SeB

Hazard: Chelsea versera 40M à Lille Il y a quatre jours, Eden Hazard avait annoncé sa décision de rejoindre Chelsea, avec lequel il s'était mis d'accord sur les modalités d'un contrat de cinq ans. Ce vendredi, Lille a trouvé un terrain d'entente avec le club champion d'Europe 2012 pour un transfert à hauteur de 40 millions d'euros. L'attaquant belge va désormais passer sa visite médicale à Londres avant de signer son bail ce dimanche et d'être présenté dans la foulée à la presse. (Avec V.G.) http://www.lequipe.f...-a-lille/288159 Hazard: Chelsea will pay 40M to Lille Four days ago, Eden Hazard had announced his decision to join Chelsea, with whom he had agreed to the terms of a five-year contract. This Friday, Lille has found an agreement with the club champion of Europe 2012 for a transfer up to 40 million euros. The Belgian striker will now pass a medical test in London before signing the contract this Sunday and be presented just after to the press.

Here's Loulou Nicollin:

He's a harsh tackler but not with a genuine tackling technique (à la Vieira). He doesn't keeps the ball under control If I had to choose between Mulumbu and Diamé, I'd take Mulumbu who reads the play better

I think he's a good player but a bit too rash. He's a kind of box-to-box with defensive abilties. He can tackle or intercept quite well, he's among the players who are able to regain the ball those ways. He's good when he goes forward, it's difficult to stop him when he's on the ball and sometimes he manages to give very good deliveries at the end of his runs. He has a good passing game But I don't find him reliable enough, even if WBA has a very good 5 man midfield, Mulumbu's role has always been wide. I'm not a big fan of those players who can do a lit of things but who aren't especially very good in a precise domain. Especially at Chelsea where the roles are defined. I've already seen him losing the ball in dangerous areas and he has his games where he's in or out. It seems clear he's a Plan B or C after Tioté. I think he'll end up at Liverpool who also tracks Wigan's Diamé. I was sure there would be rumours about possible WBA players arrival at Chelsea due to Di Matteo or Newton. I'd like James Morrison who is a versatile playmaker able to play almost everywhere between defense and attack lines

I'm listening it at the moment. I think it would be a good thing to put the summary in the description of the video as well as all the people who appeared in the video.

Congratulations all, I'll try to post more often in the future lol I'm very pleased with my award otherwise, thanks to the people who did chose me !

Rennes has the best academy in France for 10 years, nearly all the current players comes from the youth academy. They have a young squad, a quite good 11 but not many susbstitutes who are average anyway. They don't have a striker for years, someone to put the ball in the back of the net. And they target Champions League football for almost 10 years and end every year 4th, 5th or 6th We can wait a little bit to make a final judgment on M'Vila, if he manages to find a club where he'd have a precise role and where he wont play every game, maybe we would see something else than these feelings that he lacks lucidity or that he's just eventually average

Thanks. :blue scalf: Yeah, he even admitted that if he didn't become a pro footballer he'd end up in jail. He's 22, has already 2 kids. He has several brawls on his account and last year his watch has been stoled by hookers in a hotel. Something surprising is that he still has a good mediatic image in France, I mean not only people see him as a fantastic player (and pick him as 1st on the game sheet...) but no one seems to care about his off-pitch scandals

He's definitely overrated. Some may say that it's his 3rd successive season at 50+ games played... But after all those games we didn't manage to find where he's the best. He's pretty average to regain the ball and his passing game contains a lot of waste. Plus, he's unable to put the right tempo or rythm to the play. When his team has to keep the ball he tries a 60 yard diagonal etc... His runs are poor too, useless ones or ones leaving his defense exposed He's not a DM, not a central midfielder, not a box-to-box. At the end of the day he's average in many domains, Rennes became dependent on his form and due to his poor 2nd part of the season, Rennes did one more time crash before the end of the season. I must admit I did like what he did one or two years ago because I though then there was a huge potential to fulfill. Now it seems he's just an average player, with 19 year old weaknesses at 22. I'm afraid France is likely to start with him in the midfield this summer...

I'm just a youth coach, it's enough for the moment lol

Mikel was injured then his father got abducted. You may recognize it's not the best context to be judged, especially because I think Mikel has proven enough his consistency since he's a regular starter. Plus I don't know if you noticed that during the preseason Villas Boas changed the instructions which were given to Mikel in the past. He asked him to continue his runs and to be available higher on the pitch. He asked him to be a target on free kicks and corners (not a bad idea at all), he had a disallowed goal against Kitchee. The problem wasn't to try to enlarge Mikel's palette but rather questionning the relevance of the timing. Villas Boas wanted to try different animations, with different kind of playmakers (Zhirkov as a b2b against Portsmouth, Benayoun number 10 against Kitchee). I think his main mistake was to change also Mikel's role, which gave different roles to everybody whereas it would have been more relevant to maintain something known.

I'm not his biggest fan on earth. But Mikel's bashing is pretty funny considering no one else than Makelele played for the club some years ago... Some may remember Makélélé was criticized at Madrid and that his importance was underlined only when he left. I dont pretend to say Mikel is as good as Makélélé but at the end of the day it's the same process. Though for me, Mikel's absences (due to managers choices or injuries) did siufficiently highlight his importance. But we can't forget to take under consideration that we didn't achieved any success without Mikel since 2008

Anyway I liked him 2 years ago when I did think that because he was just 19 he had a huge potential to fulfill. At the end of the day he has the same weaknesses and scattering on his 3rd season. And he is unable to show how he can play, he's not a DM, he's not a CM, not mix of the 2. He's just one thing: overrated

Yes, let's sign Yann M'Villa !

