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Now that is a strike by a striker!! Almost!

Kraken causing Villa all sorts of problems.

Mou finds a friend and Cech is still brilliant!

Judging by the handballs given before in the game, I think that should have been given to Villa. We had enough luck and made it count.

Lukaku showed that he is the best striker we have right now and he should not be coming off the bench every game, United game should be interesting if he starts.

We can't seem to get off second gear. Need to keep up the high tempo and need the final clinical passes.

I'm really sleepy.. good night

Close call. Good play from Lukaku after he came on. Happy that we've had to work for the win else we'd risk taking it too easy against United

Result aside, that was a poor performance. 69% possession and what, 2 legitimate chances created the entire match? Our opener being an own goal and the winner a header from a player who probably shouldn't even have been on the pitch anyway and who was also offside, not to mention a stonewall penalty for Villa in stoppage time via a JT handball being turned down.


Hardly anything to write home about these opening 2 fixtures....

That's true. Mourinho is smart enough to know that to work on improving them I guess

Lovely to hear Stan Collymore on talkshite crying robbery. Don't recall him saying much on Saturday when the ref basically handed Villa their win at the Emirates on a silver platter. Hypocritical doofus.

What do you guys think? Better with mata in the middle or Oscar in the middle. I feel we will get murdered by united if we play like we have been

José Mourinho admits his side had to "win ugly" against Aston Villa:
http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11668/8882122

"In matches at the Bernebau, Real Madrid win every match and usually very comfortably."

"This is what I missed about the Premier League. This was hard."

"Maybe they deserved a point in the end, it wouldn't have been unfair."

"They have their style which is not my style. They have a special player in Benteke and they put long balls into him - he makes a lot of fouls as do their defenders so it's difficult to have a game of quality with them."

"But they are good on counter-attack. The moment they get the ball they are very dangerous and can score a lot of goals so we had a plan not to give them chance to counter."

"The long ball game, you can't control. The game becomes ugly, but we fought a lot. The players tried to adapt and gave their life to get the three points."

"Sometimes you have to win on effort rather than quality."

Uncanny wrote:What do you guys think?  Better with mata in the middle or Oscar in the middle.  I feel we will get murdered by united if we play like we have been

Mata is out of form. Give him another week or two and he will be back. Till then others gotta kick in!

Why on earth are Terry and Cahill starting CBs? They really are not good enough for me, not taking anything away from Benteke but they just were not good enough. If Luiz isn't fit then I don't see why Ivan isn't playing CB with Azpilicueta RB.

Also our lack of rotation was fairly dumb, we finally have the depth to rotate and still keep our squad top quality and we don't use it.

Ba was to blame for the lack of chances imo, lost track of the amount of times he was offside today and generally did nothing.

It was a poor showing but a win is a win.

Mata is suffering from the lack of pre season and I really want to see MVG play a bit more.

Anyone else think that Ramires is going to be a starter all season long?

Yeah 3 points is 3 points but I guess there's alot of room to improve.

I don't think so, to me he just isn't good enough at playing CM in 4231. He's best when we exploit his pace on the counter and when he breaks through, not when he's heaped with defensive responsibility. I'm really hoping we see a different pairing at the back and in the pivot come tuesday. While it was enough for Hull and Villa I don't think it will be for United. I'd like to see Mikel with somebody that can pass well to start the attacks and I definitely want De Bruyne starting.

lszanto wrote:Yeah 3 points is 3 points but I guess there's alot of room to improve.

I don't think so, to me he just isn't good enough at playing CM in 4231. He's best when we exploit his pace on the counter and when he breaks through, not when he's heaped with defensive responsibility. I'm really hoping we see a different pairing at the back and in the pivot come tuesday. While it was enough for Hull and Villa I don't think it will be for United. I'd like to see Mikel with somebody that can pass well to start the attacks and I definitely want De Bruyne starting.

I thought he was one of our better players last night. Put MVG who looks solid defencively and can pass next to him and he'll do a fine job.

What I really like is he is much more mobile than Mikel.

In rugby league we have a saying that its better to win ugly at the start of the season then it is to win well, and this truly was an ugly win.

This game was also another glaring indicator that we need another CF, Torres is useless and as good as Ba is, hes never been Chelsea quality

As for Ramires, Mou has always played with an engine in his midfield; Essien at Chelsea and Khedira at RM, theres no question in my mind that he is going to play plenty of football this season

Essien and Khedira are much better passers though. With Ramires we can hold the ball fine but we don't do anything with it.

Hence why MVG should be his partner. While Lampard's positioning is fantastic, he is not the defender that MVG has shown to be. Put MVG next to him, bring DL4 into CB and tell Ramires to pass to those two.

lszanto wrote:Essien and Khedira are much better passers though. With Ramires we can hold the ball fine but we don't do anything with it.

True, a prime Essien and Khedira right now are both all round better players then Ramires, but in terms of getting up andd own the pitch, all three tick that box

Personally i would like to see Mikel and Oscar play behind KDB, Mata and Hazard

I hope not against Utd.


Should be the team against Utd.

If Oscar was to play in the pivot, it would have been against Hull or Villa.


Is anyone else really disapointed by Schurrle so far?

Rather than hammering on Chelsea's performance, how about you lot give credit to Villa? It isn't always about Chelsea. Villa played a great game and could have easily won or at least drawn the match.

they did defend well.

Ba was beyond awful! 2/10.