OhForAGreavsie

Was on the point of liking this till I read the sentence about us having the best 1st XI. Of course I respect that this is your point of view, but I don't share it. City's top team vs our top team and my money would be on City. Worse, I believe City could lose as maybe as many as three top players in certain positions and still put out a better XI than us. Absolutely agree with everything else though. Top post.

Matic is a key part of our attack.

How old is Kane?

If he meant that, and I'd say he does, then what could he have done about it in the last 1-2 months?

I agree with Jose. I'm not saying I'm backing him because he's the boss, I'm saying I share his opinion.

I think the XI Jose picked today is our best XI. It is not as good as we'd like it to be however. It does need improvement and we're all acutely aware of this each time the side under performs. The trouble is that none of the backups solve the issues we have. Many of them are essentially unusable in my opinion. Some of the youngsters might help in future but it seems Jose is unconvinced that their time has come yet. I hope to see one or two kids involved on Sunday but, first and foremost, I want to win.

For the last two years that would have been my automatic reaction too but no longer. What I've seen from him more recently has given me pause and caused me to think we should reassess what we might be getting and what else could be available. I didn't see all of his displays this season but those I did watch didn't excite me. Thing is, it is tough to tell whether the output I've seen was only a question of form - no one is great all the time after all, rustiness or something else. The problem is, I don't think we can rule out something else and that's why I say there is reason for caution. By the way, if he did join I'd be tempted to try him as our 'ten'.

Firstly, just to state it, I've been consistently critical of Willian because his offensive contribution is not good enough and not because of a comparison with any potential replacement. I have been a long standing fan of Marco Reus but I confess that, for a while now, I've been less enthusiastic about us signing him. His performances after eventually getting his season under way were hit and miss, mostly miss. I'm worried about what he may have lost to the accumulation of injuries. If I were asked now, yea or nay on Rues? I'd say let's look very, very hard for alternatives before taking the plunge.

There is a strong chance that Alex reminded us all about this observation because, earlier today, I reported a post which used the word yid. Therefore I'd like to thank Alex for his prompt response. I think however that, despite understanding your need to resort to legalese, your original message (quoted) is not as forthright as I would have liked it to have been. The wider view; taken by football authorities, Tottenham Hotspur, Jewish organisations, anti-racist groups, and nobodies like me, is that use of the word yid in a football context is not OK. You have responsibilities toward the site so, if it really is necessary for you to use the shelter of the legalese then fine. Surely though we can still ask people not to use it at all, rather than to do so sparingly. Because anti-Semites use the word, anyone else who does, can, and will, also be associated with such thinking. It isn't only a question of what the user means. It's also about what the listener hears and what it says about me if I insist on using a word which I know causes her or him offence, however innocently I say I mean it.

There was no evidence shown today that has not been on display all season. If you feel you learned anything today then you haven't been watching as closely as you might have.

I hoped Remy would start today but it's hard to believe it would have made much difference. It has just not been our day. My thoughts about the urgent need to upgrade our AM options would not change whether we had won or lost today. Facts are facts; we had a good summer but it was only a start. We need two more good windows before we can be genuinely competitive at the highest levels. As for the title who knows, but I thought all along, and said all along, that City are the best team so I expect them to win it. That doesn't have to mean we can't do it though.

The problem is not the back four. It is the same one that has, in my opinion, been obvious since before the end of last season. A capable attack, which moves the ball quickly and accurately, makes a huge contribution to a side's defensive solidity. We are weak in the AM positions so we do not maximise our offensive opportunities and often concede possession in ways that leave the defence exposed. Oscar and Willian are the best options we have for their positions but they are not good enough. If we can give Matic, Cesc and Hazard better help in the attacking phase it will represent a major squad upgrade.

I disagree with every word of this.

There is no magic or mystery to this in my opinion. As far as I'm concerned it happens because City are a better side than us.

Bad performances can happen, as can disappointing results. What's more, I can live with them but I would like to believe that our decision makers are aware of the great myth about our situation; we certainly do not have the best squad in the league. We can't even put an XI on the pitch made up of Champion's League quality players, never mind the notion that we possess an entire squad of them. There are a whole range of things we can take from Jose's comment that we will not be going into the market in January. Maybe we can't afford it, maybe it's misdirection and we will be shopping, perhaps it's that he has players lined up to arrive during the summer instead, or maybe he hopes to plug the gaps with members of the development squad. Some of those are more likely than others but the one thing which is not at all likely in my opinion is that Jose could genuinely believe we don't need reinforcements. Clearly we do need them, starting with 2 AMs. In my opinion this was already obvious at the end of last season, now it has become the great big elephant in the room.

