Chelsea FC

APOEL v Real Madrid Real Madrid should go
Marseille v Bayern Munich could be very close away goals will decide the winner
Benfica v Chelsea i see benfica winning this by a narrow margin
AC Milan v Barcelona away goals or penalties

Marseille/Bayern Munich v APOEL/Real Madrid
Benfica/Chelsea v AC Milan/Barcelona barca will tear the old codgers apart. messi 5 old codgers 2

(14-03-2012 23:14 )bigguy01 Wrote:  jt is hypocritical dick, itv showed jt screaming instructions at the players from the bench instead of di matteo. the old gaurd do select the team and tatics.

JT saw Luiz was injured and shouted for Essien to drop back and fill the gap. It is coming into the late late stages, all 3 subs have been used and one of the defenders is injured.
JT acted no differently on the side lines as he would have done on the pitch. He is a captain of a club and has spent his whole career there coming through the ranks.

It is no different to what Stevie G would have done, or any other self respecting captain who gives a shit about his team. For all you know Di Matteo might not have seen Luiz hobbling, or perhaps he'd asked already and Essien hadn't acted.

As usaul bigguy you are feeding off the stories from the media.

(16-03-2012 16:49 )Money_Shot Wrote:  JT saw Luiz was injured and shouted for Essien to drop back and fill the gap. It is coming into the late late stages, all 3 subs have been used and one of the defenders is injured.
JT acted no differently on the side lines as he would have done on the pitch. He is a captain of a club and has spent his whole career there coming through the ranks.

It is no different to what Stevie G would have done, or any other self respecting captain who gives a shit about his team. For all you know Di Matteo might not have seen Luiz hobbling, or perhaps he'd asked already and Essien hadn't acted.

As usaul bigguy you are feeding off the stories from the media.

Money_Shot stop talking common sense, it gets in the way of a good story...

And bigguy, we all know you love Chelsea and all their players, just admit it already

As for the draw I thought it was pretty decent for us, I don't rate Benfica higher than Napoli and I reckon we could nick it in the home leg

Needless to say bigguy has Chelsea down for the lose

Chelsea would be quietly confident with the draw. To be fair any team left in the last 16 shouldn't be easy, there is always the odd exception but Benfica will be tough to beat. They played really well against United earlier on in the competition.

Real Madrid will go through easily against Apoel
Bayern will cruise past Marsielle, because Marsielle are out of form and all over the place at the moment.
I think Chelsea will beat Benfica, but its going to be close like the Napoli game.
Barcelona will beat AC Milan.

Real Madrid v Bayern - Have to say Real, have more fire power up front.
Chelsea v Barcelona - Barcelona should go through, but it will be close like the last time they met in the semi-finals. Hope I'm wrong, because Busquets pisses me off.

Final: Real Madrid v Barcelona

(16-03-2012 18:12 )dan g 27 Wrote:  Final: Real Madrid v Barcelona

SkyBet offer evens on that. Paddy Power offer a little better with 11/10.

Everyone's assuming Barcelona will beat Milan, but they were in the same group earlier in the competition and Barcelona won 3-2 and drew the other game 2-2, so I think that tie could be very close.

Chelsea will be happy with their draw but even so that could end up being a very close tie also.

I think the one thing going in Chelsea's favour is the fact they are unique compared to any other big team in it. Benfica like to knock it about so assuming they done a job on them much like Napoli and they make it through, Barcelona will potentially find it difficult to play Chelsea.
Arsenal and Man Utd both tried to play the Barcelona way when they played them and Barcelona played them off the park. Chelsea still play with that Mourinho factor and will look to bully Barcelona. They won't PLAY football the way Barca do, they'll go physical and try beat them that way. Real Madrid in my opinion would of been harder for Chelsea then Barcelona will. Barcalona will still be a major test for Chelsea though.

All that said, both Chelsea and Barcelona face tough ties, so it'll be interesting to see who makes it through, Milan won't be easy that's for sure, and nor will Benfica.

The Chelsea-Tottenham FA Cup semi-final has been absurdly scheduled to kick off on Sunday 15 April at 6:00 in the evening. Obviously the FA have given no consideration to the fact that Chelsea may perhaps have a Champions League semi-final match to play on the following Wednesday. It must be a case of the FA giving ITV what ITV wanted regardless of anything else. It's just as well that Roberto Di Matteo does like a bit of squad rotation.

This is a picture of Chelsea's second goal awarded by referee Martin Atkinson in the 5-1 victory over Tottenham in the F.A. Cup semi-final:

From that picture it was much closer than ITV would have us believe. By the way, the Chelsea-Liverpool FA Cup Final kick off time has been announced as 5:15 this year, a big departure from the traditional 3:00.