Kostas

Wow this truly is sickening. I'm not one to hold traditions sacred (my Greek club has strong links to Christianity/Byzantium) but this is completely unacceptable. The kit colour and a team's name are the 2 things that should never be touched.

No idea about the best but Adidas shops usually have quite a few Chelsea kits.

Getting the (any) loan sorted so early in the transfer window says something about how much the other club wants him and how he fits into the plans of their coach. With some luck and some managerial stability he may come back with more than 10 PL starts which would be a tremendous number by our standards.

Possibly because high-pressure possession football works only with combined pressure from the midfielders and the defenders. It wasn't AVB's high-line that lost us games, it was the failure to implement the whole package.

Since we've gotten to the point where there is a risk of losing important members I think staying passive does not good. I believe I've hardly hidden that I do not particularly care about being liked so I'll try to present as detailed a view of the situation as I my memory allows me to despite risking offending some individuals or groups. The best communities are self-regulated. This is exactly was TC has been. With all due respect to the moderating team both the older members and the new, as long as I've been a member and even back when I was lurking the enforcing work moderators had to do was much less demanding than at most boards I've been to. Apart from the spats between TX and the [insert the anti-TX of the month] and the obvious trolls who are very easy to deal with, moderation for serious issues had been needed less than a handful of times per year. Even the abuse Henrique received despite not being shown the necessary attention by the mods initially, was dealt with by the users and is nowadays vastly reduced. As the community grew it was natural that a few more fuck offs would fly under the radar per month and that cases of slight temporary derailment of topics would grow in number. Again given the (in)frequency of situations like the n-word and the rarrer TX spats the slight moderation was not only warranted but expected. While there has been a gradual increase in offtopic posts in the last 6-8 months which was evident by Sloths much repped frequent rants about Henri, Justin's raving about ..well..anything and Beast's flame-baiting it only recently turned into Aussies and would-be Aussies later joined by WHS and whatnot having chitchats in random topics. The 20 pages in Hazard's topic were but a culmination of that which was stopped as soon as it was spotted by the senior mods. This will probably annoy but the post about insta-bans was ridiculously over the top. Transfer topics are shit by definition. Instabans should be reserved for the worst of offenders (even worse cases than SHM or the n-word IMO) or in special situations where breach of a very specific rule which exists for very specific reason takes place (ie Steve's photographs). Using TX's warnings as an argument against a lenient system is frankly ridiculous as he is neither the norm nor someone who'd survive the older system had the biggest of his quarrels both taken place not in 2009 but in 2012 and had they been as big as such brawls would be in the environment of the much bigger community that TC is now. PS. All the comparisons to RAWK I've seen were obviously light-hearted and that is no reason for the most responsible group of the forum to get butt-hurt. PPS. I won't claim to have spoken to the man, but if I understood correctly Peace left because he was annoyed by the quality of some of the most frequent discussions and the arguments presented rather than due to being sick of having to shovel through shit to locate them.

Yep, think the level of paranoia is high enough to warrant a temporary lock.

Is it just me or does he look similar to Assassin Creed's Altair?

I doubt we'll ever get anyone immature enough to keep coming back after being banned numerous times. SHM created the second account just to provide some closing.

That would be a great name for the sub-forum

The Guardian's article is well worth a read. I had no idea that the 4 month ban he had gotten was actually overruled.

The links on Liverpool having scouted Hazard remind me of West Ham's bid on Neymar.

Just to give you lot some perspective: General elections will be held in Greece on the 17th of June after a failure to create a majority government. All parties get some free TV time to communicate their message to the public. The (self called) nationalistic party saw fit to include in one of the less than half a dozen visual short "aims" that are shown before their leader starts babbling their support towards the (re)creation and (re)armoring of lethal minefields along the north-eastern Greek boarders.

I have a rough list in this post. 4 players of that list were not part of the Chelsea squad when we started Kalou on the wing not to mention that was a very special occasion. Obviously we may not want some of those players to be regular starters (Malouda), some of them will go out on loan (De Bruyne, Kakuta?) and some may just not belong on the wing (the rest of them ) but that's not how squad depth works. So it could have been a case of simply Dunga not being a fan?

Way to go in a topic about warning systems. A TC dystopia is approaching

How could that goal ever stand? Ridiculous.

Didn't Joey Cole prefer to be a no.10? I agree that much of this depends on your general views on the modern game so we can agree to disagree on his uses. To be honest, the thought of him being an additional cover for Torres puts me more at ease than all his stats with Porto put together.

Apologies if that is correct. Still not too strong on the recognition side although nowhere as poor.

The players I included in my total were Mata, Malouda, Marin, Hazard, Kakuta, Sturridge, De Bruyne. Afaik all of them can and have spent a significant part of their careers playing wide. I didn't take into account which side they played at as it is IMO not so significant. The argument about coming from a "weak" league is not one I'd ever take lightly. In the case of Hazard, the French league has a history of providing PL clubs with vital players and Eden is at the perfect age to make such a career move. Had he moved earlier it would be an anomaly and he'd risk his development while moving later may have risked missing the ship for greatness. On the other hand, Hulk who is about to turn 26 and is still on just 2 international caps (even taking into consideration that he plays fro Brazil that's just too poor) is now spending the peak of his career in the Portuguese league being known more for his physical attributes rather than his footballing ability. Forgive me for not believing that his being in Portugal is just due to Porto's crazy valuation. With a transfer fee that is approaching that of our biggest flops, players who were established at the very top level of football, Hulk (while not a n9) is a risk that I can't see the reason to take.

What's wrong with It's not so much the former arguments that I'm stuck to but the current reality. From the point some are making about him being just a moderate success in a non-top 5 European league to why spend ~40m when we already have 6 (7 with Ramires) players who could play as wide forwards.

Having not paid much attention to this thread since the first 20 pages when we were debating whether he was worth sacrificing Sturridge for and if 20m, never-mind 100 or 40, were a fair representation of his value I must say I'm completely baffled by the current hype around him, the need for his transfer and the economics of the rumored deal.

You might as well tell anyone ever being nominated for the controversial award to give up! (semi-serious)

If I didn't I wouldn't waste my precious e-ink.

Supporting the worst footballer (note the word)of this level and the man who got and remained this high by a series of criminal mistakes as strongly as you did is an insult to intelligence. Fans of national teams are by definition biased and their opinion is hardly worth much since they are "enjoying" the perks of footballers without much cost. I very much doubt both them and Feyenoord fans have seen 99% of the games he has appeared over those 6 years we had to endure him. On that matter I still struggle to believe you've witnessed his Chelsea career thoroughly in its entirety. Well played actually. Not sure if you got the impression that I was making fun of a disorder and I assure you that was not my goal.

I just love human nature. Instead of admitting Roman never lost his love for the club as any non-transfer muppet Chelsea fan would tell you they'd rather believe that he has changed rather than their pathetic analysis.

A continuous insult to intelligence followed by political philosophy. If there was an intellectual equivalent of the bipolar disorder you'd be a textbook case.