Belgiannutt

Why should i ?

Could you stop with your bitching about Cahill ? It's annoying.

Yeah it seems that way. Thanks for this summary. You made a small mistake though penalty against Newcastle away. should be home.

Neymar is an inverted winger not a striker. I'd prefer if money was spent on other positions that need strengthening: striker, centre midfield.

On a side note : an article just popped up where "Sport magazine" , a reliable belgian sports magazine, listed the wages off all the Belgian players active in PL. Hazard makes 135 000 euros.

Well you have a point but the thing is it's very common for people to like a player of the same nationality. It happens a lot and makes perfect sense. So James accusing Henrique of being biased because of his nationality can be true. Only Henrique or someone who knows Henrique personally can say for certain if it's true or not. Can we drop this argument? James apologised, you accepted it.The situation has been cleared up. I don't feel there 's any need to continue this discussion as it feels kinda pointless.

Mate i get what you mean but in all fairness if you read Henrique's post you'd see that he was being overprotective of Luiz and trying to shift the blame towards Cahill while it was very clear that Luiz was at fault not Cahill. James was questioning Henrique's motives for protecting Luiz and implying that he was biased because he was Brazilian. James didn't accuse all Brazilians of being biased. He accused Henrique of being biased and imho he was right.

True, but i don't think anyone claimed that he wasn't ?

Sucks that he lost the ball on the second goal but apart from that i thought he actually had a very good game. He was constantly taking on players and trying to make stuff happen.

http://watchhighlightsonline.blogspot.be/2012/10/video-juan-mata-second-goal-vs_20.html Hazard 's pass.

That third goal, what a pass.

Chelsea star Eden Hazard took the award as this week's Trend Micro stats Player of the Week. The 21-year-old has been in fine form this year and backed up his huge transfer fee during the 4-1 win over Norwich with a superb performance for the Blues. He scored a goal, created five goalscoring chances for his teammates, completed 80 of his 87 passes and posted an Opta score of 94/100.

Mate i'm disappointed in RDM for his response on the matter. That doesn't mean that i think he did a bad job but on this matter i had hoped he would have taken a more aggressive stance. No offense but i've always found the "do everything you can to stay on your feet" a bunch of crap. If there's contact it's a penalty. If a defender hinders the attacker it's a penalty. Clear and simple: in the box the defenders need to keep their hands and feet off the attackers else it's a penalty.

To me it looks like he's trying to remain diplomatic. His first part seems to side with Hazard. Saying he hopes there's not a prejudice against him + the part of " a foul is a foul." but that last part about culture seems to indicate that Hazard went down to easily. I just hoped RDM would have taken a little more aggresive stance in this matter. Ferguson for example wouldn't have hesitated in complaining about not gettting a penalty even if his team had won, afterwards he would have said something about it.

http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11668/8147889/Chelsea-manager-Roberto-Di-Matteo-warns-Eden-Hazard-he-must-try-to-stay-on-his-feet The first three penalties he got in the first few games were clear-cut penalties. "But there were a few others where he didn't get them so I wouldn't want the officials to have a prejudice against him. "If it's a foul, it's a foul. Sometimes they get them right, sometimes wrong. "I wouldn't accuse my players of going down too easily. It's a different culture. In England you need to try everything to stay on your feet." wtf ? That last sentence. He's basically saying that Hazard dived because he's from a different league (culture). Seriously. RDM really disappoints me with this.

1) Ivanovic Cahill Terry Cole Ramires Mikel Hazard Oscar Mata Torres 2) PL > CL > FA > Capital one cup 3) Oscar integrated into the pivot.=> Moses or Marin on the wings and Hazard and Mata interchanging. High pressing. Trying to play a bit more from our own strenght instead of always adapting to the opposition. 4) The new signings have been great but i think their still adapting so we haven't seen the best of them yet. The fact that Drogba is gone + the players that were bought have forced us to start playing more from back. Although i feel it would work better if we played Oscar in the double pivot. 5) Hard to say really. As far as we can. Hoping to challenge for the PL title. CL will depend on the draw. FA and Capital one : with our busy schedule i wouldn't mind getting knocked out quickly. 6) Marin i'm guessing will be mostly used as squad rotation. Sturridge Well that will depend greatly on Torres and how he performs but i would like for him to get more time on the pitch.

