Jase

Mourinho on people saying his teams are defensive.. http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/mar/23/jose-mourinho-chelsea-arsenal

Mourinho on Matic.. http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/mar/23/jose-mourinho-chelsea-arsenal

For our sake, we gotta hope that he turns up and play decently. Otherwise, we are screwed! Forgive? Not sure about that. It might alleviate the pain and/or anger of having to bear with his trashy performances, more often than not, but over the 3 years, he's been a failure.

Chelsea set to send highly-rated youngster Patrick Bamford back out on loan next season

Ivanovic looks pissed here. Can probably caption something out of this...

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1j1pcj_best-of-jose-mourinho-at-chelsea_sport Some of you may find this to be familiar watching the beginning as you might have watched this before and that's because it really is the same as the old version, just that this is an updated one with soundbites from Mourinho's pressers this season..

I'll make a donation to charity if Chelsea win the Champions League, claims Mourinho

Pathetic as always from MOTD. Pretty much said we copied Liverpool's approach against Arsenal back in February. As if Liverpool invented such pressing and counter attacking approach when many teams have done it over the years against Wenger's team and oh not to mention, we have done it many times against Arsenal!

Still need City to basically drop points in two matches anyway. Doesn't really make a difference whether 4 or 5 points..

Can throw in Gundogan (despite the injury problems), Kroos...

It should probably be 'Wnger endures 1000th game obliteration'..

And despite that, it's still not the best of midfield for us. It's still lacking that X-factor, that extra bit of quality. Lampard is ageing and can't keep on going forever. Ramires is a great athlete but very average as a footballer. Matic is the only one great there. MvG and Kovacic are both still young and developing. Never know how are they going to turn up to be like. We need someone who is at his peak or entering it that can come in and immediately make a difference for us, not someone who is past that or need to wait years to get there. Otherwise, we'll still be sitting here and complaining about the same midfield issues next season, again (let's not forget how long this issue has been around!). And said this many times, people want us to go out there and buy another young talent like Kovacic but would probably later moan about not giving our youths a chance...

Again, never understand why it has to be one or the other and not a case of balancing both. In Schurrle's case of replacing Willian in the starting XI, can't fault his workrate in any sense as they are very similar and if anything, the only difference between the two on the defensive side is that Willian can operate in the No.10 role and track back into the midfield and turning our 4-2-3-1 into something like 4-3-2-1 (not the Christmas Tree formation). That is not something natural to Schurrle but otherwise offensively, he offers much more than Willian right now.

Maybe or maybe not. At least with Eto'o around, we have options but with him injured, albeit for a short period, we are down to just 2 STs and Torres is a 'glass' himself too..

Am guessing this is the pic where Terry and Azpi applauded Cech for his save after we went 1-0 up..

IIRC, Benfica were having financial problems and needed the money. So, they couldn't really play hardball with us like say Porto used to do! Besides, Matic wanted to return to us anyway. And no, don't think we have placed any buy-back clauses or things like that. Don't think we'll be silly and leave us at a disadvantage with clauses like that.

When I saw the save during the match as it happened, I thought it was a decent save, an OK save, one that Cech should be saving because Giroud's shot wasn't the strongest/best. However after watching it again on MOTD last night, it was actually quite a good save. Got down well and quick to push the shot away and it was certainly a very big vital save given what happened after that.

I don't think picking up only a draw against United and Arsenal should be viewed as points dropped because that can happen and usually happen in matches between two big sides. If you wanna look at points dropped, then it's our inability to beat some of the lesser sides - West Brom (twice!), Stoke, Villa, West Ham and even against Everton.

If you wanna do that, then take United off the list as well since they are rubbish. Yes, Arsenal may have got thrashed yesterday but since they are at home this time against City next weekend, one would expect them to do better and at least give them a chance to pick up a point, at the very least. And let's not forget that City lately haven't been quite the same like they were in the beginning of the season. If we win our remaining 7 games, then we would need City to D1 L1 at least because as it stands, should they win their 3 games in hand, they'll go 3 points clear of us.