OhForAGreavsie

If Pogba is a target then it would be ridiculous to imagine that the board would not consider linking the two deals. Of course they would but they will also know that it won't help them one bit. After all, what does Pogba care where Juan plays next season? If Poba is as widely coveted as his agent wants us to believe, the former Man Utd man will decide his next destination himself and it won't be Chelsea. Juan Cuadrado's future will be a complete non issue in his decision.

No.

Can't really help you with a complete list but look up the starting XIs in last weekend's Premier League games and you'll find at least a dozen. Extend your search beyond the Premier League and you'll only stop finding additional alternatives when you get bored of the exercise. Not by me, or by anyone whose opinion I respect on this subject. I will grant you that six months before that many would have bought into the claim. I can accept all of this as your opinion. Just don't try to present it as fact. Well that's a little disrespectful but I'll have to live with it. I happen to think that my opinions are considered, balanced and well judged. I suppose I would though wouldn't I. Who do you mean? Fans who don't watch Chelsea or pundits who make their living repeating clichés and passing comment on games they haven't seen? In fairness I accept that there are probably some people who think Matic is among the best. I'm not one of them however.

I'm afraid there is plenty of doubt about it. Never mind in the outside world, just check the number of TC members who clearly doubt it. Matic has had one good season at Chelsea. (Actually two half seasons.) Since Christmas 2014 his form has been below Premier League standard and way, way below world class. We were not ruthless last season. We had an inspired start followed by a general drop of form most of the way towards our current standards. The odd good performance in the second half of the season does not disguise that our players needed to be dragged over the finish line by a genius of a manager. I'm happy to accept that it must not be true but, anyone reading the post to which I'm replying could be forgiven for thinking that you can't tell the difference between what is a fact, and what is your own opinion.

Firstly, thanks to @DaddysHobby for finding and posting this video. There are some nice things here although none of them occur in the first 4 minutes of the video. Yes, those 240 seconds contain some evidence of Charlay's silky skills but that's something we know about him already. We also know that such skills do not, in themselves, make you a player. I didn't notice how much game time it covered but that opening section of the video contained nothing that was both productive and above average. It is, I think reasonable to put that down to a young man making his first-class debut but it's a mistake to then ignore it and say that the performance was fantastic. It would be a more sober judgement to say that Charlay did well, for a debut. To go beyond that is, in my opinion, pure honeymoon syndrome. As I said, there are some impressive things here, particularly the run at about 5:28 which @Stats described. The flick leading to the goal however is not special in my view. Most players in that situation would try it and most times most of them, including Charlay, would not get it exactly right. Charlay did get it right and he deserves credit for it but Oscar pulls off things like that more often than most yet none of us would say he's a good player because of it. I know this post reads fairly negatively but I don't think it does Charlay any favours to allow him to think that what he did yesterday is all he needs to do.

You may be right but this would in no way be opposite to what I said.

It's all opinion of course but... If both are at maximum level I pick Jed. Twenty minutes of full on Boga destroys teams but it hardly ever happens. Charlay is more balanced because he has a better passing game and is equally comfortable in the deep laying play maker role. In fact based on what I've seen, that may be his best position. The top two performances I've seen from Charlay came when he played the Modric position. The two games were many months apart mind so it does not seem he's being considered seriously for that role. Both players have talent but they have to learn effectiveness. Neither has scored sufficiently highly in that regard during development games. Indeed there was a time when that lack of effectiveness led to Charlay being regularly selected on the bench or being subbed off if he did start. I would not say that he is the complete package. Not yet anyway.

Thanks Gilvorak. I opened this thread to ask if anyone had watched the game so this is great info.

See what I mean about the honeymoon syndrome?

This is encouraging to be sure but we need to be wary of what I call the honeymoon syndrome. There is a period of time during which a new player, particularly a young one, gets excessive credit for everything he does well, and a free pass for everything he does badly. Fans' opinions eventually settle on a more balanced view of course so it will be interesting to read the opinions of Betis supporters after Charlay has played a dozen games for them. As I say though, it's encouraging that he started and that he played all 90.

Reading the thread it's clear that mine is not a common opinion, but I really like Pedro. He is a purpose built tiki-taka player in a team that generally speaking couldn't play tiki-taka against a bunch of 16 year-olds. We all want to see dramatic improvements to the squad over the summer. If that happens Pedro will fit in rather better than he does now. I hope those improvements happen, and I hope Pedro stays. I'm not suggesting that tiki-taka is Chelsea's future but a team with better possession players who can move the ball more quickly, and with greater accuracy, will take better advantage of what Pedro brings.

