The only place to be

My optimism is waning. Maybe I'm being harsh, but I think EVERY single youth product over the age of 17 has either stagnated or regressed upon the arrival of Jose Mourinho. Chalobah has gone from a play-off club to another play-off club who aren't actually as good as the one he was at last season. McEachran has gone to a Championship club where he's got fewer games. Ake has gone from the fringes of the first-team squad to a youth team player exclusively. Apart from Baker, no-one stepped up to the league cup squad. Courtois and Lukaku are roughly where they were last season. De Bruyne.....urgh. Piazon has gone from the first-team squad and Malaga, to Vitesse. Bertrand....if anyone sees him can you get him to call his mum. Kalas...unfortunately injured. Loftus-Cheek may have been eaten by Toure after the friendly in America.

Welbeck and Cleverley really aren't that good though. They were never at Pogba or Chalobah's level as youngsters, and they're destined for a career a la John O'Shea which is important (as you said) for squad depth. I can't think of a United academy prospect who was as good in defence as Phil Jones either. I just wonder why we didn't give Nat Chalobah a chance. He impressed at Watford and his reward was a loan to a club in very much the same position. Now we're looking at signing a player who is good, but has never played in a league that is at the level of the Premier League. Yes he has Champions League experience and he's looked good at international level (with Kompany behind him and Hazard and De Bruyne in front of him) but why don't we look at the Pogba example and actually trust our young exceptional players?

Southampton have stated that their aim is Champions League football, so that's a fair amount of pressure. They're also off to a pretty good start despite promoting youth, and it's not really a new thing with them. Wilsere had one loan spell and was then put into the first team - we gave Nat a loan spell and then fucked him around at the start of this season. Pogba at United is an example of what happens when you don't give youngsters a shot. Still, for that one example there are countless other examples of young players getting a shot at United (Januzaj being the latest) - I don't think we can say there isn't pressure of expectation at United can we? Like I said, I like Witsel but £40 million for a guy who has never played in a top quality league is a bit of a risk and I also think it's another step in the wrong direction for what this club should be doing. At some point the academy needs to start contributing to the first-team in a meaningful way. Mourinho right now has more freedom to take risks than any manager has in almost a decade, but instead we're flitting between Lampard and Mikel once again.

Alonso is 31 (nearly 32) - that really isn't that old. What's amazing to me is that we're also looking at Pogba (who was a young lad given a shot by a big team), whilst Southampton are above us having given chances to Ward-Prowse and Shaw. Yet we're afraid to actually give someone like Nat Chalobah a go. Instead we're looking at spending £40 million on Witsel - a very good player but that is a lot of money to spend.

Maybe, but the defining characteristic of his time at Chelsea has been his inconsistency. I'm sure anyone of us here can mention a few games where he's cost us with defensive lapses.

Tend to agree. Great player but that's a lot of money. Personally I'd prefer someone like Alonso as a short-term solution who knows the league and Mourinho and can bridge the gap between now and Van Ginkel/Chalobah/Loftus-Cheek. But if we can get him for a decent price then he's one of the best options around.

Blimey, how times change. Last time when his camp wanted to squeeze more money out of the negotiations they only had to link him to Man City - now they've got to get him to waggle his arse in front of Galatasaray to avoid a pay cut. Sorry John. I love you but there's no way you're getting the same contract this time round.

That's not 'the reality', it's your opinion. My opinion is that if we had Courtois in goal I don't think there'd be a noticeable difference in our results. That's not denigrating Cech's ability or form, but simply a recognition of just how far Courtois has come in the last few years. If we didn't have Courtois then we wouldn't be having this discussion about Cech, but because we do then he's under the spotlight a bit more and these errors will be picked up on. I don't agree with all of them but the City and West Brom ones are very noticeable.

Cech is comparable to every other keeper in that regard then. It's unfair, but that's what happens. He has set very high standards so mistakes are more noticeable with him. The West Brom goal was just bizarre, but even the City one was something you simply wouldn't expect from him. Yes it was a great shot, but he seemed to have his angles wrong and simply didn't adjust to Aguero's movement in time. But the problem is that we do have probably the premier young goalkeeper in our squad and he needs to start playing for us or he'll leave. Teams very rarely get the chance to transition from one best in the world to another without any fuss so passing up this opportunity is a massive risk. I don't buy the 'let them compete for the spot' argument because instability at that position weakens the team. What is needed is a clear choice to be made.

He's had chances, and he hasn't quite impressed but he does seem to have tried to change his game slightly and for that he should be commended. It won't happen overnight, but he should get there and find himself getting more chances. But there's this constant gripe about him not getting the chances other players are getting and that ignores the competition in his spot. I assume people are moaning about Cole and Lampard in particular, but they simply didn't have someone like Oscar pushing for a starting spot ahead of them. Okay, now Azpi seems to be something of an alternative choice at left-back but it's not the same as having Oscar, Willian and even De Bruyne snapping at your heels. The thing with Mata is that of all the players we have who play in that number 10 spot, he seems like the odd one out. I'm even including Boga and Traore in that because they have a certain physicality that Mata just doesn't seem to. Maybe I'm being unfair and judging him by that constantly knackered aura he seems to have, but I'm just not sure if he'll be hear at the start of next season.

I have no problem with supporters of this club moaning about the noise levels.

It lost all credibility when I won it.

