‘At £32m Chelsea robbed Leicester; Kante is worth at least double’

N'Golo Kante: Wenger wanted him

N'Golo Kante: All-action performer

Only four players from Manchester United’s starting line-up last night are good enough and Marouane Fellaini is to blame for Paul Pogba’s “tired” second-half display, according to fans in our forum.

‘United’s plan from the start was to kick Hazard off the park’

United’s plan seemed to be to kick Hazard off the park, the Herrera second yellow viewed in isolation looked harsh but given that it followed a series of such fouls and Oliver seconds earlier had just warned Jones and Smalling as captain about the continued fouling of Hazard how stupid was Herrera seconds later.

From a Chelsea perspective we played well and Kante was outstanding and if you didn’t know you would thought he not Pogba was the £89m player but we were far too wasteful with our chances again and I’m sure that’s something Conte will be working on on the training ground because without the Courtois save against an 11-man United missing so many chances might have cost us in this match.

A well earned rest for the players now for a day or two ahead of a very tough away game v Stoke.

nine nine nine

 

Herrera’s red card ‘was not harsh’

Guys lets get this straight, the red card was not harsh, it was two yellows end of, the ref even called them over and warned them, within ten seconds the plank takes Hazard down again.
If fact after the red, the ref let them get away with all sorts after that, in particular Velencia and Rojo, see if Sky keep running his stamp today.

So everyone expected the bus to be parked, but no, instead the wonderful tactics deployed was to kick Chelsea players off the park, in particular Hazard.
They can have no complaints on being dwon to ten men, could easily of been nine on another night.
Agree, with that much posssesion we should of had at least a couple more.
But enjoyed the game and win which we were never going to lose, and now lets beat Spurs.

bluepylon

‘It was harsh’

It was a harsh second yellow. The ref should have said to Herrera another foul and he’s off.

Alternatively when he spoke to Smalling and Jones (i think) he should have told Smalling another foul by any of his players will result in a yellow card, and that should have been relayed by Smalling to his team.

Oh well, it made it slightly easier and i’m sure we are all looking forward to the Semis!

Amz

 

‘Kante was a six, an eight and a 10!’

Classic Phil Neville…”he’s a six, an eight and a ten. Lol!! Have to say he’s arguably one of the best midfielders in Europe right now, if not the world. 32 million was it? Daylight robbery. He’s got to be worth at least double that.
Stuilse

 

Kante the ‘best ever’ holding player

From what I seen so far and bearing in mind its only his first year with us Kante is easily the best ever in that so called holding position, amazing the way he is always everywhere and how easily he breaks up opposition play but he also has other abilities to his armour which we should not forget.
notnice

 

‘Something not right’ with Chelsea attack


Not sure why its not mentioned too often but we should be concerned at the lack of goals going in despite dominating most games.

I understand Costa got a lot of goals in his first season and this his 3rd season as well but I think he should be putting more away with all that possession he receives even though most are not clear cut chances.

Something is not quite right up front, maybe its cause we playing with one striker, I am not in anyway knocking the brilliant Conte or the system, no one can do that but I feel we should be scoring more goals.
notnice

 

Tiring Pogba’s performance down to Fellaini

Paul Pogba: Praised by Mourinho after FA Cup exit

I’m actually surprised at the Pogba bashing this morning. I though in the first half he was having his best game and that he, Herrera and Jones were keeping Chelsea quiet and pressed well. His performance dropped when we went down to 10 men and he was partnered by Fellaini.

I think he tired though so you could question his fitness although at his age he should be one of the fittest players in the squad, however he has played nearly every minute so far this season.

Only player I thought had a poor game was Smalling. He doesn’t fill me with confidence at the back and the other players pick up on that. Even Blind would be a better option there right now but Jose loves his height.

Darmian did okay I thought. Don’t think he played as a standard left back though. He was tasked more with keeping Moses and Willian quiet. Still think Blind could have done that job more effectively.

