Azpinator

If it was Oscar who did it he'd clap proudly. No seriously, I don't think it meant much, it's typical Jose.

Are you kidding me? He was lucky today with those crosses, in fact he was the reason Essien got confused in the first 12 seconds. Please stop overrating him and look at the bigger picture here: He's a poor man's Oscar.

Yes, because also United's defense wasn't perfect and you know De Gea wasn't either. Arsenal held their own against Napoli and Tottenham, they are not conceding much.. I don't think they'll crumble but they might lose the top spot in the upcoming weeks.

Manchester United weren't so impressive against big teams last season, but they managed to win the league. Arsenal are strong because so far they're not dropping points like others.. I don't think they are that bad in the CL either. It all can change later.

Right now it's between us and Arsenal imo.

This was after Torres hit the bar.

You have to keep in mind that their captain and best defender was absent, and their defence has been underwhelming so far this season.. and I don't think they are the strongest in the league. We didn't dominate much especially in the first half. If you're talking possession: they dominated, attempts: they dominated, passing: they dominated. We managed to win, we didn't dominate. I could have asked for better attacking play by some players like Oscar and Hazard. Again, why do you think City are the strongest side in the PL? Have you seen how embarrassing they were against Bayern? I mentioned that we beat them at SB with the exact same result in the season where they won the league and we finished 6th, and they were stronger then. So it's just one game that's all I'm saying.

Like what? Wrong passes and wide shots? I only remember 1 good tackle by him, clearly he is far from being fully grown as a footballer. But it's good that he has a lot of quality players around him to learn from.

We've waited for this Torres for 2.5 years, like always I cross my fingers for the future. Never seen him this confident before. Some people here sure know how to overreact, I mean remember that we did beat Man City at the Bridge with AVB but later we suffered so much.. so beating them doesn't mean that we're gonna conquer the world. We should be super happy but we shouldn't get over-confident. We got lucky, Nastasic and Hart handed us the 3 points. We weren't great offensively, we were good. I didn't understand what Oscar was doing, worst player on the pitch. However, Scumbag Webb was more tolerant with their player than he was with ours.. I hated that. And Mourinho has the passion that every football fan would love to have in a manager. :heart:

Why were the kits reversed? I think we could have played in the black one against their blue one.

Cech was his usual self: a monstrous boss. We played an almost perfect defensive game, gotta hand it to Azpi for giving a proper performance out of position. Eden is getting better and better.. high-five @Stingray! But Torres was the main highlight, it was one of his best performances in our blue shirt.

I advise you to watch the game vs Shakhtar last season at home.

I don't think he would have moved to RM if that was the case.

Cristiano Ronaldo?

It makes sense now that De Rossi decided to stay. That team is in it to win it.

I was watching with some friends and every single time he touched the ball I said "He's ours!"

Can't wait to see him proving lots of people wrong.

No because I don't think Oscar or Mata are in the same league of Zidane and Iniesta, and because both players are big names that never played for Chelsea. I've read the things you said before by other members, nothing new there. Once Oscar reaches the level of Iniesta or Zidane I would gladly talk about that.

It makes him a very good player who deserves to be the CAM in the starting XI. I don't like your question.

This doesn't have to be too personal, I have nothing to do with others ignoring some of your points - that's their problem, I just wanted to join the debate because you're someone I thought I'd be comfortable debating with. I didn't say you have nothing good to say about Mata, I just didn't like how you were blaming him for past failures of a team. Okay, glad you cleared the "struggling" part up, but it's also unfair to compare them this season when Mata was coming back from an injury in the beginning, and yet Mata's passing stats are still better. Still no evidence from you that Mata was a liability, sorry I must disagree on that. Having Cristiano and Messi as examples didn't make sense to me, we're not a 1-player club. About the Oscar assist, I actually mentioned it and ironically you missed it. Didn't edit or anything. Cheers!

They have to do with each other because I was talking about choosing your best options in each position in order to keep winning and challenge for titles. One of those positions is the No. 10 and Mata has a lot of experience there while Oscar is still learning so it makes sense to choose experience more often. Oscar still has some work to do to perform like a CAM should, so far in the CAM position he scored (4) with (0) assists in 7 appearances while being given more than enough time to perform in each game, and a CAM must have assists more than 0 in 7 games, a CAM must provide more final passes to the striker(s) and do less shooting around. His only assist came from being in the RM position against Steaua. He doesn't have enough vision to create chances and he tends to shoot more. He can do just fine while playing with the experienced Mata so it's for the best . And I know he scored without Mata around but we looked more cohesive when he did play with him. So playing as a team is vital to win games more comfortably so that the team can compete in different competitions. I still don't know where all the "adapting" "struggling" came from... Did he say that recently? Did Jose say that? He seems perfectly fine to me. I see him progressing not struggling to adapt. This season Mata has better passing accuracy and better key passes and that makes him more suitable for the CAM role. While Oscar has better dribbles and shots which makes him more suitable for the RM role. Use your best options in the squad and you're good to go. About the liability part: I know you love Oscar a lot but I think it's unnecessary to be that harsh on Mata. If Mata was really a liability in our system I don't think we would have won any of our last 3 titles. First season he didn't play CAM a lot, and dropping to 6th place in the league had many reasons, mainly it was AVB's new offensive tactics that cost us many games, not a single player. Second season he did play CAM. We finished 3rd in the PL which isn't bad, I believe we didn't qualify to the KO stages of the UCL because of real liabilities like Bertrand who cost us 2 Shakhtar goals by not being able to contain Srna, and because of our biggest weakness which was the CF, we couldn't find someone strong enough to be up against Juve defenders. Mata did great in both competitions. Give me evidence that he didn't if you're so sure because it blows my mind that you blame our whole failures in the last 2 seasons on a single player when in fact we had several other issues going on. And I assume the topic has to do with comparing them to one another because the topic title says it. It's about who you think is the better CAM not (who's having / will have) the better season overall.

Of course, but being offended doesn't give me the right to tell others what to do. No because I'm retarded and all. I said they were stat-related, and that I thought you cared about his overall stats in that game. But you're the one that brought Oscar to the discussion 2 pages ago.

Mate, it may not look related to you but to a different person it might. Not even stat-related? You were talking about goals, shots, assists and creating chances, how are some of these not stat-related? I saw it that you cared about Oscar's stats in a league game when you wanted to defend him, BlueLyon obviously cares about stats as well but he did explain later that they "matter a lot" for individuals, so he didn't mean that they are the #1 thing to judge players on. And man, it's a forum, I can quote and say stuff to anyone. I try my best not to offend but if the mods/admins see something wrong they would warn me. No hard feelings.

This is interesting, because I distinctly recall you saying that Mata's performances in the past were good because "we weren't competitive". So now let's say the club actually wants to be "competitive" and wants to challenge for titles, would you stick with the one with the 2-years of experience or just risk having a developing one (still ignoring the age gap)? It's a no-brainer for me.

Yeah funny because @BlueLyon didn't say stats are above anything else and you just assumed that. I was showing you that I could easily assume that you contradicted yourself. And please, you don't have the right to tell me what to do.