Jase

Yes but don't think we should be taking anything for granted anyway. If it goes to that scenario, Schalke's qualification is on the line but so are Basel's. And moreover, nobody expected or would have imagined us losing to Basel at home but then it happened. Anything can happen really.

Exactly. And not to mention, we have 8 games to play in December. Even 1 dead rubber game then to rest some players would be helpful.

And funnily enough, part of the reason why the away form is bad is because of Mourinho's negative approach at United and Spurs to begin with. The Everton one was just pure unlucky. On another day, we could have won that one 3/4/5-0 easily.

Can see where you are coming from but wouldn't say the Basel away game is inconsequential as that will be our 5th game. We still need at least a point from there to secure qualification even if we beat Schalke this Wednesday. That is unless we want to make life difficult and give ourselves heart attack moments in the last game at home Steaua, even though that is a match we should win nicely.

The members here and many of them. See the Basel pre-game thread. Many just expected us to thrash Basel because we lost to Everton before that but look what happened..

He just looks odd here...

Am actually curious to know what Mourinho said at HT to the players. Did he give a Benitez-esque team talk? In the first half, we played OK and that I think was also partly down to Newcastle being conservative and even afraid given their recent troubles. But in the second half, nothing seem to change in the players' performance and when Newcastle decidedly got their act together, neither could we handle nor respond well to the pressure thrown at us. Not playing well is one thing, which has occurred many times, but to just seemingly folded in the face of pressure reflected by the disastrous tackles/challenges and without even responding in the right manner.

Can understand where you are coming from but on top of what others have said, our trophy record in past years and playing under Mourinho could prove to be a bigger motivation and attraction for him to come here..

Chelsea boss given go ahead to sign a new striker in the January transfer window

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2485019/Robert-Lewandowski-Chelsea-The-Football-Grapevine.html

Chelsea young gun Patrick Bamford set for new loan spell in January after impressing at MK Dons

Seems like Hazard was in the stands watching his old side Lille beat Monaco 2-0 in Ligue 1 tonight.

Well, whatever. Just hope both of you fellas beat the crap out of each other..

Roma have finally dropped points in Serie A after a 1-1 draw with Torino. Now only 3 points ahead of Juventus and Napoli. And next weekend...Juve face Napoli. @CHOULO19, #RafaFTW

Wouldn't even consider Hazard as being a direct player on the wings. He likes to come short, get on the ball, run with it, like to do some fancy stuff with it etc. Schurrle and Willian does that but not as fanciful or even over-elaborative like Hazard. The former two are more direct than the latter. If you said you don't have a public agenda against Mata, then I don't think there's any reason for you to keep on justifying that... So what if we were drawing until Mata was taken off? All the good work before that is just gonna get ignored because Norwich improved and we just got sloppy? Mata wasn't great that day but was decent and certainly not as bad like how it has been made out to be.

Don't think there's a problem with Mata and Oscar playing together. The issue is, and I believe some have mentioned about it, playing either Schurrle or Willian to offer us width and stretch the play on the other side. We have already seen, for instance against Steaua and Norwich, how this has worked just fine. The trio of Hazard, Oscar and Mata is generally fine but under Mourinho's setup where combination play just doesn't seem to exist, the narrowness suddenly becomes an issue, a bigger one than it probably is.

If we have been playing the trio of Mata/Hazard/Oscar this season and been performing poorly, then you might well have a strong case of Mata affecting the team's performance especially in the current setup of what Mourinho wants. And we didn't always play badly with those 3 last season, did we? The team's setup under Benitez and Mourinho maybe different but really, like I said, to read so much into one bad game, one bad performance and pin all the blame on Mata is just . Better to just see what happens next time if those 3 play again... Not dismissing your views as having public agenda but don't think it helps one bit if you go around doing that. It will just make people think you do have a public agenda against Mata. And , don't flatter yourself. Wouldn't waste my time having a public agenda against you at all.......

Every team is bound to have a very bad day at the office somewhere along the season. If this has happened in several games this season, then I would be inclined to agree with your point above. But it was only one game and to blame everything bad that happened yesterday on Mata's inclusion is just nonsense. The sample is just too small to say that playing Mata yesterday had a negative impact on the team. And with you going about from thread to thread, banging about this same old thing, you are only emphasizing Sheva's point in the other thread that you seem to have a public agenda going on against Mata.

Hasn't done so and won't change it all of a sudden. Will see most of the same faces again with those sacrificial pawns, being sacrificed again..

He obviously isn't.. http://www.chelseafc.com/news-article/article/3520976/title/final-whistle-verdict-deserved-defeat And what Mourinho said here is definitely true.. Part of the reason for that is arguably down to Mourinho's somewhat negative approach against United and Spurs to begin with but really, if we do not start picking up our away league form soon, we won't come close to challenging for the title.

Yeah...except those changes would probably be like the obvious ones in Mata, Luiz etc while those have been performing like crap will keep their place..

Forget Mata and his supposed weakness against physical teams, I'm not even sure this team in general can handle physical and direct teams. The minute Newcastle decided to take up that approach in the second half, we couldn't handle it. Like you said, we were then hopelessly losing the 50-50s and mindlessly diving into challenges thinking we can just simply nick the ball but never materialized (almost like how Luiz did with his kamikaze tackle/defending when he first came here). The players were hardly even committed or being strong enough when getting into challenges and tackles. Maybe this is just a one-off bad performance but looking at the game, I dread to think what would happen in our next away game against West Ham, a fixture where we got owned physically last season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_cRUVmEKtw

Some decent points made by them there and I'm surprised Tommy Langley did not produce a Fergie-esque hairdryer comments on the performance.

No. The point is, the players should be cutting out their silly mistakes. There is no point in going round and round saying this player should have played instead because the other made a mistake after every game. If it continues like for 4-5 games in a row, then fine kick that player out and give others a chance perhaps but not overreacting to asking for change from game to game basis.