OhForAGreavsie

How about Milan Badelj of Fiorentina? Really like his ball retention and distribution both of which are greatly helped by his two-footedness. He is as comfortable with his weaker foot, his left, as all professional footballers should be in my opinion. Of course we may not be flavour of the month down Florence way so any bid would be complicated.

Probably so I suppose.

Agreed.

It was reported that there was such a clause in the KDB contract and that, accordingly, we were paid a fee when he joined City. It has also reported that a similar clause exists in Lukaku's case. Indeed, I remember commenting when someone else posted about it.

I disagree. About what? Everything you say here. So what if the supposed bids are widely quoted? What weight does that give them? The quotes may be accurate but neither you nor I know whether that is the case so to bleat without the facts is nonsensical. I do care what the club pays and have been critical of the club for overpaying and for negotiating poorly. If you don't then you should because it does matter. Right at the start of the Roman era I wrote a piece which was published on the BBC sport website in which I said I had two ambitions for Roman's money. 1) That the boost it gave would help establish Chelsea permanently among the elite clubs, and 2) That by making Chelsea able to outspend the traditional big spenders it would give them a dose of their own medicine and teach them the anticompetitive nature of top level football where every league in the world is dominated by its richest clubs. That their inability to match Chelsea's spending power would scare them into accepting a fairer system. Neither of my ambitions has been achieved but I want to focus on the first one. To be permanent members of the big boys club means becoming independent of Roman and that means sustainable transfer activity. The club's transfer dealings in the summer of 2003 could not have been handled more stupidly if you sat down and planned it. It taught the market than whatever price you can think of is still not high enough and that if you simply held out for your number you'd get it. Sellers have become drunk on that gravy train and weaning them off it is painful. Unless you are prepared to accept the pain however, unless you walk away sometimes, no one will ever take your positions seriously and the market will go on believing they can get silly amounts of money from Chelsea for players they not really desperate to keep anyway. For you the end result is a winning season. For me the end result is perennially successful club. You, unsure whether to snigger at Chelsea football club? Don't make me laugh. I expect most Chelsea fans care about your predicament about as much as you care about their club. You behave like a spoiled toddler. Where's my shiny new toy? I want my new toy. Why haven't you bought my shiny new toy yet? Seems to me that the club needs to treat you to a dose of good parenting to teach you some self discipline.

This is why my long standing feeling about Rom remains unchanged since I formed it within twenty minutes of the first game I saw him play. He has qualities, not quality. I learned later that Rom also has brains so there is no doubt he'll find a way to contribute but no manager of a top level, Champions League contending, side will ever be satisfied with Rom as his first choice striker. Any such manager presented with Rom as his top option, will soon be on the look out for an alternative. That's the prediction I made nearly 5 years ago and I stand by it.

Assuming two offers have been made, how the hell do you know what they were and whether they are smart or otherwise? Your just pay whatever they want idea is such a breathtakingly simple tactic. If only life were so easy.

I know who the media, fed by a combination of agents working for players, agents working for clubs and sooth-sayers, tell me have been identified as targets by Chelsea but I'm not prepared to judge the club on such scanty evidence.

Nor when he came on against England. He doesn't even look anything special in his youtube clips. Don't see any reason for any fuss about this player.

First let's hope that we'll never know. Hope because none of us want to start the new season with the same squad that finished the last one. If that is what happens, if Antonio has to navigate the season with the same options Jose and Guss worked with; then, and only then, we'll get some clues about whether you are right or not. None of us want Antonio to be handicapped like that.

Roma's stance is that the Belgian is not for sale which is always the position the selling club wants to set up for negotiating purposes. (Unless they are contractually obligated to do otherwise.) Had we gone in with an opening offer of €40m what do you suppose they'd be asking for now? Like it or not the world is real, budgets are finite and the game has to be played.

If he said it, then he fibbed. If he dropped it, then it missed.

As all of the furore blew up over this, it emerged that there may have been long standing doubts about the quality of Eva's work for the club. I know nothing about the truth of that either way so have no opinion on it and what I have to say below takes no account of it. Anyone who has read my general comments knows that I'm a huge Jose Mourinho fan but he was undoubtedly in the wrong about this. He not only behaved badly on the day, he compounded it by behaving stupidly afterward. His actions, which have cost the club a lot of money and bad publicity, have also seen us loose an individual who was a big PR asset. A successful woman in a man's world was always a news story and one that showed Chelsea football club in a positive light. Further, it's not too far fetched to imagine that the incident and its aftermath played a part in driving a wedge between the the manager and his players. It was a bad day and a bad business. Good luck to Eva. I wish her every success.

