Good article. Maybe

Mr C, how have you been?

This is such a troubling issue, because whilst I understand the reasons and arguments for not playing Mata, in my opinion we are so inluid in our play without him and our passing just breaks down so dam quickly.

Gary Neville made the point that when we had Drogba in the team our passes did not have to be inch perfect, but with the strikesr we have now they do have to be...............Mata is arguably our best passer, so not playing him is not helping us offensively.

I am just going to give Jose benefit of the doubt and give him some time to hopefully educate me..

With Jose its his way or the highway.

1st time round he done this to Joe Cole and SWP,both players arguably would have been better of in other teams where they would not have had the defensive duties, but both players left Chelsea with medals they may not have won at other clubs.

In the adoration of the man did everyone forget how he set his teams up and what he expected of his players.

If we had 2 world class defensive midfielders they may get more licence to attack, but with Mikel, ramires and Lampard its not going to happen.

I can still see us going back to 4-3-3

I can still see us going back to 4-3-3
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With our current strikers, this will be a humongous mistake. We should not even consider it currently till we actually acquire strikers worthy of the name.

Biggish,

i like your stance and that's why I said we'll suffer in the short term. However, I believe in the long run, the whole team would be better for it.

Its not so much to do with the striker, more with adding more strength to the midfield area.

Win the ball back get it forward quickly.

izuta

i hope mata does improve his defensive game and gets back into the team.

mata has been one of the good things about the club in recent years, hope he stays with us for a long long time.

Mata to displace oscar in the team hopefully

agreed we need a stronger midfield general type.

He won't let you down biggish

Izuta

Where have you been Izuta?

As a #10 primarily you have to create, defending comes secondary. No one better than Mata at this.
Not a debate.

Oscar offers little creativity

I dont know if you have played alot of football before OP(not a criticism, genuine question!) but it is so tough being the most creative and vocal attacking point in a game, it is tiring and mata is that for us, he gets the most touches, moves about the most in the opps final third/half and launches a lot of our attacks. It makes it so tough to be able to run up and down and track back also. You have to be a special player(ribery for example) to be able to do both and even then munich keep the ball better than us.

You rarely see ronaldo and messi track back, they are their teams best players. Same as Bale end of last year.

I think mata is the best attacking mid in the premiership and should be allowed licence to roam, we only play one striker so its not asif we are cutting out 3 people, just a striker and mata. If he started to play(not 20 minute cameos) I believe we would see a huge improvement in our chances and creativity.

I would play a 4-4-1-1

cech
Back four
Willian Oscar Ramires Schrulle
Mata
Eto'o

Just no OP. Just no

Nickalopodis, that could work...but I'd worry Rami wouldn't defend enough in a 4-4-2
I mean him with Lamps is so pourous these days.

Oscar offers little creativity

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In general this season we simply haven't been creating enough and our strikers have to feed off scraps.

Whoever plays in the number 10 role should be creative and as good a player as Oscar is he is nowhere near as creative as Mata.

Superb has your opinion on Jose's view of Mata changed?

You rarely see ronaldo and messi track back, they are their teams best players. Same as Bale end of last year.
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Completely false mate on Ronaldo. He tracked back a lot especially in Jose's second season, and was able to still score a huge amount of goals. Easily the best player in the world that year.

KDB not completely false at all, Whenever I have seen Ronaldo play he is quiet for a lot of the game other than going forward. And its obvious that he is fitter than mata also.
And even so(dont watch madrid too much) liek you said Ronaldo is unreal.

Bluee I Kind off agree about ramires, and before he would be a worry but he has been our best CM this year(not hard) and is our only player capable of getting close and tight to the opposition midfield(making it hard for them to break) he broke up so much play against villa and hull single handedly.

I dont know if you have played alot of football before OP(not a criticism, genuine question!) but it is so tough being the most creative and vocal attacking point in a game, it is tiring and mata is that for us, he gets the most touches, moves about the most in the opps final third/half and launches a lot of our attacks. It makes it so tough to be able to run up and down and track back also. You have to be a special player(ribery for example) to be able to do both and even then munich keep the ball better than us.
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I believe this, and how Brazil play, is how we would ultimately like to play like, with Hazard taking the Ribery/Neymar role Oscar playing his own role and one of Willian or Mata doing the job on the right side of the AM.

Once they all get up to speed with the defensive side of the game and what is expected of them, then and only then we will see the same interchanging play we saw last season from them, only this time we will be a much more tighter team.

Hmmm....you have a point there Nickalopodis.

I really wish we bought a proper cm to go with Rami though like DeRossi.

*this = Bayern

I watched all of there game that season, yeah he was unreal, he is an unreal player, he still was able to not give him the free role that he enjoyed at United and get him playing he believed would have best suited the team.