Jase

But Costa did well with Atletico Madrid in the Champions League last season. Think he has been rather unfortunate not to have scored yet for us in Europe. Were denied by some goalkeeping heroics at Sporting Lisbon, had a goal wrongly ruled out for offside at Maribor and then denied by combination of goalkeeper and defenders making last-ditched blocks at Schalke.

Just realized, we have not have kept a Premier League clean sheet away from home since that 'slip'. That's a bit meh!

We're not kids. That is only for you Choo Choo.

Gary Neville on Courtois... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/manchester-united/11260655/David-de-Gea-is-Manchester-Uniteds-most-important-player-right-now.html

Become a mod for one week.

I get what you're saying and not that we don't appreciate the donation but would a virtual recognition/award really convince or encourage people to part with some of their money and donate to the forum?

Have you read Mourinho's comments about having stability in the defence? If you have, then you know why changing the back 4 around in games like this is a plain silly idea.

Erm, this is a Premier League game in which we need the 3 points, not some dead rubber match for us to experiment.

Roy Keane quits as Aston Villa assistant manager after just six months at the club

Why Germany have 4 Champions League spots? Well, when you consider the countries directly below them in the coefficient rankings are Italy, Portugal, France, Russia, Ukraine etc, then it's no surprise that there are 4 Bundesliga clubs (or at least 3 if one gets knocked out in qualifiers) contesting in the Champions League every season. Moreover, the fact that Bayern reached 3 of the last 4 finals helped their coefficients and Dortmund also aided that by reaching the final two seasons ago and the quarter finals last campaign. The coefficient rankings also take the Europa League results of clubs into account and as long as the German teams keep picking up the wins (here and there apart from Bayern and Dortmund, who are bound to do it more consistently) and clubs from Italy, Portugal, France etc keep on failing miserably, Germany will remain having 4 Champions League spots for a long time.

Only figuratively.

Correction! Two players...

Putting Moses in the similar 'bracket' with Reus sounds just wrong...

True but we all know how much the Champions League means to Mourinho and when you're very competitive and loves something strongly (e.g the club), you're bound to get irritated when someone else, especially if that someone isn't as good as you, did something that you couldn't in such a short space of time. Mourinho suggested that RDM got lucky in leading us to the Champions League (which isn't entirely wrong but not that we care), perhaps he's even annoyed that he had the luck, while he himself didn't when he was here to do something historic.

Will be tough but don't think we should fear them at all. The worst possible draw we can get from there is Atletico Madrid. Eeeek!

But but, there's still December to go and we've stumbled a bit in the past during that month.

Have to say, Schalke defended like Schalke or another way to put it, Schalke defended like a typical RDM team. Not taking anything from our brilliant performance but some of their defending were just abysmal.

Don't think it's far-fetched to say that Mourinho is annoyed by the fact that RDM won us the Champions League, a trophy he failed to win with us. And not to mention, RDM did it in under 6 months while Mourinho couldn't do it in 3 years.

IF City, Arsenal and Liverpool all finish 2nd in their group, then our last 16 opponent would be one from: Group A - Atletico Madrid/Juventus/Olympiacos Group C - Leverkusen/Monaco/Zenit Group F - PSG/Barcelona Group H - Shakhtar Donetsk

All 4 German teams lost in the UCL this week: Schalke 0-5 Chelsea Man City 3-2 Bayern Munich Arsenal 2-0 Dortmund Leverkusen 0-1 Monaco

Not instigating anything Tom. *in Benitez's voice* It's a fact!

Incredible to think that we have won our Champions League group, scoring 14 goals and Costa didn't even net one of them. Even Terry has found the back of the net twice.

Tricky game this, against the unpredictable and awkward Sunderland side. They can look like a decent team in one game and completely rubbish in another. Not to mention, they also beat us twice last season. Hopefully, we can get an early goal or two to make things a little easier then.

Suspect Mourinho will have taken 'extra joy' from beating Schalke yesterday...

*bump*