OhForAGreavsie

I don't think it's a question of making demands. If he wants to play as a cm, and a club is offering him that opportunity, then why not take it? Perfectly reasonable behaviour and he deserves respect for it. Of course there is another potential take on this whole posistional preference thing. Perhaps it's just his way of sparing our blushes. Perhaps he just doesn't fancy us or the way he's seen us play.

There is merit in what you say once a player is at a club, and a part of their squad. It's different however when a player is considering which club he wants to join. It's perfectly reasonable for a player to prefer the club which will select him in his preferred position. Of course, later on, the player is entitled to judge his new employers by whether or not they keep their promise. As far as I know Ox has never refused to play in any position he's been ask to fill. He's done exactly what you say he should, but he's perfectly entitled to seek starts in his favoured role.

Thanks BimV. All of these seem potentially informative. I've always taken the view that I'd trust my eyes rather than a table of stats. To be fair however you have to get a really good feel for what the numbers are telling you before you can accurately decide if they are helpful or not. The xG-Chain/xG-Buildup figures do sound like they are worth measuring but before I put any trust in them I'd want decide if I think they actually are meaningful. It seems highly probable that xG-Chain stats are influenced by the quality of the player's team. It seems likely that a player at City last season would naturally have a better x result than one at a club which struggled to create good chances. Does this mean the real way to use x results is to compare performances of players within the same squad? What about you, do you have confidence in x results? Do you feel there is a correlation between good players and good 'x' stats?

Thanks RB

Thanks for the warning.

Sorry to be boring about this but Azpi is not a wing back. He lacks the tools and is just not very good at it.

What an ignorant comment. Grow up or shut up.

I think most people have struck the right balance in their assessments of Victor's contribution last season. Some may have become over excited and failed to see the difference between being given a role which better suits his capabilities, and his becoming a genuinely better player. In the main however, people understand that Victor is exactly the same player he always was. This 'magic wand' theory, which claims that the manager can transform ugly ducklings into beautiful swans, is ridiculous of course. As you pointed out. Upgrading our RWB was priority number two for me this summer. Since the club has already attempted to address my top priority (CM) I'm glad RWB is also getting attention. I like The Ox and have consistently supported the idea that we should target him in the transfer market. My feeling is that he has the 'in possession' part of a wingback's function under control. The question for him to answer is whether he can bring his out of possession contribution up to the same level but that is an area coaching can help with.

Great info, thank you. That 'difficult passes' stat about Ross Barkley is surprising to me, and very interesting. This is an area in which we struggle. Even a very slight improvement in this aspect of our play would be huge. What, may I ask please, is an xG-chain?

Thanks Skipper. A few comments prompted by this post and the one to which you replied:- I'm not convinced that the 'English premium' in the domestic market exists any longer. Well, it exists, but it is balanced by the 'English tax' on the continent. There may be similarly talented players available at around €25m in Europe, but not to Chelsea I fear. Unless the transfer market takes an unexpected turn, Marcos Alonso may proove to be the last first-team player bought from the continent by Chelsea for under £30m. I like Drinkwater more than many seem to. I would rather see him in our line up than Matic or Mikel and, let's face it, we won a lot of trophies with those two in our side. If I'm right in this assessment, then adding Drinkwater would put us in a better situation than we've been in previously. If I'm right. Antonio has spoken of creating a new foundation at Chelsea. I wonder if that, and not building a potential Champions League winning side, has been the priority this summer? If that has been the thinking then I support it, and the proposed transfers seem like good steps to get that base in place. The stars can follow. One risk with such a strategy however, and it's a big one, is losing the jewel in our crown. I think we have to demonstrate to Eden this season that we are able to help him achieve his goals. If not, there is a very significant risk he will feel his time is up at Chelsea.

Arsenal types made a lot of it when he joined them in 2011, although we were also interested. Chelsea fan but he still chose Arsenal, etc, etc.

I wrote a post earlier which must have stretched to about two-hundred words. You've said more in two. Great post.

Depends what you mean by kid. There are two Dembeles, at least, at Celtic. The 'kid' is 14 and he's going to be an unbelievable player. Some time last year I posted to say that if there was a more talented youth level footballer anywhere in Europe than Diaz of Man City, then I hadn't seen him. Well I have now. Serious, serious talent.

We also wanted him on 2011 but he chose Arsenal.

Leaving aside Diego's situation, that would have to start with us actually wanting Barkley. Ronald Koeman's comment, quoted above, gives me hope that in fact we don't. Unless we've decided, for tactical reasons, to place our bid on deadline day.

Answer your question without mentioning squad depth? It would be extremely impressive if someone could answer by mentioning it. How is Chelsea's need for squad players ever going to be an answer to a question about Danny Drikwater's motives? Our need for squad reinforcements explains why we might want to sign Drinkwater, but it's never going to be an explanation of why he would want to join us. Think you've confused yourself there for a minute. You say Drinkwater is the complete reverse of the type of player we should sign. It would be interesting to see your filtered list of the players we should recruit for that role. Filtered first by removing any names we can't attract and second by purging any players who would not accept the possibility of being fourth on the depth chart. It would then be fun to debate which of the players remaining on your list are better than Drinkwater. Drinkwater is no Naby Kaita but I think he's a better player than you give him credit for. I can't convince you of that, but Danny Drinkwater probably will. I fully understand that your real point is we should be shopping for a starting player whose quality meets with your approval. For whatever reason the club has gone for Bakayoko to fill that need. By all means criticise the club if you think that is a bad decision, but don't let it cloud your judgement of what Drinkwater can do as a fourth, or even fifth, choice CM. Your posts in this thread do read as if that is what you are doing.

