The Skipper

I actually think he wouldn't mind staying but there's too much bad blood at the moment and at a club like Madrid they won't let him stay there for another season IMO. You have very valid points on Mourinho though, he won't be a guaranteed success - no one is - and his season this year at Madrid hasn't been stellar, far from it, but with his affiliation with CFC, and his overall managerial record, there are far more pros than cons in him coming here in my opinion.

I thought things were quite tough for him after his first season at Real because of Barcelona's dominance. He responded with winning the league the next season. Madrid are a circus, worse than us. I think he's going because he hasn't really got a choice to stay IMO. Real Madrid aren't really in a bad position, they've just had a bad season - they don't need that much fixing.

No way Mourinho's staying. The Real fans want his head.

All three have had great seasons and have shown they can easily challenge the first team squad. Hopefully they all make it, all three are astonishing talents, credit must go to our scouting team for actually going through with all three transfers.

Our future is so exciting.

Real were really unlucky today, hit the post 3 times, Courtois in top form denying 2 clear cut chances (1st one Higuain should've really netted to be fair, second one, world class stop). Just wasn't their trophy. Modric going off ruined the game for them, after he went off it was route one football, desperately trying to win it. First time in his coaching career he hasn't won a trophy in a season. His departure is imminent I feel. Come home Jose.

Really, really let his team down.

Hardly, Cech is moving away from the ball and has a split second to stick his hand out. It was a great save from Courtois but I was just refreshing your memory .

Let me refresh your memory.

No one is saying Courtois doesn't have it in him. What you're saying is that he's better than Cech now which isn't true, even though he is playing very, very well tonight.

WOOOOOOOOW.

Great save by Courtois. Higuain really should put that away.

Frank Lampard's Chelsea career will end this summer - The Guardian, 7th of January 2013. Doubt they really know what wages he's on exactly.

Indeed, a testament to why he's a special player. Not going to argue that. But people (not you per se) shouldn't automatically use that as evidence that Falcao is great at holding up the ball, bringing others into play etc.

That isn't the norm though, it's the exception. You only need to look at Torres.

Must be a "Gary" thing...

I agree, but with the way the team is shaping up we'd need a passer next to Chalobah for the future. An Oscar - Chalobah pivot isn't too bad at all actually when you think of it - reckon both complement each other quite well. Back on topic - agreed that Chalobah is a big reason that I'd rather get De Rossi (given that he's available at a reasonable price) than one of the Bender twins. Chalobah is good enough to make the step up in two or three seasons at most for sure.

That's not true, a very black and white way of looking at it. The people that criticise him alas myself have given him credit for the big games we've won. And it's not true that people blame defeats solely on Rafa, just take a look at the Mikel or Torres threads. I'll give Rafa credit for doing a decent job overall, he's been quite professional too, and yeah sure he won us a major trophy which is fair enough even though we were the strongest team in the competition and should be beating the teams we faced regardless (but still, you have to beat what's in front of you and he deserves credit for that) but you can't honestly hold your head up and say that he's not made mistakes in a couple of games we should've won. This image below (courtesy of robdog) also shows some are overrating the job he's done. In the end it's the points that Di Matteo won for us at the start of the season that contributed quite a bit in us finished top four.

Listen, I'm not saying he won't produce a great pass now and then, he's a good passer but vision is not his main strength. Yaya Toure makes defence splitting passes sometimes, doesn't mean he has the vision of lets say a Xavi. I wouldn't give Nat that responsibility simply because he brings much more on other fronts for the team.

Chalobah hasn't got that vision a McEachran has though. He needs to play next to someone who has vision.

Best Hazard video out there. Cheers.

Personally I think the winners should get a banner like the mods and the MOTM have .

No that's where you get it wrong - the club are not going to amortise Sturridge or Meireles' fees. There's no need for that, and it's exactly why FFP isn't as effective as people make it out to be. Let's say we have a budget of around £50m (amortised) in FFP terms and let's use your example where wages will be around £10m a year extra. With £100m being amortised into £20m, that'd be a total of £30m spent which still makes it more than possible in my opinion. Anyway, there's no use speculating to be honest, we'll have to wait when the club releases it's official account to see where we really are. I still think that we can spend £100m if we want to but we probably won't - I think it'll be at around £60m/£70m/£80m max. We'll just have to wait and see though.

I recognise that Ronaldo is amongst the elite players (him and Messi) and he'd obviously add bucket loads to any team in the world but I like more what we have going on and don't want Ronaldo to be our main man to be honest which will inevitably happen if he did come. Like I said, I'd rather develop our current players than suddenly build our whole team around Ronaldo, no matter how good he is.

Bullshit. Don't want him here anyway. Rather give Hazard a chance to become our Ronaldo.