Jayson

Unless you think they didnt deserve to win any of those games i dont see the relevance. The point is that its worthless against a side who can stop it from being effective & expose their weaknesses going back the other way. Doesnt matter how impressive it looks. And it is largely chelseas own fault for missing chances i agree with that. But dont think anyone can claim Barca deserved the win for how they play, not a chance in that game.

A strike force thats managed to score even less goals than ours, by a lot....... ?

Barcelona needed to score, so obviously they couldnt play like that. They knew chelsea would sit back so they had to go fowards. Its their own fault from not scoring at home, they set up the situation themselves with bad finishing. End of the day, you do what gets you the result. Chelsea deserved the result, hiddink set it up perfectly & they deserved to get atleast one of those pens & probably win the match. If Barca didnt deserve to win playing their openly attacking football, its worthless.

Oba & jonas dont even seem that pacey at this point. They have quick feet yes, they can move quite a bit with the ball at their feet. But its never a case of knocking it past the defender and running past them......or making bursting runs that a defender cant keep up with. I dont see it happening. Theyre just pretty good dribblers of the ball. Not sure how useful jonas is to us anymore. Duff & Butt have provided more of any significance going foward than jonas recently by putting in half decent crosses. He just doesnt give us much end product with what he does.

But thats not true. As said, if sunderland get no more points and manage to ONLY lose every game 1-0. We manage to catch them up on points, only win our game 1-0 & get a draw. At the very least we have to lose by 3 clear goals at villa...for sunlun to not go below us. If we're equal we stay up because we've scored more. Anyway, even then its unlikely they'll only lose each game 1-0. Their next game is bolton who they lost to earlier in the season 4-1, they also play chelsea. Dont see why 4 points probably wouldnt be enough if they dont win anymore, it probably would.

absolutely, and fair play to chelsea for being the first team to stop them scoring at home this season as i said before i prefer the way the italians and spanish go about defending when that's their gameplan but yeah, fair play to chelsea for that still missing how Barca's defence is so bad and chelsea didn't punish it though Seriously explained this like 5+ times now! Read them. oh no, i read 'em, it paraphrases to "they didn't try because they didn't have to" bollocks, and it doesn't explain the first leg or were they not trying then either at 0-0? Why is that bollocks? if your manager of Chelsea you know the opposition going to throw everything forward, you would like to see open game? Instead of hitting them on the break when they are over exposed ala Man Utd on Tuesday? Why exactly is it bollocks. i agree with what you're saying about the tactical aspect, i.e. don't play on an open game - counter attack definately the way what i'm saying is if barca's defence is/was so bad as you've suggested why didn't a counter attacking game expose this in the way arsenals defence was exposed by man u? (not that man u played counter attack but you see what i mean) i mean in your first line you're basically saying tactically hiddink tacitly accepted barca would beat them in an open game so even in the home leg he set up to stifle them and counter, yet you're calling barca's attack toothless!! i see this as a massive contradiction in terms and it's why we've been slavering on for hours now I said hiddink paid to much respect to them at the nou camp. Today Barca's attack were completely toothless, i mean chasing the game for 80 minutes your one shot on target is the very last. 70% possession and one shot on target. With Eto'o, Messi, Iniesta all these players they are supposed to steamroll through teams and they come up against a good defense and they are completely out of ideas. Especially in the dire situation they were in. going round in circles now mate, 70% possession and one shot tells me chelsea put up a wall and did it very well you seem to see it that Barca weren't good enough in attack we'll never reach an agreement on that, fundamental difference in how we look at things The whole point is surely that if Barca WERE good enough in attack against good enough opposition, they'd have cut through them regardless. Chelsea didnt only put up a wall, they counter attacked. If you consider the goal they had, drogba being 1 on 1, anelka would have been if it were not for a hand ball, he would have been once again had he not tripped over his own heels like a clown. On another day thats 4 clear chances to score theyd have taken, could have been 4-1 and some of you would still be claiming they were playing defensive football. No, they were playing a style of football that was perfectly suited to stifling barca's attack & exposing their weaknesses going back the other way. They were both severely unlucky & crap in different moments. Regardless, Hiddink set it up perfectly & Barca looked nothing special atall.

