dee25

"Outpour of emotion" he says.. Yes how dare I have the temerity to disagree with Lord Lionsden. If there's one thing that makes me laugh are certain members on here who say things just for the mere sake of being controversial. They look at which way the wind blows and go the opposite way and somehow they actually believe that their opinion is "enlightened" just because they dared to deviate from the norm. It's funny how these people can continuously dish it out, but the moment you challenge their views they resort to straw-man responses like"outpour of emotion". Child please.

Wow. I think this is the most off the mark assessment of Hazard I've ever come across, with all due respect. It's almost as if you've never watched him before. That isn't meant as an insult, it's just shocking that a Chelsea fan can say with straight face "Hazard lacks the natural instincts of an attacking midfielder." I can list examples after examples after examples of how wrong this is, hell take the goal we scored against City last weekend. You say that Hazard lacks the ability to asses situations before he gets on the ball but he was actually the one that instructed Ivanovic and pointed to the spot he wanted the ball delivered. Iva didn't switch play to Hazard by his own accord, it was Hazard that facilitated it. When that ball came from Iva, Eden played it first time because he had already seen the goal happen in his head before Iva had even crossed the freaking ball. That's the very definition of 'playmaking' and there are quite literally countless and countless of examples where Hazard has demonstrated this ability. Hazard isn't perfect. There're areas of his game that he needs to refine but as an attacking midfielder, he's the complete package. He does it all. His decision making might still need some improvement, but saying that he has no "speed of thought" to play in the no. 10 position is conclusively wrong. On all accounts. I think I'm just going to stop here, log off and file this whole conversation under the heading of "bizarre things you read on TC".

Completely agree with this. We've scored the most goals in the league but compared to the other top 4 teams, we don't have enough players who offer a consistent goal threat. City have Toure, Aguero and now Bony. Even Arsenal have Sanchez along with Giroud (Walcott too has goals in him). Hazard chips in every now and then and so does Oscar but they don't do so consistently. So our only reliable goalscorer is Costa and I think that's one of the reasons why we struggle away from home against lesser sides and one of the reasons why I think we should have kept Schurrle despite his poor performances this season, at the very least he offered something different. Cuadrado seems like he takes a lot of shots, so hopefully he'll score goals here.

I choked on my coffee after reading this. The question of whether Hazard should be played in the middle is dependant on a whole host of factors, but to say that he doesn't have the speed of thought and vision to play that role is quite frankly an inaccurate assessment of the player. Hazard's natural inclination is to create goals. He demonstrates this in every game.

I thought he had a good game for the most part but him diddling on the ball and then loosing it leading to us conceding.....god that really pissed me off more than it probably should. The goal is ultimately Courtois' fault but that mistake by Matic put the team under pressure that could have been avoided. I really rate him highly but at 26 years of age he needs to cut out those sort of silly mistakes from his game. His sloppiness on the ball is becoming too frequent for my liking.

I'll admit. That 2nd half was embarrassing. Top of the league and playing at home but we're booting the ball, bringing on Cahill for an attacking player and desperately clinging on. They made about 11 attempts. We made like 3. Cringeworthy

No. He most certainly would not be developing the way he is now were he still here. Kevin is given a lot of creative license at Wolfsburg. He's free to make mistakes. You put Oscar in that team and allow him to do whatever he wants with the ball, he'll also look impressive too after a season.

Holy....

3-0 now. Can't wait to see this team with Schurrle.

There's something very, very flawed about a system that completely overlooks this misconduct but yet expedites a retrospective charge for a apparent stamp. Where's the fairness? Where's the equal treatment? The FA basically picks and chooses, arbitrarily, what offences they want to charge. It operates more like freaking a buffet than a legitimate governing board.

In this fixture last season, we had Torres upfront, Lamps-Ramires in midfield and Cole was still playing LB. Even without Cesc and Costa, we're still a better team than we were. City on the other hand are somewhat declining and they'll be missing Yaya Toure. We got this. Drogba over Remy. You need presence and big character in these sort of games.

Even for 15-20M, there's something very unsettling to me about paying that amount of money for a player who hasn't managed to consistently perform well in the Ukrainian league. From what I've read he's shown flashes of quality but generally hasn't impressed all that much but you're telling me that he's going to come to the premier league, in the middle of the season, to a more disciplined system than he's used to and with less playing time than he's used to and suddenly be able to make a big enough impact? Mata, KDB, Moses, Salah, Schurrle - all have struggled to impress but somehow a 24 yr old from the Ukrainian league who isn't even the best player in his team will come in the middle of the season and do better than all those players? It just seems like fantasy thinking.

Definitely, our pressing is disjointed at times and easily bypassed. I think the problem though is more done to personnel than tactics. A big part of pressing effectively is dependant on defenders being able to engage the opponent further upfield. In that still image from the spurs game you posted, the defensive line should push up to close up the gap. If they do that the space in midfield would be smaller and it would then be easier to recover the ball. Pressing is about minimizing space but it's hard to do that against good opposition when the centre backs are slow. Speaking about defending, saw this floating around... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWgXoDWxh3M&feature=youtu.be How can the team press effectively, when you have defenders backing off and backing off and backing off? That's the opposite of pressing and it also makes the job of the holding midfielder a lot more difficult because each time a defender backs off the space grows. It sounds so simplistic, but if you put in a quick and mobile centre back in that defensive line, our pressing will improve significantly.

