Joelasticot

Can't believe they would tweet such nonsense. But let's not forget last year, when went through, we had PSG supporters come to this very forum to congratulate us. One dumb community manager doing an awful and unprofessional job shouldn't make us assume that they are all classless twats when we know for a fact some of them are actually great guys.

Explain what you don't like about the sound of it...

Thanks for the info! So with that in mind, it surely isn't just one of our players getting a new contract, right? Do you or your source know of any other occurrences of this kind of confidential set up in recent history?

Tat' your cheeks ! It's Mikel time !

Until you've been at the 2013 Barcelona vs Bayern second leg cl semi final at the Nou Camp, you haven't seen what a shitty atmosphere in a packed stadium is. Although I guess you could understand why they wouldn't be noisy. I was there and oh my... I was at the opposite end from the away fans and you could even hear the words they were shouting... shocking !

If you look closely at Andre's run for the goal, he starts very early and he just knows when to attack the space in front of him. I think that kind of play was rehearsed in training. If so, I mean if Andre is part of specific rehearsed complex plays, it means two things in my opinion : 1 - Mou is really working hard on our attacking sequences. 2 - Andre will be a starter in most games this season. Then again, I'm pumped and I could be wrong but it sure looks this way to me.

My MOTM is Fernando Torres. As opposed to last season, he didn't fuck up any chances or looked like a complete useless tool on the pitch tonight! I'm very excited to see him warming up the bench for the rest of the season. Clearly one of his best performances in a blue shirt! sarcasm aside the Matic/Fabregas partnership is going to be quite fruitful this season.

He's being quite good at linking up the play in the centre of midfield.

It is pretty safe to say both Benzema and Costa are good players. There is no argument in saying who is the better striker because they are very different in style. I personnaly like Benzema a lot (feel free to use my nationality against me, I'm probably biased as fuck), I think he is the kind of player who works well in tight spaces. And I think Costa is more suited to a counter attacking style feeding of quality passes in behind the defense. So one may argue Costa suits our style better. At least our style from last season. However what we lacked last season was versatility. We just couldn't win some games with that counter attacking style although we did just about fine against the big confident in position sides. So my two cents on this are that Benzema would help us win those games agains tightly packed defenses and help us develop a more calm approach towards those tricky games while Costa would make us stronger in what we are already kind of good at. So the question is : Do you want us to be better at counter attacking big teams or do you want us to smack those litlle sides right in the face? Considering last season's results I'm fairly happy to say I would prefer Benzema over Costa. He would help us adding another sharp edge to our style and enable us to mix it up when the counter attack just doesn't seem to be enough. I'm pretty sure that Lukaku is enough in a counter attacking style with the contributions and runs of our forwards. Then again this is me being a French biased SOB so feel free to disagree.

So proud of the french PSG fans who came on this forum. In the end, it was all good and fun banter, but now they actually come throught with the 'congratz' comments. Simply beautiful spirit, thank you!

It was on a french channel, yesterday. Mou was speaking french to french journalists. His french is not as good as say his english and he never said anything too big. I think the quotes are a bit mistranslated. I saw it when it aired and quite frankly although he said Zlatan couldn't be taken from PSG he didn't say too much about Cavani. Quite frankly he didn't deny or confirm anything, just said what everyone who follows football and who has half a brain would already have known at the time. On a somewhat off topic note though, he did say Eden is absolutely not for sale (wants to keep him for ten years ) and that it was cowardly of Falcao to "choose" (I remember the whole "he had no say in it" controversy) to play for AS Monaco because half the stadium is always empty and the french ligue 1 is weak. That's all there was to it.

That kind of probabilities (at least the way you describe it) only applies to picking random players. It's not such a lottery when you know the player, you see him play week in / week out and you have already assessed what he could bring to the team. We are talking about Luke Shaw, the fact that he is english is not such a factor here. I mean, sure Chelsea needs homegrown players, English players and all that jazz but it is not exactly your point is it? If we want to assess how good he is going to be in the future as an individual player playing for Chelsea FC, then his nationality doesn't matter. Not a single bit. Now, regarding that article, Chelsea FC is a company, pretty much like any other company. They get money in essentially two ways : Donations/investments and earnings. In this article there is no mention of the actual earnings of the club. The shirts and tickets sales, the money acquired with the results in the champions league, the premier league etc... all coming from TV rights, the sponsors and the many other ways that the club uses to earn money. Thinking that every single penny chelsea fc ever spent since roman arrived came straight out of his pocket is pure delusion. Of course, we probably spent more than we earned but every football club at the top level has exceedingly high spendings (all of them not as much as chelsea but still... hell we could even be the top spender in the world it wouldn't change my point). In other words, the turnover or the money going in and out of a club like chelsea is expected to be big, and it doesn't say anything about the actual profit. I could buy a painting for 4 billion euros (more than what Roman supposedly spent) sell it for 4 billion and 1 euros, I'd have spent 4 billion, earned 4 billion and 1 and gained a profit of 1 euros or lost of profit of whatever the number you want. Anyway that kind of article is actually stupid, we don't have access to chelsea FC accounts and to my knowledge no journalist has the personnal number of our chief accountant so there is actually no way to know for sure what he actually spent especially if we take into account sponsoring deals. Sorry for being a bit off topic. Edit : Ok so apparently i went a bit overboard with this and I just checked again and they register an amount as a "loss" for the club. So it's a bit better than what I first thought. Anyway, it still doesn't show how this "loss" amount is obtained and therefore it is not satisfying. We would need to have a more detailed and exhaustive report of the actual earnings in a season to count it as somehow reliable.

