The Kraken

Agreed. Bizarre choices today too; Clyne and Puncheon fit enough for the bench but not a run out. Lallana poor throughout but no change, Ramirez should have been taken off far earlier, he's just a wet fanny and a football pitch is no place for a wet fanny (as he's amply demonstrated on more than one occasion this season). Yoshida isnt a right back, and bringing on Guly and JWP towards the end spoke volumes for me. Dominated posession quite well and thank God for the holy goalie, he got Luke Shaw out of jail; not sure what all the remonstrations were about, it was a foul.

Really? I thought he blunted our attack and offered very little throughout.

Legend!

Utterly rubbish from Rodriguez.

Quite how Puncheon in still on the bench is a mystery. If he's not fit and ready for 15 minutes he shouldn't be on the bench. Same for Clyne; little point having an unfit full back on the bench, he's either fit or not, especially when the option is Yoshida. F*ck me; JWP for Lallana. We really don't want to win this game.

Bring it on then.

He really is a show pony. £12M my arse. Commentators "not surprised" he's going off. Rubbish.

Gaston really is a bit of a fanny.

Just for clarity Bazatron, who are the clappers? Or is the only way of identifying them by watching out for key phrases such as "five year plan" and "we owe Cortese"? They're quite a sinister bunch, these clappers, so perhaps a list of their members would prove useful so they can be kept at arms length and not allow them to pervade this forum with their spin and bluster.

Good for you. I think he succeeded in the Champions League but like AVB before him he failed in the league. 6th place for that Chelsea side was far too low a finish.

Even an injured Clyne would be better than Yoshida at right back. Clueless.

Its not irrelevant at all.. Especially when, in your own words "I'm not going to be persuaded that a complete outsider guiding someone elses team to champions league success is anything other than a complete success". That seems like a fairly generic statement to me, and also applies to Grant's tenure at Chelsea where he was a whisker away from winning the Champions League and finished second in the title race effectively with Jose Mourinho's side, yet still got sacked (and rightly so) as he wasn't deemed to be a good enough manager. Its far too simplistic to say RdM is a great manager and/or was an overwhelming success because he won the Champions League. He also finished 6th in the league, which is a huge under-performance given the players and money at his disposal. Chelsea over-performed by winning the Champions League; they also massively underperformed in the league under RdM; so in no way can his tenure be regarded as a complete success. If it were, even despite Abramovic's tendencies RdM would still be in a job there.

Very poor delivery from set pieces so far.

And we were strongly linked with him this summer.......close shave.

Wow. And I mean that.

At the expense of who? Lets say we have zero injuries, where does J-Rod fit in?

Everton have been unbelievably shocking, Wigan have been ruthless. The Everton fans are a disgrace.

Ramirez has under achieved of late, but its only his price tag that labels him as not meeting expectations. Can't believe you've left out Puncheon; 5 league goals and some proper MOTM displays, well rated and respected by fans of other clubs too. A bit of a revelation for us after previous indiscretions.

Out of interest, who are the 8?

When I think we'll win, I say that I think we'll win. When I think we'll lose, I say that I think we'll lose. Same for draws, too. F*ck knows what category that puts me in.

As has been asked; do you believe that Avram Grant's tenure at Stamford Bridge was also a complete success? He was a John Terry slip away from emulating what RDM did; yet he is seen as an utter failure of a manager.

That would be 10 points from our remaining 10 games (a better average than we have for the season to date). So, yes. It would mean a slight upturn in form. Looking at our final 10 fixtures I'm actually struggling to see where the 10 points come from. Today's game is absolutely massive.

Shame he hasn't managed it on there as often then.

If that's the discussion, then the answer is clearly Johnson. This season he has scored one more goal and assisted one more goal. He has also played more, meaning he has literally "done more on the pitch".

I don't think top scorer or top assist charts at the end of the season are caculated on an average of the number of games played. I could be wrong on that one, but I don't think so.