Indeed. The LFC fans are already complaining about the ref in their thread!

Come on oldham. give 'em a game

Daniel Sturridge, from Winning the European Cup to getting thrashed by Oldham in 6 months!

First half display was as bad as I can remember seeing Chelsea play, taking into consideration the quality of the opposition. It wasn't as if Brentford were lucky, they actually looked the better team.
We improved in the second half, but there are a few players who should hang their heads in shame. Anyone can have an off-day, but there's no excuse for not putting the work in to compensate.
Marin has only had a couple of games, but there's nothing to suggest he's anything special. At one time they were forecasting that he would become the German Messi ! I cant see him as anything more than another SWP..and he will need to work to achieve that.
Turnbull was awful, but that was no surprise. Bertrand doesn't look quite ready to take over at LB permanently, thank goodness we've kept Cole. Torres again did very little, apart from the goal. I could go on but it's too depressing.
All in all, a day to forget.

Middlesbrough away, if we get through.

When is the replay? Our schedule is pretty packed already.


Didier Drogba has agreed a one-and-a-half-year contract with Galatasaray, according to reports on Turkish television.

Reports say that Drogba will pocket a salary of 6 million euros for the 18 months of his deal as well as a signing on bonus of 4 million.

The former Chelsea striker will also get a bonus of 25,000 euros for each game he plays, up to a maximum of 500,000 euros a year, meaning he could earn 11m (£9.63m) euros over the 18 months.

hmmm is it on ssn?

"Why did you leave it so late to send Ba on?" reporters asked following Sunday's 2-2 draw with Brentford. "Because the team was doing well," replied Benitez.


Wouldn't know.

Please tell me that's a joke? If his definition of 'doing well' is being made mugs of by a league one side then I have no words!

Just looked at the fixtures and it'll surely be on Sunday 17th Feb (the weekend that the 5th round takes place). Sunday because we play Sparta on the Thursday before. There's no free space to play it before then.

This midweek's the Reading game, the following midweek is international games and then the Europa League is the midweek after that.

Now bad day in the end.

Poor old Torres can't win. He gets absolutely slated for not scoring enough even though he has scored..what 12 goals so far this season...and then he gets slated if he is scoring against a so called 'lesser team'.

No wonder he looks pissed off all the time.

That goal kept us in the FA Cup, so I would say it was an important goal.

But flippin eck, 99% of the team were abysmal, Mata did look like he gave a toss when he came on. Not sure why we swapped Brane for Dave...the tactical genius of Benitez again...I suppose...but we live to fight another day. And seeing Spurs and Liverpool got knocked out, I would say it wasn't that bad a result after all.

I have no doubt that Torres will score over 20 goals this season. However, the problem is with the service he has and the time on the pitch, he should be scoring 40!

An important goal for sure. He took it well, and it was quite an instinctive finish where he didn't have much time to think about it. He seems to be better in those situations than when he has more time to think about what he's going to do for some reason.

He has tended to try and take an extra touch where none is needed - giving the defending team a chance of getting the ball away.

He should watch Suarez and Sturridge on how to take a ball first time, they dont seem to mind hammering it into row Z 99% of the time.

I think the problem with Torres is whilst he's now scored 15 for the season, only 7 of those have been in the league. If he'd scored, say, 12 or 13 in the league he'd probably be getting a bit less of a hard time.

I actually was hoping we'd try pairing Ba and Torres together upfront (and neither out wide) from the start whilst Hazard is out, and see how it works out. Sure it won't happen though, it's much too attacking for Benitez who'd rather play Bertrand out of position.

Surely we could have tried torres and Ba together in the cup game - it seemed perfect.

For some reason we want to stick with 1 up front, permanently, and have no plan B for when opponents park the bus.

With a congested midfield and a packed penalty box, we just cannot penetrate well organised defences with our new tippy-tappy football.

Plan B: get some proper width, instead of putting hazard out wide. (moses can hopefully do this role)

Plan C: Change formation - go to 4-4-2 or even heck, 3-5-2 when it looks like opponents are playing out a draw.

For all the plaudits Rafa gets for being a tactical genius, I can see absolutely none of it. At least he was the first person to try, something that most CFC fans could tell you - put Luiz into midfield.

Our strongest team should be:

Courtois / Cech

Cole
Cahill
Ivan / Terry
Apzi

Luiz/ Rameires
Lapard/ Mikel

Hazard
Mata
Oscar / Moses

Ba/ Torres

Anyway, Oscar is a fantastic player, probably our most underrated player and is even outshining Hazard.

He has one heck of a future.

It's Ba I feel sorry for. Every time he does something good people immediately talk about Torres.

There is something in what you say. If Torres was a relatively unknown young player we had picked up for £5m, we would probably be perfectly satisfied with his progress. Heck, we would be thinking we'd found a bargain.
But Torres cost us £50m, he used to be the best striker in the world, and at 28 years old he should be at his peak. He cost more than double the price of Van Persie or Suarez, nearly as much as Hazard and Mata combined. I find that very difficult to forget when judging his performances.

We're going downhill fast - our best players are knackered/ missing/ missing in action (Torres), the squad is very thin so unless we sign at least two players in Jan things will not get better, and Benitez is taking revenge on Chelsea for their abuse of him with his insane subs.

F**k all trophies - it's now down to staying in the top four with the players we have. The team has been ground down and we've got bugger all to show for it. Consolidate, write off this year, couple more signings in the Summer and we'll be back with full force next season.

I'd love to send Torres back to Athletico and bring in Falco for say 30 mill.

You and me both!

We need to get all our loan players back. There is some real talent there.

I would have been happy to have seen Torres go in Jan, bring back Lukaku, spend whatever we got for him (I reckon someone would still have paid 20 million) and put that cash towards a couple more signings.

He is a makeweight for Falcao, wait till summer.

All of our players need summer off though, they are done in.

If we had 4 strikers at the club like City and United then Torres would be ok as one of the options (providing there was no insistence from Roman on playing him). Our problem is we only have two and if you're restricted to that number then you really need both firing on all cylinders.

Really need Ethiopia to beat Nigeria tomorrow, or a draw would be good enough if Zambia win in the other game. Then we can get Moses and Mikel back asap!

I agree in that getting top 4 is all that matters nw this season. 3rd would be preferable. The cups are creating too many games.
I woud play all the squad players now. Just give them all games in the cup.

Quite right.

After winning the FA cup and CL league last season, with the extra ridiculous games we have had the players just cannot cope.

Lots are new to the PL too.

Write this season off and start again next

The word on the street is that we are lining up Moyes as the next manager.

What do we think?