As the man who seems to the second coming said recently "I have been told about the English Media, It is up to you to prove them wrong". Which of course they wont.

They will continue to ensure as much as space is filled with as little actual news as possible

I hope Chelsea start winning soon then the doom merchants will disappear again, hopefully.
Why, just why are we talking about Jose to United yet again. Next it will be Rafa this Rafa that. Put another record on please.
Jose ain't leaving just yet and Rafa ain't never coming back.
You just know tomorrow it will be the same old stuff again.

Naaa I hope the doom merchants stay. They will always be attracted to winners. They hate natural winners

Yeah fair point though they were distinctly quiet before Xmas last season.
I hate these international breaks, still it's good seeing all our world class players in the England team

Try to avoid watching average players being over hyped players into some sort of world beaters when Chelsea women's team have more medals to their name

They are over hyped when Lallana is deemed world class. Can't get my head around that one at all. Not even a Liverpool regular.

Well he is young and English and deemed "exciting" by Billy Bob Smith who once met Bill Shankly while working as a dustman so has a direct contact with the game so what do we know

Yes, but Spurs, Liverpool and Everton are not Chelsea, Man Utd or Man City. As I said in a previous post, the elite clubs in Europe just can't take a gamble with young players in the way they used to years ago.
You're probably right, Chelsea would have loaned all those players out. Harry Kane might have slipped through our hands, but if Sterling, Stones and Barkley had continued to impress on loan, I like to think we'd have given them a chance.
Mourinho has stated that he wants to give some of our young players a chance this season, why wouldn't he ? It's just a difficult balancing act, particularly after our disasterous start to the season.
Yes, even dropping Ivanovic becomes difficult. Not so long ago he was a stalwart of our defence, with Zabaleta injured or off form, Brana was widely considered the best RB in the EPL. He's had some shockers this season, but leaving him out is still not an easy decision when every game has suddenly become a must-win.
I think if we'd had the start to the season we've grown to expect, we'd have seen more of RLC, Kenedy, Rahmann and Traore. It's still early days anyway, so it wouldn't surprise me to see two of those as established regulars before the end of the season. But throwing them in now would be like sending them to the Russian front, we need battle hardened troops to get us out of this mess.

R'mond lad, are you drunk?

Ivanovic has been responsible for several conceded goals on his own this season and looks totally disinterested, but he is a stalwart who can't be dropped?!

You could get together with doon and start your own site called 'www.windeupmerchants.co.uk' It might catch on..

There's nothing risky at all in giving a promising young player 10 to 30 mins at some point during a game to make a difference. The lack of variety is a disgrace.

You can only give young, promising players a chance when the team is doing well? Ok, when during Mourhino's successful years at the club did he EVER give a young, promising player a chance? Name one. He played or tried to play the same team, in the same way every game for 3 years, and was eventually rightly sacked for being the most boring manager in the history of the club, and totally losing the respect of the players. He has done the same thing yet again this time around wih his same, same, same formula.

'Ang on, 'ello, 'same', 'samsung' .. ?! Maybe he doesn't like the new sponsor Yokohama?!

On the 'loan them out' front, there's no guarantee that a player would come through there anyway. Sterling looked brilliant at Liverpool, and if Willian is worth £30 million, then Sterling is worth £50 million. He is quicker, he can beat players, and his crosses into the box are precise and intelligent, unlike Willian's hit and hope crosses, or his rugby style back passes.

At city in a different system, he is looking ordinary, and we have all seen what he can do. Loaning players out all the time? No, doesn't work.

Tip old chap, or should I call you Mr Top ? You've entirely misinterpreted my post, taking out bits that suit your agenda. Clever, are you a DM journalist ?
Yes, I would probably have dropped Ivanovic by now. All I'm saying is that it's not an easy decision to make. I go on another well known Chelsea forum, they get thousands of posts a week. You get the same hysterical responses on there. Knee jerk reactions from fans who believe they know more than one of the best managers in world football.
What do they think Mourinho is doing, deliberately trying to lose games ? Just drop Ivanovic, move Azpil to RB and play Rahman that'll solve the problem. Do they (or you) think that Jose hadn't thought of that ? Yes I'd do it, but I'm willing to accept that there must be a reason why our manager hasn't done it yet.
It's the same with Matic (on the other forum I mean) he should be rested and we can bring in Mikel..the same player most of them wanted us to ship out a couple of months ago. I could go on, drop Costa and give Falcao a run. Hazard has got fat and lazy, play Kenedy. It's hilarious really.

