LDN Blue

Is Costa back?

Absolutely agree with Mourinho's rage at the FA. No consistency in their decision making process at all, I suppose they're going be agreeing with UEFA's decision to back Platini too

Really good for him that Steve Holland is also in the England set up!

Stadium ban hey? José really hit a nerve this time huh?

I know, but that why I'm hoping he will change all of that in the long run. Top 4 this season, no matter what. Then lets see what he does, if he's given his transfers.

I still think Mourinho can turn this around and start changing. It's not too late for this season to turn around, there's only been 8 games. He needs to use this international break well and get the team back. He's capable of it.

HAHA of course Boularouz, we even gave him the number 9 shirt . Remember Del Horno getting himself sent off against Barcelona?! That's probably when Jose knew to go for Ashley Cole

Perhaps but he'd have a lot of work to do. He'd have to make some quality signings in several areas, so the board would have to be 100% willing to grant him that and keep investing. He's gone from the talent at Barca and Bayern, world class players for every position.

We are beginning to develop a right-back curse. Bosingwa started well and turned to shit, Ivanovic started well but turned to shit. Fuck.

Definitely, it's pretty tragic to see how anyone can be allowed to own a football club and be allowed to run it so badly! Hope that won't ever happen to us.

Fuck, how did I forget that?! (lowkey, I should stop smoking when I post here)

For the life of me, I won't get why he plays Fernando!

Yeah exactly. United signed 3 CMs in 2 years and they're all world class lmao. It's not like the club can blame a lack of options, hell even Vidal went for an equivalent of peanuts.

The Chelsea FC board will always be a plethora of mystery. How they commanded and deserved our praise in the 2014 summer, for excellent and EARLY recruitment of Costa, Fabregas, recalling Courtois, Zouma etc. All these purchases showed their worth instantly. But this season they've done the opposite. Lack of recruitment and organisation with the preseason has been telling. Awarding Mourinho with a new contract immediately, once again not learning from any of their mistakes in the past. Can we fault them for Lukaku, Mata, De Bruyne? Well, in sales alone that brought in over £70m, the problem was they didn't get redistributed well and when they were, the results weren't there. Why it went wrong for Filipe Luis, Cuadrado, Schurrle and Salah will never be comprehended, I think there's quite obviously and justifiably fault placed on Mr Mourinho for that one. Next summer, we'll probably invest £100m or close to. This all in an attempt to win back what ours and it will probably work.. Yet it's the follow through where our board continues to be naive. They've got to start learning from their mistakes and they have to do it soon if we ever hope to reach the heights of Bayern, Barca or Real.

Spot on. I don't really get how anyone thought Lampard could play that position, he'd never done it before and looked completely out of his depth. But the question is, where do you actually put these players once they're past that AM capabilities.

Watching Bayern, how they play versus their biggest rivals and bulldozing them 5-1.. I dream of a day we smash Arsenal like that.

Yeah I just read through, definitely agree with him and Peace's posts. We don't have any kind of identity because of the mismatch between players and management.. That what happens when you go after names as opposed to merit lol. I.e. Falcao = name

The problem was, early on anyway, he didn't use that strength as a major asset. Now he's grown into the traditional CF role and is embracing it under Martinez, or whoever is giving him direct coaching. In hindsight it was the best thing for him to go to Everton, with Naismith and Kone as his only competition he was always afforded the patience Martinez showed him. Shame 'buy-back clauses' aren't really a thing here. As for the Remy situation, I definitely agree with @Stats. Good player but he hasn't earned his stripes this season.. Between him and Falcao they're both as bad as each other when its come to goal scoring form. The tragedy is, we fought to keep him this summer lmao.

And those who do will have ulterior motives

You know what I hate about this place? There are posts here that, despite you being on one side of the fence, ever so slightly make you change your perception of what is and what should be. (I love it though, shout out to the quality of posts in here once you filter out the garbage lol) The magic of Mourinho is leaving me & that makes me sad to be honest. I guess this is how Liverpool fans felt when Dalglish didn't live up to his heights the first time around. But I'll still refrain from calling him a 'disgrace' or a 'cunt'. Like it or not, he's a very important part of our history and deserves the same respect.

True, but Klopp is just another Chelsea experiment. Like Peace was just talking about identity above, what exactly do we want from this team/any manager? We seem to hire managers that don't seem to get the best out of any squad we've built. Mourinho can't unlock Hazard's potential, AVB couldn't make Hazard/Mata/Oscar click together, Scolari couldn't bring the South American flare to Chelsea. What exactly are we building here? Let's be frank, our next coach won't last longer than 3 seasons, let's accept that.. So what's the long term strategy exactly?

Ha! I'd doubt it. Funny we should mention this, nice article exposing Dyke in the Guardian today http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/sep/30/greg-dyke-fa-michel-platini-fifa "Greg somehow got a £456,000 payoff from the BBC after completely mishandling the corporation’s response to Andrew Gilligan’s Today programme report on the dodgy Iraq dossier – although in fairness to the Beeb it coughed that one up in timely fashion. Blatter told Platini Fifa couldn’t afford to pay him in 2002."

I feel like Klopp needs another managerial position before he steps up to the Madrid/Barcelona/Chelsea's of the world. See if he can adapt to another league and still demonstrate the same attributes that made him a success at Dortmund

I think I'm more likely to believe him with Lukaku than with KDB to be fair. Lukaku has history. His intial loan spell at Everton was his doing, he was one of three strikers we had and that was alongside Torres and Drogba (I think). Neither of them were scoring after Lukaku went and he could've easily staked his claim there and then. With KDB, I'm not sure. On one hand you can argue that offer was too good to say no to, so that could've been the board and/or Mou.

Yes actually, that's kind of more what I wanted. Fabregas has been criminal this season, no-one will dispute that. But you can't deny how effective he was last season and that's what you wanted to know. Why did Mourinho buy Cesc? Because he was intrumental last season in helping us secure the EPL. What's happened to Fab between now and then is a great mystery and tragedy to be honest, because he's quite an intelligent footballer. As for dropping him, I think Mourinho's facing a dilemma of his own in who to actually replace him with. For all intents and purposes, Fabregas is still one of our more creative players, as demonstrated last season. In a team where none of our attacking players are functioning I guess he hopes for that one key assist. Loftus-Cheek is mentioned as a successor but he'd be replacing Matic's role in the team more than Fab? What's tragic is that Mourinho said before the window opened that he wanted a midfielder and he didn't get it. What if that was a replacement for Cesc?