Mikel John Obi

[The Skipper 20,593]

There are some clueless idiots on this thread.

@Seb: your claims about Turnbull having more clean sheets are false so jog right ahead. Typical of all Mikel apologists to make up wrong stats to support him

@Bluesmaster: I think its better we do not talk about our performances vs Man City. Mikel was completely dominated in our midfield in all the 4 matches we played against them this season.

vs Athletico: If we concede 4 goals, fingers has to be raised at the DM who in the words of his apologists "provides a shield to the defense"

vs West Ham: I must have missed the part where Mikel was doing a very good job and not being embarrassed by Diame

vs Southampton: The lesser said about the DM the better

Are you trying to say that all misfortune strikes our team when Mikel plays and that is why we get relatively poor results?

Thats a warped little world you live in.

It's equally as warped to practically blame Mikel solely for all bad performances when he wasn't the only culprit in those losses you've mentioned. The way you're depicting it is as if everyone but Mikel had decent games and that it was his bad performance that caused the majority of errors when that simply isn't the case.

[Spike 12,049]

I have an opinion on Mikel but I'm afraid to say it because one of you will probably track me down and brutally murder me.

[The only place to be 11,313]

I spoke about the usual comparison between the starting goalkeeper's stats and the backup goalkeeper's.

I don't understand how people still cannot understand how our non functional 4-2-3-1 was such a joke this season, nobody plays with 2 central midfielders and 4 attackers nowadays...

My daily battle with my U11 is to explain them that defending is a team thing, that it stars from the front, that everyone has to track back etc... that defenders aren't only there to defend.

We tend to play possession football given the overral technical ability in the squad, so that must be coupled with pressing, with the deep midfielder left to tasks related to ease the ball circulation and pick crumbles after a supposed good pressing by the 4 men ahead of him

Until Robbie got sacked, our defending process started at the edge of our penalty area considering we had 4 useless attackers in transitions. Some still wonder why we were so fragile at the back ? How we went from a team supposed to play possession in the opponent's half to a counter attacking team ?

Mikel went to cover Cole who was left completely exposed on a throw in, so then he couldn't protect the zone 14. Diamé was a deep midfielder pushing forward, so that was to the AM to pick him

Southampton, so what ? Cahill losing his marker Lambert in the box (and leaving critics free), is that also Mikel's fault ?

I actually agree with much of what you're saying about our tactics (who knew I could understand tactics??).

The best performances this season were when the team was actually 'joined up' - where everyone defended and attacked together and there were a few performances like that (off the top of my head Fulham away, West Ham at home, West Brom at home and points within matches like Spurs at home).

But in those games we relied a lot on Ramires to join up the play by bringing the ball forward and players like Mata and Hazard dropping deep. It's those links that we built a lot of our good stuff on, whereas Mikel really didn't help at all in that way in my opinion.

We talk about his passing a lot, and I actually have no problem with lateral passing. It's key to possession football because it forces the opposition to move, and it's in those small transitions that spaces open up and we create chances. The problem is Mikel doesn't do it with any urgency. If you watch him he doesn't do a lot of two touch passing - it's always a little laboured. Now that has the other effect of allowing players to close him down, but that's not the worst thing. It's the fact that it slows down ALL of our play and he's not the only talented player we've had do that to us over the years. Joe Cole suddenly went through a phase of being ponderous and slow on the ball.

Now we can criticise other elements of his game and his mentality, but purely from a tactical point of view I simply think he doesn't suit what we've been trying to do either under Benitez or even AVB.

[Jase 43,479]

There are some clueless idiots on this thread.

