Dion

So you didn't even bother to wait for the rest of game before evaluating his performance in the match? That's so kind of you. Not only that but you decided to single him out in a half where everyone played below their standards.

Yep, that's exactly what I said. Bring Torres back. You did actually get the point, congratulations. It's always a pleasure to have a conversation with someone who can read.

How come yesterday's game was the last nail in the coffin when his performance was better than against Burnley? The last nail in the coffin is the game when he actually shows improvement? That makes a hell lot of sense. And we shouldn't discuss it because it has been discussed for the last 8 months already. It would be way more productive to discuss his performances in this season, and he's been hot and cold so far.

I'm not even sure Torres is inconsistent. He's consistently bad with the odd average game in between. Oscar can look good at least. But which of our regular starters was 21/22 years old? Even Hazard, arguably our best player, has had his fair share of bad games, although not as many as Oscar. It is bound to happen with the majority of young players.

I concur. I do think Courtois is already better than Cech as many other people here do (or at the very least about the same level while younger), but sometimes I get the feeling that a few people in this thread seem a bit too happy with benching and dismissing Petr for my liking. He's still a top goalkeeper and one who did so much for us, he deserves respectful treatment.

Am I biased in thinking he looks ten times better in a Chelsea jersey? vs.

Tell me about it. I must have been watching the wrong match or that's what I thought in the whole first half.

It is my dream partnership too In all seriousness though, I'm not sure having Ramires instead of Cesc would have made much of a difference there. If anything he would have misplaced some of the passes Cesc performed. And I suppose Matic would still be there but he struggled a bit today.

We were a little bit slow in the first half. But I don't think we ever looked predictable.

Even in the first half he already looked better than in the game against Burnsley. Unfortunately some can't see the difference between individual and team performance and others can't even analyze performance past the scoreboard. Shame.

Matic and Fabregas were also dispossessed in areas that almost led to us conceding a goal. Leicester was pressing and anticipating passes pretty well, many won't acknowledge that but it was the reason why we were countered so dangerously at times.

Love how Courtois doesn't just kick the ball ahead aimlessly but passes to someone close to him maintaining us in possession instead.

My stream has just died, can anyone share another link?

OMG, Oscar, Iva and Costa.

Haven't you noticed this is our worst performance ever? I have seen people nominate at least 5 or 6 players having a shocker today, LMAO.

Same thing as the first part of the first half. It's not that we weren't dominating, it's that we were losing possession in bad positions thus providing them good opportunities to attack us.

We've been a bit slow, yes. But the worst problem was losing possession at the wrong places in the wrong times, those were the times when we looked in danger but even then Courtois had to make what? 1/2 saves? And shots that came from outside the box. We were dictating the game for about half of the time. We suffered some dangerous counter attacks and later we were too slow in our own counter attacks. We weren't too bad IMO. Our finishing was really off though.

Tbf they're way better than I expected and have played this first half really well. Also, I had forgotten how the overreaction here could be absurd, sometimes I feel I'm watching a completely different game from some of the people posting.

Our dribbling hasn't been effective today. We're being dispossessed a lot.

Oscar seems more lively today. Hope he keeps it up.

Amen.

It's funny that I'd probably think he's an asshole if he tried to cheat on her with pretty much anyone else, but with her sister? What a boss! The man has got balls of steel, only a crazy motherfucker would do that.

I swear my heart skipped a beat when I read that.

Because Cesc plays better and impacts the game way more from deep. I've always thought his best position was there and Mourinho seems to think the same from his declarations and from the way he's employing Fabregas. Why should he play CAM when he's better at DLP? Or even better, when he can choose whether he wants to be deep or advanced adapting throughout the game as he deems fit while also making it harder to mark him out of the game? Besides, Oscar isn't there to facilitate Cesc only. Haven't you noticed that Hazard has been drifting towards the middle and has been given way more freedom since the pre-season? There must exist a player whose job is to mitigate the gaps that are inevitably going to appear when there are these many players leaving their positions. Guess what, one of those players in the last game was Oscar. He's not fixed at the CAM position and IMO the way we're attacking with all these interchangeable positions is an amazing style to confuse the opposing defense. And we also can't have every fucking player on a free role or with freedom to roam around every now and then, so it's only natural that Oscar is going to be sacrificed somewhat. My only qualm with Oscar is that his quality on the ball and offensively has been declining steadily, with few games as exceptions, in a blue shirt and I can't play blind nor won't warp the facts to pretend it isn't happening. I still consider him one of the most tactically intelligent players on the squad and probably one of the most suitable to fulfill the task of covering the holes in our formation, but that shouldn't excuse him of being almost null on creativity. And I'm not talking about number of assists or goal here, there can only be one assister and one goal scorer in every goal from a team of 11, but I wanna see a better offensive impact when we're in possession and he's not covering for Cesc - no more side or back passes, I wanna see audacity and courageous effort from Oscar when he has the ball.

I agree. Now that we have Fabregas and hence more creativity to our game, I'm more interested in someone who can score than someone who can create upfront. Aside from that, Chicharito has a tendency to show up when coming from the bench, he used to score a lot of late goals for United and I quite like that.