Barbara

Every time Mourinho feels like we won't be attacked much, and teams will take a more defensive approach against us, I think he'll call upon Luís. And tbh if he does that, even in only some part of those games, I think it's fair and the right approach. He clearly struggles with the physicality of the league. People talk about Atletico de Madrid being a physical team and how it should prove that he has no problem handling physicality, but that makes no sense. Atletico was/is the only real physical team in Spain, and as it's not norm to play against yourself, the kind of defending required from him there was quite different from the kind of defending required here. Atletico's opposition wasn't anywhere as physical as the Premier League. I think he's a great defender, I mean, he might better at defending than attacking, but it'll take him time to adapt properly to how tough the league is. Everyone praises him for his attacking skills because he can cross. Sorry, but if there's one thing a Brazilian FB knows since his U-8 days is how to cross a ball. Brazilian FBs will always be better than the average attacking wise. So while some praise him for his attacking skills - which are good - I think he was a much better defender than attacker while he was playing at Atletico. He'll come good for us defensively, but it'll require time. Remember how long it took for Ramires to finally get the physicality and actually defend? So I think Mourinho is handling him in a very good way. Playing him in UCL matches (although not all will be the case), using him in the domestic cups, and taking a few risks in matches we probably won't be much threatened defensively or the ones were we won't be able to break down defenses if we play too narrow. Yesterday wasn't either the scenarios imo and still he took the risk... probably because he thought he needed as much attacking ammunition as possible. I don't want to throw him in matches were the opposition winger will eat him alive. Let him acclimatize with time. There's no need to rush. He's been giving the chances he earned. When he improves defensively and get used to how to defend here, he'll be given more, until he proves himself worth of starting all matches for us. Otherwise, he'll continue to be a good and useful squad player.

Oh I'm so infatuated with the guy - that goes without saying. And when I say those things is strictly football wise. What's there not to love about this player? The contribution, the passion he shows, he gives his everything, the way he speaks, behaves. He's perfect for us (and would have been for any other team in the world that isn't tiki-taka BS-based. Hello, Arsene). 13 assists in 19 matches is absolutely insane, absolutely insane. He could definitely have 3-4 more because I remember players missing some sitters or clear cut chances created by him. He's not the best signing since I'm a fan because there's a certain guy named Eden Hazard - who I think will the best player to have ever worn a Chelsea shirt when he's on his peak, but if we talk about immediate impact, about fitting like a glove, about being what we need the most, than he is the best signing we've done in the last 13 years. Hazard already is amazing, but I think he's nowhere close to what he can give us, so he'd always be a very good signing in the short term and an immense signing in the long term. And that's the crazy thing about Cesc... I also believe the best is yet to come. Of course he doesn't have a very high ceiling, but I believe he has two different ceilings at the moment. One, technically and tactically - I believe he can and will still improve as a player. He's at the best form of his career imo, but when you compare his last season with Barça and even with us, you see improvement. So it feels like he's still improving, it feels like he has reached that place of stability at the top, when the guy constantly play well, but you feel like he's not improving anymore. Also, he's under one of the best managers in the world in terms of developing senior players. a lot is said about Mourinho's limitations developing youth, but there's no denying he improves a lot first team players - especially tactically. Another ceiling he has is chemistry wise. The linkup play between him and Oscar has been growing (and fast if you ask me). This understanding between them still has a long way to go, they've been playing together for only five months now and I have no doubts it'll get much, much better. As important as a player being at the top of his technical and tactical abilities is having a perfect understanding with his peers. Now onto the myth that he doesn't perform in the second half of the season. Supposing it comes to life, who cares? This guy already influenced directly 12 of our matches so far. If he doesn't influence another one, this is already 1/3 of the league. That's more than we could 'demand'. He already has 13 assists - which is the same amount as the top assister last season. This is already a season long contribution, so even if he doesn't impact directly any other game until the end of the season, he'll deserve some credit if we win the league. It doesn't matter if it's concentrated, spread out, the beginning, the middle or the end of the season. That said, I'd love for him to break Henry's record - because he deserves it. According to the official site (through the fantasy data) as well as ESPN, he had 20 assists in the league in the 2007/08 season, although people always only mention Henry. Maybe there's an assist that others don't consider? Or it considers penalties drawn? Either way, I'd love for him to have at least 21, but that has nothing to do with him HAVING to keep it up. If he keeps it up, it'll be great, but I'd say he's already done a lot to deserve all credit for the title if we win it. Oh and btw, in the same season, he had 10 assists from Aug-Dec and 10 assists from Jan-May. Just sayin'.

