Tomo

I think they will win the Bundesliga too might put a cheeky £5 on it (ill explain my reasoning or it in a more appropriate thread sometime) but with the CL as us and Liverpool have proved in the last decade, you only have to be in it to win it, literally.

I did one this time last year (and called the top five right ) i thought with the season just over a week away as it stands what would be your prediction's for the PL table. 1. Chelsea I believe we can do it this year, Jose Mourinho in and we have such young talented players but also backed up with lots of experience, if Rooney comes in and proves me wrong, then i can't see anything stopping us. 2. Manchester City Will run us close and in the head to head's could possibly still get the better of us due to Yaya still be being around, but with Jose here i think we will drop less silly points than City will, which could be the difference. 3. Manchester United I think David Moyes will struggle initially, the jump in expectation's is huge and i think Utd could find themself's off the pace pretty early, i think they will recover to finish in the top 3 but whether Moyes is there to oversee it remains to be seen, i predict a early struggle for United and Moyes. 4. Arsenal Whatever means how, Wenger will always get them in the CL. 5. Tottenham They have brought well this summer but with Bale's likely exit i think they will narrowly lose out to Arsenal, again. 6. Liverpool I still don't think they are much kop (excuse the pun) i don't think there as close to top 4 as their fans especially make out, and the fact they appear to be trying to loan Chelsea youngsters shows how far they have fallen. But i think Everton's will take time to adapt to Martinez and because of that, will get 6th but still well short of the North London duo. 7. Everton I don't get the fuss over Martinez, the four season's before he took over at Wigan, the Latics had one relegation scare, he came in and they were fighting relegation every season. However Everton are still significantly better than the teams about to me named below them, so Martinez will have to be a real dope not to get them atleast 7th. 8. Swansea Best of the rest, Laudrup is building a nice little side together and have made a top, top signing in Bony, but while being the best of the 2nd tier, they are still along way from the quality of the top seven sides. 9. Stoke I feel they will be the West Brom of this season, Tony Pulis ran his course and they have now have a new manager with fresh ideas. People look to harshly on Mark Hughes's time at QPR (Harry Houdini didn't do much better, did he?) and forget that he did a fantastic job at both Blackburn and Fulham, i think he will do the same with The Potters. 10. West Ham Allardyce may not play the prettiest football on the eye, but you cannot argue his football get results. 11. Norwich City The club have brought very well in the summer, Hooper more than makes up for losing Holt, and i think they will have a really good season and just miss out on top half. 12. Aston Villa Things were slowly coming together for Villa at the end of last season and i think Lambert will build on that, things are looking up for this young Villa side, especially with Benteke sticking around. 13. West Brom I think they might struggle initially without Lukaku this season, Anelka is well past his best and won't make that much of an impact (think Hasselbaink at Charlton), the onus will be on Long to score the goals that Romelu would have, don't think they will face relegation fears but they won't be competing for "the best of the rest" title again. 14. Southampton Play good football, have a good manager and there will be a couple of games this season where they sweep the opposition aside, but they are nowhere near consistent enough for me to make a challenge for the top half, they won't go down but they won't be going anywhere either. 15. Cardiff City Promoted easily last season and i think the addition of Caulker and the experience of the likes of Craig Bellamy especially will help see the Welsh outfit over the line this campaign. 16. Newcastle This will be another nervous season for the Magpies, the uncertainty at the club surrounding the Kinnear appointment will have a season of unhappy fans and with it a season of struggle, which they will again, just escape from. 17. Fulham I saw a few of their games at the back end of last season and they were absolutely dreadful, luckily they were well safe before then, for me they will be the surprise struggle-rs this season and just pip Crystal Palace at the end. 18. Crystal Palace They will huff and they will puff, but i think like their last PL stint their lack of PL quality will make them just fall short, especially now Zaha is gone. 19. Sunderland I think Di Canio's star will fade, he was perfect at the time last season but it's a different job now, he hasn't brought that great this summer and i think it's only a matter of time before he alienates players, can see them going down. 20. Hull Without meaning to sound harsh, how the fuck did this outfit get promoted? they are absolutely awful, they had like a single figure goal difference in the Championship. Watching this team will be painfull, they have Derby 2008 mark 2 written all over them, i will be surprised if they get past 15 points. FA Cup: Chelsea Carling Cup: West Ham Champions League: Borussia Dortmund Promoted from the Championship: QPR, Watford, Bolton (Wigan's European games will cost them promotion). Surprise off the season: Yeovil to finish mid table in the Championship.

Add Valencia in that aswel that is 6 while the PL has 7, West Brom and Swansea aren't actually very good for reason's i have already underlined.

