OhForAGreavsie

Traore himself would not agree with you. He said that he meant to go for goal but not in that way so, he explicitly said, it was a lucky goal.

What's the story with him in Munich then? I hadn't heard that he isn't settled.

Of course we both know that I am not watching a different team yet I remain absolutely certain that Cuadrado is not the answer to any of our problems. We won't improve a team that is short of quality players by deploying another individual who lacks the required qualities. Clearly you feel differently but I can only see the world through my own eyes, and assess what I see through the filter of my own judgement. I'm therefore stuck with having to disagree with you.

SJ will reply for himself if he wants to but he's not being literal about the fee. He's simply using a form of words to say that, like many of us, he thinks Cuadrado has no place in our squad and should be allowed to leave so that his wages can be reinvested in a useful squad member. Personally, I'd play hard ball and ask for a bag of Mars and two bags of Twix. As for Juan not having had much opportunity to show us what he's got, I back those who feel they saw enough to be comfortable about JC moving on this summer.

Who knows what role Pato will eventually play but, leaving that riddle aside, should we now regard Bertie as our second choice striker?

Yes it was in that fateful FA Cup 5th round tie in 1972. I think that was a mammoth game in the history of our club. The game which marked the start of our decline from perennial challengers to wilderness dwellers. Shortly before half-time in that game we were favourites for the league title, had a two-nil lead and one foot in the quarter-finals of the cup (a simply huge deal back then), a date with Stoke at Wembley for the League Cup Final, and a top-five hit single in the charts. Life was good and Blue really was the colour. Little did we know that it would be pretty much all downhill from there. Not just for the next forty-five minutes, not just at Wembley 7 days later, but for most of the next twenty-six years. It took us that long to recover from Orient's fight back that day and took me a fair while too. Webby had a great chance to snatch a draw late in the game but fired over. I remember watching it on Match of the Day that night with my uncle. Although I knew the result, I didn't know about that miss. Instant reaction when I saw it was head in hands and a scream of, "Kill yourself." My poor unc tried earnestly to explain that it was just a game and there was no call for me to shout things like that about Chelsea players. Just a game? What did he know.

Thing I like best in Matt's highlight vids is his distribution. Clearly only the passes that found their target make it into the various packages and all the rubbish ones disappear into the either but, still, there are lots of good ones in there. Some good tackles in there too of course, but there would be in the highlights of any defender. Most of all, it's the well spotted, and well executed, passes that caught my eye.

Thank you I appreciate that. I did allude to the possibility of misjudgement when I wrote in my initial comment that the opinion was in the majority as far as I could divine. I do maintain however that people reading that run of pages will at least see where I got it from. That said, since I have myself often made the same point you did about KDB being an ex Chelsea player, and since it is the treatment/prospects of Charlay Musonda that we were really discussing, I'd sooner get back to talking about our present and our future, not our past.

I did initially write that but realised the original was not well worded and changed it before your reply appeared, i.e. we must have been typing at the same time. You'll acknowledge that we were replying to each other pretty much as live at that point. I'm posting this only to acknowledge that I did indeed reword my comment. There is a difference between 'lie' and error or misjudgement. Since you know Bluemoon and the thread in question you should have no problem finding the run of pages over which these considered, i.e. not initial, honeymoon period, thoughts were being expressed and you'll see that my characterisation was reasonable. Lie remains a word for which you should apologise.

To be fair to Eden how do you decide if two players do as you suggest and show the desire to score? Do they fight or do they follow the manager's instructions? Oscar said, "Me", Hazard said, "Me", Guus's standing orders got the casting vote. Spot on about City by the way but I can't bring myself to want Liverpool to win anything. Only time I ever want Liverpool to win is when they play Spurs. Other than that, may the biggest dark cloud follow them around and open up on them wherever they go.

If you're read bluemoon then you have read the posts to which I refer and you can have the honesty to apologise.

I wish you had shown more maturity in the way you responded. If you are looking to get a rise out of me you are going to be disappointed. Had you done your homework you would have read the posts I have read, and you would know that my comments are truthful. Those, who like you, have not read them may want to support what you have said but they would then be making the same mistake as you have. Had you raised a query with a sensible amount of politeness I'd have helped you with references but given the approach you have taken you can hardly be surprised that I'm disinclined to dignify your statement with such help. I can tell you that if you actually bother to check you will even find that a great many of the positive posts about KDB acknowledge what city fans see as his flaws and are written in the form of a defence against the criticisms Kevin receives from their fellow City supporters. Criticisms you want readers of this site to believe I just made up. Now, my contention was that as far as I can divine, the opinion that Kevin would not be a part of City's theoretical best line up, is in the majority. There may be room for debate about whether I have gauged that correctly but the opinion exists and to deny it is only evidence that you have not taken the trouble to check.

I said no such thing. I have reported, accurately, that there are Manchester City fans who do not believe that Kevin should be a part of their first choice XI. I have no idea whether he should, or should not be. I don't watch them much. I can tell you that there seem to be two main criticisms City fans have about KDB. They complain that he gives the ball away too cheaply too often and that he is lazy in his defensive duties. They tend to acknowledge that he plays high risk/high reward passes and accept that the completion rate for such passes will inevitably be lower but they say it's what they see as Kevin's wastefulness with straightforward, possession, passes that lets the team down. You can shoot the messenger again if you like but it won't change the message.

I have replied to your comment here.

I have replied to your comment here.

Myself included. I don't agree with this for the Depor game which is the only one I actually saw in full. As for the other two games, didn't see them so I don't know. This is just another way of saying that you don't agree with me and, as I've already said, I can live with that.

