franz Beckenbauer?

Big does him an injustice. He's probably the tallest professional footballer ever; he would put about 7 cm into the tallest in England.

I like Lacina Traore. He's a big unit. Might turn out to be rubbish but you can't argue with 208 cm of Ivorian muscle. Whoever we get he can't be a helpless baby like Torres who needs everything set up just so for him. Someone with a pair, in short; and someone who can flourish no matter how rubbish the 10 behind him are.

Tragic (in terms of the decline of the sport) that he's still the best left back around. Magic from a Chelsea perspective

David Luiz is far too complex a defender. What happened to the 6 ft 3, shit kicking, hoofball archetype? Bring him back!

We're caught in no man's land. We don't have the attacking firepower to beat teams 4-3, or break down buses. We don't have the defensive stability or 11 players that can bus it, either. Drogba was vital to the bus, and now he's gone. To a lesser extent big game men like Bosingwa were as well but they're hardly irreplaceable. In a defensive context replacing Kalou or Drogba or Ramires with Hazard/Marin/Torres is suicidal. Can we coax Makelele out of retirement?