TorontoChelsea

Yeah, ManU are a very different team and my concern with them is different. Rooney and RVP are playing really well together and with Hernandez or Welbeck, they form a very dangerous triangle and Nani, Valencia, and Kagawa (who might not play due to injury) also can be dangerous in attack and they along with their fullbacks, can create some width. Their defence and central midfield are suspect so I think our passing and skill moves could work to good effect to expose them. Here's a couple of stats that shows the difference in styles: Total accurate crosses. Chelsea: 28, ManU: 49. Total Successful Dribbles: Chelsea: 62, ManU: 44

AVB for 13.3M? Got half a crappy season out of him. I would have done that for much less. (say 9.4 million) Torres is certainly one of the worst. ManU had a couple of awful ones. Veron for close to 30M was a bust. Anderson was over 20M. He's still around but it's been five crappy years.

Assou-Ekotto and Parker would also be starters if healthy. And not having Terry for one game is not really a loss. Terry, Luiz, and Cahill are all around the same ability and rotate anyway. I also think that people don't appreciate how teams game-plan. I am sure the Spurs were planning their attack (as they always do) around Bale. With a coach like AVB, that means tons of plays and diagrams drawn up. We were all thinking about how they were going to use their width to try to counter our narrow midfield and I am sure they would have.To have that go up in smoke minutes before a game starts has a major impact. Having more shots does not necessarily equal having more chances to score, but Spurs did create more chances to score as well. A team can get 15 shots and another 9 and have more chances, but Spurs had 26 shots. That means that they were getting the ball in dangerous areas a hell of a lot. They weren't taking shots from 50 yards out. We did deserve to win because we limited our mistakes and were more ruthless in finishing. "we completely dominated the game" is just nonsense.

First of all, Spurs were down four starters including probably their two best players and their key player was lost at the last moment which meant that the teams' entire tactics were thrown out the window (can just imagine what that did to a tactical coach like AVB). That Spurs team was mid-table quality and with no preparation Second of all, we didn't dominate them at all. Spurs definitely had more opportunities to score than we did. It wasn't just that small window. Sigurdsson alone had about 4 decent chances to score but luckily for us, he's not Bale and he can't finish. We kept letting their midfielders into dangerous spots right outside the box unmolested. Even late in the game when we should have been feverishly protecting a 3-2 lead, we let Spurs have way too many chances. The ball falls a little better to Adebayor or he's a little sharper, he scores in the 90th minute. Lennon and Walker both had dangerous shots from just outside the box that were saved in the 85-90 minute period and they were allowed to just run the ball up for those shots. You can't dominate a team and be outshot 26-10. We won because Mata was brilliant and Walker and Gallas were atrocious.Luckily, we have Mata and they have Gallas and Walker so we deserved to win, but it was not some fantastic performance by any stretch of the imagination and it was a harbinger to the problems we had against Shakhtar. And yes, you can attack and defend at the same time. It's not one or the other. We don't need to play a defensive formation, but our attacking players have to be more responsible in their defensive duties. You can't have prolonged success if your attacking players aren't helping out at all on the defensive end.

Right now, we have a very imbalanced squad. We lack width, we lack a deep-lying midfielder, we lack defensive discipline. What we have is an incredibly talented team and a coach who is a quick learner so that will win us a lot of games but, we do need tinkering. The parts we have don't really seem to fit. It's the same old story of lack of coaching continuity and input on transfers. For example, there is no style of play or formation that will suite a player like Mata (who is fantastic in the style we play now but was almost useless when we played the defensive counter-attack in the CL last season) and also suite a player like Ramires (who was awesome in those CL contests but is not a ball possession type of player on either side of the ball-he isn't a very good passer and is too aggressive a tackler for the system). I don't want to come off as whining or anything because we are definitely on the right path and are off to a fantastic start, but I also think that positive results have blinded some people to some real flaws that need to be fixed. Because we beat Arsenal and Spurs, people act as if we dominated them. We didn't. We were out-shot 42-20 in those two matches. (We've given up 49 shots in our last two matches) That's just not a ratio you can keep up and expect sustained success even with a goalie as awesome as Cech.

Even more than that. Mikel is one of the reasons we win trophies. An excellent player.

It's odd to me how much Torres was defended last year when he was awful. This year, he's been OK. He's not the long-term answer to our striker question. Torres was certainly not the problem against Shakhtar. People love our attacking midfield 3 so they don't want to blame them for anything, but they were terrible. I'd really like to see RDM rotating players into the attack because 1) I think rotation is necessary 2) I think those three can get too cute sometimes and could use a different sort of player playing alongside them. When it comes off, it's brilliant, but when it doesn't, it's just annoying. Really would like to see Oscar pick up his game some as well. He burst on the scene against Juve and was fantastic and then had a solid game against Stoke, but he's simply not getting involved in the scoring enough. 4 starts and 2 sub appearances in the league, 0 goals, 0 assists. Hasn't really been involved in the goals. He's the best defensively of the front three, but so was Kalou. (I'm not comparing Oscar to Kalou, just pointing out that you don't splash big money for a player who is solid defensively). I think Oscar will come good, he has all the skills necessary, it might just take a little bit of time and I'm willing to be patient. Still not sure why RDM hasn't played Moses on the right after his brief sub appearance where he looked quite good. It seems like RDM has a very difficult time trusting players. I don't want to see wholesale changes or anything remotely like that, just want to see us rotating 14-15 players into the game rather than 12.