Before I say what I'm about to say I must make it clear that I'm a foreigner. I wasn't born in this country and didn't even apply for a British passport until I was in my late twenties by which time i had been here more than two decades. As far as I'm concerned these people who come this country and denigrate our beloved FA Cup, well my beloved FA Cup anyway, should be sent packing. Wenger started this years ago when he called for the scrapping of replays (he appears to have changed his mind on this now) and for the competition to be moved to midweek. To the likes of Klopp and Peligrini I say you are world class managers and can earn a fortune in any number of countries. If you choose to ply your trade here then show some respect for the football culture into which you have chosen to come. I don't hate any football club but if there was one it would be Liverpool. I'm absolutely thrilled that they were turfed out of The Cup but I'm still furious with Klopp for doing what he did.

I'm disappointed that self-professed Chelsea fans describe Chelsea players in this way. You are entitled to do it of course and no one should try to stop you but I don't get it. Nobody has ever disrespected the abilities of a Chelsea player more than I disrespected Chris Sutton's. I was so furious the day we signed him that I almost threw something heavy through a sheet of glass. It was only the fact that it was my mate's window, not my own, that stopped me in time. Even so you'll never hear me describe Sutton in the way you've described Oscar. For what it's worth, within five months of him joining, and ever since, I have been calling for Oscar to be replaced but the man is a Chelsea player and I'm a Chelsea fan.

No we weren't. We got more points than other sides but that's not the same thing at all. Watch the games, we won the league because of the genius in the dugout.

I've no idea about those other debuts. I didn't see them. I have seen better debuts than the one Charlay had for Betis but I don't expect better than that. This is why I described that performance as OK for a debut. There is a big difference however between me not expecting the performance to be better and you asking me to pretend that I thought it was better than in fact I did. I called it as I saw it. You saw it differently and I can live with that. Though there is nothing desperate about it, of course I want to be a realist. If I didn't then surly everyone would feel even more justified in dismissing my opinions than they might already feel inclined to do. If Barcelona give youth a chance it's because they feel those youngsters are good enough. No magic or mystery there. It is the business of their manager to make player choices taking the circumstances of his team, and his league, into account. It is the business of Chelsea managers to do the same for us. Successive holders of that post have all made similar decisions.

I fell in love with KDB's game after watching a few of his performances while he was back on loan at Genk. So much so in fact that I then watched every single Belgium international and as many of his matches at Bremen as I could. (Basically every Bremen game that didn't clash with a Chelsea match.) The opinion I formed during that period was that Kevin did not really deserve the amount of praise he was getting for his efforts in Germany. There were many times I felt he must surly be dropped after the display I had just seen, but he never was. Despite this I remained optimistic when he came back and my optimism went into overdrive after that simple looking, but actually genius, assist in his debut. I have to say however that what else we saw of Kevin, what little else for those who would prefer to put it that way, tended to back up the thoughts which began while he was in green. By the time he was allowed to leave I felt I could understand Jose's decision and I'm not the only one. If you read Man City fan sites you'll find that many of them, a majority as far as I can divine, also feel they can see why Jose did it. The consensus opinion among them seems to be that, with everybody fit, KDB shouldn't make their team. Juan Mata was just a question of managerial preference. Someone has to decide; Jose made his choice and he won the league. Won it in fact by more points than Man City have in all their Premier League triumphs combined. This despite the fact that most appear to feel that City's squad in each of those seasons was far batter than Jose's last year. As far as Romelu is concerned my perdiction when I first saw him play for us was that, though he might make a contribution as a squad player, he would never hold down a place as a starter for a Champions League level club. That any manager of a Champions Leage team with Romelu as his best option would always be urgently seeking a better alternative. This prediction is still live, still out there to be proved wrong, but it hasn't been proved wrong yet and I stick by it.

Looks like @Iggy Doonican wrote my post for me above. I would only add that it makes the hairs stand up when the Osgood song is sung by lads & lasses whose dads weren't born when Ossie first played for Chelsea. It's natural and right that younger fans should have their own heroes but I really hope that song is sung at The Bridge forever. Heroes don't have to be perfect and Ossie certainly wasn't that. Nor was he (in my opinion) the best player to play for this club, He wasn't even the second best but he was, and is, The King. May he reign forever. Sorry about the hair in the video but that was the 70s for you.

By the way, should a mod consider moving all of these posts into Charlay's main thread?

There were times when Charly didn't even get into the side for development squad games, or was subbed when he did. What is more those decisions seemed to me to be justifiable. We must guard against getting carried away. It's not about looking good, it's about being productive. There is a great deal more I'd like to say about this, and notice I wrote that I thought those decisions were justifiable not that they were correct. To unfold my argument on this however would take a very long post and, though I've been wanting to say it for years, I find that I can never be bothered to get into it. One day maybe.

This may be true of course but I don't think it is. My own view is the youngsters are not getting games because they don't deserve to. Some evidence of the reason for this difference of opinion between us comes in our assessments of Charlay's displays so far at Betis. I did not see the Gijon game but I saw the performance against Depor and I watched an all touches video of his debut vs Valencia. You feel that he has been fantastic but my respective ratings of those two outings are; OK, for a debut and very ordinary. There is perhaps no point in arguing whose assessment is right since we have both seen what we've seen, and think what we think. It is though some sort of explanation of why we see the bigger picture so differently. I don't think I watch any less academy football than many around here and suspect that in fact I watch more than most. Even so, I don't share the general clamour that the kids must play. My call is that our kids must get better.