Also, I don’t understand why people say we’re better off out of the FA Cup. It’s only 2 more games, one of which is at the end of the season after all other matches have been played. I’d take one extra game to win another cup.
manthistle

 

‘Pogba again was rubbish’

A much better performance than we managed at Stamford Bridge earlier in the season. A great effort all round with Rojo particularly good, doing a job on Costa.

In the end, though, we lack the quality to match Chelsea at the minute, especially without Zlatan, Martial, and Mkhitaryan for large parts of the game. Pogba again was rubbish in a big game and it’s becoming a very worrying trend.

I mentioned previously that we should forget the FA Cup and focus on Europa and the League. Hopefully the reduced workload will help us leapfrog Liverpool and Arsenal (for pride) and win the Europa Cup.
Hatters

 

‘Only four United players from last night are good enough’


Now to the real problem, United. I’m sorry but there are only four players from last night’s starting line up that are good enough.

That’s De Gea, Pogba, Miki (who was having a mare last night by the way) and Rashford. None of the starting back four and sorry, that includes Valencia, are good enough.

Then there was Herrera and Young – not good enough. And on the bench, absolutely nothing that was capable of changing a game. And there’s absolutely fuck all in the under 23s. Personally, I think Mourinho is working miracles with this s***e, but it’s going to take a long time before we get back to being anything like a top side.

Every time we play a team with quality, we struggle. So, no top four for us this season. And the Europa Cup? Well, there’s not a lot of quality left in that competition but I’m pretty confident we’ll manage to fuck that up as well.

Truth is, there’s only so much a manager can do, then it’s down to the players and this lot is nowhere near good enough. All this who slag off Zlatan must have been choking on their own words last night because fuck me, he’s the only player we’ve got who ever looks like scoring.
jm1502

 

‘Pogba played manfully throughout’

Watched the game last night without any emotion attached as I went in believing it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if we were knocked out.

@manthistle – In my view, the reason why we’re possibly better off out of the FA Cup is because of the calibre of matches that it would have entailed participating in if we had progressed. All the remaining teams in the FA Cup currently occupy the top positions in the league.

I think our energy, both mentally and physically, would be better served trying to oust one of those teams out of a top 4 berth. (on a side note to that, wouldn’t it be so much better that the FA Cup winners got the 4th Champions League spot and that if the winner ended up in the top 3 places in the league, the allocated spot then goes to fourth placed in the league? Seems a simple amendment, FA.)

I thought Pogba played manfully throughout, and was really strong during the first half when we had all eleven players. In fact, I genuinely remember thinking during that first half that we may just win this game. Mourinho had his tactics spot on and had nullified Chelsea (bar two great saves by De Gea) and we looked dangerous on the counter attack. Alas, it wasn’t to be.

The entire team played as well as they could and came out of that game with a lot of credit. Special note has to be given to Jones and Rashford. Both had been given specific tasks and both stuck to them. Thought Rashford in particular played well in that lone striker berth and shows that not only does he offer raw pace and skill, he can hold the ball up too when it actually finds him. And that’s where the problem lies. It rarely ever found him.

Whether we had 11 players or ten players, I felt that we were missing a real battler in midfield. Not someone who could harry and press, but someone who could get stuck in and come away with the ball to feed Pogba who could supply our attackers.

A Roy Keane. A Greizmann or a Harry Kane would be lovely to add to our team, but I would prefer our number 1 priority this summer was to get two players like Vidal, Verrati or Kessie (the combative destroyers) and a Kroos, Carrick type (the calm dictating shield) so that Pogba can play with freedom further up the field.
HailMartial

Nobody criticising ‘Miki’s complete ineptitude’


Certainly no lack of effort from anyone (HailMartial) but a distinct lack of quality pretty much all round. Agree about Pogba, thought he was ok but he’ll get the usual bashing from his detractors – don’t see anyone criticising Miki’s complete ineptitude.

And if Phil Jones has a future at the club, and personally I don’t think he has, it’s as a back up holding midfielder, not a defender. But has anyone taken the time to ask themselves why the key Chelsea players, Costa, Hazard etc look so good.

It’s because they’re surrounded by quality and that enables them to do their thing. With the exception of Cahill, just about every one of those Chelsea players would walk into United’s squad.
jm1502