As for Bale himself he has gone from being the most under-rated player in world football to the most over-rated. He didn't get the credit he deserved for years, now people are suddenly realizing it and it's gone way,way too far the other way. He has got a healthy number of goals this season but what's overlooked is he has pretty much given up his assist game to do so, if you look at overall points (goals and assists) Bale got 34 (26 goals and 8 assist's) while Hazard got 38 (13 goals and 25 assist's) Mata got 55 (20 goals and a whooping 35 assist's). So in terms of goals Bale is the best but put goals and assist's into the equation (infact in an attacking midfielder you should look at assist's as much if not more than goals) than Hazard is actually ahead of him and Mata is in a different league. Infact bringing just goals into the equation then the much maligned Walcott is only 5 behind Bale, i couldn't get Theo's assist stats but if it's 14 or more then he has more "points" than the Welshman also. Bale is a great player, no doubt about it but an £85m price tag is absurd and if at any point Hazard wants to go to Madrid i hope the club use the Bale transfer to make Eden (or even by those stats Mata if he ever for any reason wanted to return to his boyhood club) the first £100m player.

Although i agree that Hazard will eventually become better than Bale if he isn't already, the PL for me is not that much better than the Spanish if it even is. it's the most over-rated league in world football. Below Liverpool the teams are shite, some may say Swansea but for every good results (Arsenal away) they had last season they had a shocking result (Fulham at home). Teams will have a run of good form (West Brom at the start of the last season) but over-all no team including WBA/Swansea below are very good and the overall during a 38 game season it shows.

Was so excited when we got him, a good left back who scores goals. His first month resulted in a header cleared off the line by Ljungberg against Arsenal then a goal against Spurs. Were did it all go wrong

Im not sure if it's well known, but one of Roman's first moves when he took over Chelsea was to call Ron Harris in and offer him a job in hospitality at Chelsea. Bang goes the myth he doesn't care the club's history, next?

I don't like these type of threads tbh, we should know as much as anyone it's a squad game these days, what's the most that any one lineup will play together at the same time (especially now we have a big squad)? 8 maybe 10 at most. We should use different lineup's depending on who we are playing, against Hull who will park the jumbo jet infront of their goal, the best option would probably be a Lamps and MVG pivot with the 3 of the Mazacaryne playing. At Old Trafford i would probably go for Schurrle/KDB with Hazard and Oscar with 2 of Mikel, Rami and MVG in the pivot and teams that would say play 3-5-2 (imagine for one moment Martinez's Wigan were still a PL team) then it would probably be a good idea to play one of Moses and Schurrle, if not both due to the fact you need width to counter a 3-5-2 (case in point our 1-0 defeat to Liverpool in 2011 were we had no answer to Quuen Cashback's 3-5-2).

Forget tippy tappy football, the confidence and assurance Jose brings is priceless.

If i had to choose a game this match reminded me off from Jose's first spell incharge it would be the 2-0 win at Highbury. Couple of sketchy moments in the first half (Henry hitting the post, Ivanovic's last ditch clearance) but as soon as we took the lead we never looked like giving it away.

I hate seeing him under-rated because he's not technically all there. he's going to be vital for us especially in a Mourinho team. The obsession with footballing footballers is beyond annoying.

Spot on, i have been saying for years that every season in the Roman era our first Xl has been better than United's (apart from 10/11), but there's a reason they win the league's and we win the cup's. As much as i love the cup win's in recent season's i would happily see less of them for sustained league success.

Maybe she should fly back to England and wait for Martin Lipton after he makes his inevitable back page spread saying Luiz is leaving.

but, but, but, but Moyes and Pellegrini would provide us with longevity

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2384585/Liverpool-hoping-bring-Chelsea-defender-Kenneth-Omeruo-loan.html Most likely bullshit because their's no quotes, but if Liverpool do loan in any of our young players, will that finally be an admission of their reduced status?

Marin and Benayoun replaced by De Bruyne and Schurrle, and we thought last summer was a successful window. That's not even starting on the changes elsewhere in the team, including the dugout.

To give Lukaku a few minutes.

Is it me or is Hazard's tracking back getting better by the game?

Ba has been here 6 months, considering all the backing off Torres in the same time (when he was only here for 6 months) it's only fair Ba gets the same, no?

Now we are entering the 'business' stage of pre season, this game and Madrid we can make some fair assessment's on our squad (i won't include Inter because they were tragically bad).

This opinion probably belong's in unpopular views, but assuming we don't get another forward in, i think Ba will make more of an impact this season then general opinion would think.

I know it's only pre season, but that was a typical Jose Mourinho team performance.

not playing tonight = getting sold #medialogic expect a back page spread from Martin Lipton tomorrow.

Sorry for the late response Skipper i have stayed away from this for a while and as much as i hate Suarez myself and i am agreeing in tandem with every other mister meaner he does, i just can't condemn him for this. If that goal went in his own country would have gone out of the tournament, any one would have done the same in that situation and it's easy for us to say no we wouldn't but our instints will make us do it, i have done it myself before and that's playing pub league, let alone the biggest stage off all. You get what you deserve for doing that, a red card and a ban, its up to the player then to punish you but scoring the pen, which Gyan didnt' do. Also what's never really noted is that there was the other player on the line that was looking at doing the exact same thing and De Jong admitted before the World Cup final that if he was in a similar situation, he would have had no hesitation doing the same thing.