Every time I see that avatar pic, I can't help wondering how the family of the poor girl who died in that accident must feel. Of course Marcos should not be expected to stop his life, but pain like that family suffered never goes away and an image like that is bound to set off a feeling of deep and tragic injustice.

Fair comment.

I now know that Ben Ramsey is a telegraph reporter. This means he must know that FFP is not applied on a deal-by-deal basis, yet his tweet implies that an individual deal can be examined, and should be rejected. FFP does not give uefa the power to examine an individual deal so neither of those things can, or will, happen. Let's give Ramsey that he didn't mean it like that; that he was just using an expression and that what he meant to say is something like, 'Come on uefa, you know PSG is just messing with you and your rules now. Show some guts.' PSG are messing with the regulations. The problem is that loans, or temporary transfers as they are officially known, are perfectly legal and, as long as the costs of that loan don't take PSG over their allowable FFP expenditure, then uefa can have nothing to say about it. FFP is assessed on clubs' annual accounts, not on an individual deal. Even then, the figures for any particular year are allowed to fail the test as long as the club's results over a rolling three year period balance out. What does balance out mean? uefa allows clubs to make a €5m FFP loss over those three years, but that can go up to €35m if the extra €30m is a no strings cash injection from the owner. Obviously PSG's owners will put that money in. How can a club hope to stay within a €35m loss if they spend €222m on a single player? Remember that, regardless of whether a transfer fee is paid in full at the time of the deal, clubs are entitled to amortise, or spread, the cost of that payment over the length of his contract when reporting it in their FFP numbers. Instead of €222m appearing in PSG's accounts for 2017/2018 in respect of the Neymar deal, a portion of it will be reported in each of the next five annual results. That's €44.4m per year. Even with just a slice of the Neymar deal to pay for, PSG clearly can't afford to add another €36m to their costs, and still stay within FFP. (€36m would be the annual FFP cost of Mbappe's transfer fee over a five year contract.) Setting up a loan deal therefore is a clever, and entirely legal, way to get around that. It means that, although whatever loan fee has been agreed with Monaco will appear in this year's books, the transfer fee won't come in until the 2018/2019 figures. That, in effect, gives PSG two years to sort out their figures. They might: - Edit: I typed bullet points here giving examples of what PSG might do to improve their FFP situation but a glitch in the system has chewed them up. No time to retype them now but I may re-do it later. PSG would not have entered into these transfers unless they felt they would find a way to squeeze them through FFP. Ramsey must know this. He can read the FFP rules just like I did and he probably has. He should therefore pass on accurate information about what it is and how it works. He could even use the position he's no doubt worked hard to reach, to call for a different set of FFP rules if that's what he wants to do. The one thing he should not do is perpetuate any lingering myths about FFP by tweeting silly comments like the one I commented on above.

Anyone who can write such drivel clearly has no idea how FFP works. When you don't know anything sit down and shut up. Instead, this idiot is advertising his ignorance on Twitter. P.S. I see that his account is described as "verified". Presumably this means he's well known though personally I've never heard of him. That doesn't mean he's not entitled to an opinion, but nor does it mean he should get a free pass when he's talking rubbish.

I think there could be some truth in this, but for non-footballing reasons. If he goes to Liverpool AOC will have fewer problems in his day-to-day life than if he moves across the capital. Ask Sol Campbell or Ash. I see this notion crossing his mind more than once.

If he joins, Sanches may start off higher up our depth chart, but my expectation is he'd soon play his way down it again. While I have to acknowledge that many, many people believe in this lad, I must also state that I can't see why. More hype than substance there in my opinion.

Well, I am yet to see the supposed excellence in Gabriel Jesus, and quite a few City fans have begun to express doubts about him too. Even so a sizeable percentage of those doubters on Bluemoon still prefer Jesus over Aguero. Their posts express love for the Argentine, but they'd rather see the youngster in the team. This opinion isn't unanimous among City fans by any means but there is enough of it to make us stop and think. If a player City fans think still has a lot of developing to do before he reaches the desired standard, is nevertheless thought to be a better option than their long term centre forward, then what does that tell us about Aguero's recent contributions?

In fact it's for our medical department to try to convince the Red Devil's medical team that Eden is unfit to play, and for our manager to try to persuade Belgium's manager that it's not sensible to select Eden even if he is technically fit. In the end however, the national team makes all the decisions. If Belgium's doctors don't accept the opinion of our doctors, Belgium are entitled to call up the player anyway so he can be examined by their medical staff. Antonio can recommend that Eden is not ready, but Martinez can overrule him and select Hazard anyway. If we refuse to allow Eden to go when selected, Belgium can inform FIFA and Eden will be suspended for the same number of competitive Chelsea games, as he missed for the national team.

You seem to me to believe in fairy dust. Look what happened when Andre Villas Boas tried to play the right kind of football with a squad that lacked the talent to do it, and look what happened when Robbie Di Matteo adopted the pragmatic approach required to cover up that squad's deficiencies. You are not alone, we all want to see our team play that football, but we live in a world where Joseph Heller's paradox bites. Any fool can set up to play the way you, me, and millions of others would like us to, but Chelsea can't hope to win playing like that. We don't have the players to do it, and we can't attract those players because, among other reasons, we don't have a reputation for playing that way. If those other reasons prevent this being a true catch twenty-two situation, it's probably not much less than a catch twenty-one and a half.