gojo_ed

If this news is true than it's brillliant. No overstatement to say he's the best player at the club at the moment.

Ditto, today shows this more than ever. If we lose him then someone is doing something seriously wrong regarding contracts.

Bolton away next, tough game though Stoke got the better of them today. We have an excellent record at the Reebok so hopefully this result will help us to continue that! Oh and Ivanovic is fantastic, we have to do all we can to keep him.

Agreed, almost looked like he was trying to hard to do something spectacular. Can hardly blame him though, he needs to be playing more than 5-minute cameos at his age.

Disappointing to not see Sturridge starting. Can only think Anelka's excellent record vs Blackburn edged it, and hopefully they'll prove us wrong- if we're being honest we really should be winning this game comfortably, but current form means it may not be

Hahahahaha I don't want to boast or anything (although boasting about correcting grammar is fairly sad lol), but I'm "Daz" on the DM comments...I only usually comment when they print a load of crap, which is quite often, and in this case I felt I got my point across well ;)

@Zolaslovechild (1) Mourinho wasn't sacked- mutual consent. (2) What does it matter who the owner supports, Ken Bates was a QPR fan. Roman obviously does care for us, otherwise he wouldn't have put in the bucketloads of money

Retards. Ancelotti and Abramovich out...hmm that's gonna help.

Sturridge just scored 5 goals for the reserves. If he doesn't start on Sunday (and to be honest, the run of games after) God knows when he will do.

What else can Sturridge do? That team would probably have done just as well as the rabble that turned up last night.

Bloody hell. Go on, who else would you hire? As I said in another thread even José would struggle with this squad. For f**ks sake, they're essentially the same core players (Cech, Essien, JT, Lamps, Drogba) that won the 06 title minus the strength in depth. Carlo did wonders to win the title for us last year in style- admittedly losing to Wolves feels sh*t but who on earth is going to want to manage us if we sack our manager every 12 months, 6 months after we've won the Double? How long did Wenger/Fergie, even bloody Claudio Ranieri go without winning a trophy?

We could have played our youth team and they would have put in more fight. Rubbish.

Ha Blackburn 2-0 up. Grateful for small mercies and all that

I make that déja déja déja déja déja déja déja vu

No Anelka! Let's see if Kalou can perform from the start..I predict 2-1 to us Drogba and Lampard,

Putting some of the under-performing first-teamers on the bench could be beneficial for a number of reasons (i) It gives them a kick up the backside (i.e. Drogba at Spurs) and hopefully motivates them to perform. (ii) It gives them a rest if they're not required to come on . (iii) It hopefully gives us more options if we're not playing well. How many times have we been struggling, only to see limited options to bring on? If we had an Anelka/Essien on the bench it would give more options for Carlo to change the game from the bench, rather than putting on a right-back or a youngster. (iv) It of course gives the youngsters the chance to prove themselves from the start rather than coming on when the game's already 70 minutes old.

As others have said given our current form this is no easy game (though what would be!?). IIRC they gave us a decent game last year at Molineux, but hopefully we can just pull something out. If Anelka starts I can't imagine how annoyed Sturridge would be, surely he'd do no worse.

Hmm interesting. I'm not sure, maybe if we had gone down the cheapies route it would have been better in the short term, but I feel the club are sensibly looking long-term. The likes of Sidwell, Ben Haim etc were never going to be major players with us, but you can see the potential is there for at least one of Josh, Kakuta and Bruma. Having said that I feel we still should have still brought in extra squad players in the Summer as our squad is obviously short. The main difference though between Carlo and José is that we basically still have the same core to the team (Ess, JT, Lamps, Drogs) except a few years older and in worse form. Carlo did wonders to squeeze that great season out of them last year, but you can't keep holding back the inevitable.

Carlo isn't a miracle worker. Dare I say it, even José would struggle with the squad we have.

One thing that should be mentioned is that last season wasn't all plain-sailing. There were times when we appeared vulnerable, albeit no where near the levels of this season. Even when we were winning games for fun earlier this season, there were still periods of the game where we looked poor- the 2nd halves vs MSK Zilina (away) and Blackpool come to mind.

Lampard just for me. Kalou and Bosingwa did well when they came on, Ramires continued his decent form. On the negative side Malouda Drogba and Anelka just seem to have completely lost their spark up front, Ferreira had an off day and the whole defence fell asleep at the end. 4th has to be the target now, if we play like that against a team who to be honest are in terrible form, there's little hope for our title chances.

Uncannily similar to the game on Boxing Day 07 as well, didn't we come back from a goal down to only let in a late equaliser at 4-4?

Bizarre game. We were rubbish in the 1st half, if Villa hadn't backed off so much we were there for the taking. Despite his goal Drogba was poor and Malouda anonymous.

Same old story...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1342153/Chelsea-90-cent-certain-land-Real-Madrid-star-Kaka.html