but if we buy a good RW (to which I agree should be a priority over CAM or even CM), then we can rotate Willian and Oscar in the #10 for the matches Cesc plays in the pivot. We don't need to have three absolute creative players in the three AMs positions and as we said, Mourinho demands great workrate from at least one of them. I think a creative RW solves all our problems in the attack. With Hazard in one side and someone like Reus in the other, we can afford to have Willian or Oscar in the middle, without having to move Cesc there to have more creativity in the attack. I also want to see Oscar playing a few times in the RW. He's no wonder, but maybe an AM with Hazard - Cesc - Oscar and Ramires replacing Mikel (when Rami is in form again) could work out until next summer. Then Willian could rotate with Oscar. Anything is better than having Mikel in the pivot if we want to dominate games.

So we need to address that we need to sign a player closer in style to Cesc to play in the pivot... I prefer him in the pivot, but he's equally great as a #10. My preference lies on the fact that it's easier to find a creative #10 than a pivot player as influential in the attack as Cesc.

I actually disagree and I'm surprised few people realize what kind of damage playing Mikel brings to the team. This isn't about creativity, this is about fluidity, dominance, quick play and making the opposition our bitches. What do we realize in ALL matches Mikel played for us this month? That our pressing isn't anywhere as good as it normally is without him. Part of that is because Oscar is one of our best pressers immediately after we lose possession, but that also because Mikel doesn't press much where matters because he's never positioned where matters (way too deep and behind other players), Cesc presses as much as he can, but it isn't that amazing, especially when he's very high in the pitch. But that could be a coincidence, the players being tired and a lot of other stuff that have nothing to do with Mikel. What really has a lot to do with Mikel is that we lose dominance with him in the midfield because we look soft, slow, toothless, and we play way too deep. He simply destroys our newly established style by simply being in the team sheet. He doesn't know what means pass onwards, forward, he doesn't present himself to link up with the AMs, he doesn't take one single risk, he delays, slows down and sometimes kills out transition altogether. He's a good defender - he will offer some stability as José likes to call it, but that's about it. I was discussing with Choulo that we didn't dominate the midfield at all - I guess against Stoke, when combined him and Matic had 16 successful tackles, but that's not dominating because when you dominate midfield your opponent doesn't even have the ball long enough for you to have sixteen tackles!!!!!!! That's the whole point. It really surprises me how nobody mentions or notices that we play completely different when he's not in the team. Proof of that? Many of you said our best match this season has been against West Ham. One single match where he didn't play among many where he did play. Today our best moment in the match was in the second half, and while he was there for some part of it, it was barely because of him (Southampton got tired) and when he was subbed off we played even better. How can't you guys see it? The problem is not that he's making mistakes, or that he's having bad matches because despite not being as solid as he normally was when he played more often (which is natural), the problem with Mikel isn't what he does bad or well, it's what he can't do at all. When Willian, Oscar, Cesc and Hazard are playing - especially the latest three, they go deep to get the ball and they move it quickly, they make 1-2s all the time, they have been working better and better like on that. They're developing chemistry and Cesc has been instrumental for Oscar's improvement imo. With Mikel there he doesn't offer it. When Cesc or Hazard drop to start the play, he ignores them more often than not because he won't pass to them unless it's a 110% safe pass. More often than not he'll pass sideways or backwards. How can we bloody dictate the tempo, dominate the midfield, suffocate our opponent with quick, smart and imposing football if we're softly passing the ball to nowhere that matters? How can nobody notice or mention it is beyond me. And please, you guys are really lacking observing skills if you say BS such as 'when Mikel plays Matic goes higher in the pitch, something he doesn't do much when Fabregas is playing'. Untrue fact and untrue fact. Today Mikel was ahead of Matic on many occasions - because as I said, Mikel drags the rest of the plays to go deep as he can't for the life of him make a pass forward unless the player is 2m away from him. So Matic naturally plays deeper otherwise Mikel will spend the whole day exchanging passes with our back four. Another untrue fact is that he doesn't go high in the pitch when he's playing with Cesc. He does all the time - exactly because when Cesc click with the AMs we just keep the ball moving faster and forward, objectively and in an involving way that is drags Matic higher in the pitch - exactly the opposite of what happens with Mikel. Notice I'm not detracting Mikel as a player - as I said he's a very good, albeit limited, defensive midfield, but he doesn't fit our new style, he detracts our dominating play and he simply has no place starting in a team with Chelsea ambitions - titles wise and performance wise. He brings the team down simply because the kind of player he is. In another situation, in another team, or maybe even in the current Chelsea in a very specific situation he can be really good, but that's not the case anymore. Still people won't admit that the only significant change in the matches we dominated and the ones we didn't in the last two or three weeks is exactly John Obi Mikel. edit: I'll write an article about it with heat maps, passing stats, and whatnot to see how we change our setup completely because of one single piece in the team. Checking the heat maps on Squawka now makes it as clear as day. If anything he detracts Matic's influence in the attack in the matches he plays...

