chelseafan26

No more no.10 roles. 3 man midfield Please. Either of them can be the creative beacon that people are looking in Cesc for next season.

AMEN brother.

In all fairness, I never thought Lampard-makelele-essien was a very creative midfield 3. Infact bayern have lined up several times with vidal-alonso-lahm (mostly since thiago was injured for a spell). Regarding cesc, I seem to have a mental block now (and not without cause). some want him to play the "pirlo role" with matic and radja acting as bodyguards. I think I had a converstation with you regarding my doubts about cesc's ability to play the role. Pjanic is not much different to cesc, i feel. Koke would be the absolute ultimate buy but the probablity of that happening is 0. While radja and Kante are not "creative', i think each of them have a very good passing range. radja has a mean shot with him and we have the likes of hazard, willian to do the creative work. One thing I would be worried about is the runs into the box from the midfield. I dont think any of these 3 is good at that. So maybe, yes, it is overkill. But I just dont want cesc here next season. PS - This just makes me appreciate exactly how great a player Lampard truly was. All round midfielder with 20 goals a season. What a player. No doubt we miss such a player.

Seems about right. Would love it if we buy Kante with a midfield of Kante-Matic-Radja. Feels Kante has a ceiling as high as prime essien's. Hopefully we can make it happen. We might even be able to keep Cahill/JT for a year along with Zouma as the 1st CB in that case. While our defence does need some revamping, still think its actually are midfield and our utter lack of identity as a team that makes it look worse than it is. On the other hand, Jose's tactics last season made it look 10 times better than what it was.

THIS.

Kante..... Totally agree that Radja is Ramires' replacement. Albeit a much better footballer.

Bastian was sidelined by Pep. He wanted to play in his twilight years rather than gather fat cheques (not saying he is not earning well in united, but I am sure playing time would have been the Main issue here). I dont know how Carlo plans to use Muller but it would be a shambles of the greatest order if Muller is not used by the DON. Also, honestly speaking why would a mutliple CL, league and a world cup winning player come to a club with no identity, no european football, no guarantees of european football for the coming future. That would be one major step back in his career graph. So I dont have much hope, if any.

Thats very harsh. Both players are brilliant and literally levels above any creative players we can boast of.

First of all, Cesc is a 28 year old MAN. Josh was a 17 year old BOY. How many 17 year olds are there in the world who have a 6 foot frame and lukaku's body strenght. YOU HAVE TO BUILD THOSE ASPECTS of their play. You have to mould them physically, mentally, emotionally. You have to give them experience. How many loans did segi roberto have? How many loan spells did Thomas Muller have. Loaning a kid for gametime is one thing when you think he is ready for first team action at some club and he needs to evolve his game which will come only with regular gametime. Blindly loaning 17/18 year olds like Josh, when their character and physicality needs more moulding than his gameplay is exactly the reason why we have lost So many talents. Kakuta was the same as JOSH. What he needed was mentoring. NOT to be loaned out to some arbit shit team where they do not care about him. A parent club is supposed to do the best for the kids. We have made a bloody flesh market of these kids. Again Courtois and Kdb. How can you compare multi million signings of already first teamers in their previous clubs to the YOUTH players. Mate, their is a massive difference between "YOUNG" players and "YOUTH" players. If i remember correctly, I have already gone through that once. You can go back to it and see my definition of it. comparing the likes of Thibaut and kDB to Josh and Kakuta is as naive as the club's idiotic policy of loaning them left right and center. I dont know how else to explain. We have screwed their careers. If you cant see the talents of Gael Kakuta then I honestly cant help you. Are you saying that the club almost got a ban for a player who they thought was average? Sorry mate, I find that hard to believe. We can agree to disagree here. But well, the results are there for everyone to see. NOT A SINGLE PLAYER THROUGH THE YOUTH RANKS (that should take out any ambiguity about Bertrand), since JT. The only youth player is looking like actually making it here is RLC. and guess what he has not been on loan. And by god, I hope it stays as that, otherwise this is another MASSIVE TALENT that we would be screwed.

