Beren

In fairness, the impression Bolton/Stoke/Blackburn get of Colo must be much worse than the rest of the league. He has struggled with physicality previously. Not always of course.

It's very nice to have some players who can strike from range (after what seems like a long drought). I'm thinking of Cabaye and Ben Arfa in particular, but even Obertan, Tiote and Marveaux are beginning to strike from the edge of the area (albeit with less quality/power/direction!). I think firing in really low and direct shots/cross-cum-shots might be very potent against Stoke. In addition to getting around full-backs, they're not fantastic technical defenders so firing balls low into their box will undoubtedly give them more problems than lofted balls - even from wide areas. Their strength in defending is brute strength and congestion - a bit of Luck o' the Lampard (read: deflection luck) might not go astray if we can conjure some space on the edge of their box.

Class manager.

I fear this fairly key issue will be swept under the rug and overshadowed by the gutsy effort to resuscitate the game in injury time and extra-time. Conceding so early really pisses me off.

As Arsenal demonstrated with their goals against Stoke, the best way to beat Stoke's behemoth defenders is to get around their full-backs. Krul can help us play better football with playing the ball into feet. The whole team needs to get on board with it though. Especially our full-backs.

Must try harder.

3-0 to Stoke.

I'm happy with our fighting spirit, and other teams must think we're fucking mental (which is good) but I'm not going to let go my gripe about just how profoundly shit we are at the start of every single fucking game this season. EVERY GAME.

Good thing we love to lose 4-3, right.

It's 2009/10, man.

Clever

Ref owes us a pen. Go on a run Jonas!

Pushing for automatic promotion if they win their games in hand - which doesn't seem unrealistic in their form.

That's quite funny like.

:lol:

Go on Ob1 - use that pace of yours for good!

Shame Vuckic didn't make the bench. Think he'd offer something decent going forward based on pre-season form.

Madrid two up in eleven minutes. Benzema and Kaka.

Suarez 1-1

We've been begging to give away an early goal all season. Shocked it's taken this long. Disappointed it's come at all. Here's hoping for a better second half.

Big one. Looking at that, they're favourites IMO.

We have no defensive cover on the bench

Main: Bayern -1 & Man City to qualify Side: HBA to score, Stoke & Liverpool 2nd half more goals, Brum to score, Everton & Chelsea 2nd half more goals.

To the left, there's a slightly larger vehicle called "Tiote S"