Jonty

Surely we're going to be getting a new striker in January, all our signings in the summer were good and the Lampard/Cole situation isn't finalized yet.

I can think of a worse 50 million we've spent

Apologies, the sites are saying that the bid was made from an unnamed club (very good chance thats us anyway), i misread "chelsea target cavani" as us being confirmed as being the club that made the bid. http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/napoli-reject-45m-bid-for-edison-1507092 http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2892/transfer-zone/2012/12/26/3629936/napoli-reject-55-million-cavani-bid?source=breakingnews Apparantley the clubs chairman is the source, so should be reliable, and there's not many other clubs who would put that much money on for him.

Apparantley we've just had a 45 million pound offer for Cavani rejected.

Interesting, makes Carrick look bad lol.

Everton scraped through in their last two games (wins over West Ham and Wigan), and definitely look a lot weaker without Fellaini. It's going to have to be one we grind out but I think this is the best time to play them. Their main weakness is that their defence is old and slow with the likes of Neville and Distin, and i'd like to see us play both Hazard and Moses to really have a run at them. They also have Hibbert and Mirallas out with injury, and I think Gibson will be suspended for it unless the appeal is successful. Overall they'll have a weakened team and I fancy us to grind it out, 2-1.

So has he been playing the majority of the season in midfield? Does he look as good playing in defence?

Only two contributions i saw of Ake were a) Losing Bassong from the corner which nearly led to us conceding b) kicking a throw in straight in to touch to put more late pressure onto us Not fair to base an opinion of a player off 5 minutes of football, but wasn't a great first impression on me.

If theres one thing I realized about Torres this season, it's that what he needs to do more than anything else is hit the gym and put on some upper body muscle. Seeing him get knocked over 20 times a match is embarrassing and useless, it's unlikely hes ever going to get a yard of pace back due to his knee, so if the coaching staff were smart they'd adjust his regime and look at giving him some more weight, so he can contest more balls into the box, hold off defenders and compete for the ball better in the air AND on the ground. Right now soon as the ball is played in front of him, he just gets barged off it instantly.

It was a pretty serious injury considering it's the main load bearing bone in your leg and it took him nearly a year to come back from it. 17 goals & 2 assists in his last 44 games. I think Torres actually has a better record than that?

Overall I thought 2012 was a pretty poor year for music after the last few years. If i had to pick one, i'd go for Lex Hives by The Hives Evolution of Man by Example was also a pretty good album

I think i posted this in another thread, but to anyone that is doubting the importance of having Lampard on the field: Form with Lampard this season: 11 wins, 2 draws, 2 losses. Form without Lampard this season: 5 wins, 3 draws, 6 losses. It doesn't matter if he's lost fitness, speed, strength or his touch has gotten worse, the statistics show that just having him on the field lifts the entire team, particularly in the absence of JT. Fact is we have a very young, inexperienced team in front of our defence, the next most experienced player after Lampard would be Torres, and I don't forsee him taking much of a leadership role when his daily soap opera of will he won't he is continuing.

Wonderful, I guess we haven't learnt from Crespo, Kezman, Shevchenko or Torres that buying injury prone declining strikers isn't a good policy. Not to mention the fact he apparantley fell out with Guardiola last year before he got injured, and that would really help Roman's chances of getting him here in the summer. The only reason i'd see to bring him here is if Atletico/Falcao don't want to do a deal until the summer, and we just get him for 6 months. At the same time, with Sturridge gone, loaning a player that was injured for over a year coming from La Liga where its considered impolite to tackle a Barca player, to the EPL where every defender in the league is going to be kicking him in the knees, well I just hope Torres is prepared to play every single match this season.

Too true, Cech is horribly underrated in comparison to Schmeichel, and as you said it's because he doesn't play for United. Funnily enough a lot of United fans, and the media, have forgotten that Schmeichel was accused of racism by Ian Wright in the mid 90s and there were lip readers that affirmed that he'd made the remark (the only evidence deemed necessary by the FA in the JT case). If that happened in this day and age, his reputation would be dragged through the dirt (or maybe not, as he plays for United), and he'd never be looked at the same. David James holds the record for most overall top flight clean sheets with 173, which means Petr is only 36 behind him. If he can keep Courtois out for another 2 seasons he should be able to get that easily. The only statistic that really holds in favour of Schmeichel over Cech is that he won 5 EPL's to Cech's 3, hopefully he can pick up another 2 before his time is over and that should make it unanimous.

I wish i hadn't watched the United game after ours, ruined my f**king night.

Surprised only 1 other person voted for Cahill, he kept Norwich quiet all night and was very compose playing out from the back. This game was more about holding on to what we had than an attacking display, which is why I went for him.

Expect Hazard to come on for Oscar just after the hour mark, as hes been the least effectual of our 3 today and has been getting kicked to sh*t by their midfield, while the ref doesn't feel like brandishing any cards today. Overall it was a very solid half, my only concern is that we wouldn't take the lead, but now that we have it should hopefully force Norwich out a bit and give us a chance to knock in a few more.

I predict it will be a close game until we bring Hazard on at the hour mark and he tears Norwich a new one.

We have 2 games left this year, hopefully Mata can pick up a few more assists and top it.

I'm fine with everyone else hating us, which might very well be the case if Mourinho were to come back. What's not fine is us hating ourselves, which is what we get with Benitez.

Don't believe it for a second, there's no way we're going to offload him in January unless someone comes in with a ridiculous offer for a 34 year old with 6 months left on his contract (which won't happen).

If we are doing this, we better bloody well do it on January 1st, not January 31st.

That 2nd goal has to be one of the best world cup goals ever.

All respect to the blokes who stayed, unless you're in your late 20s and need to be playing top football for your peak years, I don't see why players that love the club wouldn't just stick around for the 2 years it will take to get back to where they were.

Just read that Holt will probably be back for tomorrow, Norwich's first loss in 11 games against the Baggies was due in large part to his absence through injury. Their keeper and first choice right back are both out though, so I expect we'll be direction a lot of pressure down our left side for Hazard to run at whoever they have filling in there. I'd prefer to see Iva and Cahill at CB because we'll need their physicality to deal with Holt, Luiz's pace won't be so important.