Styles

The players we would want to sell nobody in their right mind would be interested in them, the Ferreira's and the Kalou' for example. And also nobody will pay them what they earn now so they are effectively our problem. Is somebody really going to pay Kalou £60k a week for his level of talent? Of course not. Is somebody really going to give a 33 year old Ferreira another two years on about £60-70k a week? Of course not. It's not that we won't sell it's more a case of we can't sell. Players only leave us once their contract is finished i.e. Joe Cole because nobody will pay a transfer for them + the wages they are on with Chelsea.

:mouthclosed:

Kalou is sponsered by Adidas and they tend to feature players who wear their boots more I think. Not many of our players wear Adidas do they? Can't think of that many.

Gourlay is Kenyon-lite so maybe he has the capacity to do both positions to a good standard? You have to say he has done a terrific job with this tour of Asia. The club is very well supported over there and with this commitment of going there every so often our fanbase will continue to grow.

Yeah that's what is happening and it's how it should work. The manager picks his targets (Modric for instance) and the club tries to buy them at a reasonable price. I'm glad we aren't paying crazy money for Modric and to be honest I doubt we're even interested in Pastore as all the noise is being made by that nutter of a chairman.

Villas-Boas does have a say actually. He has already signed Oriol Romeu, a player he tried to sign for Porto last year. His stance so far has been that he is assessing the squad and will make decisions once the tour of Asia is completed. I am almost certain the signings we will make will most definitely be based on what he feels we need with very little to no interference from the board. They tried it their way and we ended up with a 50m striker who is as likely to score as Paulo Ferreira. What you also failed to mention is that we no longer have a sporting-director as Arnesen left (or fired?). So who is making the transfer decisions if it isn’t the manager? Boas is taking his time which is fair enough. But it's boring for us transfer numpties who want to see some new blood

Mikel is worth £25m.

They 'can' meaning we have a say in the matter.

Very much agreed. If he can accept that he doesn't need to play every minute of every game then he can prolong his career a little bit longer.

I can't wait to see Aguero in the Premier League! Well done City, great signing for them and the league because it seems all the top stars were in Spain or heading there.

€42m = £37m That's far too much.

Gotcha!

Kalou is better anyway.

I'll offifically start worrying if we haven't signed a first team calibre player by the end of next week. So by 5pm Friday the 5th of August if we still haven't signed somebody that is not first team ready I will start the first 'AVB out' thread on this here forum.

I was thinking recently imagine if we didn't waste 50m on him how many options we would have this summer?

I really want to believe but I have no hope for him. I think he's finished.

He's had some serious knee and groin injuries in the last few years. It's exactly like the Shevchenko transfer, we've bought a player that is losing it physically. He was never a technical footballer and always had a pretty bad first touch. But he was quick, sharp and very mobile and he just doesn't have that anymore. And I'm watching the Copa America final now and you should see how brilliantly Suarez is playing and he cost less than half of Torres!

He tried to dribble with the ball about 4 times and he just looked so stiff, slow and had absolutely no control of the ball and was easily tackled each time. He looks slow and lacks any sort of confidence. I hate to say it but he's looking like the biggest waste of money ever.

Torres still looks like an absolute disaster.

Don't be daft, just because you haven't seen it online somewhere doesn't mean it isn't true. It is in line with the Bojan transfer and is likely to be Barcelona's new policy on all youngsters leaving the club. You're smarter than this, thinking that we have essentially entered into an agreement were we have our hands tied behind our backs. The club has lawyers, advisers, negotitaters etc who would laugh off what you're suggesting.

Trust your instinct on this one. Why on earth would we develop a player for another team? We have a hard enough time developing our own as it is! If he is any good then we're keeping him, you can rest assured on that one. The Bojan deal is that he goes to Roma for 12m and there is an obligatory buy-back option for 13m. If Roma want to block this option then will have to pay an extra 28m. Now Oriol Romeu doesn't have the sort of experience and reputation as Bojan so any further money we might have to be pay for him will be significantly less, possibly 10m max in my opinion.

I doubt we negotitated that badly to end up with such a rubbish deal. Going by the Bojan transfer Roma can pay an agreed amount to block any buy-back option. So at worst we would have to pay some more to sign him. There is absolutely no way that he can come here for 2 years do well and then head back to Barcelona, we aren't that stupid.

Well done Chelsea for realising Drogba still has a lot more to offer. Exactly! Some people don't get this at all.

From what I've gathered it isn't a buy-back clause it's a first-refusal clause i.e. if we decide to sell Barcelona have to be his first option. Now this is just what I've read on a few sites so it might not be accurate but it makes far more sense.

There are plenty of players that are predominately one footed and it doesn’t hinder them in the slightest. Somebody like Xavi for instance almost always only uses his right foot and nobody would dare say he is a bad player because of it. The players have problems are the ones that lack dexterity and speed of thought. Sadly quite a few of our players seem to fall into this catergory.