ozboy

Standard team with Kovacic for Ross. Question mark over Jorginho and willian both of whom are clocking up a lot of minutes.

I keep think(Ng palmeri would do ok.

The temptation is to play a lot of the bench. But I think the culture of being undefeated is worth working on. To an Aussie a 3000 mile round trip seems like just a normal day at the office.

I can’t ever seem to agree with yorkyblue. I thought Barkley was noticeably sloppy in his passing today, and so was Dave although to a lesser extent. We struggled until Morata goal. Jorginho was fantastic today, constantly making good decisions on the ball. Morata made the second goal look a lot lot easier than it was. Me I still think Zaha would be good in as better team, he’s strong and clever, but has no support really in that team so try’s too hard.

Hope hazard is back. Willian needs a break but probably wants to play. Rest of the team picks itself, I can’t see Giroud starting in front of Morata.

Willian’s played ten games in a row, had the least rotation of any of the front six. I don’t always like how he plays but the coach sure seems grateful to have him.

Wow reading this thread we must be such a crap team. We clearly have no good players and probably lucky not to have lost every game this season. If Derby came up ahainr a good team like ManU they’d really get smashed. We are such a useless team. Let’s ship everyone out and start again then we might finally finish in the top half of the table. As it is we are stuffed, and we are so boring to watch , like we never score any goals, no style, no possession. Crap all over really. Glad that for once I didn’t have to watch our crap team.

We should have too much for Derby. Kovacic obviously will play. Change the defense, up front there are fewer options. I guess Giroud will start, maybe we will see CHO again and Pedro if it really was just a stomach bug.

We were great but Burnley were complete garbage. Huge amount of spaces for our wide guys behind their full backs and we had plenty of opportunities to pass the ball forward. Against such bad opposition the strong points of our team really stand out. Kante is really growing into the box to box role Barkely not just the goal but actually his defensive positioning was excellent Morata made great runs and stayed on side. He is mobile and reasonably pacy The passes over the top to him are starting to come together. The only thing I haven't seen this season is the crosses from Dave for Morata to head home. Arrizablaga is very good with his distribution and we are confident playing out from the back. Actually play out from the back with a 4 man defence better than last season with 5. RLC needs to demonstrate a bit more consistency, was far more average today and his passing is not as sharp as the others, and neither is his defensive work rate although that and his positioning are improving. It costs a lot of sleep to watch games live in Sydney now the clocks have moved in both countries but last night was well worth it. Reminds of Chelsea in 2006/7

Morata could have had a good assist as well. Willians has so much space down our left.

And actually Kante is growing into new role

Well I did say I thought Morata was far more up for it this season and Barkley is da bomb in this set up

We have to learn to play without hazard. Other than RLC or Kovacic I don’t see who else could have started or what options ther were.

It must look different on tv to being at the game because I thought Andreas was pretty average on the ball and Zappa was pretty good. Possibly the worst game I’ve ever seen from fab, it’s like he didn’t care. Saris comments about rlc not being good enough defensively are right on the money in my view and I’m sure that’s why he doesn’t start more in the past 3 years. By contrast Barkley has improved his defensive play if you wanted to play Barkley and RLC together you’d have to put Kante back in his proper position and then you wouldn’t be playing Sarri ball

Cho has pace