The Skipper

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.

1) If you look at the calculations, I've taken that into account. I divided Ba's amortised fee by 3.5 years as he signed for that long. The others I believe signed 5 year contracts. 2) Because it's £50m of amortised money available. If we sign 4 player worth £100m all together on 5 year contracts that comes down to an amortised fee of £20m (£100m/5yrs = £20m a year) - so even if my calculations are slightly off you do get to see the bigger picture where I believe we can afford to spend another £100m in the transfer market next year if we really want to. Not that we really need to, I think around £70m will be enough but it's there if it's needed.

Mata, simply because he isn't as versatile as the other two. Oscar and Hazard can still have great careers even if they don't play CAM whereas I don't think that we can say the same for Mata.

Agreed. He could be easily be the link between our defence and attack. If we need more attacking prowess/game plan isn't working we can always take off one of the three that aren't performing ahead of him, throw on another midfielder and free him to join the attack (Yaya Toure like). I personally see his future in the pivot.

I guess it's down to personal interpretation/experiences. In most cases for me anyway, when discussing with a mate about football, mentioning the word "striker" will bring up names like RvP, Falcao, Cavani, Torres etc. and not Mata, Hazard or Pedro.

I've never heard someone call Hazard or Mata a striker - in most cases they're either called forwards or attacking midfielders.

People have only been calling Messi a striker in recent times in my books due to how he plays at Barcelona now (false 9). Regardless, I'm sure the OP meant it in that sense as you can see by the formation he put up (Mata as a 9/False 9).

You might be lost in translation but in english football culture, a striker = a CF. Pedro is a forward. Ses (no idea who that is) is a forward. Ronaldo is a forward. I'm very sure the author meant Mata as a number 9, as a CF, and not as a forward, as you can see by the formation he put up.

The general consensus is that a striker = a CF.

No one's saying Mata isn't a forward because he obviously is, but he isn't a striker; he would be very ineffective as a number 9.

Not a chance. That completely takes away from what he's actually good at. Mata is a creator, he likes to create, granted he has a great finish on him but he wouldn't work as a striker at all simply because he isn't that good at holding up the ball and his runs from deep are far more effective, he can't be the focal point of attack (as in the most forward player as he needs to get involved in play) and physically he isn't up to it. Mata is a wonderful player but he isn't Messi, no one is.

Hate to sound Benitez-esque but won my 3rd game in charge 0-4 (63% possession) away from home against top of the league Hazard Alliance to go top of league 1 whilst maintaining a 100% win record (12 scored, 0 conceded). Watch out, bitches. Facht.

But what makes you think that someone else's opinion wasn't out of strenuous thinking and reasoning? You can't really compare your opinion on SFL being by far a better player than Scholes or Gerrard to a proven mathematic algorithm.

Adidas have a great marketing team, must be said.

Okay, let's say the transfers from last season aren't included in our profit figure. Hazard - £32m/5yrs which comes down to £6.4m. Oscar - £20m/5yrs which amortises to £4m. Victor Moses - £9m/5 = £1.8m. Azpilicueta - £7.5m/5yrs = £1.5m. Marko Marin = £7m/5yrs = £1.4m. Demba Ba £7.5m/3.5yrs = £2.1m. Total = £17.1m which still gives us a leeway of around £22m. We lose about (estimate) £10m of that obviously because we didn't get far in the CL and that leaves us with potentially £12m to play around with. That doesn't look as promising but our youth expenses are not as negligible as you put it either - last season they were accounted as £18m - which bumps up our total money to around £30m on a rough estimate (in FFP terms) assuming we get roughly the same figure this year which is still quite a lot to play around with. You're also forgetting we sold Sturridge and Meireles for around £20m combined which also gives a lot of leniency - which brings our total figure to play around with to around £50m (estimate). Not to mention we might sell guys like Michael Essien who's easily worth +£10m, Kakuta, PvA etc. and a lot of players are leaving on a free therefore freeing even more space on the wage budget - Add to that the fact that the PL will give us a a few more million for finishing 3rd (and the restructuring of PL money being factored in) and also the likely additional monies made from our CL win (the merchandise, growing fan base around the world etc.) and you'll realise we still have a lot more to play around with than you're giving credit for. Of course we'd have to wait and see for the next set of financial information the club will release to confirm all of this but we're fine regarding FFP and we do have the ability to spend another £100m from what I've gathered. It's more than possible - but again, we'd have to wait for the accounts the club release for this past season to confirm this and see where we're exactly at so we can the have a definitive answer but from what I've gathered we look capable.