The only place to be

You're talking about minor tweaks in the system we use. That again comes back to the problems in our double-pivot where the transition from defence to attack is often too slow. In games against Stoke and Everton we actually played our best football when we reverted to that Mourinho-style offence. Mata and Oscar don't do enough defensively, but look at Moses and Hazard who have improved so much this year on the defensive side of their game, Eden in particular. Look also at our youth teams who all play that type of football as well. Klopp and Mourinho are probably the two best choices in terms of the style of football they might bring. My reservation with Moyes has always been that it's unclear what his footballing philosophy is beyond survival through pragmatism.

So basically, Bertrand is okay but we should buy Shaw. I agree.

He would have more security at City, but the City job would only be open if City SACKED Mancini just one year after winning them the title??? That doesn't sound like that much more security than us, considering that's similar to what we did with Ancelotti. Plus they have the Barcelona guys there who rejected Mourinho a few years ago and would be a big presence there when people continually point out that Mourinho doesn't like people meddling. As for the style of football argument, is there a team we're closer to in world football than the current Madrid side? We're only lacking a Modric/Alonso in my opinion but we set up fairly similarly to them (Hazard/Ronaldo, Ozil/Mata, Khedira/Mikel/ etc.) Nice post OP btw. Don't disagree with too much of that although I think it's hard to judge Mourinho's use of youth in his time here because the young players we had weren't much cop.

Should be playing the team we played in the Europa Cup in this game, albeit it with the inclusion of Mikel and Moses. Ba will obviously start, as will Mikel, Moses, JT, Luiz, Oscar and Cole. Would be nice to see some youngsters given a chance but that's not in Rafa's best interests. We'll win and score somewhere between 3-6 goals, but this is just another game where we'll burn-out key players and rest them in league games so forgive me if it's hard to get that excited for it.

He looked busy on the ball but that was about it. I'm not writing him off because he's suffered from the same problems the other players have suffered from - a useless twat up-front and Lampard and Ramires in midfield. Mata was completely anonymous last night too, and not for the first time this season. What was encouraging was that Oscar played like his Brazilian self when he came on. Yes it was against shitty opposition but he was dropping deep and controlling the tempo beautifully and his goal was obviously well taken. We've talked on this forum before about the choice we've got to make regarding Cech (who had a dodgy game himself) and Courtois but I think we're going to have to make another at some point in the future in the number 10 spot......Mata or Oscar?

I've voted for Cech for MOTM - not Petr, but the Czech's in the Sparta team. They were shit but I'll be fucked if I'm voting for anyone in a Chelsea shirt after that shit.

Pathetic team to put out in this competition and the players treated it with all the enthusiasm you'd expect. Despite that we still managed to beat a very ordinary team and will probably shoehorn in a couple of extra fixtures when we don't have the players to cover them. All we learnt is that Marin really doesn't offer much, Torres is able of playing even worse than you previously thought, Cahill and Ivanovic are terrible at passing out of defence, Lamps likes shooting and the Europa League is as shite as it's name suggests.

His mother must be a woman after my own heart because I've wanted to drop him for the last 3 months.

Winning this tie means an away day to Amsterdam to play Ajax 3 days before either an away game at Fulham or a home one against West Ham. Do people actually want us to win this tie so that we have more fixtures in the run-in?

Right....but if we win this tie then we have to play more games.

Fun Fact One of these teams is the reigning Champion of Europe.

Lamps nearly gets closer to the record....I mean scoring the opening goal.

It's not just the worthiness of winning the competition that I'm questioning. I don't want us travelling around Europe on the Thursday before a game against Spurs or United or Everton when we need to win our games and don't have the players to rotate for them all. Again, it's the reality of this current situation that I'm referring to, not some fantasy world where we have 25 first-teamers who seamlessly interchange with one another.