I just try to fathom out Jose's thinking. He gets to see these players all week. I haven't seen enough of RLC to judge what level he is really at right now. As you say, he should be getting minutes here and there when the time is right. But I'm guessing Jose thinks it's too much of a risk to start with him right now. Perhaps he'll explode onto the scene and prove Mourinho wrong, but that's the gamble a manager has to take.

Sterling ? Let's face it, giving him a chance in the Liverpool side at that time wasn't such a great stroke of genius, who else did they have ? To give (let's say) Kenedy a run we would have to leave out two international star players with a combined cost of more than £50m.
As it happens, I still think Sterling is overrated anyway. We've all seen plenty of players of his "type" who didn't go on to make it at the very highest level. He's not another Robben in my opinion. That's not to say I wouldn't have loved to see him at Chelsea, he would have been another great option.

According to something I read on WAGNH, Jose's reason for continuing with Ivanovic is that we need 5 tall players to deal with corners.

Crazy reasoning, if he really said that. With so many goals coming from that side you'd think open play would be the priority.

Ok, I'm taking a break from this thread on my doctor's advice. I'm not 82, that was a joke! Do you people have a sense of humour?! So will people please stop offering to come round and make me cups of tea and turn the heating up. It was a joke!

I'll end with a quote. It might be something JM might say. 'When the seagulls gather at the back of the boat, the sardines stay in the tin.'

And something I might say. 'When the manager gets a string of s..t results, and blames everybody apart from himself, he gets sacked.'

The headlines soon could be.. 'Mourhino sucked!'

Goodnight!

Apologies, the headlines could soon read: 'Mourhino sacked!'

Well, Bran is out for 3 weeks, now well see.

Don't think it will tell us anything this weekend no matter what the result.

In our current form a bad result against VIlla would not be a major shock and even a excellent performance against them wont tell us that much. The Stoke/West Ham games if he is still out for them will be a better idea.

Reading that Zouma is a possible right back on Saturday

At the moment the team could be anything.

He could drop players or he could pick the same team (apart from injuries of course). He could stick with the same formation or he could change it completely. We will only know more then likely around 2pm on Saturday. I really don't think it matters who he picks or how sets the team up if the players themselves don't perform to even the lowest standard expected of them and that's been the major issue this season

Yes, I agree. We are in a position few of the players will have faced before. We've had plenty of high pressure games but not from the position we're in now.
Every team we play now will think it's a good time to pick us off, even more so at The Bridge where it will be very tense. We need the players who have the character and bottle to give it everything. We know the quality is there, but we have surrendered some games too easily. I don't want to see any players (or the manager) losing games with a shrug of the shoulders.

The "experts" will more then likely start banging on about "going for it from the start" but what we need to do first is get back to basic's. First we need to get back to controlling the game and the tempo of the game. Of course its going to be a very difficult atmosphere but hopefully the Moaning Myrtle's will stay away. We normally are pretty good at times like this (much better then many of the some of the so-called bigger clubs) so while I expect it to be more tense then it has been I would not expect the bad/tense atmosphere we had when Rafa was there

Villa at home tomorrow. In theory a comfortable win, but let's be honest anything could happen. It's official on the forward front. The club made a higher bid for Anthony Martial, but he opted for Man Utd. I said way back at the end of last season that the team need another world class striker to challenge Costa, and we got, .. Falcao.

I'm not going to start to try and predict what the team might be for tomorrow. There's too much personal feeling around, and it's also official that privately, many players have deserted the manager.

'However, privately the situation is thought to remain decidedly tense. Poor results have exacerbated concerns over Mourinho’s treatment of the squad with certain individuals singled out for substandard performances while others have been retained in the starting line-up despite suffering their own dip in form.

Mourinho’s ability to create a togetherness in teams has been a hallmark of his success but the ruthlessness with which he has treated certain players — and former club doctor Eva Carneiro, who was popular among the squad — has caused considerable unease.

It is understood Nemanja Matic, Cesar Azpilicueta and Oscar are among the players to have been chastised in front of the rest of the group while others left out of the team are said to have been treated with apparent disdain.'

To me, that is a person who has lost the dressing room.

It depends on what you mean by "official". Most of the rumours appear to have originated from one source, the Evening Standard's James Ollly..who happens to be a life-long Arsenal supporter. No smoke without fire I suppose, but I think you can bet that the stories of a dressing room "mutiny" are widely exaggerated.

Be good to see RLC playing tomorrow

At least it was not the nasty piece of work Matthew Syed, now that's a guy who cannot help himself when it comes to Chelsea and Roman, Nothing more nasty then a bitter Gooner

Begovic; Azpilicueta, Terry (c), Zouma, Baba; Loftus-Cheek, Ramires; Wilian, Fabregas, Pedro; Diego Costa

Blackman, Cahill, Matic, Mikel, Oscar, Hazard, Remy