Castiel

Well up for this. They'll do us proud!

His future here will be decided next season when we will undoubtedly offload some strikers and make Torres the focal point in succession to Drogba. I believe Danny would do well with us but his link-up play with Torres will be pivotal to his future here - unless he surpasses him in ability of course. Be patient! We have 4 strikers at the moment and nobody could have predicted they'd all misfire at the same time. He wanted game time, we couldn't deliver it, so we loaned him out giving him good experience while we rearranged the striker situation for the future.

Even if we don't go through I wont be gutted provided the team puts in a good effort. Barca is going to humiliate whoever meets them in the final.

Well having played to Drogba's strengths for so long, that sort of change isn't something you can practise immediately no matter how good you are. Fast build up passing is almost done from muscle memory and it'd be pretty difficult to rewrite it to accommodate a different style overnight.

Lots of good points. I'm personally thinking we should stick with him and give him time to learn this league, build his own squad and instil some stability. I can't help but suspect a lot of the attitude issues we have with our players is connected with their lack of faith in the Managers future. If you knew your boss was getting sacked at the end of the month for supposed incompetence would you pay any attention to him? This vicious circle will just continue so long as we indulge in it and we'll never be able to emulate United/Barcelona's sustained dominance in our league - only flashes of brilliance.

Seen lots of interview snips from Yossi lately, inspiring words about the team, what this match means to them and how Torres will hit form soon. Hopefully he's picked up the mood in the camp a bit, he picked mine up at least!

Getting too negative in here. This is hardly beyond our capabilities. We've got no outside pressures (we wont finish below Spurs), we have some incredible talent and form can strike at any moment and we have a good record against United in general and at OT. They have two other major trophies to worry about with an important FA Cup tie with City on the weekend, they may be complacent and park the bus to hold onto a 1-0 effectively turning it into a 90 minute siege on their posts + the Utd counters, their star man is the object of a media witch hunt (pro or con - jury is out) and they are playing just as badly as we are in general. The boys know what's what. We had a similar showdown here last season for the league and they delivered the goods.

Stop letting the media get to you over Torres. Our offence is hardly built to accommodate him as the focal point at the moment. He's just moved to a rival team, in a new city, from difficult circumstances, on a record fee, with no breaks after the world cup with the media circus camped outside his house. At Liverpool he proved to be one of the best strikers the world has ever seen until his constant mismanagement (playing him injured before recovery) and general resulting dissatisfaction with the situation there. Here he's lively, fit and TRYING to make an impact. How many of our great players had horrific first seasons where we all wrote them off, only to flourish later into fan favourites? How many of those players didn't even appear to be making an effort? Torres at least is doing that and he arrived in the middle of our campaign at an especially rough point. He's not the new messiah, he's not going to fix all our problems, he's just the future spear head of our attack. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that sooner or later he'll become a legend to this club and set some goal scoring records on the way.

I can't believe that's all one sentence! :o

We don't need more strikers. We need Wingers!

I don't think its a good idea to play Drogs and Torres together. We've seen this just isn't a successful combination too often now. Drogba was an astonishing impact sub in the OT prem fixture last season and made the difference between 3 points and 1. I'd start Torres, keep Drogba on the bench and let him get fired up - especially if he sees chances being missed. Carlo is going to have to play this with a bit of trickery if we're to stand a chance and that's going to involve some gambits.

Just red media hysteria. Everyone knows its just a matter of time before Torres hits form and gives their precious 'historical' sides a prison pounding. They want us to sell him to Spain before that happens.

I think our progression depends on this tbh, either him or Torres having that sudden form hit and marauding the Utd posts for 90 minutes. Failing that I don't hold much hope for bringing the goods to OT considering their home form and our shaky situation.

I understand your point but its a dangerous road to tread. United and Barcelona have the balance, Arsenal are too far in the youth direction while we're too far in the experience direction. If we played Josh and Sudge next season in more regular roles in place of Lampard/Drogba that'd be a good start. The issue I see with this, especially with Drogba, is their willingness to take a back seat to the youngsters like Giggs and co have done at United. Lampard and later Terry I can imagine conceding to this change, however how many others do you think would be happy to play second fiddle to the next generation? Clearing out all the old guard would leave us in an even worse situation (as we saw with the release of several last summer) and is probably a major factor in our managements decision on what to do.

I'm obviously not too satisfied with how things are at the moment concerning the age issue and lack of drive, but what you're describing here is what Arsenal fans tell us all the time.

One ego to rule them all!

0-5 Torres hat-trick, Lampard dubious penalty and Terry header from a corner.

Its mainly because of his attitude. When the buy was first announced I was really weary of him given his attitude at liverpool. Here he looks a changed man and more up for it than almost any player on our side of the pitch. You can't blame him for lack of service, horrific luck and general tactical problems within the team, Messi wouldn't be where he is without Xavi and Iniesta. I'd wager you could put any striker in the world in front of a Chelsea 11 and we'd be no better off because of deeper issues within this squad. Secondly he's even going out of his comfort zone now as seen in recent matches to make goals happen. At Liverpool he was served the ball and he put it in, against United and previously I've noticed him dropping much deeper to collect it and make things happen (even playmake for others!) which is a new trait (also not using him to his natural ability but that's beside the point). I've just not seen this level of commitment from many others including many of the old guard. He is trying incredibly hard to further the TEAM not himself, even if that means lessening his own wow factor; the opposite of what others are doing. Bottom line is it'd be great if he just had to glide around haunting defenders until our playmaker or wingers fed him the ball for that critical finish he's famous for; but until we buy/promote such a player, he's looking for other ways to be useful while many of his team mates seem to play for their own agendas. As long as he puts the effort he clearly is into his game, he's got my support.

Playing for pride and to cement our top 4 position now. Anything but a comprehensive victory will be a bitter disappointment here.

Agree. He is guilty of sticking with his plans until its practically too late. Whether that be formation, tactics, sub choices or whatever else - if he learned to be more adaptable when his plan backfires that'd be an improvement. We may have won today if he had enforced the 433 and subs at half time when it was clear after the first half that fergie had cracked us. Once he made that change we looked more likely to score, only it was done way too late and I suspect he had the time for the change planned methodically, refusing to deviate from it.

Torres for me. I maintain that United had some kind of voodoo ward on those posts tonight because nobody is that unlucky. By no means was he great but he stood out as someone being up for the fight and creating/capitalising on chances unlike most of them. Every heart skipping moment in front of the Utd posts for me involved him in some way.

Torres is MotM for me out of a very mediocre performance, summing up a mediocre season. The positives to draw from it are it could be worse (we could be in Spurs position). We looked about 100% more threatening when we fell into a 433 which the majority of this board has been screaming for, but alas it was too little too late on the day. No point crying over the penalty that never was because we've done that year after year and it still hasn't changed anything. Just hope we can bring a 433 to OT with some of the threat we caught towards the end of this fixture and turn it around. Even if we brought game to OT I don't fancy our chances against the survivors of the Spanish showdown in the final at this rate.

Looks like a 433 and look at the difference already.

Jesus Torres looks up for it.

Line up looking good. Could have swore I saw an absence of Nani on the United starting 11 which is also great. Feeling more confident now!