Madmax

Spot on. In football people like to put labels on someone or something. It sells papers, it gets eyeballs, it gets ears listening to dodgy 'pundits'. It's a bit sad we as Chelsea fans are happy to roll over and buy into whatever crap the media tries to make us believe.

5 million.

Good on him, good Karma. It's funny how ordinary folk on the sidelines think that watching famous personalities go about their lives gives them a right to adopt a moral high ground and pass judgements. The kid is 19 or 20 and has a bit of a temperament, so what? Has anyone thought about what sort of problems he faced back in Italy - the abandonment from his parents, the racist taunts, etc? How many of us were doing anything other than getting wasted and chasing pussy when we were that age?

I dearly hope we keep Corky

Welcome...stick around :cfc:

Trophy cabinet gathers dust, the silverware gets rust, but in Arsene we trust

I think the problem we have is getting people on the end of crosses, the crosses themselves are decent enough ... usually we'd have Drogba and one other forward in the box in addition to Lamps making his late runs, but it's been missing this season for reasons I don't quite know why. Maybe Drog's lost a yard in pace and obviously Lamps was out for 4 months so that's the difference.

Malouda doesn't give us natural width. He cuts inside all the time, linking up with the overlapping Cole.

what's wrong with him?

Cech- 6 Ferreira - 6.5 Luiz - 5 Terry - 6 Cole - 6 Mikel - 6.5 Essien - 6.5 Lampard - 6 Malouda - 7.5 Kalou - 6.5 Drogba - 8 Subs Bertrand - 7.5 (being a bit generous, but for sentimental reasons ie debut et al ) Anelka - 5 Torres - 5.5

Meh can't really see the humour in it.

I thought it was a problem at my end

I know

Petr Cech - Chelsea's number 1. I don't think there's much debate to be had really.

First things first, 6 points at home should be our priority. By then if United have a slip up against Everton we're down to 4 (Arsenal won't get anything against United - I'm sure) going into OT. Win there and it's 1 point so in theory it's all open, but what I'm worried about is that after OT, we have the difficult games while they've got much easier ones. I have my doubts about taking the points against Newcastle and I genuinely wouldn't be able to tell you when was the last time we beat Everton. But if it's down to 1 after OT then it's anybody's game because United will be feeling the heat of the chase, plus they have UCL to contend with. I'm counting Arsenal out of it - they've bottled it yet again.

No.

I thought we pressed well today, or 'well' by our usual standards anyway.

Quality report, Al! Player ratings : Cech 6, Ferreira 6.5, Luiz 5, Terry 6, Cole 6, Mikel 6, Essien 6.5, Lampard 6, Malouda 7, Drogba 8, Kalou 6.5, Bertrand 6.5, Anelka 5, Torres 5.5.

Assist on his 3rd touch. Put a couple of great crosses in apart from the one that led to the goal. Hopefully gets even more play time, Ash could do with a rest once in a while.

Meh ... he'd had loan spells to the likes of West fucking Brom and be 25 years old before he makes his debut anyway

Ask them what they sang for their initiation songs .... and about Torres' initiation song as well.

I'll eat my socks if this guy is still on the roster next year. Isn't it just wonderful how he his performances pick up as soon as a transfer window approaches?

Bertrand had it too. Kakuta's had one in the past, as has JT.

Why me? Top post btw, Alex. We're just saying the same things over and over again so I'm getting very bored of these threads now. One thing though - what all of this shows reaffirms is that football is a results business. We were playing shit well before Wilkins was sacked, infact I don't remember a convincing performance all season long (except Sunderland away) and yes, it includes those 6-0 and 4-0 games early in the season, but we didn't see all this speculation then simply because we were getting the results that mattered. Notice how the 'Ancelotti out in the summer' thread was started on the day of the Liverpool defeat at the Bridge.