I see. Sorry my english isn't that great.

What do you mean with " let off " ?

I think we can't really credit him that. It was all about getting that second goal. Still he looked good and we saw some nice link up play between him, Mata and Oscar. Looked promising.

I think it was 10 percent luck, 20 percent skill, 15 percent concentrated power of will, 5 percent pleasure, 50 percent pain and a 100 percent reason to remember the name..... Sorry for the bad joke but i thought " if he's allowed to troll then why can't i ? "

Good discussion but i think it's a bit early days to revolve our whole system around 1 player. Atm we're still trying to balance our team and play all three of our playmakers. Also i don't think that's really something you decide beforehand. It get's decided by the performances of the players. Messi didn't get the superstar role, he took it with his own performances. I agree with you that Hazard's skillset has a more X-factor to it then Mata's or Oscar's. While Oscar and Mata have also shown that they can be decisive and create that X-factor (Oscar's goal vs Newcastle, Mata's heel flick against Stoke) i do feel their quality's lie elsewhere. Oscar has got the quality's to be a worldclass deep lying playmaker. I think he's the best distributor we've got. Great amount of stamina, good defensively, great passing range and he already has a tendency of picking up the ball deep. He doesn't really dribble that much he's more of a pass and move kinda player. Also when on the nr 10 position he doesn't really interchange that much. I mean he never really moves towards the wings. He always remains in a central position even if Hazard or Mata have moved into the centre. Mata's strong points are his movement, his passing range, his creative passing. He probably has 1 of the best crosses i've ever seen in my life. His goal and his assist vs Arsenal are proof of that. Both times great delivery. He also interchanged and combined well with Hazard. Hazard showed in his first 3 PL games what he could bring to the team. I do feel that 1 of the reasons why Hazard hasn't been able to replicate that form is because of Oscar's presence on the pitch. There's a clear lack of width when all three of them are playing. This congests the centre of the pitch and doesn't give any room to roam into as Hazard likes to do. This has resulted into Hazard being pushed out more to the wing (also ,i think,under instructions of RDM) which isn't doing anything good for his performance. Imo i think it would be best for the team if Oscar was brought back 1 row and put into the pivot while Hazard and Mata could then interchange between left wing and nr 10 with Moses on the right creating the width. Although i think we're not ready to play that way just yet but i do believe it's the way to go in the future.

Feel the same way. He could really become an awesome deeplying playmaker. He's got the quality's for it and he wouldn't need to change his style as he already likes to chase down the opposition aggressively and has got a tendency for dropping deep and picking up the ball.

Read my other posts on the matter... I'm done with this. I feel that there's way too much discussion on this situation. He tried a trick it didn't come off. Move on...

I get what you mean. A hard low cross between the defender and the goalkeeper is always very hard to defend against, but in this situation i don't think it was possible. I think this is just 1 of those situations where if a player does something flashy and it works people would be praising him for it but if it fails people would say it was bad and unnecessary. Creative players will try to do creative stuff. It won't always come off or be necessary but that's something that you have to kinda accept. You know, take the good with the bad. Just my opinion.

I think your being a bit harsh. I've watched the moment again and freezed it the moment before he takes the rabona. Three players in the box but not really anyone he could cross it too. Oscar is covered and isn't in a good position to kick the ball or head it in. Putting it hard and low also isn't really an option as you've got the 2 Arsenal defenders defending the first zone. Mata is running in behind Oscar and the 2 defenders but to get that ball in there over such a short distance, over the 2 defenders and on the head of Mata with his lesser foot. Very hard. Torres has peeled off and was probably the best option. It seemed to me that he noticed Mata's run and was trying to lift the ball over the 2 defenders. I think it could have worked with the rabona but i thought he didn't hit the ball as cleanly as he normally does. For example his rabona against Qpr was hit more cleanly and had a bigger lift. The rabona has as an advantage that you can get a lot of height on the ball, over a short distance and a quick drop as you don't really kick the ball but you lift it more. ( sorry hope you understand this explanation. I don't really know the proper vocabulary for this)