I highly doubt only one of his defensive mistakes has resulted in a goal. Off the top of my head, he gave away a penalty against Spurs and scuffed a clearance against newcastle at SJP. Already that's two defensive errors that lead to goals and I'm sure if we were to examine the goals we've conceded we'll find more. The whole 'errors leading to a goal' stat is one of the most useless football stats. Not only is the criteria of what constitute an error very rigid but there're so many factors that prevents a defenders errors from being costly. A goalkeeper might make an outstanding save that prevents an error from resulting into a goal. Or another player might step in and bail the defender out. So what exactly is the point of the stat? If anything, the fact that Cahill has made 4 defensive errors and only one of them has resulted in a goal (according to these statistics) is more a reflection of the goalkeeper and other defenders than Cahill himself. What these stats show me is that other players are having to cover for Cahill.

Let's just hope this is just like the Guarin rumors that popped up last January window. All signs were pointing to us signing him and then out of nowhere we snatched Matic. I can only pray a similar thing happens again.

City were mostly restricted to long shots from the edge of the box. There were only about two occasions where Middlesborough were scrambling, which is expected of a team of City's quality but saying that they created many clear cut chances isn't an accurate reflection of the game. Their final ball was poor and it was too easy for the Middlesbrough defence to make interceptions. Honestly If it were Chelsea that played that way I highly doubt you'd be saying, "we dominated" "a goal looked inevitable" "we were just unlucky to score". No you'd be talking about how we had 11 corners and barely posed a threat or about how most of our chances were long shots or about how our midfield was overrun by championship opposition or about how we were lucky we didn't lose by more goals. I think a lot of times you judge the performances of this team through pessimistic-tinted glasses. It's only natural to be harder on the club you support but sometimes you remind me of those parents who are always moaning about their kids but constantly praising their friends' children. This isn't a slight on you, just an observation. Maybe you should loosen up a bit? I always feel this sense of impending doom whenever I read your posts!

I agree Middlesbrough are a pretty decent side but City were dire in attack. I don't know how you can say they had a lot of clear-cut chances. They had 1 or 2 clear chances - the Lampard shot that hit the post and the Boyata fluffed shot inside the area. If anything City were very lucky to lose by 2 goals.

This. An accurate summary of this team captured in one sentence.

I can also name at least 4 games that Cesc have been shit who you routinely defend irregardless of poor performances.

"many" is an exaggeration. Just as big of an exaggeration as saying we lost because Matic wasn't there.

I really haven't seen enough of him to offer a sound opinion but there were times when I tuned in to a Fiorentina match to watch Jovetic and I always ended up paying more attention to Cuadrado. I have reservations about spending that amount of money on a player who seems to be a marginal improvement on our options for right wing but the thing is, if City are able to retain the premiership, it'll be the 6th season we haven't won the league and the gap between ourselves and them, in terms of commercial revenue, brand appeal etc will widen further. So the people who are saying that we should wait until the summer for someone like Reus need to consider what the possibility of City retaining the title and winning it for the 3rd time in 4 years will mean for us in terms of being able to compete for the best players and also retaining our best players, i.e Hazard. I think the board should do all they can to put the team in the best possible position to win the league and having Cuadrado in place of Salah will strengthen the squad considerably. 26M seems like a lot to spend on him but the implications of not winning the league, I feel, would be more costly.

I'm beginning to wonder if he can tell apart his enemies from his friends. What sane manager would applaud the liverpool fans and ignore his own supporters who out-sung the home crowd for close to 60 mins of the match? Who does that? Knowing full well the animosity that exists between Chelsea and Liverpool, you applaud the home fans and snub your own. That's just so messed up, I'm loss for words. Feel really bad for the fans who travelled. They were brilliant and don't deserve that at all.

This might probably sound 'over the top' but in all honesty his comments and treatment of the fans is now bordering on degrading. People can rationalize it as him trying to lift the crowd but what he's doing is degrading the fans. Plain and simple. Just really sad.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry

Just a reminder of some of the assists and goals he's produced this season.... I thought I'd post this because from the comments in the last few pages one would think that Oscar is this player who can't so much as string together 5 passes. I agree with those who are saying that he has room for improvement and this season I think there are clear signs that Oscar has taken his offensive game up a level, if anything that should give us encouragement that he's capable of improving weak areas of his game. The comments that Oscar won't get any better than he is now are far off the mark. The one-touch assist he made for Cesc's goal against Palace, his assist for Remy's goal against Swansea, his assist for Costa's goal against West Brom, his assist for Drogba's goal against Spurs - those were all very different assists to 4 very different players but every one of them was incisive. This was a dimension in his game that was lacking last season but he's made noticeable improvements this season. I think people are writing him off too prematurely. We all want Jose to give more opportunities to the academy youth players, but if you can't be patient with Oscar and allow him time to grow as a player how on earth are you going to be patient with the likes of RLC, Boga etc? Do folks think that these kids are going to come into the team and suddenly turn into world beaters after a season?