unfortunately we can't rotate better because seriously, everyone who isn't in the starting lineup except Zouma and maybe Luís - depending on the kind of match we have ahead - are in way worse form than the ones starting. Schurrle, Ramires, Mikel, Salah are all out of form and worse than Hazard, Oscar, Willian and Cesc. So how do we rotate when we don't have anyone playing well in the bench? Someone said it's because we haven't rotated enough. Well Zouma is playing even better than Cahill imo and he hasn't had that many more chances than some others. Some were ill, injured and whatnot, which made it harder for them to get more playing time. So not we're between a hard and tough place. We need to give them more minutes, so they recover form, but at the same time we aren't playing Palace, Burnley (LOL CITY), WBA in sequence,so we can't afford to have players far from their best form jeopardizing important results, like Schurrle did today. So yeah, we have a good squad, but we also have many players out of form, which sucks. And as I had to drive five hours from my mom's house just after the match I missed the meltdown, but it's funny to see how the tone changed after City drew against fucking Burnley after leading 2-0. Reality check for some people here. And we played great football in the second - just like we played against West Ham, just like we played the first three months of the league. We struggled in December, because it was packed and clearly our squad players aren't bringing much to the table. But we were flawless in November - which used to be our achilles heel. So how about we just stop overreacting. The team is struggling at some moments, but we're still playing better than anyone else in the league in general. City have been scrapping some results, and that's what champions do, but it's one thing to scrap a result against Leicester or with a penalty given by the referee and another to go to Stoke, Newcastle, play most away games against top teams and even West Ham and Southampton while they are playing with big confidence. But I had a laugh reading through this thread, lol.

I don't watch Brazilian football anymore... and I don't watch French either. Sorry I couldn't help I've been done with our league for a couple of years now. This whole year I haven't watched one minute of Brazilian football as far as I remember

My brother - who likes him, but as any Manure fan, think we overrate him - finally conceded today that it must be a nightmare for a defender when he comes face to face with Hazard (even with a backup, helping him). He's so hard to mark and defend against. He's so resourceful and skillful that one just can't guess what he's going to do. Mata, Willian, Schurrle and many other players we had, always do the same thing over and over, they cut inside, or beat opponents running, or stop a run before cutting. Hazard is completely unpredictable. You don't know what he's going to do next and that's just hell on earth for a marker imo. They must hate and feel hopeless and desperate when facing him. He was so good today, he was unstoppable, but too bad only he and Cesc looked inspired. And he did what I said at the beginning of the season would be a must for him this season in his development curve. And today wasn't the first time. When things got thick he came to the rescue. I don't give a fuck how many goals he scores and assists he provides. What I've always demanded from him was to shoot more (which he did), then I said we should give him time to find his best finishing again (he has very good finishing as showed lately, he was just in a run of low confidence) and mainly that he would step up when the team had a bad day, that he'd become our match winner when as a team we struggled. He's done it many times this season imo and today was the epitome of that. We were lost, bad, toothless and he came and took matters into his hands and won us the away point. That's what I think a player as talented as him should do. Who cares about how many goals he scores and how many he assists if he's the guy bailing us out of the jail? I don't! I know he dreams of winning the Balon d'Or thing and I really hope he has a chance to have it at least once in his career, but I couldn't care less where he stands regarding Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar, Bale and whoever else people include in this bracket. I look at this boy, and he's 24 next week and it seems like the sky is the limit. I just want the damn contract printed and signed and him to continue his development. He has taken HUGE steps in his development this season. I think the stupid award will once again be Ronaldo's (come on, the guy has been a scoring machine), but I think with the level Hazard has been playing he's by far the best player in the EPL (for me he finally passed Cesc, I was leaning a bit towards Cesc until a few days ago, but Hazard is just better, end of it - imo), and he's top3, at most top5 of the world right now and he's only 24. We should appreciate and praise this kid much more than we do and stop demanding things from him. I'd say he's progressing faster than I expected and that's all that matters to me, that he keeps growing because then I know in a couple of years we'll be feared all over the world because of this guy. He was unbelievable today and here's hoping he repeats what he does most seasons as far as I remember, and plays his best football starting January-February. He'll be the reason we'll win the league if he plays even better than he's been doing now (I'm not saying he needs to, I'm just saying if he goes by as he generally goes, and playing better in the second half, we're in for a huge and beautiful treat).

