Le Fantôme Noir

Maybe. Possibly he tried to manage that risk by giving him less minutes (from the bench) and it backfired, but this game should never have taken place and that pitch put our entire squad in danger.

If he kicks a ball in a Chelsea shirt before Christmas then his comeback has gone ok.

Why are people blaming Sarri?! Got to go upstairs to point the fingers for this one. You'll find that it's full of people who don't 'get' football.

Kovacic will score today.

The only way fans will reach acceptance with Sarri is if he becomes the conduit for young players to find their way into the first team. If we are say, in top 6 next season, but starting with Hudson-Odoi, Loftus Cheek, Christensen and (by way of circumstances) Tammy Abraham (with maybe Reece James and Ampadu featuring enough so that they're not being neglected), and you can see that as a team, we are growing and developing into something good, then I think we as a fanbase would accept that. However, unless he 'grows' too, his in-game management will always prevent us from truly challenging.

We can keep Sarri in charge for weeks or years, but we'll still get bested when it comes to the crunch. Not up to it, sadly.

No x1000.

Rory's gone rogue and needs to be reined in.

It's like he's the award winning drivetime presenter on Capital and then the Radio 1 Breakfast Show job comes up - and he's their choice. Nothing to do with money, it's about ambition and stature. All we can do is appreciate the player he's been for us, enjoy the month or so left and wish him all the best.

A terrible, clueless board appointed the wrong man. All of them need to go. Even with the transfer ban, the future will be brighter with them not around.

Golden opportunity wasted again. He needs to go asap, because we're just wasting our time otherwise.

Let him go. Get good money for him and let's see how he fares at Bayern. They're expecting him to be their Jadon Sancho. That's a hell of a lot of pressure on him and if he falls short, they won't hesitate to replace him.

Morata better be gone by the weekend, because we won't be getting anyone else in while he's still here.

A striker is needed. Desperately. And whoever decided to turn down £60m for Willian should hand their notice in. A truly terrible decision in every way.

The 1998-99 Chelsea team is better was better placed to win the title than the Chelsea team of today. That season we should have won the tile, but suffered huge amounts of bad luck and misfortune during the season. It's crazy when you look back and think they were still in the title race until the penultimate game.

I don't want City to draw level on league wins with us, but that's a small price to pay if it means Liverpool not winning it. Not so much Klopp or their players, but more the media and particularly their fanbase. Don't ever forget the s**t they gave us, year after year.

Nice to see Spurs and that dirty little slut Pochettino being put in their place.

It's short-termist, but we should back the manager and give him the player he wants up front. Also gives Morata a path out of the club too, which is no bad thing.

That's true. He is measured against the best because he was the best. Sadly, for all the money he spent at United and the free reign to make signings in his first two seasons, all he has to show for it is a Carabao/EFL Cup which half the league don't take seriously as a competition, and a Europa League in which he had to sacrifice Manchester United's league position (sixth they finished) in order to win. It's ever decreasing circles. If he wants to enjoy football again, he should take over at an unsuccessful, success starved club and rediscover his love for being an underdog.

I think we have to in January. Links to Higuain today, links to Cavani last week. A lot of fans want Icardi but I don't see that as realistic. I think we're in a Top 4 fight with Arsenal and Spurs and we don't want to be losing out to those two. We'd be better off sending Morata to Milan and getting Higuain for half a season in some weirdly arranged, Juventus ok'd swap. Intrigued why Wilson is a target though. He appears to be a few levels below but maybe someone has seen something in him. (Lollichon once saw something in Ross Turnbull, so these things can go either way).

Nope, the warning signs were there from the first season (2013/14). In fact, in isolation, the calendar year 2015 was not the best for us, save for an incredible moment in May. We didn't just fall of a cliff that summer, and people who were paying attention knew where Mourinho was heading and said so. His managerial powers are on the wane, and have been since Real Madrid. That's understandable, football moves fast and he's simply fallen behind the times. However, the methods he's employed to drag himself back to the top table are the reasons why he finds himself where he is today and why he will never be truly successful at a top club again. It's also why Rui Faria, who followed him *everywhere* eventually lost faith and chose a different path.

United got themselves into this mess because of their arrogance. They thought they were a better/classier club, so they wrote off Mourinho's second spell failings with us because they saw us as a "circus", and instead, they fully believed they could create an environment in which he would somehow thrive in. Wasn't it supposed to be the Pep vs Jose era of English Football? Anyone with their eyes open knew that would never be the case because he was both past his best and becoming an insufferable, poisonous character. It still staggers me that Chelsea fans thought he would actually go there and win the title.