Leif

The reason for Moses not being on the bench isn't a mystery. Schurrle is the better player in many people's and probably Mourinho's eyes. This is what depth does. Schurrle played most of last season on the left and played perfectly fine on the weekend when he came on deployed mainly on the right. In fact, vs Hull City he proved that he can be an impact player coming off the bench. With a slightly rotated forward line this game (Mata for De Bruyne, Ba for Torres), we need at least some bench consistency in case the forwards fails to produce and get the chemistry going, hence Schurrle being there to just potentially pick up where he left off last time if needed. No need to take up a substitute spot with Moses who doesn't offer as much as Schurrle. Also, after Schurrle's little time out during pre-season, coming on vs. Hull City was a good way start to regaining his fitness. Should he come on today, he should be ready for a start vs. Manchester United should Mourinho see fit as he'll want high work-rate players for that game (I'm being bold and guessing it'll be Hazard, Oscar, Schurrle for the Utd game.)

There isn't such a thing as Lukaku being "3rd choice". Manager's don't decide "ok you'll be third choice whenever there's a game" - especially not Mourinho. Players play depending on form and the particular game. Anyway, even if we were to use the whole '1st choice/2nd choice/3rd choice' thing, you don't become 1st choice at a top club like Chelsea when all you have under your belt *at the club* is a decent pre-season and 0 Premier League goals in 9 apps*. This is literally only our second game of the bloody season and because he hasn't started yet people are contemplating loan options etc. Some people expect far too much.

Cech; Ivanovic, Cahill, Terry, Cole; Ramires, Lampard; Mata, Oscar, Hazard; Ba. Woop.

FUCK MY BALLS

Possession football.

Wow. Talk about anti-climax.

Fantastic vision!

Torres has 3 goals in his last 4 starts for us. If like some members say - we shouldn't really judge players from pre-season - surely he's automatic first-choice ahead of a guy who's yet to score a Premier League goal for us?

Lampard's 500th domestic appearance with us

Lukaku played 4 days ago vs. France. Of course he doesn't start.

What a perfect day for him to have that quote go out to all of us. That and Mourinho's return! Well Chelsea's return in general. I love Roman

The current argument thrown around against what seems to be every striker who either fails with us or ends up being linked with us is always that their game has 'always relied on pace'. Can we move on now and have a new point? I doubt Eto'o has won 2 trebles relying on just his pace, otherwise we should fret as Walcott will probably win the Champions League and if not him then Lennon at some point. At least following this logic of; Pace = Success, Less Pace = No Success; we can see that Kiwomya will be amongst the best players in the world one day. Actually forget all this Rooney and Eto'o talk, let's sign Agbonlahor!!! PACE IS EVERYTHING TO A PLAYER!! But seriously, this 'argument' of 'he no longer has pace' seems to be thrown around by people who later confess they've barely, if even at all, seen him play since his Inter days. It's easy to look at a player who no longer grabs the local headlines, see that he's aged a few years and thus conclude he no longer has electric pace. I'm sure we've all done something similar at some point when we've wanted to enter the discussion of a player. He's still one of the fastest strikers on the planet. Just watch an actual game of his for god sake. As for the 'HE WOULD NEED TO DROP HIS WAGE DEMANDS' thing, I won't even go into that. It's common knowledge and doesn't need to be repeated every single page. We're not run by complete idiots who don't understand finance. They're not going to pay anything we can't afford.

So does no-one remember his comments in 2005 saying players would want to retire if we won the Champions League? That it'd be a disgrace to football?

Taking off your captain (Terry) and throwing on another striker (Lukaku) is bold. It paid off. It won us the game. This is what Mourinho does and what we've been missing ever since he originally departed. Apparently, Inter were once about to lose so Jose played with 4 strikers in the last few minutes. They won.

United fans on Twitter think Ronaldo is going back to them because Valencia isn't wearing No7 today

I'm annoyed. They market themselves well saying "We've got all Bundesliga games, Ligue 1 games" etc etc etc. but it's untrue. In a way. They'll broadcast a live Bundesliga game between 2 small teams that no non-followers of German football want to see, and then later that night they'll show Borussia Dortmund in their game as one example, only the game ended hours ago and isn't live at all. Yet they present it like it's live. It pisses me off. At least they have the Schalke game on tonight. This whole thing they're trying to do has plenty of promise but their execution has been awful. Presenters who don't know how to present is my biggest gripe. They constantly look into the wrong camera, stutter, mumble, i could go on and on. Can't believe I'm complaining about free football.

