Kostas

The only thing I'm worried about is his (lack of) pace as it was a huge part of his game, realistically he simply can hardly have such a horrible patch again and hopefully the same goes for Chelsea. Zolayes already mentioned the critical factor of confidence which can make a huge difference on its own and we shouldn't forget that this summer he had the biggest brake of his career since coming to England. The truth is most Chelsea fans wouldn't make such a big case out of it if Sheva never happened. Biggest flop in history? PPlleeaassee...

Last season showed a lot of things, that certainly wasn't one of them.

12 months ago Malouda was the best winger in the country. Anelka's technique,speed and sharpness never abandoned him and it was his decisions that made him underperform this season. If AVB can get the best out of them they'll turn (back) into tremendous players.

Good job to whoever merged the topics

Good to have Di Matteo back.

LMFAO!!!

Didn't Benfica confirm that talks between us were finished only a couple of days before we signed Luiz? Just saying..

Quotes from a family in Ipswich that André Villas-Boas visited with Bobby Robson and a picture of him when he was 16 years old: Couple had Sir Bobby, Jose and Andre in their living room

Not with the wages he reportedly wants.

Would it be too wild to presume DiMatteo was chosen/recommended by the Board given previous stories about us looking for an ex-player to be an assistant manager under Hiddink? Would welcome such an appointment but can't help thinking it's PR-related like Zola would have been.

If Madrid and Jose iron out all the annoying things about his style they're gonna be doing football a service.

That's what I thought but it's still going to be noticeable in the Match threads, oh well at least MHS will improve.

Am I the only one annoyed by the extremely poor English, senseless/useless posts, absolutely daft topics and transfer muppetry by some of the recently registered users? I know I probably sound like an old grump but I feel like I have to endure 50 posts, which might as well have been written by bots, to find a couple posts worth reading.

Please take a brake from the Transfer section!

Totally untrue, pathetitc lazy journalism. All were hired and and announced as Managers.

Henrique, can you confirm that statement is real? I mean it's not like last year's statement on Santos' official site regarding our bid and 150 pages have taught me to believe only something as strong.

A man can't even enjoy locking this thread for good.. I've settled with him staying for one more summer and we've got two months of annoying speculation ahead of us. The sky is the limit for this topic.

Now there's a topic we've never discussed in any other thread!

I do miss Ballack but only because he was a huge personality and one of the most impressive figures in European Football. Liked Belletti and thought Deco still had something to give but Chelsea doesn't miss them and neither do I.

Cosign. Can understand those fuming though.

Not when you realise he had only a year on his contract.

Piazon dribbled past 3 players and linked brilliantly with one of his teammates to create Brazil's equalizing goal in extra time.

What's interesting to me from that article is that Hiddink for DoF, not manager, was our original plan and we can only speculate why it didn't happen, although it's safe to assume unwillingness to pay his buy-out clause was not one of the reasons. We can't know whether André Villas-Boas was our first choice manager or not and we will have to wait for the new DoF to be appointed to make educated guesses about what power he will have.

English's departure may have nothing to do with André Villas-Boas getting appointed. About 2 and a half months ago L'Equipe reported that we were after Franck Legall, Lille's chief doctor. He helped setting up the French national base at Clairefontain. Thierry Laurent, one of our physios, worked at the Clairefontain for the French national team before joining us in 2005. We may not hire Legall but at least I'm relieved by the fact that getting rid of our backroom staff*, after scrapping our scouting network, was being planned and ain't part of sacking spree. *If the reports are even true