Ba is already warm enough

He's wearing a wooly hat, mittens, a scarf, wellies and has a hot water bottle.

A defender to play forward of lampard and rameires?

Ridiculous move.

We need someone to hold it up rafa and stretch the game, BA!

This guy is a complete and utter dope.75 mins gone.

I thought we'd seen the back of this when Di Matteo was sacked.

My blind spot regarding Ramires is starting to fade.



Oh, look, Ba is getting 10 minutes.

Ramires wasteful once again....

It really is Fifa style management at its worst.

Every fan in the ground can see that Arsenal are having so much of the play now, and we are defending soooo deep. We have no threat up front. Mata, has slowed, as has Lampard, oscar has gone off. We need that threat up front.

Now coming up to 80 minutes, lets hope BA replaces torres....

sub being made

(Terrible dive and theatrics from Wilshire there)

And Ba comes on for the last 10 mins, just WTF rafa?

True, wilshere clutching his shoulder when all it was just an arm across the face, rotter.

you guys keep criticising Benitez for persisting with Torres, yet it's clear that he has no choice

Every idiot knows you make subs in the 60th minute. YOu give the old player time after the 2nd half to waste their energy and give the fresh player 30 minutes to get a goal.

This 10 minute stuff (that rafa has done twice now is stupid).

Ba has one cleared off the line - should have had this for the last 20 minutes and grabbed a hatfull.

By all means start torres, but if he has done f-all he should be subbed on 60 minutes!

If rafa such a dope that he cannot see this, or is too weak, then he deserves the pelters.

Not that I believe it's the case, but if there is any manager out there willing to be told who to start with, he deserves criticism for it.

I believe it's Rafa's choice.

Did Giroud start today? I've only just seen him.

Do we actually think Abramovic picks the starting 11, or when the subs can be used?

If he does, he's a good manager

He's won 3 league titles, numerous FA Cups, and the Champions League

Excellent point.

CFC simply have to close this game down now, 5 mins of injury time.

The next 5 minutes are extremely important to our season now......

Another football club owner, Vladimir Romanov was accused by former Hearts managers of interfering in team selection. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that Abramovich would want to see his £50m investment play as much as possible.

What a terrible 2nd half. Awful subs by Rafa nearly cost us the game.

Lets say that its 3 points against our rivals and finally a win at home.

We won despite Rafa and Torres today.

Horrible viewing in the second half after a brilliant first half. Not sure how we can turn so bad in the space of 15 mins. Arsenal defenitely uped their game.

Rafas subs are mind boggling, either he is incompetent or Abramovich really is the manager and is picking the team / tactics / subs and Rafa is just there as a front. Either way we arent in good shape right now.

Oh well, 3 points is the main thing, really important to win today.

Phew !!!

Just keep saying it, 3 points at home and in the first half we thrashed them. If we had played Ba from the start it would have been 5-0

That was stressful watching. Ba should have been on much earlier as in the short time he had he created about 4 good chances and was unlucky not to score. Torres needs an intervention or something to remind him he's a striker.

Blimey that was hard in the end.
My big fear is that we are slowly turning into Arsenal.
Great going forward but when the chips are down we suddenly collapse.

We have a great team and a great future. We just need to start Ba and realise that lampard gets tired after 70 minutes.

Fixed it for you.

Held on, good result, room for improvement, Demba needs to start!