I remember how much people on here were pissed off about the club favouring the short term approach for so long. Sending Lukaku out on loan a few seasons in a row is exactly what we were all crying out for in the last few seasons. We are trying to polish what could be a gem in the long run. See the Sturridge case for example : one good loan at Bolton and we brought him back to the first team. Was he ready? maybe... Was the club ready to play him in his favoured position, ready to give him the time a player his talent and his age requires? Absolutely not ! Did he help in a short-term fashion? Yes he did. What ended up happening? He left. Obviously Lukaku is not Sturridge and there are many other factors that have to be account. Regardless, what the club is doing with a guy like Lukaku is obviously influenced by the club's own experience in dealing with young talented strikers. It's really naive to think that the club doesn't use its past experiences to improve in the way we promote young talents in the first team. This situation is really so great for Lukaku and his progression as a player who has the ambition to rival with the greatest. I'm very impressed by how the guy comes back from his mistakes (especially communication-wise) and deals with his situation in very mature fashion. He wants to grow, we are helping him in doing so. I'm very pleased with the way the club are dealing with the situation. We are not sacrificing Romelu's progression in order to strenghten the squad for this season, we are waiting for him to be fully ready to come back (if he ever does). Does that mean I am not frustrated seeing he might help us this year and he can't? Yes I am, as we all are. But I am trying not be deluded because I know thinking long-term comes at the price of short-term efficiency. I do my best to try and remember all the mistakes this club has done in the past regarding these types of situations and I look towards the future. To me, the Lukaku situation is somehow a proof that the club's approach has changed, that mourinho migh very well be here for the long-run. He is willing to sacrifice right now for a better future. Isn't that saying a lot considering how much Mou is attached to his track record and outstanding statistics across Europe? I think it is. And I definetely like what it is saying a hell of a lot!

Expect Mou to take full advantage of this one goal lead with his signature special tactics !!!!

We won't even try to play the midfield battle.

Mou strikes again? I feel he expected such a "ball control lineup" from pellegrini. Anyway I'm confident we can hurt them badly on counters with hazard and schurle.

You are basically saying "what's the point of trying to convince someone to do something? Asking/proposing should be enough." Well... the point is if you need that person to do that "something" you end up having to try and convince him(/her if you know what I'm saying ). Then again it's the same as asking "why do politicians make campaigns? Aren't elections enough? " and many other questions i could list here but i'm sure you get my point. Bottom line is a choice isn't always easy and the way this choice is presented is pretty much one of the determining factors in the choice itself. Edit : reading my post I'm realizing it's not entirely clear. I mean that reflecting on players who changed clubs in the same league and still managed to do good (the quotes from Mou in the article) could give rooney an extra push. Maybe not a deciding one but still, at this point I'm pretty sure Mou would take anything.

Maybe Rooney does.

if that's what you meant then i'm ok with it. I'm sure people on here can come up with more interesting insights than just "Mou is always right". It won't push the discussion very far even though of course i'm just as happy as anyone to see Mou back.

What's the point of even having a forum if we can't share opinions? Quite the frankly, the "in Mou we trust" argument is getting old already. We all have our opinions and we should all be able to share them without being told that we are ridiculous to disagree with a manager. Should I just watch TV and listen blindlessly to everything everyone in the football industry says or does just because football is their life and it's not mine? Should we then say things like "oh well this politician has studied all those things, he must know better, I shouldn't even want to disagree with him" ? Intolerance and one track thinking : that's what's ridiculous !

Well... with that big game against United around the corner. Might be Jose's resting him for that. Torres starting against Hull could as well be because Lukaku was too tired after the friendly vs France. Not saying any of that is actually true but as far as we know right now, he could even be first in line. We'll know more after the united game.

This guy is impressive. We often expect young players to work on their weaknesses and improve as a whole. We expect Lukaku to improve his overall technique, we expect Luiz to become more consistent, we expect mikel to start having more of an impact on a game, we expect hazard to contribute defensively and so on and so forth... However almost noone expected Rami to get so much better every season. He has become more versatile every year even though, at first, we thought he was a very "one dimensional" player. The guy just delivers great performances on a consistent basis. I think his attitude on the pitch says it all, he must be one of the most hard working players in training and I just love the fact that he is playing for Chelsea. I feel Moses could surprise us in the same way, I really liked his attitude in pre season and the way he never gives up on working for the team is very reminescent of Rami's. Bottom line is those guys might not have the same learning curve and such a high ceiling as players like Mata, Hazard, Oscar and KDB but still if they can keep on doin'it the Rami way they could very much be instrumental to the club's sucess in the future. With the club being more of a "meritocracy" with jose back, it could only mean more motivation for the hard working players to break into the first XI.

Come on guys, can't you think of a more important eddie? here's a hint :

It's completely irrelevant to any kind of discussion we might want to have, but I'm just so excited for this new season I thought I might share a funny thought. In times like this, with all the new players and the new possibilities it brings in terms of lineups and such. I have to say I miss the Carlo days when the lineup for the game was made public early. Go Chelsea !

Why does every transfer saga have to be so dramatic? Bale is not Wayne ; Tottenham isn't Manc United ; Real madrid isn't Chelsea. We all remember Levy was a cunt to Modric and how difficult of a manager Villas Boas can be when you don't agree with him (cf. Alex and Anelka), I guess maybe it is the only solution for tottenham players who want out to act so cunty. Fighting fire with fire... If Rooney ever comes, I'll be glad he would not have had to make a fool of himself with things like going all out in the media or refusing to play and train... Situations are different. I wouldn't draw any conclusions from such unimportant facts. Bottom line is that the most important things happen behind closed doors.