CHOULO19

That's not really fair. We have Torres as a striker, of course his crosses never found their target!

So has a lot of our other loanees like Clifford, Hutch, Kane..etc but the club has taken none of loaness with them to the states. Josh is now taking a well deserved break after his first full competitive season before he joins the U21 in the Euros.

No, this is not another thread about Eva; not in particular anyway You may remember that our current medical department at Chelsea were put together by AVB's staff at the start of last season, and I have to say they have been a bit of unsung heroes of our team this season. They have done an absolutely incredible job, imo. The fact that we've played 69 games this season with so little injuries is just unbelievable. Rafa has mentioned this in interviews a few times as well. The job of the medical staff is usually underrated because it goes down behind the scenes, but it could really define your season at times. For example, look at Inter this season who at one point had 13 injured players at the same time, half of which got injured in training and warm ups! So here is a shout out to our amazing medical staff at Chelsea. Thank you, and please keep up the great work :cfc:

The thing with Josh is that he can't get regular minutes here at Chelsea unless he shows his best else where, but for him to show his best, he needs to be playing along side players of the caliber we have here at Chelsea!

Tough love at it's best!

That bad? It's always been regarded as a 'reliable' source by everyone for some reason.

Easy. Set a study schedule with breaks every 2-3 hours, but during those 2-3 hours, turn off your wifi, switch off your phone and unplug the TV. Give your self literally nothing to do except study and you should be fine. Good luck

Bild have been reporting a lot of BS lately.

Or it could mean that none of the loanees are coming with the team to the US. Take your pick.

According to WAGNH, both of their contracts end this June. I expect Hillario to be retiring but I'm not sure where Ross is headed to. I think we will replace him since we had confirmed interest in Begovic in Jan.

Oh God, not you too!

Actually some people on Twitter were saying that he said this to Bild but there have been absolutely no actual links, that I've seen at least, so I'm guessing it's just someone bored who came up with that.

I was one of the few saying from the beginning that this is a huge competition and criticizing the people saying we should only play reserves in the EL, but I think a parade would be over the top. I spent half the match against Benfica on my knees in front of the TV from nervousness and celebrated the win like crazy, but I can't say that winning the EL was a dream of mine nor was it an objective of the team at the start of the season. There's a fine line between being spoiled, which is what I think of the people who were saying we should intentionally lose in this competition, and having big ambitions for the club.

I swear I change Desktop backgrounds more often than SAF changes the gum in his mouth!

Do we really need to have the fight of some Turkish teams here on TC? Let's just drop the topic, please.

I honestly have no idea what the purpose of that game is!

Homophobic comments. PS: Spike and Ankit, take it to the cricket thread if that is what you're talking about. No gibberish in the pub, please.

No, don't play the reserves! If I have to wake up at 3:30am to watch Marin and Benayoun I might cry..

Soooo, anyone got a link to a melt down on a Tottenham forum?

Bad first half but really grew into the game in the second which is great to see. Hope to see him take some part in the post and preseason games.

I've only watched Fernandinho in the CL, so I will comment on Vidal only since I've watched every Juve game this season. Vidal has many many qualities, but his defensive ability is not one of them. He is too aggressive and even though he sometimes does get the ball, other times he does not and that often puts Juve in trouble. Again people just judge Vidal based on a couple of great games he had in the CL while forgetting a couple of horror games he had as well like against Bayern. And just to put an end to the myth, Mikel has a higher interception per game ratio than Vidal; check whoscored.com. Mikel has the ability to go to ground, but just like Alonso said, it's only something you resort to when you make a mistake. I disagree that Mikel is not dynamic, just watch his matches with Nigeria where he is given a more free role and you can see him all over the pitch in a more of a box to box style. But at Chelsea his role requires discipline. He is the midfielder that is supposed to shield the back 4 and he shows great discipline to stay in position and not leave gaps behind him. Naturally, when your opposition are in control and are committing men into the box, your DM should get into the box because 2 CBs to defend the area wouldn't be enough. Finally, regarding the comparisons you made, I couldn't disagree more. I mean Arteta who can't pass for his life, Yacob who spends more time out of position that actually in it, and Sandro the head-less chicken?! Also, none of those players have Mikel's distribution and ball retention abilities. We've been talking about the defensive part of the holding midfielders role because that is what you criticized in you original post, but for me Mikel's biggest assets are on the ball. He always provides an outlet for the back four because they know that they can give Mikel the ball in almost any situation and he has the ball retention skills to keep it under immense pressure and then play a safe pass. He also has incredible pass completion percentage meaning that when Mikel plays, our distribution of the ball is more accurate and we lose the ball less often. That's why you see when Mikel does not start, our CBs tend to lump the ball forward much more often.

Sure, mate: http://s18.postimg.org/fuu40p3ax/Stamford_Bridge.jpg

I'm only saying because you obviously gave some people the impression that the game is at 1:30 pm and not am like Hutcho here:

Still, he has an agent and his agent knows that he's playing for the best club he could be playing for now and making the most he possibly could with his ability. He'd also know that we can't afford to give Torres the 'Malouda' treatment, both financially and in terms of PR. And frankly, I don't think the board wants to move him on that badly, he's still has HUGE marketability value and makes the club a lot of money.

No, it's a very late kick off. Early kick off is 12:00 or 1:00 pm.