Henrique

He will change if the results are not what he is expecting.

Fabregas or Matic won't become captain as long as Ivanovic has a starting role in the team.

During this pre-season its clear Mourinho favorite system still is the 4-2-3-1, but for people who dream about a 4-3-3 return, it seems Mourinho reckon he might use a 3-6-1, 3-5-2 (van Gaal influence here). But right its not easy to imagine Chelsea starting XI against Burnley. No doubt the system will be 4-2-3-1, and Matic+Fabregas will both play in the mid, Costa is our main striker and Hazard will be one of the 3 attacking men. That leave 2 positions for Oscar, Salah, Willian and Schurle. The german is full of confidence, but his biggest weakness is his defensive work. He always looks a little bit clumsy when he is defending, and Jose love wingers with good defensive work, I'm not so sure he will be the starting man everyone think he is going to be. I think Salah will be starting the first games of the season, since he had a full pre season and played some decent games. At the back, I don't know if Mourinho will play Ivanovic as a RB or as a CB, or if its going to be Terry + Cahill or Terry + Ivanovic. No doubt Luis is the one starting in the left. Curtois will be the GK. If Mourinho wanted Cech to be the first choice, Curtoius would have stayed with Madrid for another season. But I predict the team will have a slow start of the season. Compared to Arsenal, City, United and Liverpool, its a little bit strange that we are facing weak opposition. Players who are starting the first games have a HUGE chance of being dropped during the season. Just remember lasts season when KDB, Luiz and Schurle (who even scored against City) were starting games but became squad players after some matches.

lol Ramires is a Mourinho favorite, he will play LOTS of games in the wings.

lol

Good 1st half from Xurli. The lad is full of confidence.

Any news on Didier injury?

Probably Diego Milito.

We already know man, Salah is better than Willian, Schurle and Oscar, and must be a starting this season.

Huge game for some players who must prove they are good enough or just big overpriced flops.

You really know one thing or two about writing posts to get "likes", don't you?

Last time I checked William played 45 fucking minutes in a stupid friendly match of 45 minutes, in pre-season. lol Some people here should wait until the beginning of the real thing before starting to bash players they never liked because of many reasons. I've been in this forum since 2010, and to be honest I've never seen anything THAT embarrassing. This place reached a new low, unfortunately.

Well, its quite clear you have the same expectations as mine, and its also clear you are the one who will come up with fancy excuses after the "slightly inconsistent start of the season".

Bold prediction: win the league, and become the best team in Europe. Honest prediction: same football from last season, new excuses.

1- Arsenal (bold prediction) 2- City (they have the best squad after all) 3- Chelsea 4- United

Then you should avoid this kind of stupid post. I'm sure you are one of those guys who only watched Cavani in both legs against Chelsea in UCL quarters last season, and watched his games in WC weeks ago and are now claiming stupid things like: Cavani has a poor finish, Cavani is average, Cavani is overrated. Its not a surprise that a lot of people here believe PL still is the strongest, Hazard is a top 3 player in the world, Matic is the best DM of all. Most people here only cares about whats happening in PL, and only get to know different players and teams when they reach UCL semi-finals.

I won't describe his WC as "amazing", and even if that was the case, what players are doing in international levels has nothing to do with their clubs. Schurrle is a very good player, but at the end of last season few people were saying "he has to be starter", suddenly, after 2 good WC games it seems he already won this place in the starting line-up next season. imo those claims that "x" or "y" must starters before the beginning of the season doesn't make any sense.

I always thought Ivanovic was a very good CB. Terry + Ivanovic is our ideal partnership.

Its not hard to understand the fact Torres is staying with Chelsea for another season. He will probably stay at Chelsea until 2016, when his contract expires. Thats the best way to reduce the damage. Abramovich and his board won't concede they were wrong again about buying an expensive striker. The best way to not make Torres singing look as bad as it really is, is letting him fulfill his contract.

Didn't watched the game, to be honest this pre-season was doomed. With Oscar, William, Schurle, Hazard and Ramires out on vacation for the most part of the pre-season, that really hard to implement new ideas, or to to create any kind of chemistry.

Here we go again...

Selling a player for 30m that never scored a single goal in official matches for Chelsea, is an amazing deal for me. Drogba still is a very good player, and at least a decent "squad player".

Good news.

Excuses. Atletico reached UCL Final last season, and their home league were harder for them than PL was for us. Years ago when 3 out of 4 teams in UCL semi-finals were from PL, I don't remember this talk about PL teams being quite worn in the knockout rounds of UCL, AND if now those teams are facing tougher and similar-level opposition, its not necessarily because the rest of the league is better than years ago... and we can't forget teams like Sunderland and Stoke can be really tough opponents, but anyone who is not involved with PL will have a laugh if you say those teams are very hard to beat. Its really easy for us, who are watching PL week after week to say that Spurs or Everton are very good teams, but those teams are barely known outside PL. People who are involved with La Liga and Bundesliga, for example, they don't think Spurs, Everton, Sunderland or Stoke are tough opposition. Is Everton and Spurs better than Leverkusen and Schalke 04, or Sevilla and Villareal? People who are watching PL week after week will say yes, people who are watching Bundesliga or La Liga won't believe Everton and Spurs are better than those teams. To be honest this kind of attitude is similar to what happened with Brazil for many years, failure after failure, people here always believed the football still was the best, still was the best, even when the evidences were saying a different scenario. At this point, the idea of PL still being the strongest in the world is really odd.

Well, I'm not sure top 5 PLl clubs from last season are that superior when compared to La Liga ones. Is Chelsea better than Real Madrid? Is Liverpool better than Barcelona? (Suarez left one and joined the other one for a reason). Perhaps Arsenal is better than Sevilla, Spurs better than Valencia, but form me Internazionale and Fiorentina are also better than those teams, but are Arsenal, Spurs, Valencia, Sevilla and Fiorentina that make a league the strongest one? Perhaos PL is as strong as La Liga and Bundesliga, but not THE strongest as claimed by many. About the two horse argument, as I said before, "with the notable exception this year", PL has always bees a two horse race. Sometimes you just change the name of the horses, but since 2004 United have been one of the horses every single season, with the exception of 2003, 2004 and 2014. The rest of the seasons were United/Liverpool, United/Chelsea, United/City, and no to mention the one horse race we had in 2005, 2006, 2013. The talk about 4 or 6 teams fighting for the trophy started in last 4 years, and as I said before, its not a coincidence that PL looked more competitive when Liverpool, Chelsea, United and Arsenal couldn't rebuild teams that were once world beaters. Years ago a decisive match between Real Madrid or Bayern and a PL giant had a predictable outcome. To be honest its not a surprise anymore if a team like PSG, Atletico de Madrid or Borussia Dortmund manage to beat Chelsea. Someone happened in the last 4 or 5 years, and for many reasons PL is not the strongest anymore. If Mourinho manage to build another world beater team, that scenario might change again, because I do believe Mourinhos tactic combined with Roman's money was the reason PL was once the strongest league in the world.