Sleeping Dave

We've scored 12 league goals so far. Morata has scored 6 of them and assisted another three.

I think you are being incredibly harsh and it feels like you may not appreciate him very much due to your history with him. Something I think stems from his time at Juve when he was a 21 year old kid where everyone knew he wouldn't stay on past his second Juve season. I do agree he was a bit subdued from min 20-35 in the first half. But that had more to do with us playing an ultra counter-attacking style with virtually no support whatsoever for Morata. Had Stoke equalised in that time frame I'm not sure we'd would have gone on to win the game. Instead they made a mistake and Pedro scored the second out of nothing. His second goal was immense. Diego would have struggled to replicate that goal and running against defenders battling is supposed to be his strength. I was extremely pro signing Alvaro this summer. Heads and shoulders my preferred striker option. Now that I've seen him play for us, I'm not sure I'd prefer many strikers to him to be perfectly honest. Of course a Neymar, Mbappe, Messi etc are better players but for us, in our system, I don't think any of them would be better. He's also only 24 so a lot of the established household names fall off due to their age. Aguero is one such example. I struggle to see a better striker in the PL. Getting him for £58m+add-ons is a steal.

Not sure how Conte should deal with the defensive situation that we have right now. Azpi - Luiz - Cahill is the strongest constellation on paper and is also the more experienced one. But I'm starting to think that the best one is actually; Azpi - Christensen - Rudiger I can't see one single reason to why Cahill should ever start ahead of Rudiger as long as Antonio is fully fit. Seems to me it was a mistake to give the captaincy to Gary. Should have been Azpi... I think it's a pretty close call between Luiz and Christensen although I'm positive Christensen will become better than Luiz as he ages and gain more experience. My team for this one, would be; Courtois; Azpilicueta, Luiz, Rudiger; Moses, Kante, Bakayoko, Alonso; Willian, Morata, Hazard Caballero, Christensen, Zappacosta, Fabregas, Pedro, Musonda, Bats

Ouch. A much less athletic version of Ramires? I hope you are talking about the 2010-2013 version and not the one we saw from 2013 onwards. If that's the case then I'm surprised Baka can enter the pitch without his cane;) Think you are being incredibly harsh on Bakayoko. Imo he's already a much, much better player than Ramires ever was.

Musonda isn't the 4th AM. He's a squad filler. A fourth AM would be a player who'd be a proper option regardless of what game we play and who he opposition is. Musonda isn't that player. He's a filler that will get LC games and the odd dead rubber early FA Cup tie. He wasn't even in the match day squad for Qarabag at home. I know it's tempting to think the club is serious about promoting youth. But we have a 14 year track record to go by now. Maybe Musonda will make it some day. I'm not going to say he can't because he clearly is talented and has bags of skill. But this season he's just making up the numbers.

Azpilicueta, Rudiger, Kante, Bakayoko and Morata were amazing today. Morata showing all his doubters wrong (and there have been a few, even among the clubs own fans).

Not all our problems no, but it would solve the problem with a small squad. I also think you may want to have a look at the squads JM and AC has had at other clubs.

Not sure why, he's nowhere near Morata in terms of overall ability.

So Crouch manages to escape the clearest red I've seen this season. Mike Dean, chief muppet and clown.

My lord - Morata could be on five now...

Alvaro on a hat trick. What a player.

Diego who? Like seriously, whoever thought that Morata wouldn't make it here has either watched too much of him when he was a young up and coming striker in Italy or has vastly overrated the Premier League. He'll be scoring 20+ goals for us this season bar a serious injury. You can take that to the bank. Fabulous signing!

Who are those top managers? We have had a few at our club, but interestingly enough when those same managers goes elsewhere they seem to favour squads with 3-4 proper options more (at least) then they had here.

1. Sure, and they were a non-entity until 2010-11. Our decline had started before that. That they had Takshin as their owner meant little to us. Neither did they sign players we were interested in until a good few years after the take-over and once the arabs bought the club. 2. Right. So you are now saying we weren't overtaken by clubs outspending us or by clubs with their own benefactor which was your initial claim. You now claim United didn't have to spend because players went there for free and managed to convince their clubs to let it happen? Makes sense. Not. 3. We didn't lose out to Modric. We didn't get him because Spurs refused to sell him to us. They sold him for less one season later when he left for Real. 4. Strange example. We've never even reached the heights of a Bayern, Barca or Real even for a 5 year period. Not even the heights of Juve once they had been demoted and made their way back. We came close, but not quite to those levels. 5. The playing field is level? Not really, there's six clubs or so that has more money than everyone else. We aren't one of them. Given the head start we had as a club to the "money era of football", I can't help but thinking that's a failure on our behalf. 6. Get over yourself. I don't think I deserve anything. I'm not feeling comfortable pretending we are something we clearly aren't though. You seem happy to project your fantasies as truths. Whatever makes your boat float I suppose.

Well that's the team with the change of Pedro starting and Hazard taking his place on the bench. Bit surprising Hazard doesn't start.