My answer was in your way lol

Belhanda is a winger who plays behind Giroud since the start of the season. Nothing Yaya Touréesque in his play

I can't stop laughing at the thread's title Mikel is the team's best tackler, he wins everything in the air and has a huge tactical awareness in terms of covering by example. Plus, he's undoubtely the most skillfull midfielder we have at the moment. By skillfull I mean the way to keep the ball under control, the ball protection. That and his near 100% success in his passing game (considering the genuine crap he receives most of the time in an over exposed zone) makes him very solid when it comes to contains a high pressing. I don't understand how so much people can't understand the fact that it's impossible to have 2 offensive full backs (even if under AVB they started from the back instead of sitting upfront like under Carlo, the result on the team balance is significantly the same) without balance provided by a Mikel-like kind of player. A team balance depends of covering relations between the players and the lines of players. Villas Boas was too ambitious and striped Mikel from his options, I start to think that how horrible the team was in transition phasis was not enough to show how important Mikel is. But anyway, it's like the cruisade against "pure goalscorers" like Gomez, Falcao or Huntelaar: people will never be happy with their playing style even with as much goals than games played because it's the mass mediatic formatting that wants that. Of course like everyone, he makes mistakes. But considering the zone he plays in, and the crap passes he receives to provide a quality pass (not the most ambitious, but it's his role*), considering his consistency and strength to regain the ball ; I think the criticism he receives is harsh. *: Two different points: Sergio Busquets is a dick, but an excellent player. His only difference is that his role is a bit wider that Mikel's because he launches attacks and orientates the play from the deep. It's due to the instructions he receives (watch again Lampard's goal at Blackburn if you think Mikel can't play vertically) and the oiled animation making every player moving and providing everytime 3 solutions to the holder of the ball. Romeu showed good things under no pressing like against Foolham in the league cup. But in terms of his passing then, there was several problems: he wanted to build the game from the back: it creates some waste in his passing game and then, new situations to cope with. With Mikel's reliability, we don't often face counter attacks from our own distribution phasis**. Plus, Romeu got upfront sometimes with the ball whereas being the holding man. It created then an inbalance. **: It's like at Swansea City, Allen and Sigurdsson are that great this season because there is a 100% man behind him allowing them only to focus on a pertinent run without keeping an eye on their own opposite man in midfield. At Chelsea, Mikel allows Lampard to score 27 goals in one season in 2010 by example. At Anfield the other evening, our midfield had no density: even Spearing-Henderson seemed more reliable. Romeu and Essien were awful tactically, they were anywhere thet didn't had to be. Suarez leaving his upfront positions aspirated (I don't know if you say that in english lol) the two center backs who were pretty often too high, with at least one of the two in the middle of the field. It's exactly the same when you play PES or FIFA and when you have to defend, you choose your CB to press the adverse midfield holding the ball. The "shift" of marking leaves one striker alone and quite everytime you conceide a goal. And something very interesting, arguably a point to talk about: we qualified to the Champions League final thanks to an excellent pair featuring Lampard and Mikel, very disciplined defensively. And in a quite funny manner, with our 2 poorest tactical midfields, we conceide 4 goals against a team who hasn't even score 1 goal every 5 games at home. I can't imagine Mikel being totally innocent in that process

Gareth Bale is promoting the new Rottenham kit

Like everyone in France, even people who don't care about football usually

Otherwise Belhanda's season is over, he was involved in a fight against Evian Thonon Gaillard (2 reds each, Camara missed a penalty at the 10th minute of stoppage time) and was sent off. I didn't see the video, but he may be suspended as it is in that kind of case

You should go to Giroud's thread, I did answer to another comparison (Gignac) Typical english press Montpellier's president is Louis "Loulou" Nicollin who made up his own garbage collecting buisness 30 years ago. He sponsors all the sports in Montpellier (4 different sports will be qualified for Champions League) and above all he doesn't keep his mouth in his pocket. He's an incredible character, you should google about him, he's just epic. Of course he wasn't serious in asking that fee, Giroud has a 13 or 16m release clause

Clyne, Jarvis, Parker, Steven Fletcher, James Morrison, James McCarthy... I agree that the average english player is overrated and I can do nothing but laugh at Liverpool and the Downings. But there's also quality, but in fact it's just a shame how some british players are overrated whereas others ones are underrated. He had a good potential but I fear that Dalglish's awful management to play him as a starter in that complete mess will affect his carrer and progression. He will become an average player Micah Richards hasn't any tactical awareness and his limits were highligted in Champions League football. Clyne would be a very interesting buy, far better one than Walker. But let's wait how our own Kane and Hutchinson will do in the near future

He's a good player, but frustrating at times. Not yet mature in his game even if he has a real technical quality. Chelsea is a far too big step in my opinion at the moment

There's something else among all the things that are "forgotten" about any Torres analysis. At Loserpool not only he received balls into space but he had 3, 4 or 5 chances per game whereas especially the month before Villas Boas got sacked he hardly did receive anything than a lucky clearance falling on him. Despite his constant movement, he was given no service and especially; no service reflecting any offensive animation preset. But he still got the stick, people's logic at times... Anyway I'm glad not having stopped defending him considering he's starting to show his real worth... But from my point of view it's not really that, he plays well since January after a good start of the season (and before he was benched 10 times in a row). I'm among the ones who thinks that only goals lacked to his games since January, the movement and the chances created for others, assists as well... were already there

I think I can say exactly the same with the opposite meaning as yours