Leif

BRAMBLE SCORED SOME TOO, IT DOESN'T MEAN SHIT please start singing it

Our players don't trust eachother enough to play comfortably. They aren't morons; some of them have the awareness that Matic & Cahill are shit, and that makes them hesitate and take too long with their moves. It happened when Alonso was very first starting for us, nobody would pass to him. The same happened with Kante.

Everything that's need to be said about Costa has been said. From now on only his name needs uttered. Costa.

Aw man he's just so bad, he doesn't understand how other players work, he just stands

Looool please tell me that wasn't Cahill standing on the line and not reacting even a bit

A perfect pass is twice as orgasmic as a perfect goal.

Well like Matic, they were all great in Portugal, and all became shit once leaving.

And Jonas, the failure Valencia held onto for too long, has won it twice in a row. This year, it'll probably be Mitroglou. Neither player has been the best player in any league in their lifetime. Jamie Vardy won it last year. Does that define who he is? Was he the best player in the league? Chelsea material? Gilette win plenty of shaving awards, but go through their Amazon reviews and droves of people complain of the product breaking down quickly, followed by listing a healthy amount of better alternatives. If awards were meant to be taken seriously, Ronaldo would be the best player in the world right now However, he wouldn't be the best player in our team, and he isn't the best in Madrid's, nevermind the league, nevermind Europe.

Matic was the BEST player in Portugal? Better than Jackson Martinez & James Rodriguez? Better than Alex Sandro? Better than Hulk & Moutinho? Better than Witsel? And Cardozo? Better than Rojo? In what world? He had 1 and a half seasons of being a truly impressive, top player - by the standards they have in Portugal. Like you say, standards here are different, and he's crap here, straight crap for our standards. Whereas as well as them being equally good if not better then, even now in THIS team, I'd have more confidence in Rodriguez, Sandro, Moutinho, Rojo.

With that logic you must believe Iago Aspas is a 'goalscorer' too when you look at this season's stats. It's relative. I'm sure Bats could be a goalscorer in China, France, and the League Cup, just like Balotelli is. In the Premier League? Against the big boys? He is no goalscorer. Which is fine. We have a good creator here and that's what I've said from day 1 - along with, don't expect a prolific player, at all. Stats are the worst & most trivial thing to bring up if you disagree. Stats have some of the most average players in Europe being put in the same class as the elite, when on the field, they're nowhere near their team's most important player. Neither do the stats reflect a player's best role & qualities. If they did, Alli would be a striker. Plus it's not like he scored 23 goals from open play in a competitive league. It's easy to bulk up numbers with penalties against shit teams (he was their PK taker) which, when accounted for, means he averaged an open-play goal around every 3 games, which is pathetic for the French league compared to his peers. Even Gomis at Marseille has the same amount of open play goals this season that Bats did, and that's with more games to come still. that must mean he's a good goalscorer, let's sign him! In reality, nobody in their right mind would called Gomis a goalscorer. He's a French Andy Carroll experiencing a purple patch. Ask people who've watched him who this player is, not the stats. Go on a Marseille forum, watch old Marseille clips, look at our current games when Bats plays. Scoring goals doesn't make someone 'a goalscorer'. If it did, Ribery would be considered a goalscorer and not a creator - which isn't the case. In fact, if scoring a handful of goals during a purple patch makes you a 'goalscorer', sprinting to the shop a handful of times makes you a 'sprinter'.

Rafa could make Newcastle compete for a Europa League spot given 2 seasons. I don't like the club at all, but out of all the Championship clubs, NUFC feel the most 'right at home' in the PL.

Google says 'creating or controlling a situation rather than just responding to it', and Cahill certainly creates more situations than he needs to

He's a centre back. Not a left back, not a wing back, not a midfielder. He's proven it. He can become similar to Luiz IMO, and before this game I had little hope for him. I always said he's not proactive, but reactive. Well, that's what you need in your centre back often. You don't want a reactive CDM, or a reactive wing back (the best in those positions are proactive with link up play), but you do want a centre back who sees the move a striker wants to make, anticipates it, and reacts. Puyol, Nesta, Terry, Ake - epitome of reactive players. A proactive centre back guesses where the striker will go, and commits, a la Cahill, & Luiz before PSG. That prediction tactic leaves a lot to be desired. But a reactive Ake gives himself time to analyse at which crucial moment a striker has commited - and then adjusts his next move accordingly to react.

