The Skipper

Wiki seems to have him down as 25...

He's 25.

Great bit of business by the club btw. 25m euros is very impressive.

Shaw and Hazard on the left flank would be orgasmic.

Remember this very well. What great performances those were. Shame many have forgotten that he's capable of this.

I'd say we would've exceeded expectations if we actually win the PL. Right now we are where I thought we'd be - challenging for the title with Man City and (surprisingly) Arsenal.

My XI with rumours flying about that Lampard is fit for this one...: Cech Azpi - Cahill - Terry - Cole Ramires - Lampard Willian - Oscar - Hazard Torres Match preview coming up soon.

Still a notch behind Real, Barca, Bayern. Possibly City and Dortmund too. But it's a huge improvement.

Mikel, Ba are pretty close to it too.Edit: and Lukaku.

Replace Mata as the 5th choice AM?

100%

Just relax mate, it'll come. Don't stress yourself about it.

Beat you.

http://web3.cmvm.pt/english/sdi2004/emitentes/emit_fact.cfm?num_ent=%25%23TKY%22%3DT%20%0A The link.

Nah, I'm alright. We'd have to be absolutely poor like United for us to be relying on such a young lad.

And Kenneth's even gone out on loan so pretty much right now if we did sell Luiz we'd have to throw in Kalas at CB if Cahill or Terry got a knock.

Not aimed at you mate but people are completely forgetting how good he was in the second half of last season... Short term memory at it's finest. People are acting like Luiz has been playing like he has this season for his entire CFC career when that's not true whatsoever.

It's very naive to think that Cahill won't get injured or won't drop form or Luiz won't pick up his form...

At City, he'd have to compete with Nastasic correct, but Nastasic has been injured a lot this season and he's certainly an improvement on Lescott or Demichellis. City play with a high line and build from the back so Luiz could be ideal for them, especially next to a very solid leader in Kompany (who also gets injured quite a bit). United... I don't rate any of their CBs apart from Vidic and Jones. Vidic is nearing the end of his career, so is Rio, Jonny Evans and Smalling aren't as good as Luiz either. Bayern have a solid core of defenders there but due to the way they play under Pep especially I think they'd potentially be interested too. I think Luiz is possibly better than all of their CBs when on form too but that's just my personal opinion. Now I'm not saying that all these clubs would definitely be queuing up but I'm sure that if Luiz was to be made available on the market they'd look into the possibility of it. PS: sorry for going off topic. Would be nice if this discussion was moved to the Luiz thread by any of the mods.

A Kompany - Luiz partnership would be the best in the PL and one of the best in the world when both are on form. Fits in with Pellegrini's philosophy too. I'm not saying they'd sign him but United have a huge CB problem IMO. Barcelona also for obvious reasons.

Man City, United, Barcelona, Bayern just to mention a few clubs. If Luiz regained form he'd walk into those teams in my honest opinion.

Still, even if we do go by your valuation, £25m is still a nice price, so the deal is nowhere near as bad as you're trying to make it seem. Torres on the other hand... I'd bite your hand off if you offered £10-15m for him. Now that's what you call a bad deal. He's not even worth half of what we paid for him. Call Luiz's average if you want but to say it's one of the worst deals ever done is ridiculous. Yeah, Luiz has slightly regressed this season but before that he was steadily improving and he still has enough time to turn it around in the second half of this season. There's still plenty of games to go.

Why is the David Luiz deal bad when he's clearly increased his value since he has joined us?Torres yes, Luiz no. If we wanted to sell Luiz he'd go for more than we got him for. And again before you say it, there is no way Matic would've made it if he stayed here.

Arsenal's run in from Feb to March: Crystal Palace (A) United (H) Bayern (H) Sunderland (H) Stoke (A) Swansea (H) Bayern (A) Tottenham (A) Chelsea (A) Man City (H)