Mate, to be fair to traore, everyone except for Diego was pathetic on the day. I would not blame traore for the lack of intensity. I would blame the "leaders" on the pitch for that. RLC has been very impressive for me. His performance against CIty was brilliant.

At this moment, Yes. The jose of old could and would have. Dont know what happened at RM, but something seemed broken in him since then. If he joins PSG or Inter, I would love for the man to get his mojo back and become that "JOSE" of 2004.

Honestly, whenever I watch Atletico play, I feel "this is what we should have become".

Brilliant Mate. Honestly, whenever I watch Atletico play, I feel "this is what we should have become".

My bad about Iheanacho. Fair enough about Traore. Iheanacho and traore seem to be the same situation. Thats why I dont use Traore in the list of Zouma, Kenedy, Baba multi million buy list. Despite having nothing to play for since December, traore has 380 senior minutes while Iheanacho has about 1000 minutes. While pelegrini is using Iheanacho ahead of bony, jose had the likes of falcao and remy ahead of traore. WHy? (lets not take the argument to gus, because in all honesty, i think he has done a worse job than Jose).

I always thought that was Marca propaganda.

Exactly. This is not saying that Cuadrado seems any better, but it just baffles me that people use one yardstick to measure one player and a completely different one for another. Cuadrado was pathetic for his 300 odd minutes for us, Pedro was been beyond awful for a whole season except for against relegation candidates. For me, both are not good enough for chelsea and in case i do want to take a chance with one of them, I do it with cuadrado. He can play the wingback position, he can acrually produce something with the ball on his feet meanwhile pedro's USP is his movement which is mostly rendered useless with his finishing and with our style of play. It was cuadrado's first season in a new league, new country, new teammates, and he came in Janurary. How has he done enough to play a significant part next season? By being a below average useless player? If we want to do an encore of this season then sure Pedro is the best way to go forward. Pedro was a barcelona player, a player of the system. and he has looked every bit a player suited for a system. Not a player which is suited for ours. And i dont think that we are anywhere close to playing the barcelona system. So mate, I honestly dont understand how you can judge one player on 300 minutes with the same conditions while say pedro has been good enough despite his sub par shit performances all season long.

When did we start including "Father's fee" in the transfer fee for a player? Might as well include things like agent fees. Dont know how much that would make Kurt Zouma's fee. Zouma at the start of his career played like any 19 year old would coming to a big club for big money. He still has a lot of problems with his positional sense as he did then. Jose only gave Zouma a chance when our defence turned totally shit this season, before that the only chances that zouma got were playing like a headless chicken in the midfield. And if his development had anything to do with Jose, he should have become atleast a decent passer (since he played a lot of his 14/15 season games as a DM), sadly it has not. Iheanacho joined city on 10 jan 2014, his ifficial Date of birth is is listed as 3rd October 1996. So if my math is not wrong, that would make him 17.

Really? This is based on what? His performance for us againt villa, newcastle and Bournemouth? Except for these teams, each and every game he has played for us, he has been average to poor. Oh wait, there was WBA too, his first game. Sorry if I dont agree with your assessment of pedro. And i wholeheartedly hope Conte does not agree too.

Iheanacho joined City in Jan 2014, as a 17 year old. For a fee of "maybe" about 250,000 pounds. Any Young player that is "bought" from the parent has to be paid a nominal fee for the care of the player. This was the nominal fee. For 2 years, he has stayed with city not on loan and now he has been given his chances by a maneger who trusts youth. We did not develop Zouma, we bought him for 12 million pounds. And if people are willing to call ryan bertrand as a chelsea academy product, then why is not Iheanacho a city academy product? They were bought for the same fee, at around the same age. And while we loaned out bertrand for aorund 5 years, City and pelegrini had the balls of trusting an 18/19 year old. Fair enough about santone, but thats one example in how many years. And more precisely, there are 2 Joses. The pre RM jose and the post RM jose. The jose of the 2nd tenure was an average outdated manager who has cost us some absolute gems. As for Balotelli, he was already a prominent feature in the inter squad scoring a brace in 2007 against Juve. By the way, if iheanacho is not a city academy product, I simply cant contemplate how balotelli is Inter's. This was mainly a reply to a particular poster who i have seen belittling pelegrini's youth policy time and again, despite us having to use multi million signings like Zouma, baba, kenedy as "youth". I mean is not leicester's total budget as much as the sum of the price of those 3 players.