That he's realistic about his own abilities. That doesn't make him 'afraid'. Do you understand? No. No I didn't. Oh that's very clear. You seem to have an almighty disagreement with not only what I've written, but also what I haven't written. In fact your major disagreement seems to be with the plain of existence within which the words I've written exist, such that you've disappeared off to another one all together. I really am not interested in this point, but weren't Ancelotti and Scolari paid off in full rather than getting the same deal AVB and Robbie got? He was fired for the same reason he couldn't get a job before we hired him, and for the same reason he hasn't been given a 'top' job since....the perception is that he's not a top-class manager. On this I disagree. I think there are plenty of people who have the drive and determination to prove their worth in a role that they would take a financial hit for a chance at glory or enhancement of their reputation. Considering you know fuck all about my life and employment history (unless someone's been divulging more of my personal info) you're really not in a position to call me a hypocrite, but that's more semantics than anything else....continue. (no gold star emoticon). Apparently it puts you in the category where some boy in Brazil can sit at his keyboard and call you plastic. Personally I see blokes who have been going to the Bridge for years who turned up in hailstorms to watch us play Southampton when it wasn't the cool thing to do - I wouldn't label them plastic....but then I rarely take my keyboard to matches to hide behind. And you leave the supporters in the stands alone. Deal.

The bolded bit is how I feel about him....but I can point to a few recently retired cantankerous whisky-nosed gits who fit that same criteria. I agree with what you say about Robbie too. I don't begrudge him his payoff either because he earned it. I'm just being realistic about his situation - he doesn't have top four clubs knocking on his door and he doesn't seem to have the desire to go to a mid-table side and work his way back up again. I think that's possibly because there's a realisation that the risks outweigh the rewards when he looks at what he could realistically do in such a role. I think it's born out of a childhood dealing with gloryhunting United shits who bought the shirts and took the piss but didn't actually have any discernible connection with the club.

Where did I say he was 'afraid'. Again, i don't know if it's a language thing but you're really not making any sense. You're trying to disagree but you're really struggling to find a reason. Maybe you should stick to calling supporters who attend matches 'plastic', because you articulate that sentimentally very clearly. I agree with most of that, but I disagree about the difference with AVB. I don't like the guy but he clearly felt he had something to prove after his time with us when he could've just stayed at home collecting his wages. Instead the guy decided to spend his life in some grotty little shithole with smoke damage, just to prove his doubters wrong. Actually I disagree with the part that says it's a no-brainer. There are people who would forgo financial rewards for the chance of (for want of a better word) glory.

Sometimes I read your posts and don't know whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. I can see you really want to disagree with me but you're struggling to find a reason to. It's laughable. AVB is a manager. That's all he's ever wanted to be and he was always going to make a swift return because he's a stubborn arsehole. I dislike certain things about him but you have to give him credit for this. Robbie was a footballer. That was his dream and he achieved it, but it was cut short by injury. Now he's tried forging a career as a coach and despite leading us to CL glory, I think he's somewhat limited ability-wise. Maybe he'll prove me wrong, but he doesn't seem to have this overriding desire to get back into management and prove to people that it wasn't a fluke and that's absolutely understandable. I'm not castigating the guy as some people think I am. At the time, yes. But in hindsight it was probably the right thing to do. He was never a coach for the long-term and through no small amount of luck we've ended up with the right guy in charge once again. I've probably said it before but the CL win was more to do with Jose than Robbie. It wasn't just the players like Cech and Drogba who were moulded by Jose that were key to our win, but the defiant spirit that he engendered in his time here and that survived long after he went. Robbie deserves credit for what he did at a difficult time for us, but there's a reason he's not been snapped up by another big club since he left us.

The crowd does react to those types of things. It's just sustained pressure against an opponent who has few attacking aspirations isn't the most exciting spectacle. This is the case at a lot of grounds nowadays, especially successful clubs. It's just what modern English football is in this day and age and it's probably not going to change. Cheaper tickets aren't realistic right now (how do you stop the people who currently buy the tickets from buying them ahead of the person who already can't afford them anyway??), standing areas aren't (although I agree clubs should relax on the moaning about people standing) and it's hard to change the nature of football fans because it's more deeply rooted in societal and environmental factors.

I've given AVB stick in the past but fair play to the guy for jumping back into management to prove people who doubted him wrong. Robbie's problem is that, with all due respect, he's not that great of a manager so why would he deal with all that stress when he's got a regular paycheque coming in? Yes he's a legend (moreso as a player for me, than a coach) but being realistic he's done bloody well for himself with that deal. Can't blame the club either because this type of deal actually makes more sense than a guaranteed payoff....so long as the coach you sack has aspirations to take up another job.

Right, so really I was expecting you to post personal information about me when you 'cracked'. Sorry, but I really wasn't. Honestly I don't think it's worth us discussing this further. Like I said, I just wanted members of this site to realise what could happen to their personal info. You haven't denied or disputed the facts and simply looked to justify what you did, ergo it's really not worth us discussing this further. Beyond anything, I'm sure it's very boring to a lot of people.

I won't dispute that I suggested you had divided loyalties. Quite whether it serves as a legitimate reason to do what you did is perhaps the more important question.

Anyway.... The important thing is that members of this forum now know that if they disagree with one admin and engage in 'banter' with him then he might share your personal info even if you haven't given this site permission to do that. Hopefully they treat the rest of the information people use when signing up with a bit more respect. No reason to make a mountain out of a molehill because admins like Jim and Alex are sound guys.

I agree with the first bit, and you probably have a point with the second bit. The fact that certain members are treating it so lightly is perhaps what's raised my ire somewhat. Funnily enough it all came from a look at Choulo's twitter account (which he chooses to link to). He declares on there that he's a Juventus supporter and I raised that in a discussion. That's info he puts out there and chooses to share. The fact that he then posted my full name (which I haven't linked to publicly) in retaliation was at best immature and at worst.....well, worse.

Full name.