Juan Mata

[Magic Lamps 11,677]

We should have cashed in in summer. Could have got around 45m for him. Now he will be cheaper.

[Ainsley Harriott 2,732]

Valencia are broke as fuck though

[Jase 43,479]

Valencia apparently expressing interest in taking Juan back to the Mestalla. Also Real Madrid are believed to be interested in him, hmmmmmm if he doesn't get back in by December I reckon he'll be gone.

Valencia are having a huge financial problem. There's no way they will be able to bring Mata back to the Mestalla. As for Madrid, even if they can afford it, why would they want to bring Mata back with all the attacking players they have got? And besides, see no reason why Mata would want to go back there.

[Spike 12,049]

I want my Mata 10 shirt to relevant for a few more years...

[kellzfresh 7,229]

Let's take 2 great young offensive players - Götze und Reus. They had 48 and 47 tackles respectively last season. More in our team had only Azpi, Oscar and Ramires. (Mata - 14 tackles).

Mario and Marco - great attacking players, but they contribute in defensive game. No one ask for them, or for Juan, to become "defensive specialists", but they must to be involved in trying to take away the ball after losing it.

This^^^^^

Mata will become a better player and we'll win more games if he develops. Why dont many of us want this.... why???

[Rom2013 446]

Definitely agree, but if this is the kind of chances Mourinho is going to give Mata (as he did with Kaka), I have a problem...

I have been on the record Oscar is my preferred #10 (and no, it is not because he is Brazilian), but Mata sure can play and he deserves better than games against Swindon.

So, for me, Jose must find a balance in keeping Oscar as our primary CAM and giving Mata enough opportunities to prove himself!

Kaka today is no one. He is a retired player. Mourinho has nothing to do with the bad moment of Kaka.

Real Madrid paid 70M€ for a player that couldn't play two games in a row, and they paid to him 10M€ per season. Kaka and Milan robbed Real Madrid, that's the reality.

About Mata, if he can't play like Mourinho wants he will go to other team.

You can see that Chelsea has a problem when a player like Mata is considered our best player. Mata is not between the best 40 or 50 players in the world.

[Barbara 15,149]

The key point remains being competitiveness. Mata was our best player in the last two seasons. The last two seasons Chelsea wasn't competitive and because Chelsea wasn't competitive Roman asked Mourinho to change the team's philosophy. Mourinho (and the rest of the managers ahead of top teams) thinks that current winning football is about a balanced team that defends and attacks in blocks meaning that defensive players have to have good pass, a little bit of vision and the DM/CM should allow a smooth and fast transition from defense to attack. The attacking players should also provide defensive achievements such as pressing, tackles, interception and man-marking. That's how big teams are competitive today. They have balanced squads.

If Barcelona didn't have one of the best defenses in the world in the 2008-11 period they couldn't afford Messi to be the player he was. Their problems started when Puyol was injured and ever since their defense (FB, CB, DM and CM) wasn't at the same level and that's why they lost some of their competitiveness. RM had one of the best attacking players in the world, but defensively the team allowed the opponents to dominate their midfield, Mourinho is the one who changed that and the result was immediate: from 6 years in row falling in UCL R16 to three consecutive SF.

It can't be hard to understand that in modern football defensive players have to improve their passing and vision of the game and attacking players have to improve their defensive skills so they can be competitive. Top teams are attacking sometimes with 6-7 sometimes 8 players because everyone attacks and defends in blocks (except weaker teams that need to park the bus). It doesn't need to be a math genius to conclude DMs, FBs, CBs aren't enough to cover that...

Normally teams can afford one player to have less (or even little) defensive responsibilities. Right now I can name Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo who are out-of-this-world footballers and can't be compared to the rest. Robben, Ribery, Ozil, Gotze, Reus, strikers all have defensive responsibilities imposed by their managers.

So it's time for the club and the manager to make a decision. To keep Mata with his little service and work-rate and not enough attacking contribution to win us anything worth mentioning (because he is no Messi or Ronaldo) or adapt to what the best teams in Europe have in place and compete for big titles. We may love Mata - some more than others, we may want his splitting passes in the matches (all of us want it), but if we want him to be the exact player he's been for the rest two years let's prepare ourselves to have realistically 0% chances of winning EPL and an average between winning UCL and being knocked out in the groups stage - because chances are neither will happen, but something in the middle might be the reality (R16 or maybe a QF depending on the bracket). When I look back to our history in the last couple of years it's normally been the goals we conceded that cost us competitiveness more than the goals we didn't score and also our inability to solve complicated matches - which means we had tactical limitations. We have problems in the attack and in the pivot, I'm not denying it, but knowing the resident issues we have in the pivot and in the attack should make us want to desperately fix our liabilities in the AM - because that's attainable right now.

[kellzfresh 7,229]

Kaka today is no one. He is a retired player. Mourinho has nothing to do with the bad moment of Kaka.

Real Madrid paid 70M€ for a player that couldn't play two games in a row, and they paid to him 10M€ per season. Kaka and Milan robbed Real Madrid, that's the reality.

