rantdeville

Gotta admit, I'm almost impressed the way he can consistently keep blowing.

What a bargain, let's sign him up

I was just wondering the same thing. It's quite a ceremony.

"Theres is no big club in the world that has an academy to produce players only with the perspective of selling them [sic]" Maybe we are amidst a changing of the guard? Seeing as the responses above are showing figures far below my projected thoughts and supplemented with the notion that academy costs do not factor into FFP but profits do, then it might just be feasible that generating a stream of revenue from sale of youth might take priority while actually bleeding them into top-tier, first team players is more of a bonus, rather than requisite condition to see his business model succeed. £4-£5m/year seems like a number that can be recouped with the sale of just a few players. Speaking mostly about under 21s moreso than the odd case like bertrand who has been costing wages every year while not necessarily the picture of success in terms of appearances.

You do raise a good point that was overlooked, the actual cost of running an academy. I wonder if anyone has actual numbers that an operation like that takes to run? It def cannot be neglected or overlooked. If it is, in fact, a lower cost operation than what we're thinking, maybe it could be recouped with the sales of younger players. Those small gains from players like Stoch, Cork, Bruma, Torë, etc might have actually offset costs to a degree. What's the minimum professional contract value for the youth players? Does it factor into FFP?

Damn. Unacceptable is right. And I know I will have my doubters on here, but I'm highly confident when I say that many of, if not all, the vices we witnessed from whatever 3 AMs we fielded at any given time last season can and will be alleviated with the corresponding increase in quality we are going to see up front. Only time will tell, but man the upside of these additions is monumental.

It's...just...been so long... Collectively we can't even wrap our heads around a striker who cracks 20 goals in the PL, in a season. Considering "he-who-shall-not-be-named" has scored 20 goals. In the PL. over the course of 4 years. I'm thinking the last one to do it was Drogba (correct me if I'm wrong) in 09-10?

Disenchantment aside, I've begun to agree with you. We're gonna pioneer a new reality show that's gonna air on television called "Flip This Footballer!" The plot will be based around the heavy turnover in the Chelsea youth ranks and the evolution of the "glass-ceiling" (which has developed more organically out of necessity, rather than intention) and the aptly-named Football Factory that is being run, whereby the club has chosen to implement a revolving-door system of purchasing fringe youth players, underlining quality moreso than quality in their search for the purposes of making a large number of small profits instead of hoping and praying for the one special talent to break through. ... Of course, I'm kidding. I think we, as fans, would do well to (like Bir_CFC said) detach ourselves emotionally and remain objective with these youth players, for our own well-being, of course. From a business perspective it does seem relatively low-risk and appears to be scalable, and for all intents and purposes may be running perfectly in their eyes. After all, at the most fundamental level and ignoring costs, selling 10 players at £5m pounds profit and winning a couple (FA Youth Cups in the process) does look good. And who knows, after 10 years or so, the allure of this youth machine they're running does increase considerably when they're chasing the signature of the next 15 year old messi and they can bring a handful of accolades to the table and say, "this is what we do..." Not dissimilar from the manner in which we attained Eden Hazard (much older at the time, of course), but he did say that he was joining the reining champions of europe, which I'm not too confident we could have done sans the trophy with the big ears.

13-15 league < 20 all competitions

A pretty common theme in the past 3 years.

Geezus. Starting a season without the "pressure" of playing Torres over another striker is like a new signing in and of itself for Mourinho. Just take him.

This just means more minutes for Torres. G**dammit.

For all his virtues, and let it be known I support the isht outta this guy, I do remember him losing the ball quite a bit. For the life of me I can't recall which game it was against Barcelona, sometime during midseason maybe, but I recall watching him and thinking to myself, "holy hell this guy cannot keep the ball with his back to goal." In that game, there was a spell of pressure where Atletico were absorbing an attack which might have lasted a solid 2 minutes straight, and Costa might have gotten the ball 3-4 times and all he had to do was hold the ball for 5 seconds while someone ran off him, and each time he'd commit a turnover. And Barca would be back in. Granted, a VERY limited sample size to pull from on my part, but can't help to think we'd get punished for that against a more direct team (City, Liverpool, etc). Maybe Drogba just spoiled me. Who knows.

How can you not just love this guy. Whether you're a coach, a fan, a player, whatever...he's just a boss.

Haha very well played.

I love playing FIFA with the offsides rule turned off and not telling my opponent, usually my brother. He gets FURIOUS, absolutely livid when I score and the player was miles offside lol. I always just shake my head like, "I dunno man, coulda gone either way...tough call" He's caught on lately. lol it's a completely different game with no offsides.

Willian has all the tangibles to take on defenders. So quick, creates space for himself a lot. I feel like we all watched it over the span of the entire season with Chelsea. As soon as he gets the ball on the side, he squares up against the defender. Jabs his feet around really quickly, and pokes the ball into space past the first defender. Jumping over the defenders outstretched leg. Unfortunately, this is where he can get a little frustrating, he cuts the first defender up across the field, then cuts again, and again, and again, and again until he is pretty much dribbling across the pitch dodging tackles lol and then he finds Hazard with a safe pass who sometimes does the same thing the other way haha It's somewhere between the second and fifteenth touch across the width of the pitch that I sorta feel a true "playmaker" would have the vision to play a dangerous, risky ball vertically/through the cutback lane created by chasing defenders (rather than horizontally). Something Silva, Mata (used to), Iniesta, Messi, etc. There is a little sense of enjoyment/excitement watching defenders pounce hopelessly trying to tackle, I'd hate to have to mark him 1v1 lol could just be me.

