Elliott

Hasn't had the impact needed to impress enough to enter the first team, I agree. Hopefully he impresses at Oldham and they or someone else takes him on. As long as the player this club has trained get first team football at a professional club somewhere I think that's alright.

To be fair I don't think friendlies were ever about fans, they were about getting the team ready for the season. It is easier to do this locally, but when there's monetary benefit to be had by going far afield, why not. And to the North Americans here, they might do more than one game. Chelsea played a friendly in Chicago in 2006, and in 2005 played a friendly in Massachusetts and another in Washington DC. So when they play in the US, they do play both coasts! And this won't be the first time the team has played in Seattle, in 2004 we had friendlies in Seattle, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia (two more eastern cities).

I can't imagine Giggs agreeing to it though.

He's gonna have to prove to us he deserves it, quite simply.

For a very good offer it might be worth it, but it would have to be a LOT of money. Otherwise, hell no.

I think see it as a 4-4-2, but with 1 central midfielder more forward than the other. No reason why that cannot work as long as the wingers are willing to put in some graft in midfield when defending.

I'm just not sure playing Mancienne in his second game for the club in such an important game would be beneficial when we have a vastly experienced player who can play instead. And Quaresma is in the same position, but our option instead is a youngster or Malouda, and Quaresma is still very experienced anyway.

I'd rather we played Lampard and Mikel with Quaresma and Kalou on the wings. Or Stoch for Kalou. The team I'd like to see: Cech Belletti Ferreira Terry Ivanovic Mikel Lampard Quaresma Kalou Anelka Drogba Bench: Hilário Bosingwa Mancienne Deco Ballack Stoch Di Santo

So he's lost 40% of his vast fortune...

Welcome 53 54! Glad you like the site!

Anelka wasn't being used right by Scolari in the last few months, thus he looked to be turning useless. But if we can turn out the 4-4-2 with regularity, Anelka can grab many more.

Nice spot Alex! I remember Hasselbainks perfect hattrick against Spurs, but have we had any other perfect hattricks in recent times at Chelsea?

Okay having two GZs is gonna be confusing! At least you're of a different nationality!

Mancienne did well I thought, provided some decent crosses and did everything right at the back, only fault was giving away a free-kick in a dangerous area, but I thought he was unlucky to have it given against him anyway. We switch to 4-4-2, and then we score 3 goals. I think that's clear enough. If I was Hiddink I'd be banning 4-5-1. We have enough wingers to play 4-4-2 now, so lets do so.

Yeah keeps chopping up! On reflection we weren't totally useless. We'd be 2-0 up if Anelka was a bit luckier and Kalou was a complete fucking muppet.

http://atdhe.net/live-tv-3437.html

Now that tackle by Mancienne was fine, got the ball...

Boring boring Chelsea

Well we've got 3 forwards on the pitch so presumably, but lets see if it works out like that.

Mancienne! Great, hope he does well. Shame Stoch and Quaresma are only on the bench though.

There's a couple of streams on this page (look down the list): http://www.atdhe.net/ But I had problems with it during the Hull game.

I'm so innocent my first thought was the Hammers fans crying.

Sounds to me like Scolari wasn't tactically astute enough to get the best out of the players.

It does look like we're gonna need a VERY good coach if we want to challenge for the title with these players. In Mancienne and Cork we have some players who have impressed in the Championship. We may get back Bertrand, Sahar and Sinclair who conversely have had varying form, varying to worse in more recent times unfortunately I think we should be keeping Ferreira personally, he's not gonna be worth an awful lot but he's a decent player. Unless Hutchinson can come in as another useful defender, but I think he might need another season to prove himself because hasn't he had a serious injury recently? But we definitely need to look to our youth and I hope we do, but I hope we do so without dropping ourselves out the top 4. It's a tough ask, and we may well fail.

You should be able to install on firefox on your other computer! Good to have you back!