lionsden

We can't afford to pay £10m for one of Belgian's brightest prospect and arguably the best left winger in Belgian league whilst we have already had a bid of £18m rejected for fucking Perreira, a player we can, quite frankly, do without. . . . .can someone justify this madness to me other than another age/experience argument

Yes but my assertion still stands regarding Torres being past his prime just like Ronaldinho, kaka, Robinho, adriano,Ribery,Stan collymore, Michael Owen et al.. . players who peaked too early.

We need a CMF and the article claims Ribery, an injury prone winger whose quality and performance over the past 18 months has gone pear shaped, has been identified as Modric's alternative. Which leads me to the conclusion that Its either the report is completely false or the people in charge of transfers at Chelsea have been smoking some strong Jamaican weed. I just hope the former scenario is the case.

Obviously DD and Torres are too old/established to be a loan candidate. I only made that statement to stress the importance of retaining Lukaku this season for 3 main reasons. 1. Our first choice strikers are showing major signs of deterioration. We need alternative quality striker(s) on the bench as plan B should (Torres and Drogba) continue to perform poorly. 2.Drogba and Kalou will leave for the ANC in Jan and we need a striker of Lukaku's quality to fill the void. 3. The most obvious one is the age factor. DD and Torres have more or less past their prime and the Belgian has more to offer in the short and long run imho.

And how will this loan move enable him get a work permit? Why would his case be different from that of Radjkovic since they are/were in similar situation.

Don't you know the operations of this club is based on sentimental values. . .even Bruce Buck alluded to it. We love to retain our old players/core of JM's team like a treasure in a museum. The problem is players, unlike treasures, depreciate in value and quality overtime.

I had rather send Torres and DD out on loan and play this kid and sturridge week in week out.

Excellent post. I will also like to think that is the case as things tends to become chaotic as we approach the end of the transfer window . I find it extremely hard to believe the rumours myself that AVB is in demand for the same player he offloaded out of Porto last season. He must not have rated Miereles highly in the first place to take such decision. Most importantly, he's a B2B midfielder. Even the least knowledgeable football pundit knows our most pressing need at this time is a creative midfielder. For those two reasons alone, we should disregard the rumor.

I gave up hope when we placed a bid for Perreira. . .nothing surprises me anymore about our transfer dealing and those who will find a way to defend everything relating to Chelsea. You can almost picture this News: Chelsea fc are on the verge of signing Peter Crouch some TC members: AVB knows what he's doing.. . .Crouch wouldn't be a bad addition.

We were generally pleased with the Mata signing. . . .if the player we are after was Hazard/moutinho instead of Perreira, I'm sure the reaction would be very different

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The Torres apologists can continue making excuses the same old excuses for him. we have been on this issue for 6 months and quite frankly I'm bored of the discussion. It's a waste of precious time and energy going over the same shit.

Sometimes I suspect some of these Torres apologist are actually on the Spaniards payroll. The pathetic excuses has been that overwhelming.

In a fair and democratic world, Sturridge and Lukaku should be ahead of Torres and Drogba in the pecking order and Lampard wouldn't be in the starting line up. But unfortunately that is not the case with football and at Chelsea. I would love to see this against sunderland .......................................Romeu . . . . .. .... . . .Ramires. . . . . . . . . . . Josh . . . . . . . . .Sturridge. . . Lukaku. . . . .Mata

AVB should summon the courage to drop him to the bench and only introduce him in latter stages of games until he's able to justify being a starter.

Great post We could pay £100m for Heskey and people had still make excuses for his poor performances. . pathetic isn't it. It's no secret Man city, last season, under Mancini's guidance where overly defensive and short of creativity with a midfield trio of De Jong, Yaya toure and Barry (3 defensive MF) Yet a certain Carlos Tevez still managed to bang in bucket load of goals which earned him the golden boot. Add to that, he achieved this despite playing as a lone striker for most of the season. Like you rightly asserted, a £50m striker should be able to create his own goals. I'm sick of all these excuses. What happened to running at defenders, cutting inside for a shot at goal, shooting accurately from long range, chasing after every lose ball (Tevez comes to mind) and anticipating potential weakness to exploit (mata, Raul), getting into the right areas/positional awareness (all hail Raul, Nistelroy, Chicharito, inzaghi) what happened to that? What is he doing to enhance his own performance and form?, just waiting until we sign Xavi, Iniesta and Ozil? I have no sympathy for someone who's not willing to grab the bull by the horn and take some initiative.

Maybe if we deviate from the norm and do something differently by putting up impressive performances, that would heighten people's confidence in the team. in terms of performance, at the moment, we are on par with Wolves- they play boring football and have the same amount of points as Chelsea.

+10000000 I said it earlier that the addition of Modric wouldn't have a colossal impact on the team unless we change our style of play to pass and move. what baffles me is these lot are professionals and get paid ridiculous sums of money just to stand on the pitch like the statue of liberty and pass the ball backward and sideways. Even my 10 year old nephew understands the concept of pass and move football better than our players.

hahaha That's brilliant . Even Turnbull is creative, he just expresses it in a different way.

AVB stated in his post match interview yesterday that we displayed a good 90 mins performance against Norwich. That indicates he's somewhat happy with the quality of football we displayed in our last match. I won't hold my breathe.

Utd City Chelsea Liverpool

I absolutely agree with you. Below is AVB's response to the game "I think all the players are creative, they just express themselves in different ways" "I think we looked better overall on our 90-minute performance. We had two good second halves against Stoke and West Brom. We had a good 90-minute performance" It's extremely worrisome that the manager seem satisfied with that pitiful performance. doesn't it.

Whether we like to admit it or not, Torres has become a major liability to the club.

The problem is, The Chelsea Board are not willing to accept this fact considering his hefty transfer value. . . if he was cheaply acquired, I can assure you, he would have been offloaded to some club in Kuala Lumpur by now. AVB will still be expected to play him and get the best out of the £50m investment to the detriment of other more deserving options on the bench. Next time we should evaluate carefully and exercise better judgment before we splash £50m on a player that hasn't shown any form to command 1/2 of his transfer fee 10 months prior.

He landed very awkwardly. for a minute I feared he might have broken his neck but thankfully it was only a minor injury