If you can't end the night with a 10, you can still conquer five 2's and call it even. As long as your buddies don't see you.

Thumbs up, just for the Obi wan Kenobi reference.

In his (Chelsea?) defense (no pun intended), I sort of interpreted him saying that Mata worked hard in defense in a different way. I remember one of Mata's first games for United some of the commentators were analyzing the shape of the United team as it absorbed pressure on a few occasions, and they picked out and highlighted Mata on the reel and it was kinda funny to watch as he scrambled around desperately trying to find someone to mark. I mean, love the guy to death, but jumping into Moyes system for him it was like watching him chase a chicken around the pitch. He was turning in circles, closing down needless spaces, marking players who were already marked, it was just funny. His effort = huge His effective defending = much less huge He definitely expended a lot of energy, it was just...misdirected, to put it lightly. Idk, maybe he's gotten better lately. I think you are right, though, Hazard was a bit more effective in defending, albeit didn't work as hard.

Origi was more dynamic, but if football was always a game of sitting next to the last defender, sprinting and chasing 40 yards onto balls down the channel with huge amounts of space, taking 1-2 touches and shooting as hard as you can, I'm not sure there'd be many better than Lukaku in the world. Unfortunately, that's just one aspect of a strikers game. The rest of it he's very, very mediocre. It doesn't add up to him being a great player, but doesn't mean he's awful either. He's a quintessential situational player, when the game lines up in such a way that is conducive to his strengths, makes all kinda of sense to bring him on. Otherwise, Origi (or Benteke) all day.

Not exactly sure if you were speaking satirically that Barca, Real, Bayern, City have better AMs on their benches than ours on the field for emphasis, but I'd be slightly hard pressed to believe that Pedro/Affelay, Jesé Rodriguez/Isco, Shaqiri/Thiago (Gotze...ya, I'll concede at times), or Navas/Milner are actually that much better all-around than Willian/Oscar/Schurrle (at some things, like vision and creativity, yes). However, they do have certain better AMs on the field than we do if we were to go like-for-like. But realistically, which of those teams absorb as much pressure as part of their game plan as we do, and have their wide® players put as much pressure on the full backs. I say "as much..." because obviously a certain amount of pressing on the fullbacks is going to be an inherent part of the AMs game for all those teams, but I feel like Jose expects an extra level of pressure from his. Just a thought. Then again, if you weren't being "literal" than jokes on me lol Maybe you can elaborate?

Let no other "action" set precedent for this incident in your mind. Especially one as convoluted as an elbow thrown during an entanglement in 1994. An entanglement in midfield where the two players are intertwined, and Leonardo while looking away, swings an elbow backwards and hits an opponent, leading to the aforementioned onslaught against him. And you compare it to Suarez knowingly coming from behind the defender, looking down, and sinking his teeth into his shoulder? No. Absolutely. Mutually. Exclusive events. And if you consciously, honestly equate one to the other in your own mind, then I think there's a lot of questions to be asked of you ethically, intellectually, and logically. Here's a concept for you that we can circle back to: precedent. In fact, he's made it easy for you! He's set it himself. He bit someone before. No kidding tho, he did it TWICE. As in he consciously placed his teeth into someone's flesh, and--to whatever degree--bit down. I'm going to tell you, because judging by the nature of your post, you don't seem to understand this rudimentary concept, but that's just not ok. By virtue of the game, arms swing, legs fly...hell, it's a kicking sport, heads collide, all these occur during the course of a game allowing for the possibility, or more aptly, probability that one of those things might strike another human being. And when it does happen, based on the severity of the incident (here we go again with that concept...precedent, Exhibit A: Leonardo 1994)...they try and punish the alleged attacker. It's actually a serious legal concept wherein crimes are punished based on the nature of the severity, the more serious the crime, the more serious the punishment, termed RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE). But I digress. NEVER, EVER is it excusable to grab someone with your hands, open your mouth, place it on someone's body, and bite down. There is no place in the game for it, we can stop elbows flying by tying players arms to the side during a match, or shaving the elbow bones of footballers so they're merely swinging sacks of flesh around, but that would detract from the game, and probably by painful and maybe unconstitutional, hell idk. But nay, we rely, as passionate fans and devoted followers, on a fleeting sense of humanity that a glimmer of compassion remains in a footballers soul that during the course of a match, while bloods pumping and grass is a flyin', they take a moment and think to themselves and say, "hey, maybe I shouldn't bite this person in front of me, it's probably not a good idea." And you know what? I feel like EVERY SINGLE DAMN PERSON associated with the game seems to abide by this unwritten law of cannibalism. Except for two, you and Suarez. So In closing, no, Leonardo's elbow hitting Tab Ramos in the face in 1994 does not serve to provide the FIFA committee with an incident by which to judge the seriousness of this most recent event. In no way, shape or form. Let Suarez's predilection for allowing the world to revisit this incident be the only precedent we use. The first time, it was his fault it happened. The second time, it was strike two and punished accordingly. The third time, it's our fault it happened. He has a serious issue, as might anyone else who can seemingly justify this behavior. Rant over.

Such a steaming pile of poop

No way. There's no way he did it again. He's got a serious issue.