Definitely his best game for us. Definitely not good that we're excited about a striker just doing the basics right, just like right after the Torres fiasco. Ba was a more dangerous & effective player, but nobody would've taken prime Ba as our leading striker in these times. Bats will never be good enough to lead us, and it's nothing to do with the terrible man-management he suffered this season. He's simply not a goalscorer. He is part of the dying breed of Bergkamp wannabes. He isn't a winger, he isn't a midfielder, but his job is to assist & win free kicks. (He had crucial build-up play leading to our Willian freekick - that's what he's good at. And that's what Diego severely lacks.) Yet we don't ask for a player like that. We don't play that way. So it was lunacy from day 1 to be linked with him. I think next season, Bats will be loaned out (a la Atsu) and we'll keep Costa. The club won't want 2 brand new faces up front for chemistry&marketing reasons, so someone has to be retained. And I've no doubt Conte to the board want a more reliable and ready-made bench option, so Bats just must be loaned out (our board, as arrogant as they are, never have the balls to sell a player after just a season, no matter how horrible.) I expect more or less the same next season, just with a better bench option, who scores plenty, but still doesn't get to start any games.

He was very bad in my opinion. Every single Spurs 'cross' from the half way line which ended up near a player outside or in our box, put Courtois into a mental 'should i or shouldn't i?' frenzy. He isn't and wasn't good at deciding what measure to take - and he too often takes a half measure. Just look at both of their goals. Our defence could do better too, but it's painfully obvious that Courtois looks like he's in no man's land in both scenarios, which he really wasn't. This is why Courtois excels when there's literally only 1 option - like from corner kicks, where all he can and should do is use his height to reach the ball from above their heads. For every great shot he stops he follows it up next game with either dropping the ball (just remembered he let the ball through his body and almost into the goal too!) or looking like he's on coke - too erratic and unfocused.

Options who'd do Matic's job better - Allan or Jorginho from Napoli. Nainggolan obviously. Saul from Atletico. Fabinho. Gonalons. And that's excluding the little but strong leagues like in Portugal & Belgium.

They think this rivalry's Barcelona / Madrid. It's more Barcelona / Espanyol.

Good game by default just for seeing fresh faces. We're winners just for taking part

We'd win this if we went 2-3-3-2 with Bats up front with Diego. We need to throw the kitchen sink but in a way they & we can't plan for. No gameplan = not being methodically picked apart.

It takes talent to be more disliked than Torres here, it really does. It takes talent to clearly be one of a club's most prolific players since the turn of the century, and still be despised by more than a handful of supporters. Even if you think Costa should stay, you have to agree the above statements are true currently. And hopefully they'll set the light bulb off in your heads, so you can realise that Costa has all the intangible factors which make him the bad apple squads get ruined by. He wasn't as bad an apple at Atletico; as bitter and aggressive yes, but he wasn't there to disregard the club and its fans, so he was still worth carrying in the basket. Now, he's very much spoiled, and there's no going back from that. The best the apple can hope for is a peasant who has no standards picking it up. A la China.

With the landscape as it is, 100m to China is average & rational - so we can start higher. 150m. I think they'd go for it.

Ibrahimovic is 35 years old. I think I win. But for good measure, Suarez is 30. For better measure, Ronaldo's 32. For disrespectful measure, Dzeko is 31, but not too old to lead his team to 1 place behind an uber strong Juventus. Imagine we got rid of Drogba at 30 Cavani is one of the best athletes in football. After 35, I wouldn't be overly enthusiastic, but I know in 5 years he'll still be better than 90% of the strikers in Europe. Even at 39 he's going to be useful coming off the bench. He'd be a very wise, experienced investment who'd bring more to the locker room than a single other striker who's been mentioned. (In losing Terry, I doubt we should be replacing him with Lukaku or Mbappe. Icardi brings 0 charisma too)

Cavani. He's the only other player I've ever seen who played like-for-like when compared to Drogba. I miss that, I want that, and we'd benefit from that. Don't let anyone fool you into believing Cavani's some sort of goal-missing merchant. He has his misses, as does Suarez, but they score so so so many goals that it really doesn't matter. And age isn't a factor when you're as athletic as Cavani is. It is time, even though he is past his best. I think he'd keep up a similar goalscoring rate to Diego, and for sure have periods where he doesn't score, but it's those dry periods which can define a player, and Cavani offers all those qualities Drogba gave us when not scoring. I can see us selling Diego for 80m, and signing Cavani for 65m.

He's not trolling

Maybe this is a masterclass from Conte. A powermove. "You bought me a player I don't want, so I don't play him. Problem? If so, I go. If not, the regime changes and I pick the players from now on." That's been communicated to the board through this action IMO.