Cech; Ivanovic, Luiz, Terry, Cole; Ramires, Van Ginkel; De Bruyne*, Oscar, Hazard; Lukaku I'd go with that for this game. Reason being, Hull should, in theory at least, be full of energy and enthusiasm since it's their first game back in the top flight. I don't exactly want Mikel, Lampard or Essien in such an important position vs. such opposition at this time. Losing the midfield battle and being overran by a newly promoted team would make me feel queasy. De Bruyne always gets a tackle in, Oscar is great at applying pressure, our midfield '2' would have more energy than the sun and Hazard & Lukaku would take the most responsibility in attack. It'll be no good using Moses or Schurrle as starters in this game. Both lack that creativity we'll need to break down an organised unit. Both would be handy impact subs if needed. *I wouldn't mind Mata on the right considering he's more talented than most teams put together, but I just feel like I have to put De Bruyne there for this game because of his work rate and the fact that since he's on his strong foot (unlike Mata would be) he can hit in cross after cross to Lukaku. We need width and energy for this game. Mata would cut in too much, compromising our width on the right side in the process, and he has one of the lower work rates in our team which is never good for the opening match of the season.

Schwarzer; Azpilicueta, Luiz, Terry, Bertrand; Essien, Mikel; Moses, De Bruyne, Schurrle; Torres Cech, Azpilicueta, Terry, Cahill, Cole, Van Ginkel, Essien, Hazard, Schurrle, Mata, Lukaku Playing one of those apparently.

ROMA (4-3-3) De Sanctis; Maicon, Benatia, Castan, Balzaretti; Bradley, Strootman, Florenzi; Lamela, Osvaldo, Totti

I'd like to see Lampard, Terry, De Rossi & Totti all on at the same time please.

Guess it's time to order a new kit with Rooney on the back of it then. Never did I think this would happen. And if he doesn't join I'll just get a crayon and colour the top red and donate it to a homeless shelter where some United fans should be hanging out.

So Cahill - Terry doesn't work for us. We know that now. Cahill - Ivanovic has never worked. Cahill - Luiz hasn't been tried much but it's safe to say that very few of us would feel safe going into games with that being our duo. (See a trend?) Yet despite this, Cahill continues to get votes of confidence and comments (or excuses made for him) like "HES A GOOD SQUAD PLAYER!! SQUAD-DEPTH IS WHAT WINS TITLES!!!!!!!" (Barcelona and Bayern pre-Guardiola say hi.) I'm putting this down to his nationality. Being English and being in the national team has swayed people's opinion on him from what I gather. If Cahill was South American he'd get triple the bashing Luiz gets. Probably rightly so based on performances. For me this should be his last season with us. He's good at putting the ball in the back of the net but too often he lets the opposition do exactly that to us.

If he wants Champions League football, literally the only clubs in the Champions League next season who can afford his transfer fee/wages & actually have space for a striker in their team are: Chelsea: Depending on which paper or Twitter account(s) you want to believe, we've signed Rooney, are trying to sign Rooney or definitely won't sign Rooney. All we know is that we're genuinely interested in him. If we can't get Rooney though, is Mou really happy with our current strikers? In the past, in title-winning seasons, he's had Higuain/Benzema/Morata/Ronaldo [if needed],Eto'o/Milito/Pandez/Balotelli, Drogba/Crespo/Gudjohnsen - combinations like those. A strike-force of Torres/Lukaku/Ba is absolutely amateur compared to those others. Mourinho works with top class players. He has no top class strikers now (Lukaku is potential, Ba is just Ba and Torres doesn't even need to touched on). He will want one. He wants a superstar name in attack. A ready-made player. This is why we're currently pursuing Rooney and not some unknown talent who'd cost a fraction of either Rooney or Suarez. Real Madrid: If they sign Bale I think there's much less chance of this happening. If Bale doesn't join for whatever reason, I think it's clear they want to sign one more top forward, and that would most likely be Suarez. Arsenal: Obviously prolifically linked with him at the moment, but they're not even guaranteed to be playing CL football next season and they have a very strict wage policy. Would they bend that wage policy? Would they actually splash so much cash on one player? They're not known for it. You could put the Manchester clubs, but Liverpool selling to United? No. As for City, they had clear targets this window and are following a slightly new policy than what they've followed previous seasons. No Suarez for them. Point is - I think people are too quick to dismiss Suarez. He's surely in Jose's head as a potential target if the Rooney deal doesn't happen. My prediction however: He goes on-loan to Real Madrid with an option to buy. Voila.

The moment I sat down on my toilet and brought up Twitter I saw that Sky Sports tweet and, well, it relieved me of the need to squeeze. Plop. Hopefully we don't sell him. Unless we get Messi as part-exchange.

He starts off saying that Rooney won't want to play abroad and agrees that there's no clubs abroad who'd be willing/able to pay the fee for him. After ruling foreign clubs out of this transfer saga, he goes on and talks about the club (Chelsea) that is available to Rooney. 'Chelsea - Rooney' is the only discussion going on at this point. He then says during this discussion, quote: "We've said on numerous occasions with players, once you leave a club like Manchester United, there's only one way you'll go [down]." How isn't that saying we're a step down from United?