Jonty

I feel bad for you brother.

We have no choice but to try and pass it through the middle with Mazacar, if we go wide and try to cross it in, Torres wins no headers, and if we try and play direct to Torres from the back, he gets muscled off it right away. Our entire game plan involves Mazacar passing it between themselves until they can fashion a good opportunity, it's sad that we have to play around our 1 striker on the field.

He got injured in the game against everton.

He was making chances, getting on the end of them, retaining possession, making runs on and off the ball, and linking up with Hazard and Oscar. By his high standards he was below par, but if you were to judge him on the Torres scale it would be a very solid performance. We started with a 4-3-3 against a weakened Everton side and got sodomized until he changed back to the 4-2-3-1

For the record for all i've said against Torres, i'd never boo him (or any other Chelsea player for that matter) either, last thing he needs is his own fans on his back making him even worse.

Who was as bad today? Ivanovic had his worst game ever in a blue shirt but normally hes very solid, Turnbull wasn't great for either goal but they weren't his fault, everyone else made some form of positive contribution. Mata/Hazard/Oscar didn't play their best games today, but they were the players doing everything for the entire game around the box, Torres barely had any touches, the bar gets set far lower for Torres. If Torres played as well as Mata did today, we'd be hailing him for his fantastic effort.

To be honest this is far from over, Ba came close 3 times in 10 minutes, give him 90 and we could easily have a game on our hands.

Judging by this thread and many others, he's driving a bigger wedge between the fans than the FSW ever has.

Looks like all those people slagging me off yesterday for saying Torres is a waste of space were bang on. 80 minutes and his only contribution was winning a free kick off chico flores that looked a dive on the replay. 10 minutes for Ba and he gets 2 headers in on goal, gets tripped by the keeper in a 1 on 1, and scores a goal that may not have even be offside. Hope you're all happy with your star #9

This loss can only be blamed on the manager if you point towards leaving Lampard and Ba on the bench, two decisions I suspect were influenced from higher up. I'd rather keep the interm on another season than Torres.

Don't care if it upsets the fanboys on here, Torres didn't have a bad game, didn't make mistakes, but boy did he do jack sh*t for 80 minutes, then in 10 minutes Ba wins two headers on goal, nearly goes around the keeper, and scores a goal which was very contentiously ruled out for offside. He's not the reason we lost but he's the reason we didn't win, f**k off.

Anyone else love the physicality our midfield is showing today too? Luiz, Oscar and Rambo not taking any prisoners, that Hernandez clown is a twat.

I certainly wouldn't object to having them in the EPL, much better than the scummy Rangers we currently have in this league.

Someone said that away goals only count at the end of extra time in the 2nd leg, not end of normal time, so it's not as important as say, in the Champions League. Overall we did everything but put it into the net, we made loads of chances and they've all just been inches wide, Iva forced a great save out of their keeper, and a few through balls have just been ever so slightly overhit. Mata had maybe the best chance from Hazard's run and hit it right at the keeper. If i were the manager all i'd be saying now is keep doing what you're doing, their only chance of the game came from a mistake, and those mistakes will happen as we learn to play out from the back so i'm not too worried about it. Bring on Ba around the 60-65 minute mark. I'd say we can still get something out of this game, Swansea have been far poorer than I expected, even a draw wouldn't be a disaster from this game if we show up this well in the 2nd leg. edit: My view on Torres today, he hasn't had a bad game by his standard, hasn't really had any good chances yet, although Ba may have gotten into positions to be on the end of chances better (as seen in his two goals last week)

I think you know what I meant when I said he forced Robbie, obviously not in the literal sense of the term, but his performance was so bad and the team's form was slumping because of it, that Robbie had to change it up as the pressure was on him to get results. I stated later in my post that Drogba was likely going to leave after the CL win regardless. We were top of the table in the 2011 season for the entire time until Torres was bought, then we had the worst run of form in the RA era because it took him 1000 minutes to score a solitary goal, which ended up costing us any chance of silverware, and that clearly cost Carlo his job. Again, he didn't personally fire him, but he was clearly a major reason in that season being ruined and costing Carlo his job. Again, i'm fairly sure you understood what I meant when I originally made that statement. And yes the board was wrong to purchase him to begin with, especially for such a ridiculous sum of money, and no I don't think it's reasonable that we build our team around our weakest player, would make a lot more sense to build it around our strongest. Most of what I just said was fairly self-explanatory, but you felt the need to nitpick...

I'll make one for the decade spanning 2000-2009, any earlier and i'd just be basing it off other peoples opinions, which doesn't seem right. Buffon Cafu - Nesta - Cannavaro - Maldini Zidane - Makelele - Lampard Ronaldinho - Ronaldo - C.Ronaldo Was hard leaving out Zanetti, JT, Ash, Figo, Davids, Xavi, Messi, Raul and Henry, but thats about as good as I could do.

I almost think a final against Villa would be easier after watching that game, a lot of passion and experience in that performance, was like watching us against Barca all over again.

I defended Torres long after most people gave up on him and were calling him a girl and much worse, but there is only so much I can take, and after that game against West Brom where he clearly didn't give two sh*ts, forced RDM to start without a striker against Juve, leading to him getting the sack, that was enough. If players are on bad form or are having trouble mentally then ok i'm all for getting behind them, but what I saw that day was a culmination of what has really been the problem all along, and that is that he just does not give a f**k about football, particularly for Chelsea (he's slightly better for Spain). There have been a few flashes of him caring, like that run and goal at the Nou Camp, but they are few and far between. If the board hadn't been so insane as to get rid of Drogba and loan off his replacement at the start of the season, Torres could have been rotated more and i'll give him that it's not his fault he's had to play virtually every game this season. Or maybe it is, because according to Carlo, Torres could never have performed until he had Drogba and any other strong competition out of the way. Saying he hasn't at least played a part in the demise of Carlo and Robbie is a flat lie, the departure of Drogba was probably going to happen regardless as we'd won the Champions League, but lack of effort and form is the primary reason why our season has gone to sh*t. The only other blame rests with the board who have taken this long to do something about it.

Didn't he say the same thing about England a while back? Just trying to panic everyone by the sounds of it.

I don't want to sound cocky, but that 1-1 draw against Swansea did come when we were playing the worst football we've played all season, and we had no striker, and Lamps was still injured. Despite that we still outplayed them and conceded a late goal in probably the worst conditions we've played in all season. I feel a lot better about this, and JT may be back for the 2nd leg.

They're not his legends, he hasn't been a Chelsea fan for the last decade, so he has no emotional attachment to them, so what do you expect. AVB tried to do the same thing, and whoever comes in at the end of the season will likely do the same.

Probably depends on what they count as assists, things like deflected shots etc.

That penalty Fabregas won was a dive as well, he said as much to Drogba afterwards, Drogba says so in one of those "Champions of Europe" videos. Not to mention we had a difficult group with Leverkusen and Valencia, we may not have had those players suspended if we had easier group games. We hardly had it all our way.

I can't feel sorry for FT when he's getting 210,000 pounds a week to play football.

I laughed