Kostas

Don't see the fuss around thim to be honest. How many of his goals came from set-pieces again? His signing signals the end for Meireles and/or Aquilani which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned as they are both better players.

We ain't going to sell him while he's injured so might aswell stop whining now. A terribly unlucky player and this injury only strengthens my doubts of him returning to his best since his injuries have been pretty severe and his style of play depended much on his physical attributes.

10m a year? Not bad at all.. The fact that the company is quite close to Mansour means that City establishing themselves amongst the top teams and the "Manhester City" brand getting bigger wouldn't have made much of a difference on the sum they will get. "City of Manchester" was so bloody generic that changing its name is going to be easy, certainly easier than renaming Stamford Bridge which is why its naming rights are probably worth much less.

^ROFL

What I think should be our targets or what the club requires of him?

Never actually got his Chelsea debut, one of the few along with Mancienne that came from our academy and wasn't brought from another English club. Southhampton got a U21 international for peanuts, good for them.

I'm pretty sure I pointed that out when the first rumours about us hiring him came to surface. Even so the blame for Torres' horrific injury record can't layed solely on Ortega. Torres being injury prone is a truth we can't hide from and the well-documented lack or rest along with Benitez's exhausting training methods (which hurt other players apart from Torres) probably contributed more to the injuries he's had than the work of his fitness coach.

FYI, playmaker is not a position, it's a state of mind.

You're right about that. I still anticipate some noise from Hiddink's camp once his contract with Turkey ends. Don't believe Emelano will be either permanent or all-powerful.

Either Tomas Kalas or Torres.

Thank you for including me Alex. I'm not often a candidate for popularity awards on the Internet. Good job for picking the rest of the candidates, all important contributors who actually make good points in their posts instead of trying to appeal to everyone, reckon you did a good job with picking 'unconventional' options. Hard to pick one but I voted for BLionHeart due to his tireless input on tactics and squad analysis. Could have been Henrique but his attitude is sometimes plainly wrong.

While playing for one of the best teams in the world and challenging for the biggest trophies a footballer can win?

I follow McGarry only for the comedy value, I'd urge everyone to take what he says with

Expect that to make a difference, can't say I'll be glad with him getting a promotion (for numerous reasons) but if he's announced as a technical director he'll have less power than Grant or Arnesen ever had.

With the wages we're paying them, do they need convincing?

He could do better than a team whose first priority will be to avoid relegation.

A board signing, like all our signings in the last 4 years. I remember reading that the fee could reach 9m depending on conditions like international caps, PL starts. goals etc.

I don't think the club will loan Kakuta to a foreign club, they could have done that in January when Marseille wanted him but opted for a PL club even with less guaranteed games. As good as Arnesen may be in luring away players Kakuta signed a new contract long after it was known Arnesen would leave so that tells me Gael is closer to the club than to our former DoF.

Won't go for more than 24m

Real bound? I wonder if he's Plan B to Aguero because I doubt they could afford them both.

After checking my twitter timeline it seems the Emelano rumour originated from Ben Lyttleton who is generally a very good journalist, of course now McGarry uses it to make up bs as always.

Here's what the original Spanish article said, I trust it more than anything the English press publish. Whether him being Torres' personal coach was a big factor or not is irrelevant as he'll now work for the fitness of all Chelsea players. And even if it was I don't see what's wrong with supporting a 50m investment before it collapses, because no matter what you think of his performances for us it still has not collapsed.

Either a lame troll attempt or we need an alcohol test before being able to sign in as Badboy, LDN and Tomo proved.

We certainly do, probably to the extent most football fans overrate their own youth players. I usually have no problem pointing that out when we do. However there's a far cry between not overrating your young players and claiming they were given chances when they weren't (FFS I remember someone saying in one of the Sturridge threads during the season that he failed at Chelsea while Carletto did all he could in terms of playing him) and trashing them for not performing up to the standards Messi set for 19 year old players. Being a Kakuta fan I can't be a neutral judge but I'd argue that his performances in the European U19 Championship and him winning the Golder Player award does earn him more chances than a 4 month loan at Fulham, which wasn't an outright failure to begin with.

He'll be responsible for all players, given that most of us have little or not knowledge and experience in football medicine I don't see how we can be for or against hiring him.