Stats

I am one who always voices an opinion on the lack of opportunites for the young ones and I stated that RLC should have been given more minutes against Sporting and the likes of Baker should have played against Shrewsbury etc. But yesterday was not the one. Going into an away game against arguably the best team in the Championship who are playing their best team, there is always a chance of a giant-killing. If were at home then possibly more reason but this is the QF stage and we are serious about winning it. Boga and RLC are top talents but they have never started a competitive fixture before. To throw them into an 11 against a team like Derby is very risky. You understood why RLC did not start the game against Sporting etc but for this game you are surprised that he did not play any of the youngsters. Sporting Lisbon if anything would have been the best game to start the likes of RLC and Boga. A game where only pride was at stake and we were at home. Going to Derby is not the ideal place to just throw around 3 youngsters in the first team. Ake less so because he has more first team experience however he has just recovering an inury but Derby is a very tough game. Although the COC is not the most prestigious trophy, with where we are now and considering the teams left in the competition I and everyone else I assume would be quite annoyed if we did not go on and win it considering the last time we won the trophy was in 2007. If we played 3 youngsters in the starting 11 and we went out we would be regretting that if we played a stronger team we might have just gone through. You can see while we deserved it yesterday, it was no easy game despite a very strong 11 out there.

Seriously? I think he has grown leaps and bounds this season and established himself as one of the best DM around Europe if not the best one.

WOW. Crowd have been excellent tonight

He has had a good game. Give it a rest.

Are you taking the piss or what? What is wrong with you?

Every striker has their bad game even against the poorest of teams. Drogba obviously is not as good as he used to be but he certainly has proven me wrong in a Chelsea shirt since returning.

Another Fabregas assist

I did warn everyone

I wanted Remy starting as I stated but you can't claim Drogba is "not good enough" when he has proved people wrong. He already has 6 goals to his name and scored in some big games as well.

He has a point tbh. Remy is a proven PL striker and is struggling to get minutes let alone a start. Bamford on the other hand has never played a PL game before and people think it is realistic for him to come in and play as third striker and be happy. He will hardly get games looking at it on the bigger scale. I don't see what he said that makes it a poor comment. He has a very valid point.

He is on the bench. Either way I am really frustrated at the lack of appearances he is getting.

Aguero has got even better since leaving Atletico. Harsh comment when in the first leg last season he was injured and the second leg he went off injured after 45 minutes. A fit Aguero can really trouble that Barca defence. World's best striker for me.

Boga can play LW very effectively as well. It would not be hard to instruct Boga to play as a winger. He has the qualities. Sterling only started playing that no.10 role late last season and done it very effectively. Boga can be a great no.10 whilst also being an effective winger.

Still our biggest threat though either way. Hopefully he has an off game.

Ibra was injured for the 2nd leg as well. We must take that into account. When it comes to the UCL, form book in the domestic league goes out the window. We won the UCL finishing 6th. Dortmund are around the relegation zone in their league but always look strong in the UCL. In the UCL every teams wants to raise their game.

Yes, Jason. You guessed right

It was really OTT with the RLC and the way his debut was being built up by the media. It goes to show that either the media don't have faith in Mourinho integrating youth players into a first team or highlights our poor track record in developing young players at the club. The reason I say this is that Arsenal had a younger player than RLC making his debut against Galatasaray named Ainsley Maitland-Niles who is a real talent. You did not hear any of the same hype about him even though he was actually given the chance by Wenger to play much longer on the field then the odd 8 minutes we gave RLC. Like yeah I was pleased to see RLC make his deut but the way it was all built up, you would think he is the second coming of Christ FFS.

Costa is the only one out of those names that I reckon will be rested. The rest will most likely start or play some part in that match.

His finishing was "dogshit". He could of scored a hattrick today and needs to work on his finishing badly but he was the only player who actually caused United problems. Coutinho to a lesser extent. If Sterling scores 2 of those chances we are suddenly calling him MOTM. He was the only attacking outlet who offered anything for them. Shame his finishing was not up to scratch but if he works on his finishing he will turn out to be a world class player. He really needs to think hard if he wants to sign a contract at a club who are showing no signs of progress and have wasted money on inadequate players.

I am not saying his technique is perfect but it is not poor. You don't get goals like the one he did against Everton (2nd goal) unless you have some form of technique. That was a brilliant finish, with his left foot as well. Some of his goals for Atletico were quality as well.

Costa's goal against Arsenal. Costa proving he is a big game striker and it was assisted by Fabregas of all people. They chose to not get Fabregas because they had Ozil and on that day, the player who made the difference showed. It was like a "how do you feel" moment.

What I think he is saying, which he explained below Barbara is that in terms of their best players, recently they have had key players injured and still won which is true. They had the equivalent of us having Terry, Matic, Fabregas and Hazard injured. Against Everton they had their best defender injured, their best midfielder/playmaker injured and their best striker, literally and have won every single game with these key injures. They have all three strikers currently injured and have had to play Pozo, who is 18 and litte first team experience up front. That is similar to us having, Costa, Remy and Drogba injured and having a makeshift striker in Schurrle upfront or playing a youth team striker such as Solanke or Brown. Credit goes to them.

Courtois knows that he is not infallible and has a WC keeper behind him in the pecking order but Courtois has been very solid this season. Mourinho made a decision for the future of the club that Courtois will be our no.1 and he has justified it. What reasoning will it be to drop him unless he was playing poor? And Mourinho has rotated Courtois a few times this season already but rightfully so imo, Courtois is the first choice keeper at this club.

Come on. That was not the reason for bringing on Dider today imo. We had a man advantage and Costa can hold the ball up well anyway. Drogba was brought on because right now he is the second choice striker. I would have rather Remy come on simply because we have not seen him play enough minutes in a Chelsea shirt and assuming he is content will be here longer than Drogba. Costa may not do it as well but he is good at holding up the ball and Remy can stretch defences. It was highly unlikely that Hull would attack us after that red card anyway.

Like I was saying before, if Cahill was half as bad as people were making out, Mourinho would have dropped him. It is as simple as that. Mourinho would not be frightened to play Ivanovic or Zouma at the back if he thought Cahill was a liability. Ivanovic has had many solid games for us in that position so it is not as if he is not trusted. Cahill makes errors, I accept that but the level people are making it sound at is as if he is doing Kolo Toure-esque mistakes. People will hunt down any error he makes but ignore the positives. He did one bad challenge which was the fault of our DM for being sloppy in possession but apart from that he literally won neaely every single tussle he had whether that was in the air or on foot. But your last sentence, couldn't agree any more.