The Big Drog

Seriously? That's the justification? Last time I checked Jose Mourinho was unlikely to be made a saint, Ferguson probably wont win a Nobel peace prize, infact you will be hard pressed to find any manager with a whiter than white track record. I disagree that he has nothing for the club, he has knowledge, he is a proven, top class coach, a two time Uefa coach of the year, a 2 time La Liga winner with Valencia, a Uefa Cup winner with Valencia and an FA Cup and Champions League winner with Liverpool. He has the character of a winner, he has the magnetic personality of a true champion and tactically he is top notch. He is a great manager and a great football person, we are lucky that he stepped in on a short term basis.

You do realise that by the end of Ibra's time at Barcelona he wasn't even the first choice striker? You also realise that when Guardiola became manager the Barcelona camp was split in two between Ronaldinho and Eto, Guardiola healed those divisions, got one more great season out of Eto (a gem of an example of top notch man management by the way) and sold Ronaldinho (an incredibly brave decision considering what Ronaldinho represented at Barcelona)

There also used to be a facepalm smiley but I can't find that one, please imagine that I am facepalming while reading your message.

Why? If he's scoring 2 every game and Benitez is doing what he does best, bringing a solid structure to the team, then why wouldn't it justify keeping him?

GTFO!

The Barcelona performance from last night in which they demolished Bilbao hasn't gotten enough praise on this thread, it was a display that very few teams in any era would be capable of replicating, a near faultless and often breathtaking production, football in its purest form.

The right attitude. The attitude that should exist in the dressing room of a big club, even though their commitment fell away towards the end of Pep's reign, that they react like that to a defeat is the character of true champions. Their reaction this season has been the perfect response, the football they produced last night was something from an entirely different planet and was as good as they have been in a long time, their hunger back, a point to prove, this group of players have stepped up and are producing the goods once again. Champions to the core and it will take something truly remarkable to stop them winning the Champions League this season.

I have no problems responding politely to posters however when the comment was as unbelievably bad as yours then it only merits derision, sarcasm and a Ryback impression. Nobody is saying it would be a walk in the park at Chelsea for Guardiola, however so many of the rest of your points are just plainly wrong and ignorant.

Both the original comment and your response are so diabolically dumb that I feel absolutely no reason to expand on why they are dumb, if you don't know why they are dumb then I'm afraid you are also quite dumb. Honestly if you don't know a lot about a subject then don't talk about the subject, you clearly haven't the slightest clue about Pep's time as manager of Barcelona, what he did, what it meant and what it's created in the long term, thus don't talk about it.

(smacks own head several times) "stupid!"

Fuck off Torres, bloody useless

This Chelsea side is dire.

I don't like the defensive winger choice, particularly playing at home against Fulham. I understand though that Benitez has opted for a defensive winger quite often in his career. Surely though Moses or Marin could have done a job out there.

I fully expect the team to look like this. Cech Ivanovic, Cahill, Luiz, Cole Mikel, Oscar Ramires, Mata, Hazard Torres

I'm not sure if any amount of logic can free you from the crazy train you are on. Baffling comment.

When did TC become overrun by trolls?

The Road to El Dorado.

2 time Uefa coach of the year. 2 time La Liga winner, 1 Uefa Cup, 1 FA Cup and a Champions League winner. The man deserves respect and admiration for his accomplishments. He is a world class coach and we should be happy that he has taken the short term contract that we offered him.

Fuck it I'm gonna say it, I like Rafa, I like him a lot. Tactically astute, charismatic, a proven, top quality manager. Would I rather Pep? Absolutely, how will this all work out? I haven't a clue but something had to change, Benitez is a step in the right direction in my opinion.

I absolutely realise that Di Matteo doesn't have a huge say in transfers and nor was he Abramovich's first choice to get the job on a permanent basis but that's a problem in itself. The players will know he wasn't first choice, they will know that the first signs of disaster and he will be out the door, we want longevity and consistency and the only way for that to happen is for Roman to be patient with a manager but he's never going to be patient with a manager he didn't want in the first place. A manager with a strong personality would have made a big issue of the striker problem, like Mourinho did at Real Madrid a couple of years ago.

Disgraceful. Yes you can say that we are going through a transition period but we've just splashed close to 100 million in the Summer and we have a 50 million pound striker sitting on the bench. This wasn't a result that materialised over the course of 90 minutes in Turin this result can be traced back to the Summer. Most unbiased observers could see that we were light up front, we were banking a huge amount on Torres to come good, it hasn't happened and tonight was the conclussion of that particularly painful experiment. You can't say that Roberto Di Matteo is at fault for the prolonging of the Torres experiment, Abramovich had splashed 50 million pounds on the Spaniard, he wanted value for money. My issue with Di Matteo is that he and his team have been working with Torres now for close to 2 years, they see him on a daily basis in training, they see the same matches we do, anyone can spot that he hasn't been up to it on a consistent basis in a very long time, this is where a top manager with a strong personality, like Guardiola or Mourinho, would have spoken up in the Summer. Perhaps Di Matteo had reservations about Torres but he seemingly applied no pressure on Abramovich, Gourlay or anyone else to seek out a top striker in the Summer, even Mancini at City went public with his disappointment at not being able to sign Van Persie, in comparison our manager was reduced to a yes man. Then we arrive in Turin, the 50 million pound man is worthless, the other striker is injured and not proven at the top level to begin with and we are left playing 5 foot 7 Eden Hazard upfront. The standard is set high by the top clubs in the world, at no other top club would this have happened. The pressure on Di Matteo is almost now at breaking point, no win in 4 games in the Premier League and pretty much out at the group stage of the Champions League, not good enough for a top club, let alone the European Champions.

Tbf there was a time when he merited the hype. Along with the likes of Drogba, Eto'o and Adebayor he represented the perfect modern day centre forward, he had it all. He had the electric pace, he had the physical strength, he had the technique and he had the killer touch. He was a genuinely great player for club and country. Injuries simply took their toll, he warned that he would be burned out if he played in the Premiet League for long and it happened quicker than he expected. Like Michael Owen, knee injuries robbed him of his all important pace and he hasn't been able to adjust his game and as a result he is never as confident as he was. He was a great player, we just got him too late.

Sublime lay off from Oscar, poor finish from Sturridge.

Poor performance but at least we got it back level and we had a good period towards the end of the half. However there are problems, Romeu and Mikel are too similar to play together in this kind of game, I don't enjoy Sturridge playing wide and neither Sturridge or Torres are particularly convincing, a top class striker must be the main priority over the course of the next 2 transfer windows.

We played well, we had more chances and Liverpool had very few chances for most of the game, we just didn't score the second, it's that simple, every teams have days like that. I will say though that Man Utd had Hernandez to win them 3 points yesterday, City had Dzeko earlier today to do the same, how many late winners has Sturridge scored? It doesn't help that the man he is replacing, Torres, isn't good enough if we are to achieve what we want. With a top class striker we probably would have won today.