.verse - Comments

With Gerrard playing a deeper role we don't need Carrick there as well. I'd be more open to the idea of having Henderson in there than Carrick - I just want to see us have some energy and take a bit of a risk rather than going with two deep lying central midfielders.

Baines and Shaw are the future. No point taking Ashley Cole for him to be rinsed by Suarez and all the pundits to be like, 'who saw that coming?'

Has Cole even played this season?

People saying Sturridge only showed his true ability when he got to Liverpool need to remember that when he had that loan spell at Bolton he also had a good record (8 in 12) so basically anytime he's been used as a striker he's shown what he can do, it just seems every manager at Chelsea misused him quite badly

Why do that if you weren't highlighting it in a bad light though?

It makes no sense at all.

You were highlighting his new deal as if it were an exaggerated price to pay as if your own club didn't waste 50m on Torres with 150k a week being spunked on him.

I'd take paying Rooney 300k a week over some of the dross Chelsea have on stupid money.

>Chelsea fan
>Complains about prices in modern football

Chelsea don't need a quality forward. Could stick Turnbull up front and still win the league next year

As for Vidal, I think it's a no go anyway, but the club have been talking about these players (or as close as we will get to talking about players) in the hope or expectation that Rooney would stay. Rooney staying does not necessarily hinder that pursuit, arguably it may enhance it, especially if we drop out of the Champion's League, because he's a very highly rated player in Europe, and its going to be far easier to convince players of the calibre we want that this season has been a blip if players aren't fleeing.

Why are you so against playing Mata on the wing?

And Ninja's right about the obsession with tactics being arbitrary. Often the tactical lineups on MOTD seem to be decided by how progressive a manager is perceived to be. The 'Classic English 4-4-2' normally has a big man, a little man and two wingers. Could easily be describing the current 4-2-3-1.

*Whilst they were suffering an injury crisis that saw their best central midfielder and one of the best players in the league to miss the game and resulted in a 33 year-old centre-back playing in midfield.

Chelsea played well and Mourinho had a good game but his 'tactical genius' has been vastly overstated in that game.

Just seemed to me that as usual Mourinho spits his dummy out when he doesn't like something he hears or see's. He's already cried about what City spend even though he did exactly the same to get success at Chelsea, then of course there was the West Ham game where he once again forgot that he's played exactly the same way many times before against clubs when he first took charge of Chelsea.

He bores me to death now and is only ever interested in trying to make himself look better than everyone else, which is what he's been doing by saying how his side are not contenders for the title despite them having an almost equally good a squad as Man City, blokes a prick.

Unprofessional, though. He needs to grow up.

No ones trying to claim he's a gifted defender, but he's clearly capable of doing his bit. His presence in the team for every single one of the games against Barcelona and Bayern Munich (the Barca games in particular, where he played from the right) are clear indications that he's not the defensive liability that the poster I was responding to believed him to be.

I'm not trying to insinuate Mourinho was wrong, I perfectly understand his decision making process I just think in making that decision a pretty distorted view has been created by his hordes of supporters.

As for the last point, thats fair enough, but again, thats Moyes to blame more than anyone. If he wanted to play football in the way we have been we should have got Andy Carroll and Peter Crouch in in January, not an actual footballer like Mata.

See I think this is an unfair stick to beat Moyes with.

Mata was always going to be playing from wide for us, but even your heat map shows he's not playing 'wide right'. His clear tendency is to drift inside, just analysis that for a second, he has as many touches (I assume thats touches its measuring) in central midfield as he does close to the byline, and even then I imagine the vast majority of those were touches coming back from taking corners.

Although it obviously favours the right side it's clear that he's drifting all across that front line, hence the large heat spot on the left flank and the fact that the heat off the right comes inside.

This, to be fair to Moyes is a pretty progressive position and this is despite the fact that our performance was entirely based upon players getting to the byline and putting in crosses, something which Mata clearly was not doing .

Another manager with the front 4 of Rooney, RVP, Januzaj and Mata would use them in similar ways. There's a really exciting prospect of some excellent combinations with Rafael and Evra (or a competent left back in the summer) providing the width thats needed. Unfortunately, Moyes seems determined to play one of the shittest brands of football imaginable with them.

Well that's the main thing he has to do so as long as he's scoring I don't really care if thats all he does.