Jase

Funny how Benitez got the sack after drawing against a club managed by an ex-Man United player (two if we count Phil Neville as well). And remember this...? Rafael Benitez constantly cleaning up Jose Mourinho's mess, says wife

*points finger at @Jim*

Admiring a player (an ex-player in fact) doesn't mean one would like to be managed by the same person. It's two completely different scenarios.

Claiming that he's faked his injury like it's some sort of fact...? Anyway, since we are just going in circles and never going to agree with one another, we'll just agree to disagree. Ta.

Zouma is great with the last-ditch tackles but I'm actually more impressed with his recovery pace, especially for someone who looks big.

No Champions League football next season. Looking forward to the Papy-Happy combo in defence.

Corrected? What are you now - some kind of legit news source? But for argument's sake, even if it has been muttered, it didn't go overboard till after Jose was sacked - e.g people calling him a rat/snake because he apparently didn't play for the manager. Like I said, it would carry more legs if the point was discussed widely before Jose decided to hang certain players out to dry. On a side note, it's actually quite funny that Jose decided whether Hazard was injured or not just by looking at him when he was not the one who's getting kicked every week. For much of the last 2 seasons, he constantly called for referees to protect him because players are putting hard tackles on him (should be thankful that if he hadn't picked up more injuries). And this season, when he has finally picked up injuries because of the treatment he's getting from the opposition, Jose instantly doubted it and accused him of faking injuries. Talk about a manager who cares about his players' health and condition. Don't misrepresent people's criticism? How about not trying to come up with conspiracy theories to doubt Hazard's integrity and professionalism to begin with? I think when you start to come up with baseless accusations and question a player like that, you deserved to be criticized.

Find it quite sad that some people are turning their backs so easily on Hazard, the player who won the Player of the Year accolades last season and the one who led us to the title when everyone else had ran out of steam last year, after one bad half of a season. Granted, he has been poor but I don't think he deserves his professionalism to be questioned at all (it only really picked up steam after Mourinho threw him under the bus at Leicester). If some can show a lot of patience with Mourinho, who was in his worst moment and after all the wrong things he's done, then why can't people do the same with Hazard? (heck, even Torres got far more patience despite doing next to nothing!) We are not talking about an average player here. We are talking about a special talent who has played his part in helping us win things in recent years and who will become of the best in years to come. He deserves better support than what he has been shown so far, particularly in his toughest moment of his career.

Hard to tell really. We weren't in control of the game BEFORE he went off and we weren't in control of the game AFTER he went off either. We only took control of the match after we got the first goal and even then, that came out of the blue because we created absolutely nothing before that.

Since Mourinho got the sack, we have scored 8 goals in 4 league matches, which is 1 goal less than the total amount we netted in 10 league games before that. (could have been 9-9 if Oscar hadn't missed his penalty!)

And that's after the reporter asked him a biased question - stating how tight the game was in it.

1-1 it finishes between Everton and Spurs. We now sit 4 and 13 points behind Everton (11th) and Spurs (4th) respectively. We play Everton in two weekends' time.

We have done that in all competitions this season. A different matter altogether in the league...

We should see some youth and rotation in this game since we have West Brom and Everton coming up on following Wednesday and Saturday respectively. Just avoid another Bradford scenario...

Hiddink on the win today... http://www.chelseafc.com/news/latest-news/2016/01/final-whistle-verdict-post-palace.html?extcmp=SOCIA_TW_ENG_NEWS_POSTMATCH

Hiddink on Mikel's performance... http://www.chelseafc.com/news/latest-news/2016/01/final-whistle-verdict-post-palace.html?extcmp=SOCIA_TW_ENG_NEWS_POSTMATCH

Hiddink on Hazard's injury... http://www.chelseafc.com/news/latest-news/2016/01/final-whistle-verdict-post-palace.html?extcmp=SOCIA_TW_ENG_NEWS_POSTMATCH

Fair play to Mikel today. He was very very very good. It was arguably one of the best performances by any midfielders in the league this season - controlled the game, didn't give Palace an inch and provided a platform for us to launch our attacks. The thing with Mikel is he needs to be more consistent (it will probably come with more game time, I guess). We shouldn't forget that he sometimes can produce brainfart games - e.g looking slow and pedestrian on the ball, looking lost on the ball, losing out in challenges etc.

That's more like it Diego! Focus on football and none of the nonsense fighting stuff and the performances as well as goals will come. It might be too early to say but Hiddink might just be working his 'magic' with Costa like he did with Drogba back in 2009 - some coaching on his strengths and 'arms around the shoulder' man-management -. Both strikers appeared to have lost their way but Hiddink came in and got them back on track.

Yikes! Any way to fix it?

@Jim, apologies for bombarding you with more things but any idea why the first post in the Palace match thread is hidden? http://forum.talkchelsea.net/topic/20828-crystal-palace-chelsea/?do=findComment&comment=1192334

I think we can say with authority that the performance today is the best of the season. Said that a few times previously when Jose was still around but those were kinda neither here nor there - looked solid but toothless in attack etc. It was a different story today though. A convincing performance against decent opposition. We controlled the game - never gave anything away, Palace only had that one real chance from Zaha before Willian scored. Otherwise, they didn't really create much. We also looked decent in attack and produced none of the defensive football nonsense of holding back after going 1-0 up. Almost refreshing to see us continue pushing forward and trying to score more goals.

WE ARE BACK!!!!!!!

@Jim, doesn't seem like we can set up polls now in threads.

Yes but in Hazard's case, it's not THAT bad till has any correlation. He didn't exactly come back totally fit in previous pre-seasons and he didn't suffer any notable injuries, did he? IIRC, this is like the 3rd time only that he's suffered a notable injury. Otherwise, his injury record has been near perfect.