bjd

Cheers you're a diamond

Im hoping too Scott but i was away when the tickets went on sale and so missed out. If anyone knows of just 1 spare going for Villa on Sat please give me a shout!!! Sure plenty of people on here can vouch for my reliability and authenticity...i hope....

Always a tough game at Villa. Every season I think it's going to be tough for other teams too. Utd, City, Liverpool, Arsenal. But no. Villa roll over and every time lets these teams tickle their tummies. Yet they come to life against us. It's weird. Saturday will be no different. Tough game, any type of victory will do me.

It was a good result, obviously it could've been better looking at that first 30 mins, but we didnt get the second and that is that, its hardly a disaster - i think most of us wouldve taken a 1-1 at 7pm last night. We are clear favorites to get through now and rightly so, they are a good team but we are stronger. I fancy Luiz may play in the second match in midfield and that extra bite will help us. Im very confident our defence will handle Drogba. I think it will be a good game actually, looking forward it, though i just hope our fans can make some sort of atmosphere as we all know the Turks have the capacity to make it like a home game for them, fair play to them. Its a massively tough CL this year, so many strong teams. I think we will do well to reach the semis. The League is the priority, we all know that, its a nice sideshow but i just dont want it to affect our run in, especially as we look like we could be the only English team left in.

Can't believe we've got a Stripey Nigel posting in here now

Thought he was a sullen useless waste of space when he came on yesterday. Offered nothing but conceding free kicks, breaking down our attacks and losing possession. He was great at moaning at the ref and looking up at the sky though.

My word, I really think you're going about this the wrong way

Agree with this 100%. Compared to the money we payed for the other 2 it was a cracking signing! People also forget Kezman scored a winning goal in a Cup Final for us and also led the forward line very well on one of the clubs greatest ever nights (and results) What did we pay? £6 million ? Yes he wasn't that good but in a different ballpark to the other pair of momental failures he is being compared to here.

Poyet tops my list,totally because of one unforgivable, absurd action on one very bad night at a very horrendous match i was at. Then you've got Townsend, Durie, perhaps Gallas. Bridge never bothered me, i think he just got swept up in the media maelstrom, incomparable to, say, kissing the Spurs badge and punching the air.

I don't think that's accurate at all. I think he started 9 or 10 Premier League games that season. He played more in the Cups and certainly had a decent Cup Final but let's not go overboard. I'd say 10 starts a season is about right for him myself, and I've been ploughing that same narrative since August 2006. Still, some of the abuse he gets is scandalous, I can't get into the same argument again but I think it high time that the club moved on.

I don't think anyone is doing anything of the sort, haven't seen one single post blaming Mikel for the defeat (despite the fact he could've done better with both goals). I think there are two facts no one can deny - the best team won yesterday and It's Mikel or Matic, not both and very clearly it should be Matic.

Fair post. I'm not really buying into the theory regarding tiredness. I just thought City shut us down and didn't let us play, to a certain extend West Brom did this too. Jose is going to have a big think about this. Having said that a week off is going to do us good, not in terms of a physical rest but more for a mental one. And I'm sure we all agree the sooner JT comes back in to the team the better. It's important to take lessons learned from every game and yesterday I think we learned that Mikel and Matic cannot play together, I was staggered that Jose kept them together throughout the match to be honest, I actually thought Mikel had a shocking match and was ball watching for both goals. I wonder if we are going to see more of Luiz in midfield when JT returns, I've never been an advocate of him there but him and Matic certainly seems to be our strongest duo. No disgrace in losing to City at the Etihad it's just such a shame to lose in the manner we did not long after outclassing them up there last week but we won the more important game and perhaps it may help our season in the long run, who knows?

I think it would've been a tough game, but yes it would've been a surprise if they hadn't won.Not sure if this is good or bad for us to be honest, can't say I like the idea of going into a title race with City having a game in hand

Is Mikel being targeted? He certainly shouldn't be. Yes it was a team failure but that doesn't mean people can't suggest some players caused more issues than others. Oh and did you mean to say they are not liked by other players??

Will toure actually play though? In fact what sort of team do you think Pellegrini will put out? Tough to call our team I think, not sure which way Jose is going to go to be honest. There is merit in suggesting playing our strongest and merit in resting a fair few. Don't think anyone can predict how this is going to go until we see the team sheets. One things for sure, we could both do without a replay. Also it'd be nice if your mob made some sort of atmosphere this time!!!

Hate is a strong word. And inaccurate.Shall we pretend he made a difference? Shall we pretend our attacking threat didn't evaporate when he came on? In his case and in the case of Luiz it's not scapegoating, just home truths. It's actually a little frustrating to make valid points about a players performance only to be accused of scapegoating etc (I'm not suggesting you are) There were issues all over the pitch last night to be fair, I maintain the biggest issue was weariness but in the case of Torres and Luiz they were both poor last night, one for not getting involved and the other for, if anything, getting far too involved! Jose must've been frustrated with the both of them and in particular I suspect he thinks he dropped a big one in taking off Eto'o.