You're not the first person to compare us to Arsenal and it's quite frankly ridiculous. Top four is more than good enough right now and I know you're trying to say the right things but try and acknowledge the reality of the situation. We finished sixth last year and we're struggling to hold onto third right now. We've thrown away points to Southampton, Reading and Fulham and we've lost away to Newcastle and at home to QPR. And be nice about Arsenal - if they weren't so shit this season we'd be fucked. And fair play to them for travelling, but you go and ask them if they want more away days in the Europa League next season or if they want to hear that Champions League anthem playing at some of the greatest clubs on Earth. Which would you prefer?

It's not ridiculous in the slightest. The best thing for this club is top four, but Rafa doesn't have anything invested in our long-term success. He's gone in the summer.

Put out a team of reserves. Paulo, Ake, Marin, Benayoun, Turbull, maybe even Saville and Feruz. The problem isn't now or Sunday but the next set of ties and the ones after that. We should finish top four but we should also have beaten Reading, Southampton, QPR and Newcastle. No offence, but your thinking seems to be based on something that isn't a reality at this point in time.

So we rotate like we have done tonight? Playing Mata, Hazard, Lamps etc? And it's not just about rotation. That's not the reality of professional football. You spend the week leading up to a game preparing for it, working over in-game scenarios. If we take this competition seriously we face playing on a Thursday night and then having just two days (and almost no full-on sessions) preparing for tough league games. Getting knocked out isn't just about avoiding a few midweek games - it's about maximising our chances of finishing in the top four when (and here's the dirty little secret of our season) we're not that good.

That's not far off the team I'd pick (no Hazard or Luiz) but I'm saying that we should get out of this competition as soon as possible which some people don't seem to understand. Let's put it another way. Do you want us to play extra games before we face Spurs, United, Everton and Swansea?

What is the team you would've picked?

Is English your first language? Is it in the top ten? Fair point - what about the next rounds though?

That is a fucking ridiculous team to put out. Every time you think Benitez has reached the zenith of being a cunt, he finds ways to top himself. I'll readily admit I know very little about hockey. You just need to admit the same about football/Chelsea.

What is a weakened team at the moment? Two of Luiz, Cahill, Terry and Ivanovic would have to play centre-back, two of Mikel, Lamps, Rami or Luiz would have to play midfield and three of Oscar, Mata, Hazard, Marin and Moses would have to play behind Torres. The truth is that we simply don't have that many players at this moment in time and I'd rather we didn't spend any time preparing for a game against foreign opposition when we could spend it preparing for a game against a league rival. I'm not going to be cheering for Sparta but it would probably be beneficial for our future if we got knocked out ASAP.

I don't care how many FA Cups we have - it's still more meaningful than the Europa League and if you actually think the FA Cup is like some cup in Switzerland then we'll just have to add that to the growing list of things about Chelsea Football Club that you don't have a fucking clue about. So do you want us to have more fixtures in between important league games then? Do you get more money for winning the Europa League or qualifying for the Champions League? It's actually a pragmatic reaction to the reality of the situation. Exactly - this competition used to mean something. Now it's just a placeholder until the CL get's expanded yet further Look, if we had the players to guarantee top four and win this thing then I'd probably be in favour of it. But we don't. Add to that the future rounds are scheduled around games against teams like Swansea, Man United, Liverpool, Everton and Spurs and you have to weigh up the reward of playing in this competition against the cost of long trips overseas and tired bodies.

I don't think playing defensive football is necessarily 'tactically outthinking' them. What we saw was two teams playing exactly how everyone expected, and United executing their gameplan slightly better than Madrid.

Do people think Mancini will get sacked then? I thought City were all about stability and we were the ones who sacked managers. Now they're going to sack a guy after he won them the league just last season? As for Moyes, I've said before that he could be great but I have no idea what type of football he'd be serving up if he came. He's always fit his teams around the players he's had available to him (like moving Fellaini forward or focusing the play down the left to take advantage of Baines and Pienaar) whereas at Chelsea he'd have the resources to play the type of football he'd want. I just don't really know what that would be so it's hard to suggest him.