Ollie

It will be surpassed though as there are still players to play. Kezza needs a Ba goal to keep the lead i'd assume. My H2H opponent got 7 points so far lol.

He'll be sold before he plays for us no doubt. Signed for £8m sold for £20m happy days.

I've heard his buyout clause is £47.5m. Considering they bought him for £40m that somewhat surprises me. If we sign him... just wow. Doubt it will happen tho. If we signed him with Hulk next season or in Jan it would be the best thing ever as they were together at Porto.

Thank you Tevez for giving me 24 points today as captain. 2 assists, 1 goal and he should get some bonus points too so could go up to 30. Much needed. Also got a goal for Zamora. Just played my Wild card anyway. Adam Johnson and Steven Fletcher IN! (Plus more) Could be interesting. 48 points still with Vermaelen, Kagawa and Arteta to come. Hope i don't get any more points in truth.

yeah with Lampard and McEachran in the double pivot.... actually lets not go there. Hopefully that Forest youngster Bamford can be good for our latest crop of youngsters.

So does AVB.

Maybe the celebration was a message for us. I enjoyed watching the goal, he's already showing that he's not scared to attack and he seems happy there, he's always been a confident lad. Terry went there and made it. Bertrand went there and looks like he'll make it (hopefully not as a left winger...). Let's hope Sam follows suit. And all English back 4 Cole - Terry - Cahill - Hutchinson. I'd love to see it.

Welcome to the forum mate, thanks for the post. I've always rated him. I went to a Carling Cup match between Chelsea and QPR in 2009/10 and he was awarded man of the match. I've said so many times that he's good enough to be playing RB for us but when he retired in 2010 i think it was with a knee problem, i was gutted because i know he's a quality young English defender and it would be such a shame if his career was ended so early without showing everyone just how good he is. He also had an awesome game when we beat Stoke 7-0 towards the back end of our title winning year setting Lampard up with a stunning cross, stunning finish too btw. When i heard that he could come back though, i was absolutely delighted. Since he came back there's been those obvious doubts. Can he play 90 minutes? Can he play 3 or 4 games in a month? Can he play a whole season? Very happy he's with a good club like Forest. I hope he proves he can play many games and i hope he helps bring Forest back to where they belong. I hope Sam is back with us next season fighting with Azpilicueta for the RB spot. Sam Hutchinson in my opinion will be good enough for the top levels of football if he can prove he's 100% fit and no chance of the knee problem resurfacing. He's the type of RB that gets forward a lot and can whip in some good crosses, he's also very quick. Forest will enjoy him.

Surely we'd all know if it had happened, it woulda been on the club website and SSN. He played alright against Newcastle and as has been said, Essien is on loan to Real, i don't think we'd let 2 go without replacing at least 1. I don't think this will or has happened. Strange lol. Also Fenerbahce fucked up their UCL qualifier.

Wow shocking. Why sigh him then if u can't afford him you knobs. I hope he goes to the USA because he'd be a great there and there are so many nice places to go. Go to Seattle. Surely as a free agent now he can go where he wants.

Udinese gave Watford like 5 players yesterday. I wanna watch Watford more now, i'm sure all those players are Italian youngsters. See what happens when your team has a big name manager. Good that Cavani is staying anyway at Napoli, think their fans were a bit worried not long ago.

