Corner

Thank you! I forgot the match was on.

While I do see your point, I have to add that it's the manager's job to get the players to perform and to get the players on his side and believe in him. And if he hasn't done this then he has failed in one vital part of being a manager. Obviously, I'm not suggesting that the players don't have to perform unless they approve of the manager. Of course they should do their absolute best to perform all of the time, they're footballers and they love the game after all.

That's not actually true. The reason Ivanovic 'outran' Torres was because Torres had slowed down. Not because of lack of determination or desire but because of his instincts about where the ball was going to come. And he was right. Torres slowed down, the ball came in his path and not Ivanovic's path. I'm not all for Torres playing for Chelsea either, but bashing him for things like that is just unnecessary and unfair. Yes, Torres has been pretty useless most of the time for us but when he picks up the ball and tries to outrun one or two defenders, I shout 'go on Torres!' just like I would if it was any other player on our team. But most people seem to be wanting him to screw up.

So many people seem to have this misconception that Guardiola was 'handed' a world-class team that was ready made for him to win matches. People should really do more research. I'm not even going to list everything he did to transform Barca because I'm just tired of saying the same thing over and over by now.

One positive from today and the past few weeks: we have finally found a great right-back in Azpilicueta.

I can think of one VERY good reason: We sack ANOTHER manager after only 7 days of being in charge. Our club would be a compelte laughing stock. Could you ever imagine any other manager taking charge after we had sacked our previous manager after 7 days?

Ah, okay. Thank you.

I don't know why you're putting that in quotes because I don't recall anyone on here saying that.

Really? For a man that knows nothing on how to run a football club, he has managed to bring us a lot of trophies. That's a strange one.

The recently discussed topics box doesn't appear anymore. I was just wondering if this is a problem with my browser, a bug or if it's just a change to the layout?

Because things were going to shit under Di Matteo. We were heading down the same road we were with AVB. Can you blame our owner for not wanting to take that risk?

You see that picture you have there? You should get rid of it, because without Roman we would never have had Drogba nor the Champions League. Honestly, it's so childish that people here are saying 'Roman Out' after a loss, or however many losses. The players should take the blame, not the owner. We were playing like shit under Di Matteo anyway. Do you really think he would have made much of a difference today? I don't.

Any idea on the line-up?

I agree. In the meantime until we do sign someone like Moutinho, and hopefully we do, then I think it would be a good idea to deploy Oscar in deeper role to control the tempo of the game. Ramires and Mikel are just not quick enough at getting the ball into the attacking midfielders and while Mikel is very tactically aware, he can be a bit slow with his distribution which hinders the pace of our attack sometimes. And Ramires just lacks the techinical ability to perform this role well.

There are plenty of topics where you can already discuss this. We don't really need another one.

Impossible to know the day before the game, I doubt even Benitez knows yet. But I think Hazard needs a rest. The poor guy has played every game this season.

Hehe. I did read it when you first posted it, if that helps?

Indeed. Massive respect.

Sure, the decision to appoint Benitez as interim manager has been a massively unpopular one. But it seems to me that 99% of us still appreciate everything Roman has done for the club and as long as we still appreciate that, he'll never lose our backing (as long as the word 'interim' stays in Rafa's job title). We all know Roman has his heart set on bigger things (Guardiola).

I wouldn't worry about that, to be honest. Roman doesn't seem to give a f*ck about anything the media says. He loves this club and I can't see anything changing that.

I post regularly on another forum, and what you described is exactly the way things have gone there. But my god, it's been a breath of fresh air since I joined here. I'm loving the openness of discussions here. People on here seem to be less judgemental too. So, hats off to everyone here!

None of us believe that if Guardiola become our manager then we would have instant success and win every single match. But if Roman wants to play possession-based football, then Pep is the man for the job. He would have plenty of young players with great technical ability and he would know exactly which players he needs to get of and which to bring in. It wouldn't bring instant success, as you say, but if any manager is going to be given time to implement his ideas at Chelsea, it's Pep.

That's a very interesting article. You would think that Chelsea would have already been working on his sprinting though.

True, but he also has an itchy trigger finger.

It will be very interesting to see the difference in the team and how we play when he comes back from injury. And also, how Benitez decides to use him. We've needed our experienced players more than anything over these past few weeks. I didn't realise how much of a blow it was gonna be when Lampard got injured against Shakhtar, but now I do.