Slam Dunk

He's played in midfield plenty of times.

So is the whole team's. Giving possession to them so cheaply.

Giving the ball away too cheaply. Need to inject a bit of pace.

You mean Gary Cahill who has played at international level with JT & Ash? (I get your point though, I would've expected him to get his debut though, even if just for a few minutes).

Chelsea twitter just tweeted the team. Cahill not even on bench!

Who has the most potential? Probably Neymar. Who do I think will become the best player? Probably Götze. Who is the most likely to join us? Probably Hazard. Who will we get? Probably none of them.

I read a piece about Courtois today, saying that he spoke with AVB about his loan and was asking for it to be extended. Good to hear that the manager is taking personal interest in/speaking to players out on loan.

Don't think the club could have predicted how badly Bolton would be doing this season, Coyle is still a good man-manager. I suppose his loan was unfortunate in the sense that Bolton were in need of form and weren't prepared to play a loanee with little premier league experience. I'm still getting my head around PvA's disaster however, don't see why we'd have loaned him to Wigan if they were prepared to play Figueroa at LB anyway. Again, may be due to the fact that they had a bad start to the season and weren't prepared to risk it. Of course we could loan players to lower league clubs, but if you consider Bertrand, we now have an extremely talented, experienced left back who is unable to get any chances in the first team, and too experienced to go back on loan to anywhere but a top-10 club. Turns out our club is making correct development/progression of youth talents more difficult than they should be.

Money talks... ...Imagine what'll happen if they fail to stay up haha.

Crazy. He's not been any good since his move though. QPR fans will just be hyping about the fact he's come from Milan.

Didn't Luiz play RB for the last few minutes vs. Fulham? (last season at Craven Cottage). That's the only time I recall him ever attacking from the right hand side.

Haha. This thread smacks of the Neymar saga (the first time we tried to sign him)...Everybody was getting their hopes up (me included). The thing with the Neymar 'deal' was, there was more to go on than just Ian McGarry as well!

Stop doing it to yourself mate!

They're fantasy mockups.

I didn't compare them as players, I compared their reputations on the forum as polar opposites despite the fact they both make mistakes. If you actually read my point on the previous page, you can see I didn't put either of them in our strongest defensive unit. In the context of an actual game, I'd still want Luiz to play, simply for the drive forward he provides, something that our current midfield lacks. But defensively speaking, Luiz is too irrational for me, as is Bosingwa.

Don't read too much into it. Isn't Moussa Sow rumoured to be leaving?

Could argue, however, that a defender shouldn't be making the mistakes that Luiz is prone to making (i.e impatience to win the ball too far away from the box). This is what is making them stand out from the other players' mistakes and is the reason he is drawing criticism.

Newcastle set to sign Papiss Cisse for ~£10m. Could form an excellent partnership with Ba for the rest of the season. Good price too.

Not sure if you were referring to me there mate, but I never once said he was a liability. Just pointing out the fact that he's susceptible to mistakes just as much as Bosingwa is, yet most cant wait for Bos to leave, and say Luiz is one of our best defenders.

Sorry to go off topic, but if anyone is on twitter and isn't following Dan Levene, i'd highly recommend you take a look at his feed.

He's a journalist. Used to work for The Sun I believe. Does some work for BBC Radio nowadays. He often claims to have inside information/sources at Chelsea. More often than not however, he tweets rumour as fact or "insider knowledge". Like last summer, when the rumours were spreading that we wanted Van Basten in charge, he tweeted that Hiddink would definitely arrive as DoF, with Van Basten definitely becoming manager.

So Lille, who have acknowledged that Hazard is worth €40m, are willing to sell to us now for £23.25m, instead of waiting until summer when they could get the full amount? Nice one, Ian.

Amin looks so small.

No, they weren't. Ancelotti's words were taken completely out of context.

Now that I agree with you on. Unfortunately, only Lampard and Ramires understand that pressing wins the ball back. Meireles cannot tackle at all, which is my major problem with him in the context of our team, and the wide players are often too slow to cover a counter attack. Another major problem I have with our team, and i'm sure I mentioned this in another thread, is the Mata/Meireles/Cole defensive capabilities on the left hand side. Mata drifts far too central and therefore cannot press quickly enough in the wide areas, Meireles, as i've mentioned, always loses the 50/50 challenges, leaving Cole majorly exposed. Often enough, we can get away with it because Ashely is such an established, experienced defender of the ball. I believe however, if Ash were to become injured (touch wood), then a player such as Ryan would be severely exposed. You can see this problem highlighted when we're going forward. Ashley runs the line, Mata is standing central and is being heavily marked, so Cole's only option is to pass back (often to Lampard who is standing either square to him or behind him). I'd suggest this could be fixed by us signing a left winger who will run the lines and defend appropriately, leaving Mata central and 2 holding players in the centre (i.e Ramires/Lampard/Essien).