All fair questions and fair points. I take the line however that since two managers have now made the same choices viz RLC, Brana & Baba, there has to be a reason for it. They must both have seen/be seeing something that convinced/convinces them that these decisions were/are correct. The only alternative is the idea that someone else is picking the team. That someone could only be Roman yet every manager we've had in the last twelve years has made it crystal clear that Roman does not interfere with team selection. In any case the evidence is against that. Jose sometimes picked Kurt, Guus always does. Jose seldom picked Mikel, Guss clearly regards him as first choice. A different mind is obviously in charge of team selection these days. Different minds which nevertheless agree on some things.

In matters of opinion of course there is no right and wrong. If that's what you say you saw then that's what you saw but I'd be completely shocked if many Chelsea fans agreed with you. Ruben was nowhere near our best player vs the Dons.

At last with that free kick for the push on Fabregas. Watford's strikers been doing that all night.

How do you know?

No surprise he likes it. Our away fans really like that song. Be nice if our players who are actually on the pitch were to inspire the singing of their names.

Traore is the man I want on. We won't get anything tonight if we have to play with 10 men. We may not get anything anyway but we definitely won't playing a man short.

We're hoofing the ball because we're not good enough to do anything better. Plus ca change.

This is ridiculous. Watford's CMs are, individually, better players than ours. Wow we're in a mess.

I think I'm the exact opposite to you. Having watched a fair bit of Pato at Milan I formed the opinion that he was another in the long line of talented players who flatter to deceive. They look good, but they deliver little. In other words, I never expected much from him. Now he's a Chelsea player however, I find myself hoping that he really is as good as his attributes make it seem he might be. In a nutshell, my opinion is low, but my hopes are high.

Agreed re Marko, however I'm more supportive of the loan army policy than many seem to be. Twenty-two looks a reasonable enough number to set as a maximum size for the army but I'd prefer to control its numbers in a different way if possible. I'd like us to be completely honest with ourselves, as well as with the young man himself, as soon as a player's Chelsea chances are gone. Once that decision is made a move should be found for him as soon as possible. If a quicker turnover is achieved it will improve the chance that we'll get enough people into the system to find more successes. I say we should do this if possible because wages and contracts will impact when and if a new permanent club can be found of course. It would be nice to think we could make this easier by gradually reducing the value of the contracts we offer to loan army recruits in the first place. This may not be realistic however.

As you've probably realised now, the comment wasn't serious.

I didn't include the text of the posts I'm referencing because they're a bit longer than average. They can be found by clicking the swirly arrow in the top right of the blue boxes above. If you do that, and find you have not already read them then I recommend that you do. They contain 100%, well thought out, good sense. The argument @Peace makes in those two contributions reminds me of one of my favourite Winston Churchill comments, "Most people don't think most of the the time so the majority opinion is nearly always wrong."

I am, and always have been, less worried about Ruben's level of activity when the oppo have possession, than I am about the situation when we have the ball. When Ruben has the ball himself he's fine, but otherwise he's got to up the work rate to make more of an impact. I started to review yesterday's game to look for evidence to back up my comment and didn't have long to wait. At about 0:01:33 he chased a Fabregas pass down to the corner flag, flicked it over the left back's head and was unlucky not to draw a foul when he was bundled over. Then, at about 0:10:44, he collected a pass from Brana on halfway and dropped a simple, first time, ball back to Matic. In the intervening 9 minutes plus, Ruben touched the ball once. Even then it was not because he engineered himself into the passing pattern. Rather it was because he closed down the left back and got a block in. That's 10% of game time; time during which his team was utterly dominant and created numerous chances. Yes, it is possible for a player to make important contributions without touching the ball, and yes, any player might experience a passage of play like that from time-to-time. This is not a one-off for Ruben however. I've been banging on about this aspect of his game for three years. This is not about Ruben's team mates failing to pass to him, this is about Ruben working harder to support play, find space and make angles which enable him to receive the ball. Ruben has to be helped to acquire the knack of getting into possession. Only then will what he can do with it make enough of a difference for his team. Even Butch Wilkins noticed and commented on Ruben's lack of involvement yesterday. Edit: Anyone who has read my opinion on Ruben before will already know this but just to be clear, I'm a huge RLC fan and am desperate that he should make it with Chelsea. If that is to happen, he will have to pay attention to this issue.