If you offered me both players for free, I'd take the Spaniard. Ten years from now, when you think back and realise that old OhForAGreavsie was right after all, you can send me a pint of Ruddles County and I'll drink your health. Of course, if I turn out to be wrong, you won't find me for dust.

It's good to read a post of yours which I can support. It's just opinion, but I'm certain the club will commit as much money to recruitment as it feels can be afforded. There is bound to be a limit on that however. That limit must restrict what will be possible this summer but affordability is not the only obsticle. We are in a tough place, facing the most competitive transfer market in history. The club will try, is clearly already trying.

Many years ago, visiting Toronto, I did a card trick for some relatives. It's a good trick, but only a trick all the same. One uncle in particular, who is into the mystical, was captivated and persuaded me to attempt it again but this time under scientific conditions, i.e. with no opportunity for me to 'cheat'. I knew I had no chance of getting it right so was busy concocting my excuse, but guess what? You've guessed already. I did not of course have no chance of getting right, I had a 1 in 52 chance and, lo and behold, when the card was turned over it really was the four of diamonds. My uncle was in awe. Despite my denials he believes to this day that I have some kind of power and that the denials are just fibs to protect my secrets. My question to you Kevin is this; will you be OK, will you be able to cope, if you actually turn out to be right?

Old news. This story has been discussed here at least twice before, the first time in January I think. It was being described as a done deal even then. This signing is good news for those of us who actually support this club. It's very encouraging that we retain the ability to attract exciting prospects to our junior ranks despite all the negativity pumped out by those who think the world revolves around them and their keyboard. The young man is extremely talented. He isn't quite in the same class as the youngster Man City signed a couple of seasons ago (who is) but he has great promise. It would be nice if all of us could simply welcome Juan to the club and wish him well. Instead, we are likely to read the usual output from the keyboard warriors, spouting their ill-informed Tosh. Ho-hum. Welcome to the club Juan. I wish you well.

I'm fed up with reading this type of comment. How the heck do you know what the club is doing? You decide what you think the club is doing and then you blame them for it. Sounds like an old joke about women. They ask you a question, they tell you the answer, and you're still wrong!

My question referred to the fact that player was described as not yet world-class despite already being 26 years old. if an outfield player is not yet world-class at that age, when will he be?

This is my own view and backed by nothing more than a personal reading between the lines of Juve's noises but... If potential buyers really are contemplating bids in the region of €100m then I think Juve would rather have the money than the player.

I'd happily do a deal with them where they back away from Morata and we leave the coast clear for them to pursue Pogba.

Yet? At the age of twenty-six what is he waiting for?

He looks more flashy than effective to me. As has been said, many players have looked good against us but it's not just players. Plenty of ordinary sides have put in apparently good displays against Chelsea only to disappoint their manager and fans who, "Can't understand how we can play so well against Chelsea one week, but not turn up against XYZ FC the next." The fact is we can be very easy to play against, with our slow build up and determination to give the ball away cheaply. Most professional footballers will look good if given that sort of encouragement. I'm not sold on Brahimi. Even his highlight vids contain many passages of play which are really scraping the barrel for examples of the bloke's so called quality. If he is the player some here are saying that he is, then I haven't seen it yet.

Doesn't sound like PR talk to me. Sounds like wording agreed with Eva's side as part of the settlement.

Hope not anyway. It's like the age old question, "Do you prefer a striker who shoots, or one who passes?" The answer is neither, we all want a striker who shoots when that's the right choice, and one who passes when a pass is what's required. Sometimes to play on the counter is the right choice and your team is incomplete if you can't do it. If Antonio is saying his default set up will be to press then, good, I like it. Thing is though, any fool can press. The trick is to press without risking getting opened up. That means avoiding being passed around while you are hunting the ball and then not yielding up possession too quickly when you do turn the ball over. None of our recent squads would have had any hope of implementing the pressing philosophy successfully across a whole season. Antonio needs to get his players in before getting dogmatic about what he is, and what he isn't, going to do.