The only place to be

I won't dispute his work rate, but sometimes you need someone who can control the tempo of the game rather than someone who can simply outrun it. It pisses me off that people seem happy with us trying to use Ramires to cover up our deficiencies rather than try and eliminate them. If we plan on being a top team, he has no place in the starting line-up. It would be Mikel and a playmaker in the double-pivot (even though I'm not overly enamoured with Mikel) and a proper winger. I have nothing against him personally because he's a lovely chap by all accounts, but I'd rather have someone with skill in that position rather than someone who can run all day. By the way, he was definitely MOTM against Arsenal because he was brilliant ON THE COUNTER-ATTACK AND BREAKING UP PLAY in the second-half, but that was a direct result of him and Lampard being unable to control the game. They were outplayed by Arsenal's midfield and almost cost us the game. But you choose to see his performance one way, I choose to see it another.

Didn't Mata have a pretty good game against United this year? And didn't he score against them last year too? I'm dying to know who this other 'very good team' in the league is that Mata doesn't show up against. It's really exciting isn't it - who could it be???

He's not good enough if we plan on controlling games rather than letting the other team have possession and try and hit them on the counter-attack. He doesn't have the technique you need to control possession, he simply has a great engine. The only good thing he did today was not get sent off because I was convinced he was going to. We need better players than Ramires in the double pivot and we need better players than him on the wing.

If I ever come to that realisation, I'll know that I've probably stuck just enough crayons up my nose.

We performed as well as this forum is going to perform for the first 15 minutes after the match. As I said in the main thread, same shit different day. This City team was eminently beatable until Benitez announced the team. No adventure, no ambition, no bollocks. Ramires isn't good enough. Half his touches are amateurish. Not good enough in the midfield, not good enough on the right....but, but, but Barca....SHUT UP!!! Moses or Oscar would've been better. Mikel. I'm going to guess his passing percentage was above 90% which makes him immune from criticism. Some people say he was away at the ACON. More like ACONvent Garden - best human statue I've ever seen for Toure's goal (shit joke, but I don't care). Mata, Hazard, Ba.....I'm sorry. Doesn't matter how good the chef is if we're going to give them shit to cook with. Cahill - great at the last-ditch tackle but at some point you have to wonder why he seems to make so many last-ditch tackles. I'm great at putting fires out, but maybe I should stop with the fire-eating when I'm so clearly shit at it. Ivanovic - you're not as good a right-back as Azpi has been for the last 5 months. It's not your fault. You shouldn't have been playing. You should've played on Friday so JT could play today. Lamps......had a good game, missed a penalty, tried to shoot from about 35 yards twice. Can't say much more. All in all, nothing surprising. Not being able to go turned out to be a blessing in the end. Going to treat myself to Robben on FUT and pretend it's still 2005.

Are you fucking serious? Here's an experiment you can try. Get all the money you can, sell all your stuff if you have to and buy the best diamond you can. Now go and give it to your significant other BUT before you do, find a steaming cowpat (or horse shit - only use your own shit in extreme situations because you care about them and you can't just surprise them with your own shit. You have to work out safety words and what you're going to eat before you shit). Now put that diamond in the shit. Say 'Tadaaa'. My guess is she's not going to be impressed with your thoughtful gift.

Same shit different day. Ramires isn't good enough. Moses should've started. Why is Ivanovic starting ahead of Azpi? Mikel - great until he fucks up. I feel sorry for the fans who travelled for this game because this City team was very beatable but we didn't have the bollocks to go out and try and win it. I feel sorry for Mata, Hazard and Ba playing ahead of Ramires, Mikel and Lamps because they simply can't control the midfield.

Defends well? Except for the goal right?

That's what 50% of his touches are like though. For every lovely touch in scoring against Barca, there's a misplaced pass. It's fucking pathetic.

Not good enough. Not good enough on the right. Not good enough down the middle.

Except for doing nothing to stop the goal from Toure. That's the story of Mikel - he's great, he completes passes UNTIL he doesn't and costs us a goal.

Ramires just isn't good enough. Not on the right, not in the middle.

Now you're just factually wrong. Chelsea couldn't have brought him back after 2 months - they could only have brought him back in January. Now you see how that's factually wrong - apply that to the rest of your thinking on this subject. The Lukaku you want to bring home now wasn't the Lukaku who was loaned out in August. Now if you want to suggest we should've brought him back in January, then you might have a point. That'll be new for you won't it.

So now you understand what some people thought before the season started. He needed this loan and he will be a better player for it. I've tried to explain to you before why Chelsea have loaned the players out, but you're baffled by all of them. What you need to understand is that you're wrong. You're wrong about Lukaku's loan and you're wrong about most of the other loans. It's why you can't formulate a response that backs-up your assertion.