About Mata, if he can't play like Mourinho wants he will go to other team.

You can see that Chelsea has a problem when a player like Mata is considered our best player. Mata is not between the best 40 or 50 players in the world.

Bold is not true. But i see the problem from another point.

The problem is that you have to be messi or ronaldo (scoring 50-70 goals and 15-30 assists) if your not the striker and are still not contributing defensively.

A team cannot afford to have two people(striker + AM) watching lazyly when we are not with the ball, against big teams in europe. Thats why mancity murdered us last season. They just attack through the middle since mata wont be there anyways, so they end up having more numbers than us in midfield,(3 vs 2) making our pivot look worse than its supposed to be.

That wont happen under mourinho. The midfield must be compact to compensate for weaker players.

We must play with a definite system instead of telling the rest of the team to defend deep and give the ball to mata once we intercept the ball. What if mata gets injured? then the whole system fails. Thats why we struggled so much when he didnt play.

Mourinho is looking for a team system so that if someone is out, another can enter without too much difference in our style.

[ANDRECHO 432]

The key point remains being competitiveness. Mata was our best player in the last two seasons. The last two seasons Chelsea wasn't competitive and because Chelsea wasn't competitive Roman asked Mourinho to change the team's philosophy. Mourinho (and the rest of the managers ahead of top teams) thinks that current winning football is about a balanced team that defends and attacks in blocks meaning that defensive players have to have good pass, a little bit of vision and the DM/CM should allow a smooth and fast transition from defense to attack. The attacking players should also provide defensive achievements such as pressing, tackles, interception and man-marking. That's how big teams are competitive today. They have balanced squads.

If Barcelona didn't have one of the best defenses in the world in the 2008-11 period they couldn't afford Messi to be the player he was. Their problems started when Puyol was injured and ever since their defense (FB, CB, DM and CM) wasn't at the same level and that's why they lost some of their competitiveness. RM had one of the best attacking players in the world, but defensively the team allowed the opponents to dominate their midfield, Mourinho is the one who changed that and the result was immediate: from 6 years in row falling in UCL R16 to three consecutive SF.

It can't be hard to understand that in modern football defensive players have to improve their passing and vision of the game and attacking players have to improve their defensive skills so they can be competitive. Top teams are attacking sometimes with 6-7 sometimes 8 players because everyone attacks and defends in blocks (except weaker teams that need to park the bus). It doesn't need to be a math genius to conclude DMs, FBs, CBs aren't enough to cover that...

Normally teams can afford one player to have less (or even little) defensive responsibilities. Right now I can name Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo who are out-of-this-world footballers and can't be compared to the rest. Robben, Ribery, Ozil, Gotze, Reus, strikers all have defensive responsibilities imposed by their managers.

So it's time for the club and the manager to make a decision. To keep Mata with his little service and work-rate and not enough attacking contribution to win us anything worth mentioning (because he is no Messi or Ronaldo) or adapt to what the best teams in Europe have in place and compete for big titles. We may love Mata - some more than others, we may want his splitting passes in the matches (all of us want it), but if we want him to be the exact player he's been for the rest two years let's prepare ourselves to have realistically 0% chances of winning EPL and an average between winning UCL and being knocked out in the groups stage - because chances are neither will happen, but something in the middle might be the reality (R16 or maybe a QF depending on the bracket). When I look back to our history in the last couple of years it's normally been the goals we conceded that cost us competitiveness more than the goals we didn't score and also our inability to solve complicated matches - which means we had tactical limitations. We have problems in the attack and in the pivot, I'm not denying it, but knowing the resident issues we have in the pivot and in the attack should make us want to desperately fix our liabilities in the AM - because that's attainable right now.

I think the new way to play will be like a Bayern the last years . Specially the last year and now.

[Barbara 15,149]

Bold is not true. But i see the problem from another point.

The problem is that you have to be messi or ronaldo (scoring 50-70 goals and 15-30 assists) if your not the striker and are still not contributing defensively.

A team cannot afford to have two people(striker + AM) watching lazyly when we are not with the ball, against big teams in europe. Thats why mancity murdered us last season. They just attack through the middle since mata wont be there anyways, so they end up having more numbers than us in midfield,(3 vs 2) making our pivot look worse than its supposed to be.

That wont happen under mourinho. The midfield must be compact to compensate for weaker players.

We must play with a definite system instead of telling the rest of the team to defend deep and give the ball to mata once we intercept the ball. What if mata gets injured? then the whole system fails. Thats why we struggled so much when he didnt play.

Mourinho is looking for a team system so that if someone is out, another can enter without too much difference in our style.

spot on. Except it's not only when Mata is injured that we can compromise titles if we build the team around him. He disappears on matches more often than other star players do. It's not only about the amount of goals and assists Messi and Cris provide, but also how they're protagonists or at least contributing players in basically all matches Barça and RM play. Robben, Ribery, Gotze, Reus, Lewa, van Persie, Ozil also have better consistency stats than Mata does meaning they were decisive in matches or at least contributed importantly more often than Mata does. Mata disappears in some kind of matches (for tactical reasons) and also in the odd match now and then (for no apparent reason, except it not being his day). I'm not saying he's inconsistent, I'm just saying he isn't that much consistent when compared to other players - and even those players don't have their teams built around them. how can we be competitive if we build a system around Mata if he goes missing or contributes too little in a relatively compromising amount of matches?

