EskWeston

I have always felt, especially since Guus has been involved that Rijkaard is our most likely target for many reasons. Once again the Ancelotti story in the papers is somewhat of a smokescreen. Especially given that Ancelotti has said that he wants to stay and that he has not yet spoken with Chelsea. Chelsea would not be waiting to decide on a new man. Once Scolari left the wheels will have been put in motion to get the deal for the new manager done and dusted.

Well he needs to be given the chances to show what he can do. I can understand Hiddink being more cautious as he needed to get results to turn our season around. But there were plenty of times when Scolari should have given him more minutes, many more minutes. Di Santo isn't a youth product, we should be starting him in some games. Especially in the cups against lower league teams.

Only in the sense that we not sign any Africans. It would be a little crazy of us to sign another holding midfielder purely for 1 months cover!!!! If it was me i would either ammend our formation during that time or play Jack Cork there or Michael Mancienne during that period...

I wouldn't think it will dictate our transfer activity. But losing both Essien and Mikel for the ACN is a worry. I certainly cannot see us signing any more africans because of the ACN, to lose 4 during the season is already too many.

A lot depends on the new manager. All of them are good enough to stay in our first team and get their experience there, but they need to be given their chances. Di Santo certainly should have had a lot more chances than he has been given. It is very possible that a few premiership clubs would be able to gurantee them first team football. Certainly Mancienne would be wanted by Wolves. Di Santo could be a leading striker to plenty of Premiership clubs. And Stoch would do well also, especially considering he is being called up more by the Slovakian national team.

if it is a loan, and i would rather he stayed. It has to be either the premiership or a top European league as a player like Di Santo would be wasted in the Championship.....

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So if Ancelotti does come to manage us, according to the media we can expect to sign: David Beckham Andrea Pirlo Clarence Seedorf Jermaine Pennant Emmanuel Adebayor Happy days......

It is clear our squad needs looking at. And hopefully we will finally get that this summer. We need more quality and we need to bulk up in certain areas. We need to do it now with a new man comming in otherwise we will struggle again next season.

Fantastic for him to pick up the goalden boot, was fully deserved. When in pre season he was banging in goals left right and centre we all hoped he would be able to carry that into the season, and he most certainly has done. It hasn't been the most normal season for him, playing out wide ect. but he has been top class for us.

Sturridge is an interesting signing because he is English, and we will once again either need to bring through our own English talent or sign some because homegrown rules will soon be in the Premiership and FIFA are doing everything they can to make teams have even more. Our interest in Arnautovic seems very real. Arnautovic is 20 years old, Sturridge is 19, Di Santo is 20. Playing 1 striker (assuming that is what the new manager will do also) means that ideally we would have 3 "out and out" strikers in the squad. At the moment it is Drogba, Anelka and Di Santo. We most certainly would not let Drogba and Anelka go and have the 3 above as they are too young to solely lead the line for us. And it would be unlikely that we would have 5 strikers in the squad.

I would be quite happy to see us sign sturridge. But as it looks like we are going to sign Arnautovic, and with Didier, Anelka and Di Santo currently on the books we will have too many strikers, especially as we only play 1.

Lets hope this is just a joke or a really stupid journo. It would be a very dark day for this club if David Beckham ever joined!!!!!

I wouldn't think that is a definate. It could be Jose just playing games. Or the players asking Jose opinion just in case, i wouldn't think it likely that the players know yet who the new manager is anyway.

No arguments with any of the awards to be honest, all fully deserved. With regards to Mikel getting young player of the year, even though he is "young" he is a fully established first team player with bundles of experience and i think the young player of the year should really go to a player comming through or one who has had an exceptional season at youth/reserve level. Mancienne breaking into the first team with half a dozen or so appearances is massive and fully deserving of young player of the year. Good to see Ash getting an award, he most certainly deserves it. Him and Frank have been top top class from day 1 this season.

Bosingwa has had a good first season. He has had periods where he has struggled at times, but for his first season he has done very well indeed. We want to see him build on that for next season and really become the right back we have looking for seemingly forever.

Carvalho is a very real possibility to move on this summer for a number of reasons. 1. Age - into his 30's now and it is no secret that we want to bring the average age of our squad down, we are very strong with centre backs so Riccy could be prone to being moved on. 2. Injuries - Suffering more and more with injuries, which happens to players as they get older, and we want to minimise regular injuries if at all possible. 3. Quality is position - I think it is going to be very hard to have Terry, Carvalho, Alex and Ivanovic all in our squad next season. All of them would be first choice for most teams and i am sure would be be happy with limited playing time next season. 4. Mancienne - Everyone would like to see Mancienne come through, and the only way to do that is for him to be 4th choice centre back. It is also anther homegrown player who has great quality and can grow into a top top player. To allow him to progress we need to let one of our current centre backs go. Unless Alex or Ivanovic are desperate to leave i think we would probably let Carvalho go.

Seedorf will not be joining us 100%..... We will be linked with every single AC Milan player over the comming weeks. And it will all be tosh.

We really have to keep hold of Mancienne, he is quality player who now needs to step up to our first team permanantly. As i have said in various threads it is becomming more and more imperitive that we have homegrown and English players in our squad. We have already seen that Mancienne is already more than capable of playing in our team and we need to be keeping him with us.

Why not get both of them, having wingers who are dangerous is vital to our formation (which will more than likely stay the same next season). J.Cole, Young, Zirkov & (Malouda, Stoch, Sinclair, Kalou????)

It was an excellant game to be fair and we played very very well indeed. We were unlucky not to score a hatfull, but the performance was certainly impressive. Good to see Anelka scoring again and also putting in a very good performance, the forward 3 of Malouda, Drogba and Anelka has really hit some impressive heights at the end of this season. Would have liked to have seen at least one of Di Santo, Sinclair or Stoch get 20/30 minutes seeing how comfortable we were and the way the game was so open it would have been great for them.

The club will most certainly be looking to bring up the English quota in the club. Especially with the Premier League looking to adopt a "homegrown" quota similar to the UEFA one, and FIFA trying to force through and even tougher one. So i would not be suprised at all to see us sign players like Young and Sturridge, and trying to include players like Mancienne, Cork and Bertrand more in the squad.

The Sun seem to think that it is a done deal today, time will tell.

Either or both would be fine. Both have the attributes we need in the wings, both of them have some question marks over playing at the highest level, but they both also have bundles of potential.

We need a strong manager who knows what he wants from this team and knows how to manage the players to get the absolute best out of them. We have an incredibly strong team which will be refreshed in the summer and make us even stronger, and we need a strong manager to take us forward.