TrippingStep

Are you serious when you say that Falcao could not make problems for Vidic and others. He's not a targetman and I'm not sure we need one. I would prefer an all-around like Cavani or the Falcao would make moves. Ok he doesn't play a lot with his back to goal but we don't need him to do it that often. And I'm sure he's capable of doing an enough good job of it when it's needed. And I don't see no reason why oscar and Hazard could not play with him. I even think that Hazard would like to play with a striker like him who would cut, taking the spaces in a good timing.

It would be a mistake to sign him, he has an horrible first touch, has not a good awareness on the ball to pass it, can only push the ball to eliminate someone. A Torres bis with only a better header. He's a counter-attack forward.

Hard crosses can be avove the knee level or at hip level. For me it would means there is a collective move on a side, a run from a player that would then unleash a cross in a zone where Falcao would run.

yes we could use him but what I mean is that it's not necessary to use Falcao. And for Torres I don't know, he doesn't make good moves inside the box. For me he's a counter-attack forward. Even at Liverpool where he was at his best, Liverpool had difficulties to score against opponents who were sitting deep.

I hope Chelsea understand that Oscar will never be a strong, stocky player. He will always be a slim, fast, agile player. I watched him in the game against Tottenham and I could see from that alone, he'll be fine in England." I like this quote from weber in the article.

Thanks. It means that there is more goals from hard cross where he cuts in and passes in front of the defenders. That means we don't especially need crosses like Gerrard or DeBruyne.

One question about the crossing stats. It's not only aerial one, right? the grounded pass in front of the goal are considered a cross no?

I agree the front 4 need to do more but even last year, the team was not very good in defense when not parking the bus. It seems we don't have a system where the front 4 must do defensive work but not necessarly by tracking back very far everytime, cutting the passing lanes, and pressing when we could trap them in a zone. I really think we could have a better balance if we could play Mikel in front of the defense, Ramires and Oscar in front of him, Hazard left, Mata right. Working more the relationship between the wide back and the "wingers". But I don't think Cole and Ivanovic can run this much, Cole could when younger. In the defensive system, in an ideal world, we should see more trap between wide back, Ramires or oscar and Mata or Hazard depending on which side it is and it would set-up conter-attacks for Hazard and Mata. AVB idea but not necessarly with a high line defensively but he failed miserably because we don't have the pace and the runs behind. But we can't do that because we lack players that have more pace, and can do more runs in our back 5.

I think the problem is that the english formations seems to be too easily happy to sit back with the back 4 in line, not pressing the ball. There should be more mix between the zone and pressing.

I agree and what made it worse was that we often had too many players in the same line around their box, not enough people in the middle to keep the ball and moving it and if you add that our back 5 are not very fast and agile, there was a huge gap in midfield. But even in the champion's league win, I thought that the team was not defending that well if you consider that we were parking the bus around our box. There was a bit of luck that when players were having good chances in the box, they didn't make it. Gomez had two huge chances in the beginning of the final.

I agree, He should try to work on curling shots with contact between front and inside. I don't know what they did at Lille but he has a bad habit of trying power shots from the front of his foot and because he tries too much to have the ball not going 5 meters high, keeping it low it's stuck in the ground with too much loss of power.

Shaktar are the best team of this group. They had also many chances to score against Juventus and should have won against them. To have a chance in this match, we shouldn't have conceded the goal this early in the match. Their work rate and pace were killing us in the counter-attacks. The positive thing is they didn't score more and often shooted in the middle of our goal or didn't connect well on their occasions in the 6 meters line in their free-kick and corners. I think we should work on a 4-3-3 for the next match against them and work on the positioning and team pressing, where to press, trying to trap them in a side of the pitch. Mikel in front of the defence, Ramires oscar in front of him, working more on overlap patterns with Hazard Cole, Mata Ivanovic. We need to work on run patterns between our player, on the covering track for the three midfielders. If you look at our best chances yesterday, it was run from behind toward the box or in the hole from Hazard and Oscar. I think the reason Mata ghosted the game was because when he was marked out high in the pitch near the box, he didn't come back enough for trying to work an other attack. They were often too many of our player on the same line glued to the defenders in attack, making difficult to create space to open up their defenses.