I think the new way to play will be like a Bayern the last years . Specially the last year and now.

I don't know if like Bayern because I feel we miss the main key for that (amazing pivot), but we could at least be a RM.

[Korea 734]

Let's take 2 great young offensive players - Götze und Reus. They had 48 and 47 tackles respectively last season. More in our team had only Azpi, Oscar and Ramires. (Mata - 14 tackles).

Mario and Marco - great attacking players, but they contribute in defensive game. No one ask for them, or for Juan, to become "defensive specialists", but they must to be involved in trying to take away the ball after losing it.

it's kind of different though....

Mata is not an athletic person, however, he is a fantastic footballer...

Both Gotze and Reus are athletically above average...

[Korea 734]

Kaka today is no one. He is a retired player. Mourinho has nothing to do with the bad moment of Kaka.

Real Madrid paid 70M€ for a player that couldn't play two games in a row, and they paid to him 10M€ per season. Kaka and Milan robbed Real Madrid, that's the reality.

About Mata, if he can't play like Mourinho wants he will go to other team.

You can see that Chelsea has a problem when a player like Mata is considered our best player. Mata is not between the best 40 or 50 players in the world.

I said it last season that Mata was no where near world class and I got killed on this board, but I agree he is nowhere near top 50...

[Barbara 15,149]

I'm not sure I can name 50 players in the world better than Mata... I haven't tried but it seems like too many people at first... although for most Chelsea fans he's only behind Cris and Messi [i had to read a few times around here he's better than Özil ] I think not being a top50 is a bit of a stretch...

[kellzfresh 7,229]

spot on. Except it's not only when Mata is injured that we can compromise titles if we build the team around him. He disappears on matches more often than other star players do. It's not only about the amount of goals and assists Messi and Cris provide, but also how they're protagonists or at least contributing players in basically all matches Barça and RM play. Robben, Ribery, Gotze, Reus, Lewa, van Persie, Ozil also have better consistency stats than Mata does meaning they were decisive in matches or at least contributed importantly more often than Mata does. Mata disappears in some kind of matches (for tactical reasons) and also in the odd match now and then (for no apparent reason, except it not being his day). I'm not saying he's inconsistent, I'm just saying he isn't that much consistent when compared to other players - and even those players don't have their teams built around them. how can we be competitive if we build a system around Mata if he goes missing or contributes too little in a relatively compromising amount of matches?

I don't know if like Bayern because I feel we miss the main key for that (amazing pivot), but we could at least be a RM.

Yes his consistency became a major factor in how we played as we were willing to let him preserve his energy for when we have the ball and place all our hope in his attacking skills to bail us out. Thats the wrong approach. Very wrong. Striker and AM cannot both say they wont defend, thats like us playing 4-4-2(which is so outdated for europe now because big teams would just storm through your center)

Look at the stats of the amount of tackles gotze and reus and muller made last season. That didnt hurt their team at all.

We have always cried out for an identity and mourinho's own is high pressing when we are not with the ball and compact midfield with quick transitional play.

Mata is not a baby, he can adapt to that for the benefit of the whole team.

[happy_juan 64]

I think the new way to play will be like a Bayern the last years . Specially the last year and now.

Bayern have Schweinsteiger and Javi Martinez playing in the central midfield while we have Obi Mikel and Ramires. Talk about being realistic.

[didierforever 7,349]

the MOB is so fickle. last year he was our god, our messiah, our go-to man. we could not even fathom starting a match without him. goals against united, arsenal, tottenham, 2 assists in europa league final. 20 odd goals, 30 odd assists and suddently he has become "NOT GOOD ENOUGH"!!!.

and now i read, not in the world best top50 players... what a fucking joke.

and what is going to be even more disgraceful is that, when he actually adapts, settles in and shows his class, these same classless people who are critisizing him, will be seen worshipping this guy.

ps - make mata play in RM, behind the likes of a prolific goal scorer like CR and we ll see how many assists can he have compared to ozil, who by the way ran out of a team like RM to join arsenal just because he felt his place was threatened instead of fighting it. atleast mata has the balls to fight for his place in the team.

[Spike 12,049]

Are there even 50 attacking midfielders in the top class of Europe?

[The Skipper 20,593]

Kaka today is no one. He is a retired player. Mourinho has nothing to do with the bad moment of Kaka.

Real Madrid paid 70M for a player that couldn't play two games in a row, and they paid to him 10M per season. Kaka and Milan robbed Real Madrid, that's the reality.

About Mata, if he can't play like Mourinho wants he will go to other team.

You can see that Chelsea has a problem when a player like Mata is considered our best player. Mata is not between the best 40 or 50 players in the world.

Name them.