It's a reality check but also for Ivanovic who although scoring 2 has been hopeless at the back all season. I don't think too many clean sheets will happen with Ivanovic and Luiz as part of a back 4. I'm so glad we have options, we can now hopefully change it and it basically says play like that and you can stay on the bench. Next game i want JT and Cahill together with Ivan RB but if he's defending like shit, bring Azpi on or even Ferreira to show him he's not cemented in the team no matter how he plays. I've never to this day seen Ferreira defend as poorly as Ivanovic has this season including pre season. It's a basic thing in football, if you're playing shit for a certain period, you get dropped! We have options, we better use them. Fuck this 'they're for the future' they're here and they have to show why. If they can't handle it, we should've bought better and more experienced then. As for our double pivot....it's just hopeless. I've never liked the 4-2-3-1 and i never will. Ramires, Lampard and Mikel, if he reeeeeeaaaallly needs to play them, they go in a straight 3 along midfield in a 4-3-3. I don't think Man City will get that exposed with Javi Garcia and Yaya Toure there. We're putting Lampard there because he feels he has to fit him in the team somehow. As soon as we're against a good, young, quick, technical side, you don't see him. The game for his age is too quick for a Lampard in that position. Mikel.... well he finished last season well but atm i've just seen the Mikel from 2009 again slowing everything down, cruising through the game not breaking his back to do anything special and not even showing his physicality. His passing and tempo is shocking. I'm not sure how we're gonna play against QPR but we can't play like that again. Passionless, desireless and quite frankly clueless and hopeless. It's ok to have the odd bad game but the time for that shit was not yesterday. Our teams been over hyped dramatically because we've won 3/3 against 2 relegation candidates and an over rated Newcastle team. We nearly lost at home to Reading and that 2nd half against Wigan was only ok because we had a cushion of 2 goals but the football was not good. Robbie needs to ditch this whole concept of a double pivot and go back to tried and trusted 4-3-3 or go 4-4-2. I only say 4-3-3 though because we only have 1 pocksey striker. Ramires is a central box to box midfield player. Lampard is a central midfielder too who makes late unseen runs, that's just what he does. He works hard for the team tho and does put in a good defensive shift. Mikel is a central defensive midfielder, he doesn't need a fucking clone next to him. Hazard Torres Mata Lampard Mikel Ramires Or if he really has to use this fucked up shit annoying 4-2-3-1.... Torres Hazard/Marin/Moses - Mata/Lampard/Oscar/Hazard - Moses/Marin Ramires - Mikel Ramires is no right winger. Lampard is no double pivot defensive partner. Will Robbie change or think of this? No. This could fuck us up if we're not careful. I'd say that we're the 5th best team in this premiership atm after the transfer deadline. Arsenal have had 2 bad results but they seem to keep getting top 4 and they at least have a decent balance. They know their roles and are used to the way Wenger wants them to play. If their strikers start to fire, we can kiss top 4 goodbye again and this time we wont get bailed out by a Champions League miracle. It's nice to build a team for tomorrow but we still need to be challenging today otherwise tomorrow will be in a place we don't want to be (Ask Tottenham & LIverpool). We've spent the most money in the transfer window but out of all of those players, who is first choice now? Hazard and.... ? Tottenham have bought established quality for today, for this season and i personally put them ahead of us now in this seasons battle. They've signed class all over the pitch who have done it in the prem and at the highest levels. I hope Robbie gives the new players more playing time and stops playing players out of position. We have players for every position so use them. I just fear we've bought too many, too young and too many that Robbie wont trust immediately. QPR A Stoke H Arsenal A That's a real test. We'll only get 4 points from those games imo unless we try something different. We need Marin back because him and Moses are the 2 most natural wide men we have in the squad. If we continue to play the team we played yesterday, our league position won't improve much from last season. But hey... that's all just my opinion. I like our signings and i'm excited for the future like i've stated many times but i'm worried about the shorter picture. We need UCL qualification this season and the next for this team to shine in a few years time. If we don't get it, it could all be a disaster. I'm not confident at the moment but i hope i'm wrong.

Great move for Ess, so happy for him and so glad he's NOT going to Arsenal. Essien to Real Madrid.... wow.

Ok it's bad enough to have to name a motm but 16 voting for Mikel? All his passes were behind players runs and Atletico walked through him nearly scoring 8 times. Like it or not, Hazard again was by far our best player and even he did nothing because of how shit we were as a team.

Tottenham have got Dembele, Dempsey, Siggurdson, Adebayor, vertongen, Lloris. Still trying for Moutinho although i think he's staying. They are all class.

Juve fans will be rubbing their hands now. I put Juve as a similar level as Atletico. If they are as efficient as Atletico are settled, we're in trouble. The whole world has just witnessed Chelsea 12/13. It's a rather fragile one you'd say.

