Kostas

Interesting topic. From my point of view the main criteria when discussing about clubs of European pedigree should be Prolonged success on the fieldA world wide fan baseA large domestic fan baseConsistently large attendance figuresCriteria like academy success * and the ability to attract players and sponsors aren't as important to me because they are largely dependent on extremely fluctuating factors like a team's wealth, public recognition, pull in the media or even its luck. *Ajax deserves special recognition for what they've been doing in the last decades is IMHO an exception. Now when it comes to small leagues in countries where football has never really developed properly and European success is little more than a dream the only criteria that matter are : Prolonged success on the fieldSize of the domestic fanbaseConsistently large attendance figuresSo in Greece's case the top clubs would be Olympiakos, Panathinaikos and AEK (in that order). All three are based in or near Athens, have never been relegated and have won 69 out of 75 league titles. However the football in this county is as corrupted (if not more) as the society and the top clubs are amongst the worst offenders. It wouldn't be far-fetched to claim that Italy's Calciopoli is a childs lie in comparison to what has been going on here since 1996, the BIG clubs (namely Olympiacos) have gone from controlling the referrery committee and planning who gets the league and who gets relegated to literally owning more than half of the teams in the top division. That usually leads to the small clubs getting bankrupt and the big ones getting bitch-slapped whenever they play a game which they have no power on (ie Europa League/Champions League).

Should be called Arnesen's raid or something.

Just when I was about to bargain my support Best of luck to you mate and I hope the new mod will be as intelligent as you are.

Hit the nail right on the head. As fancy and glorious as cup competitions are they could never compete with a league format in testing the true quality the teams involved.

Not keeping a close eye on all those rumours so could anyone tell me why/when was the Hiddink + Van Basten scenario thrown out of the window? Also all the Sparky talk is plain waste of bandwidth, he's only being mentioned because he's currently out of job. Zola is the only former player who we could see returning to the club in the following months.

I'd like to concentrate on those two posts as they're the ones most related to our club and not individual players or Arnesen. Arnesen's role was to both lay the foundations of the academy that Roman poured millions in and scout players who could potentially help the first team. So while he never succeeded in the second part of his role he set up an academy that will continue to operate at the highest level even after his departure. Not only that but our reserve and youth teams will replace the foreign scouted players he is going to lure to Hamburg with English players from our Academy. I could be wasting my time though, some are interested in Arnesen only during transfer period.

Not too bothered about this to be honest. It'll be interesting to watch Chelsea's reserves in Bundesliga but I'm quite worried about our ability to keep our young promising players, not to mention attracting new ones. That's what crapping on the youth does to a team.

Nice idea. Will get to reading it later but since the ranking is based on numbers I wonder how high would we have been, had we won a single Champions League trophy during that era. Frankly I'm not convinced that Inter 08-10, Porto 02-04 and ManU 06-09 were that much better than us.

I might go for the Terry one [Link] although I'll have to figure out those British sizes.

There's the root of the problem.

Any idea where I could get an authentic 04/05 kit? Not sure how to check authenticity on eBay and naturally the Megastore only has Adidas kits.

It's not Ancelotti record that turned them off. Not to mention that LvG has won quite a few more league titles.

The "Mikel underperformed" part gave it away. Normally Emenalo is too unimportant to make quotes up but with no manager or football director they couldn't claim it was Roman so it had to be an assistant coach..

I need to see it worn in a game before I can make up my mind. Right now it looks like a very cheap mock-up.

Thanks man. Connection problems prevented that but there should be celebrations once we get a new proper manager (I'm still sweating over the thoughts of 'arry Redknapp).

He was an Arnesen signing right? In the case we sign either Lukaku or Neymar we may be happy to sell him after the success his loan at Bolton was.

As much as I understand his desire for gametime when it comes to injury you better be safe than sorry.

Not sure if he should be handed a place in the starting XI yet. He could be the 4th attacking player in our pecking order which would get him over 20 PL games and enough starts in all competitions. As long as his subs are longer than 10 minutes he should integrate well

Better than Kenny? That's pushing it On a sidenote, if we've come to the point of doubting Hiddink's brilliance then maybe the CA lovefest has gotten out of control.

Kinda late to the party but observing the new kit was the main reason I watched the Newcastle game. Those added white stripes looks nice and fresh but I'm not exactly a fan of the horizontal blue shaded stripes (anything but solid blue looks strange on a Chelsea kit) or the new shorts. IMO we look too much like an Adidas team now.

Good luck to him. Wonder if he's the first of many Chelsea players Arnesen signs fom Hamburg SV. Nevertheless £3m is not bad considering he didn't have a chance with us but not a sum Wolves counldn't afford to pay if McCarthy really wanted him.

His goals-per-start ratio was pretty similar when he was here

Slow day at the office.

I find it quite funny actually. So much hype and being praised for every little pass only to see everyone around him score.

Quite a long distance between deciding to have a good game and actually having one. For the biggest part individual performances won Liverpool and Chelsea their games against ManUtd and we can not depend on those to win us Tuesday's game or save the rest of the season. On a more personal note I'm quite tempted to create a list of players who have scored since Torres' arrival. Surely CA keeps subbing Mikel to prevent him from getting one!