Well, I'm glad that you compare him to the likes of Iniesta. As one of my first post on this topic was to say that I hated the press comparing him to Messi. As for me he was more like an Iniesta, for his link-up play and the ability to create space for others as he often moves players with him. And I don't blame you if you could get a wrong impression watching the last game of Lille as they were not playing very good, Hazard scored quite a lot in the last games for them but he was playing behind the striker and they were using him for his pace. Their team was tired, were sitting deep and would only count on the pace of Hazard in counter-attacks. He was not as involved in their play. They were playing a lot better in the beginning of the season and without silly errors and more firepower upfront, they could have been easily in first place in the first half of the season. He was pulling the strings in the midfield then.

I've seen only the first 70 minutes of the game but I agree with you. I thought he was moving a lot more and defensively especially in the first half, I thought he was closing well the passing lane to their defensive midfielder. I think that he's just more fit than in the beginning of the season, he lost some fat and can move longer. When you look at the end of the youtube video when he is shirtless, he seemed to have lost some pounds. In the first games, he had good moments but alo quite sloppy passes and he was standing still a lot more often.

On this one, I will agree with you. His finishing is not his strongest point but I think he will improve. He will be in more situations like that here than at Lille. From what i've seen, he seems to enjoy himself a lot more here with the faster pace of the game than at Lille where they would play many passes backwards or between the defenders and at times would get bored by it, or making runs in the intervals and not receiving passes because the other players would not read the play quickly. At Lille he would have to overdo things many times for things to happen on the pitch.

Yaya Touré at Barcelona played as a defensive midfielder.

I've seen the miss on the end of the match. He should have attacked the ball more or control it, he would have striked it better. He open his foot too much and the little bounce means he didn't strike it cleanly. I've not seen the last 20 minutes but from I've seen, if the penalty was whistled and he had scored on his chances, it would have been a really good game of him. But at least he took the match seriously. And too bad that the ref whitsled the fault on Bertrand when the ball came to him driving toward the box, I think Torres or Ramires would have got a great opportunity in front of the goal on the end if the play wouldn't have stopped.

The ref was awful but Torres seemed pissed very early in the match. He even could have been awarded a red card when he put his foot on the legs on a player that was laid down in the pitch.

For me the line-up against QPR was a repetition before the game against Juventus. You can only explain Bertrand and Ramires on the wings if you think about the wing-backs of Juventus in their 3-5-2. I think RDM's thinking was to use this game as a practice for this line-up. We only try quick counter-attacks today, we didn't try to control the game.

What was annoying was the way he was running forward like a bull with the ball when he was 50 meters away from the goals and 3-4 QPR players in front of him. He lost a ton of balls today because he was trying nearly impossible rushs with ball instead of keeping the ball in the team.

I've not seen the last 20 minutes. But with Ramires and Bertrand on the wings in the line-up, mikel-lampard in midfield in front of the defense. RDM didn't want to control the game, Bertrand and Ramires are pure counter-attacking players. Mata was not there to help the midfield in the build-up. But even if Hazard would have done it, there would only have Torres upfront. Against QPR, I was expecting that he would have started with Moses and Oscar and not Bertrand and Ramires.

We played like it was a friendly game and they played like it was an european final. I didn't understand many things. Mata was collecting the ball very deep and I didn't understand why Hazard played a lot with his back to goal quite high in the pitch like a big holding forward moving from left to right especially as there was no one playing around him, what was the idea I don't know if the belgian commentator was joking or not when he said the players had a party in the yacht of Abramovitch the day before

Don't know. We lack fullbacks and a great forward who would be good in link-up play. And we have great ball holders in midfield but too often, they play sideways pass and not in the intervals and move forward to the box and then there isn't space to play with pace close to the box.

Yes and like I said earlier, He won't have to overdo things here like he had to sometimes at Lille. The thing I like the most about his game is the quick exchanges of position and passes. Here he will do it on a lot more regular basis than back at Lille where many other players were quite average if not poor on first touches and quick passes. I remember a game at Montpellier in 2011 the year Lille won the title, many said he hadn't go a good game but he tried a lot and made many efforts but on countless occasions where he was in good position and in movement between the lines with a bit of space, the midfielders would not pass the ball to him quickly, their heads not up, taking too many touches to control the ball and watching what's going around and then pass backwards to a defender because the door closed. That's not to say he hadn't poor games but I've always thought that the best part of his game was not used well at Lille as their midfield Mavuba and Balmont are quite poor in passing the ball quickly and lacks vision.

It's Arsenal who must be fuming to have bought Gervinho. They bought a missile withouth the launcher and the tracking device that was Hazard Like Pardew said, with his ability to move with the ball easily on his feet, you can time your run off him and Gervinho was one that capitalized a lot on this.