Not really a logical argument to say chelsea represent this side that wasnt trying to score atall simply because they didnt have as much possession. They had far more chances to score or get clear goalscoring chances than Barcelona. Dont understand people that say chelsea were messed up for trying to "nulify" barcelonas attack. What is wrong with this?? You may aswell start asking what the point of defending is atall in football. Ofcourse they tried to nulify Barcelonas attack.....Barcelona cut through sides easily......for chelsea to stop this happening to them they had to crowd them out. Wheres the problem

Dont agree with this result for football nonsense. Impressive passing football only has any worth if its effective against the opposition. If the opposition sets out a plan to deal with it & it doesnt work, thats just how it is. The players could juggle the ball as they run around the pitch, that would be impressive to. They could only go for sliding tackles endlessly, regardless of whether it was a good moment or not. Again it would make it more entertaining. The problem is, neither tactic would be very effective. Barcelonas passing game doesnt mean anything if they find a side they cant use it against. A result for football tonight would have been chelsea getting a pen, barcelona staying on 11 men & seeing how the game turned out that way. Nothing else.

Id agree with that. They dived, barca shouldnt have had a man sent off. But Chelsea shoulda been given atleast 1 of those pens

all over lol

wow

have barcelona had a single shot on target ?

tripped over his own heels......... nonsense decision

drogbas just embarassing when he does that

lmao at drogbas starfish impression

that was nearly class

thats a ridiculous strike

I think theres a case for it being a pen. Watching the vid, he does make contact with the ball...but it is very minimal. If his trailing leg doesnt take out Fabregas's heels he'd have still had the ball...he doesnt knock it far away from him. Fletcher couldnt do much about it though, the way he went for the tackle meant his back leg had to follow around as he turned. Should never have been a red.

Wum? Seriously of course it wasn't a foul. Was actually a very good piece of defending. Joey Barton touched the ball when he tackled Alonso - was that a great bit of defending? Fletcher's wasn't from behind. It was from the side first of all. He didn't go through the player to get the ball and he got the ball first. Whether there's tangling within the same motion is irrelevant. Please don't compare it to Barton's that's stupid. If anything compare it to Beye's red against Man City because it's almost the exact same incident. And of course Beye's red was overruled and ref said he made a mistake. You need to watch Barton's again then. That wasn't from behind either, it started from the side. He also won the ball before going through the player. Absolutely nothing different about the two challenges other than Barton went in at speed, whereas both Fletcher and Cesc were running at the same speed. The whole "went in at speed" thing is pretty key. Barton went charging in & barely made any contact with the ball...you can see that the way it trickled away. Fletcher stuck out his heel & got more contact barely touching it than barton did with full momentum on his side. One is far more reckless than the other.

Dont think Arsenal would stand a chance v Barcelona, but id not mind if they won.

Glad shearers humiliated him tbh Clearly other managers have tried other ways & hes the same guy still. He still goes in for the dangerous tackle, still gets wound up to easily. Im glad hes passionate, but he cant control himself well enough atall. The nicey nicey approach clearly aint doing much for him.

When you have a player like Owen who has a habit of going on runs of games in which he scores consistantly after every single goal drought in his career, id say dropping him takes balls regardless of how hes playing. Not that i agreed with it.

Bramble was better in general.

Dont think people can put it down to confidence when hes shown no attributes of being a class defender to base that off. Been saying for months he doesnt have it, his best games are when others round him excel so he doesnt have to do as much/or they mop up behind. Its never him actually being a class defender is it. Enrique, taylor, Bassong - have all managed that several times this season. The other day he probably won his third header of the entire season, not good enough. His best hope is to do some serious work in the gym & for us to teach him some things about positioning.

Come on, dont delude yourselves. Falling out with Keegan is not what has single handedly destroyed our season. Our season has been destroyed by a whole lot of decisions from Ashley, the Keegan nonsense just got the ball rolling.