CHOULO19

Here's a crazy thought: What if there is no "fashion battle" between Jose and Pep and Jose has just reached an age where he no longer wants to spend time on things like that and would rather just wear something comfortable. Now for goodness sake, can we get back to talking about actual football? I feel like I lost a pound of testosterone reading the past couple of pages!

I'd be very disappointed with that. I think Thibaut is worth much more and with the signing of Zouma, Varane would make little sense. I'd take 35m for him, though, and we can use it to buy the striker of our choice.

The rumor is completely ridiculous, Zanetti would never leave Inter. I'm just saying why they said he will take up the sport director spot here.

I think that is because he already does something similar for Inter. A LOT of their transfers are down to him. Basically all the Argentinians.

Thanks for making that report even though you probably already knew it isn't what most here want to read. We want to read that Lukaku will come back and solve all of our striker problems, although what you wrote is probably spot on, imo.

I'm talking about the decision to send him out on loan. Of course the decision to send him to Forest was wrong and I criticized it from day one. It was obvious that they just wanted him for publicity and not for football and we just sent him there because they payed an extra 5K/wk of his salary than Watford did. The right decision was to send him back to Watfprd where he fit in and already knew the players. Regardless, they spent 4-5 seasons of being mid-table to build this team. Do we want that here? Essien is our fifth choice CM, and yet I have no doubt that in, let's say, and FA cup semifinal, if the choice was between him and Chlobah, 99% of managers would go with Michael. As for Mikel and Torres, the club and manager(s) obviously don't share your opinion or they would have been replaced in the team. Of course age is not the only factor, but it is a big factor because it is proportional to experience and often consistency. Would we be looking to bring Shaw to be in our first team squad if Southampton had played the past two season in the championship? Not a chance. We're buying him because he is proven and has the experience at the top level. That is the main point. MVG had two seasons playing in the Eredivisie, just like Oscar had experience playing in the Brazilian league and Azpi in the Ligue 1. They all had played enough at a good competitive level to be able to come here and perform fairly consistently. Of course stability plays a factor. I said that in the first post. But it's not the only factor. Even with all the stability and quality in the world, it is incredibly unlikely that Jose, or any other manager, would throw into the team a player that has not had experience playing at a good competitive level unless the rest of the teams in the league lose quality and we become like Juve are in Serie A or Bayern in the Bundes Liga. They will still need to go out and loan until they become mature and consistent enough to come into a top team like Chelsea.

I think we can definitively say that Lukaku would have got much less time than he has gotten at Everton. When Chalobah was loaned out, we had Ramires, Lampard, Mikel, Essien and MVG. Take out Essien, and even Mikel (even though Chalobah starting important games ahead of Mikel is completely unrealistic), he'd still be 4th choice. Loaning him out was clearly the right choice in my mind. And of course the supporters would like to see youngsters in the squad. In my Chelsea team on FIFA, I literally have 2 players over 25 and about a dozen under 20 and I win the treble every season. That doesn't mean it can be done in real life. And where did Rogers' team finish while he was developing this young squad? Even this season, they're not really title contenders. If Chelsea have the exact same season as Liverpool this season and end up in 4th, the manager probably get sacked. It's really simple. Young players with not much experience make much more mistakes than experienced players and tend to perform inconsistently. That results in losing points and games throughout the season. If you are Liverpool and Arsenal in the past 8 years, then it's not that big a deal. But if you're Chelsea and aim at constantly being a top team, then you just can't afford throwing 19 year old players into the first team. I think we can, and have already integrated young players into our first team. Proven young players that is. Players like Oscar and Azpi. And I think we can and will hopefully do it again in the future with players like Piazon, MVG, Romeu, Courtois, Chalobah, Lukaku..etc the list is endless. Obviously, not all of them will make it here but all of them have a chance to. That is why we send them out on loan to get experience at the top level so that when they are at the ages of 21-22-23, they are ready to be integrated into the team like Oscar and Azpi were last season, and not raw and inexperienced youth players who have spent most of their past years sitting on our bench or playing with the U21s.

There just aren't enough minutes. Lukaku is similar in his style to Torres and I'm certain that, when fit, Jose would have chosen Fernando over Romelu the vast majority of the time. As for Chalobah, he wouldn't have gotten into the team ahead of Mikel, you just said he couldn't get into Forest's team! He would have just got the minutes that Essien got at most. I'm not using as template, I'm using it to show that it can't be done while challenging for titles. Liverpool and Arsenal are both example to exactly this. They managed to integrate youth players because they weren't challenging for titles. We arguably have better talents in our academy than them. Give a Chelsea manager 8 years without the pressure of challenging for titles and by the end of that period, half our squad would probably be from our academy.

Unfortunately?! Ba has played under 1000 minutes for us this season while Essien barely played 200 despite MVG picking up that injury very early in the season! You should be thankful that the club made the right decision for the sake of the players, their development and ultimately their value to the club in the future.

The scenario in La Liga is completely different. The league is much weaker with a HUGE gap between the Real and Barca (and now Athletico) and the rest. They can afford to give youngsters a chance in games. Plus the academies in Spain, especially Barca's, is miles and miles ahead of anything in England. As for united, when was the last time they promoted a youngster without sending him on a PL loan while they're at the top? Just yesterday, I was laughing after seeing Maccheda playing (badly) in the Championship (or was it League One, Ican't remember). It took utd becoming the mid-table team that they are today to promote Januzaj. He didn't get a look in when they were challenging for titles and neither did Pogba. Times have changed. Today in the EPL, you can't challenge for titles and play unproven youngsters at the same time, especially without managerial stability.

Buffon had a bad couple of season with a lot of injuries last season and the one before, but he seems to be back to his best if not even better this season. He's pulled some ridiculous saves at critical times in the league. He's still up there. PS: Juve's defense this season is shaky and not the best defense in Serie A anymore; Roma are.

Proper Chelsea legend..

Doesn't matter how close it was, the ref has to be sure that the foul denied an obvious goal-scoring opportunity or else he can't give red. I think Robben's first touch, which was before the contact with the keeper (I'm not even going to try to spell his name!) took the ball away from the goal and it would have been very difficult for him to keep it in, and even if he did the defenders would have gotten back by then.

I'm hoping City lose confidence from being knocked out of the CL and drop some points in the league.

Never a red though, Robben's first touch had already taken the ball away from him. He was never going to score.

Probably something like 50% City, 40% us and 10% Arsenal. I think our chances went up A LOT when we beat City at the Ettihad. We basically gained 6 points on them.

Didn't watch it, but from what I've read, Wigan played a very good game and had the most of the possession which Josh obviously enjoys. Their Twitter account said that he had a fine game. He came off at the 75 minute mark because he still hadn't 100% recovered from his last injury.

Wow, take a bow, son:

Would you rather he wastes it here at Chelsea? He's broken into the first team at Boro and getting games. That's already many times better than he would have got here. Of course we're not going to take a chance on a 19yo, unless he is something like the new Messi. How many games per season at Chelsea can you afford to play a completely inexperienced youngster? You can't do that as a top team because you're expected to win every single game. Honestly, I don't expect to see Nathanial here for another two season after he's had a few more loans, probably including a PL loan.

Vincent Kompany:

Gets his debut for them with 30 minutes to go.

Came on after 19 minutes tonight after Ben Watson was stretchered off. Wigan currently leading 1-0. EDIT: Make that 2-0.