Lasting flops

[BlueLion. 21,491]

BTW, in regards to the topic title, I have something to help:

[termninja 5,290]

Even if you understand his role and appreciate his job for the team.... do you feel this graphic is true? If So then are his scores good enough and can he EVER be an 8 or 9 in most departments in the future?>

Those starts stink...whole goal.com stinks...

Look at our squad there. Essien is in the starting lineup and Torres is a right winger. Meireles has number 4, Bruma is in the squad and Romeu and Lukaku don't have numbers...they even listed Benayoun as a departure and didn't mention any of our loans...just move away from that stupid website.

[The Rising Sun 710]

Those starts stink...whole goal.com stinks...

Look at our squad there. Essien is in the starting lineup and Torres is a right winger. Meireles has number 4, Bruma is in the squad and Romeu and Lukaku don't have numbers...they even listed Benayoun as a departure and didn't mention any of our loans...just move away from that stupid website.

Goal.com might be a crap website to get any reliable data, but i saw some truth in most of those stats.... The way people here are gunning for the source of these stats makes me think everyone rates mikels CREATIVITY 8/10

SHOOTING 8/10

SPEED 8/10

VISION 8/10

Mikel's Passing and Discipline i would rate as 8/10 easily, however these other values i regard closer to reality, i.e. the ones in that goal.com stat rather than what i have written above....

What say You??

I Still rate Mikel Highly but i would love it if Meireles could take up some sort of that role as he is more effective attacking wise. Mikel is good defensively but he must must improve his attacking ability.

Everyone says that Mikel brings stability to our midfield-defense link up, but that is also because we have been so horrible in terms of our attack lately. If we are scoring loads of goals with meireles creating, than defensively we might not need to feel so 'SECURE', by having a Super DM.

[Fulham Broadway 16,863]

Thought this thread was about old porn stars.

As far as Mikel is concerned, I dont know if you've noticed, but someone has had a word in his shell like, and for the last few appearances he now passes the ball forwards

[manco 38]

I think Mikel is a solid defensive midfielder, he just needs more games to get used to it, which is natural for defensive midfielders. Only thing about Mikel and it's very frustrating is that he makes many mistakes, silly ones, and what pisses you off more is that they score from a free kick, and he was the one who badly challenged them or he mis controls it and it goes to the oppesition, he just makes silly mistakes like this, i think he will get better though. Mikel made a great tackle in the Norwhich game, which prevented the player from having a one on one with the keeper.

Thank you

[SeB 1,281]

And as for Mikel, words fail me. This guy was responsible for at least 30% of the goals we conceded last season, and yet he still plays for us. I don't see why we can't but a decent DMC (since Essien is out), such as

Las Diarra or some other skilled butcher...

First of all, welcome to you.

I pass on the fact that neither Essien (who is a box-to-box) nor Lassana Diarra (if somebody can say to me where plays on the field) are defensive midfielders.

I think you do dangerously misunderstood Mikel’s role, especially last season. In fact he did have 3 roles in that season.

When we were walking on the water at the start of the season, the team was very high on the pitch; Mikel covered the axis when Cole was forward on the pitch while Terry slipped to his left to cover the flank. Mikel allowed, then, to fluidify the passing game from the left to right in the same time that he did allow the players around him to shine because thanks to his high tactical understanding of the game he was able to compensate the imbalance generated by the tentacular way of domination of the team. At this moment Chelsea did play 3 or 2 behind with the 2 CBs discarded on the two flanks and the lone Mikel covering the axis.

I don’t know if you remember how Wigan (rather Martinez) beat us nearly 2 years ago, he gave instructions to lock the wings to prevent the LB and RB to go forward and he gave also the instruction to press the axis. And tactically we were beaten by far that day.

Last season, since the Wolves game at home, every team did use this strategy against us, enjoying the tactical failure of Ancelotti (though I’m a big fan of Ancelotti, this tactical aspect has to be underlined) who did change nothing. Cole and Bosingwa were far too up on the pitch at the same time and Mikel did have often to negotiate with one or two players pressing him when he had the ball. And he was just excellent and he limited the damages several times because he was/is able to contain that pressing because his ball protection is very good.

The fact is that the two CBs were not bad and responsible for the defeats we did have, Terry and Ivanovic were excellent but where the shoe did pinch was that the axis was exposed and above a certain intensity of pressing that Mikel couldn’t handle anymore, we conceded a lot of goals resulting of a weakness of the axis. The best example is how could Onuoha score his goal at SB ?

In a 3 midfield that allows the 4-3-3, Mikel is very important because of his tactical science and his ability to switch between the 2 CBs, his passing even if most of his passes are not the riskiest. On the other hand, in the 2 midfield of the 4-4-2, he was less usefull because he hasn’t enough pace and speed in his game, that’s why Ancelotti dropped him.

But in no way Mikel was responsible of such a huge part of the goals we did concede last season, on the contrary he was the man allowing not to concede more goals than we already did. Without him in the first part of the season, we would have been in big big trouble at the winter.

[Tomo 21,733]

I really do not understand all this Mikel bashing, he might not be a flashy player but thats not his job.

What does he have to do to get credit? pick up the ball from Luiz 25 yards from Cech's goal at the Nou Camp, have Messi, Villa and Pedro on their ass in one flick off the ball, turn Iniesta and Xavi inside out 10 times each they eventully go off to be sick, convincigly outmuscle Busquets off the ball shortly followed by Puyol then turn Pique inside out then keep coming back for more 10 times before seeing him off then doing a backheel lob inot Valdes goal.

Anything less i can't see him getting much credit, even if he did that their still find some fault somehow.

[diskoviolente 425]

The debate about Mikel pulling his weight and being an important player on the pitch reminds me a bit of the situation with Makelele when he was at Real Madrid. Obviously Mikel is a different player compared to Claude, but the same way Real suffered when they sold Maka Chelsea would be in trouble if they sell Mikel. He isn´t an attacking midfielder anymore, the role he started at the beginning of his carreer. He plays on of the most overlooked parts in football. The DM-Role, it is not exciting but becoming more important than ever. Look at Arsenal: they have no one in midfield who stabilises the game like John Obi, and they get turned over in midfield with one good pass. That didn´t happened to often in Carlos first season with Mikel in front of our back four. He doesn´t hit the ball from one end to the other, but that is because he obviously isn´t asked to do that so far with no real wingers (up to this point, lets see how Mata is doing). Maybe his playing the simple ball, but then again a team needs someone like him. Players like Lampard wouldn´t have had such a good season like our double season if no one wouldn´t to the dirty work.

[zolayes 14,489]

Mikel does his job quite well. He's not excellent, neither the best in the world for that position, but I'm usually pleased with his performances. Calling him a flop is unfair.

As for Kalou, don't get me started...

Scapegoats to blame for all our problems

1 Ancelotti ...oh that was last year

1 Kalou

2 Malouda

3 mikel / anelka

easy .............

[HRiver 1,512]

Scapegoats to blame for all our problems

1 Ancelotti ...oh that was last year

1 Kalou

2 Malouda

3 mikel / anelka

easy .............

Of course it's easy, because they were/are the responsible ones for the club's failures (apart from Mikel). Why even mention Carlo anyway? That was last season, no point in discussing last season's problems.