Jonty

Can Jose perhaps organize for Jose Mendes to become Mikel's new agent? Then we might actually be able to sell him.

Well in that case i'll have to go with the best striker in PL history, Thierry Henry.

I swear this is about the 3rd year in a row of this now?

Finding a striker that can slot in and score goals frequently is very rare these days, I very much doubt we can do any better than Remy in that regard so unless he requests to be sold I wouldn't offload him in any circumstance.

Apologies for my absence guys, entirely unforseen as I actually ended up breaking my foot a few days ago. If it's alright with everyone i'm happy to play, from the bottom of the order of course.

Still hoping it doesn't happen but will obviously support him it does.

Man Utd going after Lukaku shows how lucky we are to have Falcao when they had Falcao all of 2 weeks ago and he was absolute sh*te.

yeah i'd be down

Booing that DJ off the stage in the shed bar was hilarious.

I can't remember a time I was ever more disinterested in the national team than now. Can England hire a manager who might attempt to bring some entertainment to the table, our team is clearly too sh*t to win anything so we may as well have fun losing. Brendan Rodgers, now there is a man who will bring the laughs.

"Sepp Blatter - he paid for your ground"

I don't think he was amazing, but he was the only Juventus midfield player that actually had a visible impact on the game. Pirlo and Marchisio were largely anonymous and Vidal did little other than try and get sent off. And those are 3 world class midfielders so outshining them is no small feat. You could never have expected Juventus to dominate possession against Barca so obviously he didn't get to show off his full range of talents.

Realistically no talented young striker is going to want to come here and be a 2nd or even 3rd choice striker in a team that rotates very little, the role is suited to an experienced player seeking some money and medals at the tail end of his career that has the composure to step in on short notice and make an impact when needed in limited minutes.

I see him more as a 4-3-3 complementary player to Cesc and Matic, doing more of the box to box work and driving forward with the ball, again as I said Ballack-esque. Playing without a #10 would also perhaps allow Hazard to be given more creative freedom and less defensive duty.

I'd love to have Tevez, I think he'd thrive playing in front of Hazard and Willian too. Interesting that Falcao scored for Colombia today against Costa Rica, assisted by none other than our very own Juan Cuadrado. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_mcyF_fZ6Y

I thought he was probably Juve's best player in that game to be honest, definitely would offer something different to Fabregas or Matic, reminds me more of a Ballack type player.

This window does have the feeling of we can't really improve our starting XI any more without spending massive sums on individual players so we probably won't, but our rivals can improve their starting XI's far more easily and probably will. Feels like it's going to be a summer of looking over our shoulders.

I think we'd be drastically overpaying in either of those scenarios to be honest.

I think you only have a better chance in looking to be the best team - if you are the best team. See Arsenal on how this plan regularly and hilariously backfires in the absence of this pre-condition. I'd say we and PSG are probably fairly evenly matched and so in that instance, as you pointed out, Jose went with the make less mistakes option which, as you also pointed you, usually works. Jose in what i'm sure was lengthy preparation for the game expected to be playing against a team with great talent around the field that would attempt to dominate the game. Their two glaring weaknesses were; a) David Luiz's tendency to make mistakes and; b) that PSG rarely encounter a team with any attacking threat in their domestic league. Again, this shows that the pragmatic approach was odds on the most intelligent one. What Jose had no way of foreseeing was that PSG would be reduced to 10 men so early on in the game and therefore changing the balance of the play. Having spent a week preparing the team to play a certain way he was faced with two options; 1) Continue with the approach that he'd prepared for all week - still very likely to be successful, team was familiar with it, continue to minimize risk. or 2) Abandon the tactical preparation, completely change the game plan, hand PSG the ability to launch counter attacks with Cavani and Lavezzi against a CB pairing entirely devoid of pace, increase the risk with little to no benefit. So Jose stuck with his plan which, i reiterate, was twice 5 minutes away from being successful if not for individual lapses of concentration from set pieces, something very rare particularly given that John Terry was at fault for one of them, usually the most reliable aerial defender in world football. As you say you don't like dealing in hypotheticals (even when that hypothetical is us being able to defend against 10 men at home against a team missing their top scorer for 5 minutes, just once out of two opportunities). So i'm not sure I can go along with the hypothetical that Jose abandoning his tactics and preparation would have led to a more favorable result. Finally, in reference to the Barcelona team. Yes i'm sure if we had a strike force of Messi - Suarez - Neymar, supplemented by Iniesta, Xavi and Rakitic, that we too would adopt a more possession based attacking game. If you think Jose wouldn't adopt such tactics with a team of such quality, see his Real Madrid team of 2013 that set the record for La Liga goals scored in a season by 14 goals.

And if we, one of the best teams in world football at defending set pieces, had prevented one or both of those PSG goals and thereby won the game, would you be lauding Jose's tactics as the reason for us winning? Or does that only work one way?

If Juventus win this one it will be right up there with the biggest CL final upsets, really hope they win, preferably by a series of hilarious refereeing errors.

Of course they'll be loved but it will not be forgotten.

Jose's approach has also worked against every single large domestic rival we've faced in the league since his return, resulting in him not having lost a single game. To say that approach was responsible for our loss against PSG is plainly wrong, twice we were within 5 minutes of winning and poor defending from corners lost us the game. The tactics were clearly successful and Jose cannot be held accountable for poor marking from set pieces, and if he is to be held accountable for it - it is clearly an unrelated matter to his overall match tactics.

Not sure if you seriously think that Oscar would start a CL final when hes been dropped for just about every big game this season. Clearly Ramires or possibly Zouma would come in. And a team of Courtois - Iva - JT - Cahill - Dave - Matic - Fabregas - Ramires - Hazard - Willian - Costa, coached by Jose Mourinho, is clearly capable of beating any team in the world.

Being a club legend works two ways. He shouldn't want to go to a rival, and if he doesn't give a toss about helping one of our rivals beat us then that puts an asterix next to his achievements here, as with Frank.