Well, I love Woodynho with all my heart. I've always felt you guys were dreaming too high (still not sure if you aren't because I don't know what are the real chances of him ending up here), and that he was a luxury signing if he came, but I definitely would be looking either a MD to play the Cesc role in the pivot or a RW next season (definitely not in January). I believe it's about time we replace Cahill (having been said for a while now), but maybe we also need to take care of this other situation at the end of the season as well.

Definitely. I'm starting to agree with all you guys. We need one more signing. Whether it's a Cesc alike to replace him in the pivot without compromising how we offensively dominate games and dictate rhythm when Cesc is there or we sign someone to the RW. We're falling short because whereas Cesc is amazing, unbelievable and incredible versatile, he can still only play one position at a time. Some times today I saw Mikel playing higher than Matic and I wanted to slam my head on the wall. If we have a better AM - a more creative one - Oscar and Willian can rotate the remaining position according to the profile of the match. Oscar should play home games because he links up better with Cesc and Hazard than Willian can even dream of. Willian for some of the away games and definitely in the bigger matches. If this player doesn't come, and we have to move Cesc to #10 then we need another someone years light better than Mikel to play alongside Matic. I feel if Ramires was fit we'd be playing him in the pivot and I suppose it'd be better. Whereas he's way more wasteful than Mikel, he has 2-3 insights of good things in the whole match. It takes Mikel 50 matches approximately to come up with one good insight in the attack. I'm far from being Ramires' biggest fan, but I admitted then and I state in present time based on how he started the season - back then he was better than anyone among Willian, Mikel, Schurrle and who else we might think about playing in the RW or alongside Matic. Hopefully he'll recover fully soon and will carry on from where he's stopped. The problem is, when Ramires is in bad form, he's even worse than Mikel.

whether he was ill or not, there was no way he would have played today (in a good level at least) after only 2 days since the last match. He doesn't have the physical endurance for that. Still he was deeply missed. I think if he had started we would have won... we've missed the way he presses and recovers the ball and as only Cesc and Hazard looked somewhat good today, his link up with both (which has been improving even more with time) maybe would have given us more control of the game. Hopefully he starts against Spurs, but I don't think that's the kind of match Mourinho won't have Mikel in the starting XI. And if Mikel plays, Oscar doesn't, but he was missed today.

I feel hopeless about our RW at the moment. Schurrle completely out of form, Willian completely useless, Salah feels like isn't even part of this team anymore, he doesn't even figure in the bench for matches in a row. Seriously, I'm the last one to join any transfer bandwagon, I think we have a great squad, but I'm starting to concede we really need to sign a better winger. Schurrle only fits a certain kind of game, so even when he's in form (and hopefully he will) he can't play teams sitting deep - or as Mou said, with a low block (although I suppose there are a few differences between those, but fact remains he can't play either situation). So if the guy that could be useful if he gets in form can only fit certain kind of matches and the other is absolutely and hopelessly useless attacking we just have one side of our attack that is moot. We have to find better options.

not really, but is he the player we need to win the match? No frigging way the problem isn't what he does, it's what he doesn't. He adds absolutely nothing

the slipping here is killing us We are no bloody Liverpool and we are no fucking Gerrard Come on, boys

Worship the Lord, fucking Mikel is off!!!!!!

what a pass by Cesc now, and unlucky Hazard

Schurrle was really disappointing. Hopefully Willian will find some A game to bring to the table. andré is about runs and shots, passing over and over finding space isn't his forte. He moves very well, and he needs to be found. He wasn't because we played bad and he was very bad himself as well. We absolutely need a better pivot partner for Matic when we play Cesc as #10. A team like Chelsea should NEVER play a player like Mikel. Not anymore.

MY PRECIOUS MY FANTASY CAPTAIN MY EDEN!!!!! AWAY GOAL AND CESC ASSIST

Antony can GO FUCK HIMSELF, BIG CUNT

which means they'll be dead walking in the second, especially only 48h after their last game

the overreaction here is unbelievable. GET A GRIP PEOPLE

finally we started playing some football. Cesc Hazard

there are shadows... no sun at all on his eyes

I was going to make Costa my Fantasy captain... completely forgot... now it's Hazard. Hope it doesn't come to bite me in the arse

Oh José, how much I love thee!!!!!!!!! After all bites and fingerprints I spent the last few days saying that if we played Mikel we should play Schurrle instead of Willian, you just do that Nice to know we continue in sync, my lord. There's no way Oscar can cope with two matches of football in 48h. Just no way. I don't see him starting against Spurs either, but then I think will be for tactical reasons. Today was just for physical.