chelseafan26

Yes.

Yes.

Great performance today, if only he would have been up to it for the past 8 months.
Hope next season he "feels" like it.

Willian is not a scorer. He's only 3 behind Costa, it's more of a testament to Costa's shit season. In the early parts of the season when we were at our lowest, he played better than anyone else.. it doesn't reflect in numbers, because he's a workhorse and his main contribution is what he does on the field, not in numbers, but for him those numbers are very good. Barbara's post is spot on, in a normal season he's a supporting player and nowhere near our main star player, but this season he has given his all and didn't sulk like everybody else. 

Nah fuck that. Listen I'm for this sale, based on factors like he's on his last year and that £50m is a great figure for a 28 year old winger.
But to discredit Willian this season based on stats alone is a weak argument. I guarantee that 16 included more match winning goals/assists than Diego Costa's. Even if it isn't, without a shadow of a doubt Willian was the best player by far this season to wear the Chelsea shirt. Football is more than statistics at times and fans often need gentle reminders. 
It depends. The one jibe in past season is his poor conversion rate in the final third. While I still take issues with this, I remember his goals return tally was awful (something like 1500mins between goals), if he can take his goal scoring and assist form in the first half of the season into a full PL season then he'll be a wonderful asset to compliment Hazard and Fabregas.

Whats weird is that people simply dont learn. Now I read that cesc can play the pirlo role, that Cesc is a must for next season, Hazard will be the PFA player of the year blah blah blah.
People must have really short memories because we just got raped at the bridge, in front of my own eyes. But since we won against Bournemouth, everything is hunky-dory.
Unbelievable.
 

Yes.

No one without blue tinted glasses ever thought that Thibaut was only second to Neuer in the world. 
I don't understand, what exactly had he done at Atletico that was so incredible? He had solid performances along with the odd great save. The clean sheets stats are for the entire team, not just him. I remember watching entire Atleti matches with Thibaut not having to deal with more than one shot on target all game. 
Jose didn't let Lukaku go, Romelu asked to leave. Also striker is VERY different than GK. Incomparable. 
On any account, in what areas do you think Thibaut is better than Petr? For me, while both can be prone to the occosional mistake, Petr is quite clearly better at organizing his defense, decision making (especially in 1vs1s), kicking, and positioning (the most important aspect for the goal keeper) while Thibaut is only better in the air. 

17 years old. But we should definitely sell him or probably send him on a succession of loans. Look at the number of YOUTH players that has generated for us. Who cares about personal grooming. Lets the clubs who should not give a crap about players on loan take care of that aspect.
 

Now we have Cescy and because of that are reaping the benefits.
'A bitter jest when it comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind it.'
[emoji19]

On the subject of Fabregas and Lampard (I know it is rudely off-topic and may offend Nemanja if he ever reads this thread), but I remember how Frank used to completely bully Cesc every time we played Arsenal or Barca. It was like they had something personal between them.
Btw, look at these  This is what I mean by us being a battering ram, and Franky was one of the softer guys.


 
 
 

True. Cant disagree with that even if i wanted to.

They didn't have to be, we weren't a creative team, we were a battering ram with incredibly all-round players with specific world class traits (no jacks of all trades but master of none bullshit). The partnership between Lampsy-Drogba and Lampard's consistent 20 goals per season meant we didn't need anymore goal providers in our midfield. Essien provided his fair share of goals as well. None of the three you mentioned will be able to reach such heights in terms of offensive contribution I'm afraid.

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. 

That midfield you named lacks offensive power and is solely focused on destroying, not creating. Mourinho would love it of course. Throw Fabregas or Pjanic next to Kante and Radja and we're golden. Matic and RLC would still get good minutes as direct backups.
Regarding defence, it's clear that JT is not good enough anymore if we want to play a high(er) line, which we need to start doing eventually. Cahill and Ivanovic are not good enough full stop. One or two of them can stay as backups, but nothing more. Zouma needs a proper ball-playing partner, a Carvalho to his Terry if you will.  If we fix our midfield and central defence, then we could even go another season with Ivanovic and Azpi as full-backs, but eventually we'd need to move away from such archaic pairing as well.

Kante yes, but I always thought we are linked with him because every top club is linked with Leicester's top players, especially us because of our situation. It's "easy rumours" for newspapers, very plausible, but not necessarily true or even realistic. Haven't heard of any alternatives to Kante or I simply can't remember. There is still plenty of time for things to change of course.

So Chelsea got transfer ban, PR disaster and potential other troubles for a youngster that you wrote off after 20 minutes ? Please behave with this "I told you so" moment.

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.

Whats weird is that people simply dont learn. Now I read that cesc can play the pirlo role, that Cesc is a must for next season, Hazard will be the PFA player of the year blah blah blah.
People must have really short memories because we just got raped at the bridge, in front of my own eyes. But since we won against Bournemouth, everything is hunky-dory.
Unbelievable.
 

Back then it probably wasn't a good thing to do, but now the situation is much more different. So much is invested in academies now that these players are walking cash cows, especially the longer the stay at an academy. Our ex-players are settled at the clubs they've moved on to, but not before they wasted loads of time on meaningless loans in the Netherlands or Championship, etc. 

Yes.

Hope this happens. We can always sell him for cut price to some mis-guided manager. 

You could very well be right, you probably are. I'm not even good on football manager, so I wouldn't trust myself either

Do you actually think Cesc has half the technical qualities or even know-how of playing the DM role?
Their one thing to "cover" for his lack of physicality and his lack of legs in the midfield. Irrespective of that he himself will have to do a "defensive" shift playing the DM in a 3-man midfield. Which includes tracking runners, understanding the defensive part of the game etc etc. I would love playing against this team. Absolutely Love it. I can already see the likes of Stoke and WHU countering us by continously targetting Cesc positional awareness as well as the same of Zouma and Manolas (really?. rather have Andreas and/or Cahill for another season). You can literally imagine Payet and Arnautovic rubbing their hands in glee seeing cesc's name in the DM position.
I think people have the mentality that things simply cant go any worse the next season. Try Playing with Cesc as a DM (even with Vidal and Radja to "cover" for him) and we have a worse season on our hands. And not because we sold our future or not because the board did not spend the money, but simply because we trusted the most important position on the football field to the worst suited man possible.
I am going to pray and hope that Conte simply is not thinking along the same lines as yours. Honestly, I will be devastated.

No mention of your compatriots mindless wind up though eh ? Now , we had two digs at each other its over.
lets get back on topic and talk about Hazard or warnings n bans it is...