@Seb: your claims about Turnbull having more clean sheets are false so jog right ahead. Typical of all Mikel apologists to make up wrong stats to support him

@Bluesmaster: I think its better we do not talk about our performances vs Man City. Mikel was completely dominated in our midfield in all the 4 matches we played against them this season.

vs Athletico: If we concede 4 goals, fingers has to be raised at the DM who in the words of his apologists "provides a shield to the defense"

vs West Ham: I must have missed the part where Mikel was doing a very good job and not being embarrassed by Diame

vs Southampton: The lesser said about the DM the better

This is getting hilarious. Tried to point out the fact that we didn't lose those games because of Mikel and only Mikel by looking at other factors which majorly led more to it than Mikel and you are just constantly redirecting everything to Mikel and trying to put all the blame on him when it shouldn't be.

vs Manchester City

Mikel may not have played well against Man City in the matches last season but did any of the other players actually performed against them? No. In all of those games, the entire team - back to front - basically got dominated and no one played well. We failed to win any of those games because the entire team didn't play, not just because of Mikel.

vs Atletico Madrid

Questions have to be raised at the defensive pivot but didn't know they were the only one that played against Atletico Madrid. Tell me, what were the entire team doing against Atletico whenever they attack? We basically saw a striker practically tore us into pieces especially the back 4 by himself. Was it Mikel's fault that Falcao took us to the cleaner when not 1 of the CBs or even the full backs marked him?!

vs West Ham

Ha! I said we completely dominated the first half and should have scored more than just the 1 goal then because we played extremely well. The whole team. But in the 2nd half, we completely capitulated because of Diame. Did anyone even know how to deal with him? No. We lost the game because we didn't deal with Diame and failed to defend properly.

vs Southampton

Of course the less said about the DM better, none of the goals we conceded were Mikel's fault! We ended up losing the game because of a direct free kick goal and Benitez playing a weaken lineup for the match.

Furthermore, you previously said this:

Football games are won by performances of your 11 players on the field.

If that's the case, shouldn't the same be applied on football games are also lost by the 11 players on the pitch? Why put all the blame on Mikel then? I get it you don't rate Mikel at all but what you have basically been doing here is just proving my point right from the start. You are just being selective in what you want to read and say by using stats at face value to justify why the supposed ineffectiveness of Mikel. You are trying to pin all the blame on him by pointing out the difference in winning more games and losing less with and without Mikel when winning more and losing less of those matches have hardly gotta do with him alone. There are other factors involved as well that determine it but it has been conveniently disregarded.

Are you trying to say that all misfortune strikes our team when Mikel plays and that is why we get relatively poor results?

Thats a warped little world you live in.

Oh the irony.

[The Rising Sun 696]

Just had a moment of clarity regarding Mikel, havent read much of earlier posts buthere goes....

Debating whether he is good enough or not good enough for chelsea is not worth the trouble IMO.

As a general Principle, if a player has not made it at a club for 7 years, then either he is not at the level of the club, or the club is not right for him.

Its a 7 year period, so injuries is not an excuse.... if he is so injury prone, then again the club should not keep such a player.

In my view he had qualities when he came, and he came a long way in developing those qualities, but at some time in his development, he simply stopped improving facets of his game that were heavily lacking.

That was a purely objective view....

From a personal standpoint, the reason i want him gone is very simple,

When he starts i dont expect great things from him,

but now when he is brought on as a sub, i have stopped viewing him as a fresh pair of legs, as he doesnt do the lung busting and closing down required.

He in fact makes me more nervous and changes the dynamic of the game for the worse.

Basically when a Chelsea players comes on, and that evokes fears and acceptance of the worst scenarios becoming greater possibilities, that is the moment i give up on a player.

That position is too important for a club like ours with the players we have ahead, and therefore we really need a player that has a bigger personality, greater enthusiasm and a real ability to impose himself.

Rant over.

[The only place to be 11,313]

The why I rate Oscar over Mata and Hazard for that central attacking playmaker role is because he drops, links play, he organize things being behind the ball when we build attacks ; he can play back to goal and he doesn't looks for the specular everytime (something he's been praised for in Brazil, by Parreira in instance).

I haven't read the whole post (yet) but I actually agree on this point. Mata is phenomenal but he's weak at defending and can disappear sometimes. When I've seen Oscar given that main playmaking role, as he is for Brazil, he links everything together from deep plus he offers a lot more energy and hustle in defending.