I agree with the first part of your post but definitely not the latter. I am so happy that finally England would have a good striker playing upfront. Yes, Kane is not world class, but thats an elite group, and i have no doubt that he will be part of that group in a few years. Yes, i do hate the club he plays for, the fans, his face, his weird voice, but there is no denying that the Kid is a very special talent.

Zouma is a multi-million pound buy. 12 million pounds to be EXACT. How can he even be compared to Iheanacho? City have Bony, and yet chose to play Iheanacho. Carlos Albrerto was another Multi Million signing. How can these be compared to "YOUTH PLAYERS". the point is not 20 year old "YOUNG PLAYERS" but academy products. RLC has more minutes in CL and in which game. Against the Maccabi TEL AVIV (with all due respect) whose level was no better than aston villa's. So please, lets not try to defend the un-defensible.

Pelegrini just started iheanacho in a semi-final of CL against one of the 3 best teams in the world. I can bet everything I own that in a case where we had matic, cesc, mikel injured, Jose would have started with Azpilicueta-zouma as a midfield pairing or even Oscar as a DM than give a shot to RLC. That would have been the ultimate Jose thing to do.

Why would he be behind Pedro in the heirachy?

Without a doubt I would say Bruma, Kakuta and Josh. How can you say that we would be relegated if we had these 3. We destroyed their careers. Kakuta was one of the best talents in the world and we kept loaning him out to one club or another. Obviously the kid was going to get screwed. We have no clue about youth development. Just look at the way we dealt with Bruma. His performance for us was horrendous that day and I admit it. But by god, thats what youth players do. Look at bellerin's performance against stoke when they conceded 4 or more goals last season (or maybe this one). Did Wenger drop bellerin? NO. He trusted the guy and look at him now. One of the best right backs in the league. Youth need trust and time. We give nothing to them. Our handling of Josh was another masterpiece. Here is a 17 year old kid who has the touch of world class player as well the vision. What do we do? We make him a millionaire and start the merry go round. Even after his swansea disaster, we should have kept him, made him understand the importance of improving and training rather than partying with that Girl friend of his. We should have let the likes of JT, DD, Cech mentor him. These were really good talents and we have wasted each of them. To say that they would have panned out similarly is downright Naive and silly. It does take one to be a rocket scientist to understand why we cant produce one, single youth product while the likes of ATM, Barca, Bayern, arsenal so many good ones. as for bertrand. Was he a youth player? Bought from gillinham at the age of 16, then loaned to bournemoth, oldham, norwich, reading, Forest before breaking into the first team squad in 2011. Well, you can call him a "youth player", I dont think his development and success had anything to do with our academy. JT might have been bought from WHU at 15, but he broke through the youth ranks. I am not sure if i am able to explain my point of view perfectly. But by youth i mean who has been trained at the club for some year atleast and we help that player in his development, just like we did with JT. Or barcelona has for the likes of bartra, sandro ramirez, busquets, Iniesta, sergie roberto, rafinha alcantara, el haddidi and messi. And thats the reason why they are the best team in the world.

Fair enough, may be Nouble was not a good example. What about someone like bertrand. Loaned here, loaned there. One season at a club and he got into the PFA team of the year, last year, IIRC. Why is that? Is it because the youngsters need time and confidence? Ofcourse they do. I have to massively disagree with Aina's chances to succeed at chelsea being equal at any other big club. Thats simply wrong. Barcelona gave fair chances to the likes of tello, sandro, haddidi, bojan, affelay. These players did not just get a useless minute when we were leading 5-0 at home to a relegation. They have got proper auditions. Thats why for every tello, their is a thiago, for every affelay their is a rafinha, a sergi roberto. The chance of a "youth player" succeeding at a big club is literally exponential at clubs like Barca, Bayern, ATM, arsenal, spurs, pool, because they actually care about their youth products and give them a chance, For us, the youth system is a useless entity. We cant boast of one single youth product JT. what an absolute shame. Even RM can boast of generating Jese and Morata. Who can we?