Double post

I'd agree - in fact that's a perfect description! Luiz was a total liability in that last 30 mins. We missed JT so badly.Agree the West Brom fans were pretty boisterous and bordering grim but how can we complain? That's what happens at football matches. Fair play to them, shouldn't be an issue for anyone to moan about. Let's face it , they were robbed of a win at SB, we can't deny that.

Was at the match last night and to summarise , we looked tired. Wasn't a repeat of West Ham, this wasn't a silly 2 points dropped - WBA fully deserved their point and we were all at sea at the end (oh how we missed JT) The FA Cup has come at the right time, I'd expect rests for Hazard, Azpi, Cahill, and Willian. Momentum had swung the way of WBA after their changes but the complete turning point was Eto'o going off - nothing stuck up front after that and we were non existent as an attacking force. Torres just didn't get into the match at all. Not Mikels biggest fan as many of you know but he did nothing wrong, it was the Eto'o change that killed us stone dead. When the pressure was on at the end Luiz was all at sea and Cahill seemed to have a bit of a knock, it was coming. Don't think the goal would've happened with JT in the team but it was coming for sure, they were creating chance after chance. Suspect Jose may look at Ivanovic at CB ahead of Luiz moving forward and not before time. Oh and I'd add Ivanovic to the 'rest' list too. Still think it's been a really positive couple of weeks though, worst case scenario is that tonight we are 3rd, a point off the top. And that's worst case. Plenty of twists and turns to come and plenty more points to be dropped by all 4 teams in the title race. We are pretty much where we deserve to be , last night all we did was drop the extra 2 points we didn't expect to get v City. We were looking at the fixtures last night coming back and we've got a good run in but a fair few away games against struggling teams, Jose is going to have to come up with a plan for these. Saturday is going to be fascinating , not least to see what team City put out, but also for our line up too - a fair few changes coming I think. Think we wilI see starts for Schurrie, Salah. Cole. Mikel and Torres. I absolutley want us to win everything but after seeing how leggy we were last night a defeat wouldn't be the end of the world and might contribute positively towards our performance in the other competitions.

To be fair we got lucky when Torres scratched that Spuds player earlier in the Season. He shouldve been banned and so should Toure. Swings and roundabouts. But yes, the way the FA review this stuff is so obviously flawed.

Ashton yesterday suggested JT as a viable candidate for Player Of The Year - pretty sure not many journos would come out with that. Im not suggesting he loves us or anything, just worth a mention i thought. Especially as if he'd have said anything negative there would've had a thread about it within seconds....

Has he won the League Cup ?

Ferguson had plenty of stick over the years, and he also had plenty of sycophantic journos wrapped around his finger too. But at the end of the day he is the most successful manager ever and his team were the most successful team of the modern era. We cant argue with that, i dont think we should compare ourselves to him/them. Actually, it always comes down to comparing. Why ? This is what i dont get. The media dont treat Arsenal the same way as us. He'd be given a 10 match ban if he was a Chelsea player. If that was Chelsea he'd never have given a penalty. If Chelsea did that they'dbe hammered. That type of victim mindset bemuses me. Never really sure why it it matters myself. On the pitch we get breaks and on the pitch we get shafted sometimes. Same for all teams. And in the press, we get often shafted and in a lot of our cases its of our own doing and bloody well deserved - but yet we are often praised too. Look at last Monday, universally praised id say, not that many people would admit it!

So you basically just want me to find some articles from journos having a pop at another club that isnt Chelsea? I could i guess,and im sure they really wouldnt be too hard to find. Just in the same way it wouldnt be hard to find plenty of positive stuff written about Chelsea - but then we are close to the realms of 'he said this and he said that' and i think thats a pointless route to take and wouldnt add to the debate. Do you honestly think Chelsea are the only club who have hacks who dislike them ? Thats the way ii see it sometimes, some fans are very quick to jump on something negative but often miss the positives, or even they just ignore the positives because it doesnt support the theory of the whole media being 'anti Chelsea'. I think the first post on this thread about Sunday Supplement yesterday is a perfect example of this.

Patrick Collins is hilarious, as i alluded to before. He can just be ignored, it goes beyond bias, hes like a caricature, a comedy show sketch, even. Even other journos laugh at him, hes so out of touch and from a different time. Two extreme examples above, and yes, its very easy to dig out snippets from journos having a pop, jut as easy as it would be to dig out snippets of journos praising us. And its the same for every club.