Timid. That about summed that performance up. Could've said toothless or even gone as far as gutless but I'll be kind. Clearly has so much talent but the game just passes him by so many times. There have to be massive question marks over his stamina too because he looks knackered the whole time. Rarely breaks into anything more than a light jog, lazy in defence although his passing is accurate and his vision is often the best on the pitch. Just watching Modric playing for Madrid and he's playing in a similar position, but everything is done with more effort. I have no idea if Josh can have a work ethic coached into him because so often that's something someone either does have or doesn't. He could have all the talent in the world, but if he doesn't find a way to apply it on the pitch then it's meaningless. Middlesbrough were poor but so was Josh. 5/10.

There were people writing him off in the summer, and now he's banging them in so it actually was a pretty fucking clever move wasn't it? Jesus. The board gets all the stick and none of the credit. Some people here are saying we should go into the new season with Ba, Lukaku and Feruz (which I would be happy with). That's one striker who cost the same as Bebe, one who is perhaps worth double what we paid for him at the age of 19 and another who has something special about him and could be great for us. That to me is the work of a football club who has a bit of nous about them.

Oh look, an insult from younameit. Lukaku's problems were different. He was younger and he was in the wrong physical shape. He should come back next season and be a big player for us. And what would that have meant for Danny? There's a good chance he'd have left at the end of the season for nothing (or close to). Instead we got £12 million for him. You talk about thinking, how about spending a moment thinking over this scenario - a scenario that doesn't take into account the likelihood of us buying another striker in the summer. I think this thread will simply turn into an area for 'fans' to slag off this club.

And finished 6th in the league.

People who want to compare the likes of Xavi and Iniesta to McEachran should probably acknowledge that those two players had between them more than 100 appearances for Barcelona B. That's simply something we don't have at our disposal and serves only to highlight the problem facing all English clubs in promoting youth. People also say we've failed to promote young players - who? Which young players have come through the academy that we've missed out on? Jack Cork? Scott Sinclair? The academy in it's current state is less than a decade old. Is it any surprise that only now we're seeing young teams with maybe four or five players who could realistically make the grade here? Also, when people accuse me of taking their comments out of context (which I didn't - I quoted the line in it's entirety) then maybe they'd like to explain just how they feel they've been misquoted so that I can apologise if needs be.

Are you talking about the recent Arsenal home game where we defended with our backs to the wall for almost the entire second-half?? That's exactly the type of game he thrives in and I said at the time that the midfield two of him and Lamps was the root of our problems. They failed to control the game.

Actually Danny was given the full 90 against West Brom and had TWO clear cut opportunities which he failed to convert. Personally, this thread is simply going to be people looking to bash the club for letting a player go. We doubled our money on a player who was on an expiring contract and who was never going to be out number one striker. We have another young striker out on loan at West Brom looking to come in and challenge for a spot and we'll probably sign someone else in the summer. Now I can't defend the Torres saga but it happened and there's nothing we can do about the last two years, but constant bitching about us selling Sturridge is fucking tedious and personally I'd rather look towards the future of the club than look for reasons to moan about it's past dealings.

The amount of disrespect you show Chelsea supporters is rather extraordinary. But then you are a RAWK troll, so we understand that..... It's not your fault....

We won the CL with a large dose of luck. You can't rely on those tactics to win every time and I don't think any club would aspire to. We essentially said to Barca that we would allow them the ball and force them to beat us, which is massively risky. With our backs against the wall, his driving runs allowed us to break from defence to attack quickly and take advantage of Barca committing players forward. But if you plan on being a top team, you can't do that for 60+ games a season. How many times a year do you anticipate us playing with those types of tactics going forward? Half-a-dozen maybe? I'd much rather we build a team which aspires to control games and the one word you don't think of when you consider Ramires is 'control'. Thinking of the type of squad we'll have next season (if things go according to plan) I don't see where he fits in.

Don't we need someone with 'traditional technical abilities' if we're looking to dominate games? He performs best in games where we're under-pressure and looking to counter (Barcelona last year, Arsenal this year) but in games where we have the ball for long stretches and teams defend deep he simply looks like a headless chicken. He's a poor facsimile of Essien who compared physical strength and endurance with good technical skills and he's been one of the reasons we've struggled in games this year. He needs replacing ASAP if we're looking to win titles although he may well have a position on the bench when we need someone to close down teams or play on the counter. Nice guy but not good enough for any team with aspirations of success (and I include Brazil in that).

He's been impressive in both positions, and I think putting him in an advanced position serves Everton well but restricts him from doing what he did so well at Liege and in his early days at Everton. I don't think he's a particularly limited player and he's shown an ability to dominate games in a way Mikel NEVER has for Chelsea. The things you listed are simply over-exuberance. I don't care if he gets the odd booking because he puts himself about well, but you're right that he needs to cut out the more extreme acts. None of that makes him unlikeable in my opinion though and he's a long way from the Duncan Fergusons of this world.