Jase

Guess you conveniently forget Mata's 2 assists in our penultimate group stage game against Valencia helped us to progress comfortably. Mata's away goal against Napoli. His corner kick delivery that setup Drogba's equalizer in Munich!

One heck of a great analysis! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KL8d0vR6fB4

Man City's 1-0 win at Villa Park means the last 5 Premier League games played on a Monday night have ended with 4 away wins & 1 draw.

Some stats to throw in ahead of Man United v Real Madrid tomorrow... 1. Jose Mourinho has faced Alex Ferguson 5 times in the Champions League & the record reads - W1 D3 L1. Overall record vs SAF is P15 W6 D7 L2. 2. Jose Mourinho's record against Manchester United at Old Trafford(with Porto, Chelsea & Inter) - P6 W2 D2 L2. 3. Both of Jose Mourinho's only defeats against Alex Ferguson have come via headers - Fletcher v Chelsea(1-0) and Vidic + Ronaldo v Inter(2-0).

Yes but who's to say that had Harry stayed, they wouldn't have gotten those players in. And players like Vertonghen were already linked to the club during Redknapp's reign.

Here's some stats about Steaua Bucharest: 1. Steaua Bucharest are sitting top of the Romanian league on 53pts after 21 games, 13 ahead of the 2nd place team right now(the 2nd place team yet to play this week's league match). 2. Steaua Bucharest have won 15 of their 16 home matches in all competitions this season. The only defeat came in the Europa League group stage where they were thrashed 5-1 by Stuttgart [in league: P11 W11; in domestic cup comp: P1 W1; in EL: P4 W3 L1 (excluding qualifying matches)] 3. Steaua Bucharest's overall record in Europa League this season(excluding qualifying matches) - P8 W4 D2 L2. Steaua Bucharest's Top 5 goalscorers in all competitions this season: 1. Raul Rusescu - 22 2. Adi Rocha - 7(excluding 3 goals in EL qualifying matches) 3. Cristian Tanase - 6 4. Alexandru Chipciu - 6 5. Stefan Nikolic - 5 Steaua Bucharest's Goalscorers in Europa League this season(exc. qualifying matches): 1. Raul Rusescu - 3 2. Iamin Latovlevici - 2 3. Vlad Chiriches - 2 4. Alexandru Chipciu - 2 5. Mihai Costea - 1 They have scored 10 goals so far in 8 matches and probably worth noting that both Latovlevici and Chiriches are defenders. Chipciu is a midfielder while the other are strikers.

One point regarding the AVB situation, it's funny how we all only started to talk about him (again) after they move ahead of us in the table. When we were 4-5 points clear of them before this, nobody said a thing. Right now, what AVB is doing at Spurs is hardly anything different from what Harry Redknapp did there last season and they are only 1 point better off this season compared to last season after 28 league games. Before we go on about how AVB is like some world class manager all of a sudden, best to only judge him in say 2-3 seasons time to see if he's really the real deal. There's just too much wankfest over him at the moment.

West Ham at home actually. The Fulham game has been postponed due to our FA Cup involvement this coming weekend.

This is a peach of a volley from Soldado against Levante at the weekend. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6ZZkn13bns

Sitting in 3rd and behind Spurs at that is just painfully annoying!

Said this in the Mata thread, everyone need to turn up on the day, not just Mata. Too often this season the entire team has gone AWOL when playing the better teams away from home!

Given that United players always seem to get injured, Hazard might ended up suffering injuries like Kagawa has been had he gone to United.

Mata's central deployment is hurting Chelsea Interesting take on that issue though it has to be said that valid points were made in the article.

Even with RDM winning the CL, we could still have ended with Benitez last summer. Board reluctant to give RDM the job then and Benitez was linked to us if you remember.

Had he played the players based on their skills, he wouldn't have tried to play an open expansive attacking football with a high defensive line with the players we got then when clearly they were not suited to play that kind of style.

And you took that seriously.

How is not giving promotion there considered as a bad man-management skills? Can't understand why people seem so reluctant to admit that AVB made mistakes with his management skills here. Not all the problems we had last season were down to him but people just seem so keen to blame everything on the players. AVB played a part in us experiencing the problems we had. Otherwise, it wouldn't have escalate till the point it was then.

Fun?! In the last year or so, we have played against Napoli, Norwich(under Lambert), Villa(this season), Wigan, Barcelona(2nd leg last season), Juventus and Man City who have all played with the back 3 system against us!

Surely not? Otherwise, Jelavic deserves a statue in honor of that!

I wouldn't say the 'whole bad man-management skills' was just a media BS. Think he did have some problems with managing the squad just probably not as bad as the media made it out to be.

3-4-3? Another team we're playing utilizes a formation with a back 3?! Oh gawd!

I wouldn't say he had a shocker but just wasn't influential as we would like him to be. And it has to be said that apart from him scoring goals, and important goals for us these days, can't see what else he would really provide to the team really.

Curious. Are you suggesting that AVB did not learn from his experience here in terms of what he did wrong? Hence why I said 'on paper'! And those two are home matches that I would like to think we will win those. We just have to if we want to finish in the Top 4!

We started the weekend in 4th. Ended it in 4th. Remain 2 points behind Tottenham but now sit 5 clear of Arsenal. Anyway here's some stat and fixtures... 1. Tottenham are only 1 point better off this season(54) compared to last season(53) after 28 PL matches - 11/12: W16 D5 L7 - 12/13: W16 D6 L6. 2. Tottenham have now only lost 1 of their last 17 Premier League matches - W13 D3 L1. The sole defeat came late on against Everton at GP. Can only hope Liverpool won't be as useless as Arsenal were next weekend against Spurs at Anfield. 1. On paper: Tottenham's remaining tough PL games are - Liverpool(A), Swansea(A), Everton(H), Chelsea(A), Man City(H) & Stoke(A). 2. Chelsea's remaining tough PL games(on paper) - Fulham(A), Tottenham(H), Liverpool(A), Man United(A) and Everton(H). 3. Arsenal's remaining tough PL games(again, on paper) - Swansea(A), West Brom(A), Fulham(A), Everton(H), Man Utd(H) and Newcastle(A).