Both? That's too much to ask for!!

I seem like the only one who wants the English teams to advance. A lot of people hate other clubs, I don't care at all about them, I want what's best for Chelsea and it's better for Chelsea if English clubs stay in the tournament longer. It's not just the coefficient, it's that extra games in the CL means a harder time in the league. Even getting to the quarterfinals, means an extra 4 crucial games in late February through early April. That means that you have to rotate players in games in the league. It means your players get tired, get more prone to injury, etc...Look at us late last year. We were playing our bench in league games for the last month and a half because of the FA Cup and CL.

Watched the game. They just outplayed us. Our front four was awful. Didn't track back properly and our midfield was overwhelmed. Not sure how anyone could vote for someone other than Cech or maybe Mikel as MOTM. Oscar was atrocious. Hazard had a few good moves, but was terrible. Mata was invisible. Torres was useless. Our front four was also dispossessed a ridiculous 13 times. Not all that surprising as I see this game as a continuation of our problems against Spurs where we gave up 25 shots to a team missing a few of its best players. RDM definitely needs to do some tweaking to limit the number of chances we are giving the opposition. Not time to panic at all, but work needs to be done.

That's some horrible photoshopping.

Pretty sure we'll see the usual starting XI and I see something like 2-2 or 3-2 for either team. ManU has an extremely dangerous attack and are a weak defensive side.

And even then you can always re-activate it. I used to work in casinos. I know their tricks. Basically, you always lose. (And the reason football bets often look good is that it's not a straight yes or no proposition. There's also the possibility of a draw which happens a lot.

Didn't watch the game. A few general thoughts. 1) Teams need about 14-15 regular outfield players. Chelsea now seem to have 12. RDM has to work some other players in. You can't play the same starting XI every match. 2) In all competitions, in games I haven't watched fully, Chelsea have 1 win, draw and 6 losses. In games I've watched fully, Chelsea have 8 wins, 2 draws.

Exactly. This is a 6 point game in the group. Obviously hoping for a win, but a draw wouldn't be the end of the world as we could beat Shakhtar at the Bridge and take 4 points from 2 games and hold them to 1. A loss would be make our path to getting to the next round more difficult..

The Intercontinental Cup was before and that has some history but it was always viewed as a minor tournament in Europe. European teams often declined to even play in the tournament and viewed more as a distraction than anything. It's always been a bigger tournament outside of Europe. As I said, I want Chelsea to win, but it's not a high priority.

Biggest tournament in club football? That's the Champions League by a mile. This is a very minor tournament with very little prestige and almost no history. Still want to win it because winning is always better and this is the easiest tournament we'll ever have (2 matches both against inferior clubs).

Who is going to vote "no" on this? Of course I'd like to see Chelsea win it even though it's not a high priority IMO.

All it takes is one bad pass or one mistake and the same old people come back with the "see, I told you he was useless" as if the last five years haven't proven otherwise.

Damn. Going to miss the game tomorrow as I have to help out a friend on set. I will be able to watch the hi-lights but there are many things they miss. Sigh...

I actually though Mikel's second half was below his usual high standard. In the first half, our defensive play was excellent. In particular I loved the way we kept forcing Dempsy back, turning their fast breaks into nothing, but in the second half, we gave Spurs way too many opportunities to score. This was a severely weakened Spurs side and they had 26 attempts at goal including a lot of very good opportunities. I am not blaming this all on Mikel by any stretch of the imagination, but our defensive problems went beyond just set-pieces and one 10 minute period. There were a few plays late in the game where Spurs players seemed to just cut through us and get the ball into dangerous areas easily. There was one just awful play by our double pivot when we were up 3-2 and Lennon just carried the ball past Ramires and Mikel into a dangerous position. Thought Ramires had one of the best halves I've seen from him this season in the first half but was very poor in the second half.

Busquets would theoretically (because it's not going to happen) replace Mikel. Anyway, Ramires is likely to be a rotation player in the future anyhow.

It'd be 3 games in 8 days. That's how you exhaust players. No team in the world sticks with the exact same starting XI every game that matters. It's just not possible.

I wouldn't rate him as the best, but he's in the top tier and maybe the single most important player to his team now that RVP is in Manchester.

I think we'll see something like that although not sure if RDM trusts Sturridge as striker yet.