The problem is that if you move Mata wide then you can also expose one of the full-backs because he doesn't track back like Hazard does.

I think Mata is going to be a problem for us going forward which sounds absurd because he was our best player last season.

[CHOULO19 24,332]

I love how the football is bigger than Ashley Cole!

Just had a moment of clarity regarding Mikel, havent read much of earlier posts buthere goes....

Debating whether he is good enough or not good enough for chelsea is not worth the trouble IMO.

As a general Principle, if a player has not made it at a club for 7 years, then either he is not at the level of the club, or the club is not right for him.

Its a 7 year period, so injuries is not an excuse.... if he is so injury prone, then again the club should not keep such a player.

In my view he had qualities when he came, and he came a long way in developing those qualities, but at some time in his development, he simply stopped improving facets of his game that were heavily lacking.

That was a purely objective view....

From a personal standpoint, the reason i want him gone is very simple,

When he starts i dont expect great things from him,

but now when he is brought on as a sub, i have stopped viewing him as a fresh pair of legs, as he doesnt do the lung busting and closing down required.

He in fact makes me more nervous and changes the dynamic of the game for the worse.

Basically when a Chelsea players comes on, and that evokes fears and acceptance of the worst scenarios becoming greater possibilities, that is the moment i give up on a player.

That position is too important for a club like ours with the players we have ahead, and therefore we really need a player that has a bigger personality, greater enthusiasm and a real ability to impose himself.

Rant over.

Or inversely, if a player has stayed at a top team for 7 years and has been a starter for 4 years, then, either all the managers that have come to the team during that period are idiots, or the team is very shit, or the player gives the managers blow jobs before they pick the team, or, god forbid, he is at least a very decent player.

[Special Juan 27,103]

BREAKING NEWS - #Nigeria and @ChelseaFC star Mikel agrees to join Turkish giants @GalatasaraySK:

[nadavTKL 1,787]

Transfer Central TNC ‏@TransferNewsCen

Turkish site 'Fotomac": Galatasaray sporting director Bulent Tulun confirms John Obi Mikel has agreed in principle to join the club -W.

[Peppen 934]

BREAKING NEWS - #Nigeria and @ChelseaFC star Mikel agrees to join Turkish giants @GalatasaraySK:

Source?

[Special Juan 27,103]

Source?

http://www.mtnfootball.com/europe/epl/news/2013/june/14-mikel-agrees-to-join-galatasaray.html

[Peppen 934]

http://www.mtnfootball.com/europe/epl/news/2013/june/14-mikel-agrees-to-join-galatasaray.html

Cheers, mate. Certainly interesting!

[Spike 12,049]

Half of the members of TC will kill themselves when he leaves. Such a shame that he has turned out so rubbish. For about a year I was convinced he was world class, easily one of the best DMs in the world. But nope, he went and got worse...and worse and worse. I don't know why, either. Change in tactics? Managers? Or maybe he just stopped caring?

[Special Juan 27,103]

Half of the members of TC will kill themselves when he leaves. Such a shame that he has turned out so rubbish. For about a year I was convinced he was world class, easily one of the best DMs in the world. But nope, he went and got worse...and worse and worse. I don't know why, either. Change in tactics? Managers? Or maybe he just stopped caring?

I think he looked like he got chunkier as time went on, we can do so much better than Mikel and when/if he goes and we sign someone people will soon realise just how average Mikel had become.

[Leif 6,006]

That's one less thing for people to argue about on here!

[OneMoSalah 8,614]

If we lose Mikel I honestly expect us to get De Rossi. Cant see us selling him without an adequate replacement already signed/more or less signed. I can't see us starting Romeu this year or using Lampard regularly in the holding role as he absolutely sucks there.

[BlueLion. 21,491]

Considering I'm one of those who appreciates Mikel and his role in the team... I'm actually feeling pretty happy with this reported move.

[Slam Dunk 1,442]

Don't understand why we'd sell him. Our only established holding midfielder leaving? If so, De Rossi or Matic please, Roman.