Van Butsen

Gary has no weapon to bail himself out of trouble when he inevitably makes similar mistake. I'll take the 21 year old with explosive power

Whoever takes over, I really hope they continue with Zouma at the back. Hopefully he'll have a partner come next season too.

Terrfic post! Hoping everyone has been noticing this develop. On Hazard, it is crucially important to have match winners like this in your team. While having a tight team and a cohesion is absoloutely imperative, so many games are won by individual brilliance. We need to keep him, we need him to take the game by the scruff of the neck at times. Only a handful of players in the world can do this. And we need him to do it for us. Spare me your "but look at him this season" crap, he has been woeful but so has the WHOLE team. He is a quality player and you can shove all the love for the club you want in a bag, if you start shipping out quality then the endless circle of debate will continue. Everyone's crying out for stability and I honestly think people mean managerial stability.. Stability extends to the team as well.

Real professionals get the job done whether they have a homeground or not. Real professionals embrace a challenge. If he doesn't like the look of us now then I don't want him when he does. The one seemingly irreplaceable aspect about losing Jose is that we lost someone who loved the club.. this was more than a job for him, it as his life. But he didn't feel that way overnight, it's our job to be the same club we always are and welcome anyone with open arms. Falling in love with the club is inevitable.

As a few posters have mentioned, all very well to be grateful to Mourinho.. but this weekend, the new manager has to be supported from the outset. Unless it's Brenda

Top post Plo, think I'm on the same level.. don't have much more to say on the topic in general. Thanks Jose. And good luck to the next bloke.

I never really detested Fergie, lot of respect, even more so now.

A lot wrong with this post.

I don't 100% agree with the decision but I do think a lot of people are letting sentiment get in the way. Maybe it was too soon for some, but when would it ever be acceptable to say goodbye? Maybe at the end of the contract, but if by then we were in the lower regions of division 1 would you say otherwise? I'll support the club for ever but I still have as much love for the players that got us the titles as I do the manager. Everyone suggesting the players will be forgotten but Jose will not... well i argue that your just as bad as the people you argue with that suggest Jose should have been sacked. It's a sad day, but a new day,

What does losing the dressing room even mean? The players lose faith in anything the coach says? Are they just sticking headphones in during the pregame talk? Let's say somehow the dressing room was left on the bus and 'lost'.. How does it stop the best play maker in league from making plays? How does it make the best defensive midfielder in the league suddenly look like a frail old man? i think that's absurd

In the past three seasons he's been the shining light for players get knocked over/tripped and just getting up and on with the show. Rarely whinged and was most of the times tackled quite aggressively. I'd hate to think he faked it on Monday because the going was too tough.. Serious serious problems if so

Why can't we play like this from the start.. I'm quite liking this now

Why the fudge would Ivanovic just cross it all the way back the other side after we have switched the play to the open side. He has absolutely gone ahead and replaced his brain withh rocks in the summer

We are sh*te

I think you are just trying to poke holes in a great competition here. With this mentality, we would have changed the whole premier league system a few seasons after it's inception because the same teams were going to keep winning. We haven't even played the first round of KO and your tired of seeing great teams play against each other? Tired of seeing two great teams like Chelsea and PSG play again.. have the previous ties been uneventful for you? Tired of seeing what Kiev could do against Man City.. notorious underperformers in this competition? Tired of seeing the champions of Italy play against the champions of Germany? Tired of seeing what newcomers Gent can do in their first go at the KO stage?

Not sure what people are complaining about? Tired of getting PSG? A good team? There's only so many effing teams that perform each year and qualify for the knockout, it's not like they were a 1% of being drawn. If you want an easy group just to finish top, then you must realise other groups will be tough, leaving a few quality teams to finish second and thus have the possibility of being drawn against us? Revenge? It's one a piece over the last two seasons. Unless you want to go round and round on revenge for the next few? But then again, you've probably already complained about playing them too much. We've had a pretty good run of groups and first round knock outs in the last 8 years I'd say... We are not in this competition to make up the numbers, we are in it to win it. At some point, you're going to have to beat someone good. Bring them on, really hate Cavani's face

Don't they just pull the dam thing out of a hat? This percentage breakdown has me rattled

Costa for mine.. holding the ball, drawing the foul to regain possession and good movement on the counter, aggressive but not over the top. Thought he played his role the best.

It'll be Gent for sure

This is why I'm holding my judgement.. I want to see what he can do with this situation.

I'll hold my judgment on whether he'll learn from any of the mistakes he's made this term. It's his way or the highway and I doubt he'll ever seriously acknowledge that he might have been wrong once or twice or more.

I essentially agree with this. If I'm playing football and a new manager comes along, I don't immediately want to go out and lay my life on the line for him. It's on the manager to set goals, set a culture both on field and off and develop the squad and hopefully, meet your goal and win the title. By building this culture the players all buy into the program and develop a solid trust in the manager to follow his lead and subsequently succeed. once achieved, it is again on the manager to build on this and continue to strive for more success. If all the supporters back in the manager and we ship out talented players in the summer, what's to say that in 3 years time we won't be saying the same thing. That the crop have had their three years, Mourinho pulled them all together and won the title but now we look slow and bereft of ideas. We've sold 3-4 players that people on this forum can't stop mentioning. We've been an off-field side show. It would just seem manufactured, nothing grew, everything was put together for a purpose and now it's fallen apart.

Sh1t beer and a full house, sounds like a good day at the cricket to me. Have you been to Metlife stadium? Plenty of soul when I was there.. and it was about 0 degrees. It's probably not an example I'd use of a good stadium in the US though. To me, the US have a plethora of quality stadia and quality atmosphere in a number of sports. Just google best US stadiums and have a look at the lists, some great ones in there for an aesthetic point of view.