OhForAGreavsie

Your whining if you're wish should fail will be music to mine.

😊

Thanks XP

PM me please Scott if they are still available. I've got two for me and my daughter but a couple of members we watch games with look like missing out.

Not to mention that we are not going to win the league on goal difference anyway. If the title comes down to goal difference, spurs will be champions.

I don't mind rolling down the the local church hall one Thursday night every year, if that's what it takes.

The 14/15 squad was not as good as this one. I like everything we are hearing from Antonio regarding his plans for the summer. Saying that our squad is undermanned, and under skilled, is just a statement of the obvious of course, but the fact that he is prepared to say it anyway wins confidence. Whether this season yields two trophies, one trophy or none, there can be no doubt Antonio is the right man to take us forward. I hope no one in the hierarchy will seek to veto any of his transfer targets. By all means offer an opinion to the manger and try hard to persuade him if you think he needs to change his mind but, in the end, the man in the chair should make the footballing decisions. Anyone feeling they spot a bit of self-contradiction from me here, is correct. I've admitted many times that if I had Roman's money I would certainly have attempted to buy the club, and if that attempt had been successful, I would now be making all the transfer decisions myself. The only explanation I can offer for this hypocrisy is to say that it's about trust. In that fantasy world, I'd trust myself. In this real one, I trust Antonio. The Italian is only the second Chelsea manager, after Jose, to whom I feel a personal commitment, and I go all the way back to Tommy Docherty. That's a lot managers who have come and gone without making a personal impact on me. We have a good one here. I believe he can eclipse even what The Special One was able to achieve. Don't blow it board.

And long may they continue to lack that player!

Leicester is the one exception I referred to. When Blackburn won the league they had one of the two biggest budgets in the country and ditto Arsenal when they were winning all but one of their PL titles. In fact, but for our hoped for triumph this season and Arsenal's in '03/'04, I would have been able to state that, barring The Foxes, the league had always been won by one of its two biggest budget clubs. This season our budget is behind those of the Manchester clubs so I've had to expand that to three. Regardless of the specific budget ranking of various champions, the general point stands. Money talks.

Can't happen. Calm. Work. Focus. No need for crowing folks. Six points from now will be time enough for that.

Antonio will enjoy his family diner even more when he hears about this.

The next 15 minutes are going to be agony.

United are United. In my opinion English football owes them, and Liverpool, a debt for its current wealth. I think it was the huge worldwide popularity of those two clubs, particularly the Reds of Manchester, which pulled in large parts of the international audience and which drove the worldwide coverage of Premier League football. I argue that this coverage helped the growth in popularity of England's other leading clubs because unattached supporters gradually picked a club to follow. I'm not suggesting that other clubs had no worldwide presence around the globe in 1992, they clearly did, but ManU and Liverpool were a long way ahead back then. Untied still are of course.

I don't agree with this. Never have agreed with it and I never will. Goals are obviously an important part of a striker's role, but to say that role is all about goals is equivalent to saying that a centre back's role is all about planting the ball into row Z. Every player has more than one function to perform for his team, and each of them is important. Part of the reason Messi scores so many goals is the fantastic contribution he makes to Barca's build up. He makes his team more efficient in possession and not only he himself, but his teammates too, reap the rewards. Someone at the top of the shape who has the technical quality to receive, retain and redistribute possession is a difference maker for a team. Look what Suarez did for Liverpool. We shouldn't forget either that a player who is good at retaining possession also improves his team defensively. Even if such a player contributes fewer goals personally, his team will finish up with more points. Rom is often labled a good target man but he isn't. The ball bounces off him too often. (As has too frequently been the case with Diego recently of course.) If Diego is to leave, I want his replacement to be an outstanding technician.

I like the way the squad and coaches are looking at it; assume Spurs are going to win all the rest of their games, and set about things accordingly.

So was Palace but I like your positive attitude.

Tammy would not take up a place on our Premier League squad list because clubs are free to have as many such players in their squad as they like. All players in the list are however required to be registered to play for the club. As far as I'm aware, Tammy is currently registered to play for Bristol City, not Chelsea and will be until the season ends. With a bit of luck, one of the journos will ask Antonio about this at tomorrow's press conference.

Yep that was undeniably the case.

Anybody know how to get Dembele to fall out with Spurs please?

I'm fully in favour of the manager getting the targets he wants but it's not as if we here get a choice. In the end we take what we're given, like it or not. I agree with you about the rationale of 'Premier League proven'. It's a reasonable criteria that squad builders should give due weight to, but it's not a magic formula which lets decision makers off hook when it comes to exercising good judgment. My own judgement remains as stated in the post to which you replied. I don't remember if anyone mentioned the magic phrase when I was saying forget Torres, go for Suarez. People certainly told me to stop talking nonsense, count Nando's goals, and try to be as happy as they were. It wasn't long before that false happiness faded. If football was as easy as arithmetic then all those clever people who are paid for their football opinions would be out of work. Rom is a better player than Nando. If we resigned him he'd do OK. We'd win some matches and maybe even the odd trophy. What's the problem then? The problem is that I believe we would be a better team with a technically superior alternative, even if the individual goal return of that alternative player is less than Rom's might be.

Who did you hear it from?

All is well again. Apologies for being so slow on the uptake but I'm up to speed now. I genuinely burst out laughing when I read the comment to which I am replying. In football, people often throw insults around and call it banter. They forget that banter should have some wIt and humour about it. You've had to ladle it on pretty thick, but it's worked. You've helped me see that it wasn't only your jokes I was taking too seriously, but myself too. Good work. I appreciate it.

"As well as having a fifth Premier League trophy to boast, according to ESPN, Chelsea would also receive a whopping £140million prize money if the league leaders prove to be triumphant this term. ESPN report that’s a 40% increase on the £87.3million we received for finishing tenth in the Premier League table last term." One thing we can say for sure is that ESPN are crap at arithmetic, or typing, or both.

Belloti's the one I'd like for sure. If that can't happen I'd be happy with Morata. Mbappe seems impossible and I've no interest in Lukaku.

On the phonetics first since that is not a question of opinion. I doubt I'm the only person who spotted the incorrect spelling but perhaps I am the only one who is interested enough to comment on it and to risk being thought patronising, or just plain rude. The pronunciation of the two words is different and this dictates their spelling. These words have entirely different meanings and, when annunciated correctly, are audibly different. That difference allows the two to be distinguished in speech, and, together with context, allows the correct meaning to be received by a listener. To claim that an "e" is missing from the word "for" is to ignore the rules of English spelling concerning vowel sounds when the word of which they are a part ends with an "e". I fail to see what you hope to achieve by deliberately misspelling the word. If the purpose of writing is to communicate meaning, then inventing your own lexicon can hardly help. As to Nemanja being similar to Glen Hoddle. I doubt you'll find a single sighted person on the planet who agrees with your claim. Certainly not Nemanja, and not even his mother. The opinion is nonsense. Having read that comment I can no longer take your views seriously on this issue. Indeed I can only imagine that you are having a good laugh at me for having taken them seriously in the first place.