Of course Torres would have trained and kept himself fit to play. The alternative would have been to risk his contract worth something like €500,000 a month, plus bonuses. How stupid would he have to be to chuck that away for the sake of a strop? Don't forget that the club treated Bogarde appallingly badly in a cheapskate and dishonest attempt to get themselves out of a situation that was UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY THE CLUB'S OWN FAULT. I am absolutely delighted that Bogarde stood firm and put up with all manner of humiliations as CFC tried to cheat him out of his contract. Good for him, but if Bogarde did that for about £2m a year, do we really imagine that Torres would not have done the same for 3 times as much, maybe more?

Indeed the source I'm recollecting did say that Milan were paying Torres's wages of €3.1m pa, implying that this represented his total salary. Obviously all of us here know better, so I just speculated that the quoted figure was in fact Milan's share of Nando's base salary. As for the wages being completely off the books, I'd be quite surprised if that was so. It's common practice for clubs to offer a pay-off when they want to move players on. Those negotiations would usually start with the player asking for the full balance due on his contract, plus an amount to cover projected bonuses. The fact that Torres seems to want to go home will have given Chelsea some good cards to play in those discussions so I'm sure we will have negotiated a discount on that figure. I can't believe we'd have got away scot free however. Any amount we did agree to pay Torres would still count against FFP.

I wonder if it's reasonable for us to speculate that the club must have negotiated some sort of compensation for this? Reading between the lines of some authoritative sounding news items, it seems Milan were paying €3.1m of Torres's annual salary, with Chelsea obviously picking up the rest. Maybe Torres has agreed to wave at least a part of what he's owed by Chelsea in order to make this deal happen. If so that would be our payback for agreeing to take an £18.2m hit in this season's FFP numbers rather than £9.1m this season and £9.1m next. It doesn't really matter much either way since we would have had to pay the full amount eventually but I'm sure there was a point in the negotiations when Marina looked across the table and asked, "What's in it for us if we sign off on this deal?" Hopefully the answer was a million or two off the total bill.

If Torres should play against us in Europe, I hope no one will boo him. He should never have been signed, we know that. Once he was signed he should not have been selected as often as he was. We know that too, but none of this was his fault. Promises were made to Torres in order to persuade him to join. The club the decision to bring him here and the club made those promises. This entire mess is the club's fault. I hope we will continue to show up other clubs in the way we treat our ex-players with respect.

Yes there should. Even if 17 out of 17 was not quite true

The use of English in the letter is embarrassing for an official communication from Chelsea Football club but the behaviour described as unacceptable is indeed unacceptable.

Roof is probably the best word to use. The attitude of the local council and residents makes it highly doubtful that we'd get a licence for concerts or other non-football events at Stamford Bridge. Even if we did manage to stage some, the revenue would probably count as being generated from non-football activity and so would not count for FFP in any case. That does not mean that extra income would not be welcome, of course it would, but there would be no impact on FFP.

Roll back 12 months and many people were arguing that Mikel was the ideal man to occupy the main DM role. Enter Matic and virtually no one is arguing that any more. The arrival of someone who really is good at the job has pretty much ended the made up case for Mikel. Now there is a case being made for Mikel to fulfil another function. Well that case too will continue to be argued until we find an alternative who is genuinely good at the second DM role. We are not Leicester City, we should not be making do. If we need someone better, and we do, then let's go and get him. Perhaps Mikel's real contribution at the moment is as a place holder for Loftus-Cheek. I've been an RLC doubter; not of his talent, that's undeniable, but of how he applies it. If he gets his act together then he will perhaps earn promotion to the top squad. If Jose believes in RLC then he could well think it's better to have a stop-gap player occupying the place earmarked for Ruben, rather than buy an off the shelf player who will block Ruben's path. Ruben is not a proper DM of course but there are good options available if someone with his attributes replaces Mikel in the squad. Just a speculation.

Someone posted recently to argue that we need quality backups in the AM positions. My own view is that, Hazard apart, we already have plenty of backup quality players in that area. What we need is more AMs of the appropriate quality to be starting for Chelsea.

Quietly effective game by the looks of that. Especially enjoyed some of his first time passes. Not flashy but the correct pass, at the correct time, played with the correct weight. Very efficient.