Mega fucked off. I don't even know what i need to say here really, we got shown up. This is the defeat that we should've got in the UCL last season so i'm glad it came today instead and now it's out of the way. Not happy at all though, they were so much better than us all over the pitch. Today i saw a performance that was absolutely shocking. The passing was slow, the tempo was slow, we were hitting high balls to nobody and the service was anonymous. This is the easiest match Atletico will have all season. Mikel, Luiz, Mata and Ramires were terrible. We need Marin and Moses now to get games out wide and maybe give Oscar some starts because Ramires is no right winger and Mata seems too weak and tired tbh. What the fuck has happened to Marin? did a slight hamstring strain mean he had to have his leg amputated or what? That was an absolute dog shit performance, on par with the worst i have EVER seen. Credit to Atletico Madrid. Sorry they are in the same league as Barca and Real Madrid but they are a great side and absolutely battered us today. They are a well settled and organised team with an absolute monster or a striker. We, on the other hand are just a team which doesn't even know it's best formation and we have a few players who are inexperienced who need to play some more. I hope we're better in a few years time with a better formation and a more settled squad. Bring back 4-4-2 and get rid of the players that are holding us back. We were shit against Wigan, nearly lost at home to Reading and the game against Newcastle wasn't good either, suddenly we were gonna win the league. Fact is... this team is not ready yet and this will be a season of real transition. Last years transition was cancelled with AVB's contract. This transition will have to happen now and it may not be nice. We need to target top 4 as simple as that. Atletico showed us what level our team are at today. They showed us we have a lot of work to do. I'm just pissed off because we still should've competed better and given a better showing. I didn't expect to witness what happened.

Hope it's not as bad as the last time we played in Monaco.

Maybe i'm the only one here but i don't actually care if Sturridge leaves. If the comment bites me in the future then so be it but i just can't see him ever being consistently good for us.

Essien is a shadow of what he once was anyway. If he plays brilliantly and helps Arsenal, then it's good for us but if he makes Arsenal worse, it's also good for us. It's bad in every way don't get me wrong, seeing him for Arsenal will make me heave but if it shows he's capable of carrying on at that level, it could be beneficial.

The fact that Barcelona's 3 home games are genuinely easy makes your comment a bit weird because if they win all of them, which they will, they only need one or 2 points away. This makes it an easy group.

Wow it's getting a bit hot in here isn't it. Anyway firstly i'd like to congratulate Juve for winning the league in fantastic style last season and welcome back to where you belong, the Uefa Champions League. Juve are steeped in history and we should all respect who they are first and foremost because they are one of the biggest names in world football. I wont disrespect any fan by saying we're on a different level because it's not right to be honest. We are the better team today and we are higher in the football pyramid as of now but Juve had a great season and can beat us if we're not careful. Personally, with all due respect, i don't see too many problems in the group for us. Juve aren't what they were a while ago and we have the better team and squad. I believe Juve and Shakhtar will battle for 2nd spot but that's not me being cocky or disrespectful, that's just me saying it like it really is. I've liked Juve in Italy for a long time because of some of the players and teams i've seen since i've watched football, Vialli, Nedved and Del Piero stand out of course and Buffon in goal. Still wish they had beat Man Utd in that '99 semi final but some things just happen don't they. I don't think many of the Chelsea fans are trying to be disrespectful but Chelsea are ahead of Juve atm for sure. Juventus have had many problems on and off the field in recent years and even now they are having problems. I just hope they sort themselves out because they belong on the UCL stage. They still have a bit to do before they are challenging for the Champions League trophy imo. Must admit tho, Juve deserved to knock us out in 2009, we deserved nothing from those games. But Juve vs Fulham the season after.... Fulham 4-1 Juventus? Shocking. Anyway good luck, hope they are 2 fantastic matches worth of the UCL and both teams stature in European Football.

If Essien goes to Arsenal, it's stupid on the part of both teams. I would like Essien to play some games tho but not fucking there. It seems Yossi is almost on his way out too.

Tottenham's potential signings are a bit worrying. They really are trying to do something pretty special it seems. I don't think we're gonna do anything but still always an exciting day in the season.

Never in doubt but a good sense of relief anyway. 6 and a half hours to go Roman, have a slight celebration drink and buy someone out of the blue