OneMoSalah

If Benat is anything like Wilshere tactically as you've said then he can't be a player for the pivot imo. That's where Wilshere lets himself down for me, when I've seen him break forward for Arsenal and they lose the ball he doesn't get back and one or two passes from the opposition and its automatically 2 v 1 in midfield, the Arsenal midfielder usually being Arteta or Ramsey who aren't really defensive midfield players. That is how they get dominated in certain games, they don't have a proper defensive midfielder to pair with Arteta or Ramsey. Anyway that's another issue and another team haha but I might have a look out for this Illarramendi if I get the chance to watch a Sociedad game. I imagine he doesn't have any senior Spanish NT caps but has he been used at u23 or u21 level?

No idea who he is but I'm sure I've seen someone mention him on twitter before, plays for Real Sociedad? Moutinho would be the perfect player we could get for the pivot this summer as hes likely to leave Porto.

For the next 2 week, I can see teams targeting our left side as they will see him as the weakest link in our team. Which is fair but also unfair as you could say he might not get a lot of help from Eden and the pivot could essentially our weakness too. Hazards tendency to not back track every time (hes certainly improved in that manner since Rafa came in which I'd expect but he doesn't always do it) could be a problem for Ryan but I'd rather it was Hazard further up field using his pace to counter against teams than say Mata or Oscar.

Possibly. I've not seen him play but from what I've heard hes very much similar to Alonso, correct?

Great goal. Needs to start more often. Think his link up and hold up play is underrated by a lot of people on here and on twitter.

Seen someone mention Viktor Fischer above. In my opinion Viktor Fischer would be an interesting buy. He has flourished for Ajax in their traditional possession based 4-3-3 as a left winger/inverted forward under de Boer where he comes infield and floats in between the lines. Technically excellent as you'd expect being schooled in Holland with Ajax and in Denmark before where the quality of youth players have improve the last couple of years. Think he has 8 goals for Ajax in the league this year in 18 appearances which for an 18 year old in their debut season is really impressive. Hes one we should keep an eye on and I'm sure the scouting department already know who he is after giving him a trial when he was 16. Already got the inevitable comparison with Michael Laudrup. Still we all know what we need this summer. A Xavi Alonso-esque player who can dictate the tempo and play along with getting stuck in when needed and a striker of some sort depending on what we do with Lukaku (loan him or keep him). We could gamble and go with Torres, Ba, Lukaku and promote Islam Feruz to give him a taste of first team action but ultimately we need a manager lmao. Also a quality CB would be nice.

Gave Rio another beating today, played like he did vs United when Newcastle won 3-0. Next on Demba's list: Bramble and Kompany.

Rafa will announce Ba will start in press conference and troll us all by playing Torres

Yous are all lucky anyway, I'm not a Glaswegian. They are impossible to understand sometimes, they speak rapidly and we'll I'm sure yous have heard a Glaswegian accent before.

Meh I can take that. Obviously being Scottish, April Fools day is a good day to wind fuckers up as is the other 364 days of the year

Fair to say April fools has already hit the forum to devastating effect, must be about 5 threads by now hahaha.

So rather than reply to try and argue why you said that/'why Tiote is better than Mikel', you attack me haha. Why you so mad? Anyway to answer your question, I've probably got over 1000 rep because 1) I'm fucking awesome 2) I don't run around saying Mikel is shitter than Tiote and 3) I share the view of a lot of users on here on certain topics. Yeah? Good enough answer for you?

Na I still feel the most ridiculous post made was one of yours saying Tiote was better than Mikel.

I think he chose Bayern because they basically have the same set up as Barca, they are very well run upstairs and well... you said it yourself they are a top side in a 2 sided league. I think he can take Bayern to another level though, the last 2 years they have been undermined in a way by Klopp and his brilliant Dortmund team similar to what Madrid had sort of done to Barca for a while before Guardiola took over. He will walk into the job with a quality squad but its not as good as the Barca squad Pep assembled. There will be a lot of quality players who could be sold in that team I'd imagine. He did the same at Barca.

I wouldn't say the Barca job was a guaranteed trophy laden job (well not 16 trophies in 4 years anyway) as they required work tbh but I agree about Bayern especially with Dortmund constantly losing their better players each year it seems (Kagawa and now Lewa).

I think its fair to say there's been one stand out member this month and hes already been nominated. Full English Breakfast.

Highlighted in pre-season he looked awful, has been more exposed recently but hes not been great this season at all.

He had a bad game today but so did the whole team. The way he played against United coming on and dominating the game showed how good he really is. Just an off day today. When we lose the amount of abuse Mikel gets is ridiculous. Some of it I think ok maybe he didn't do this that and this but there's some of it that isn't even his fault. Hes obviously the scapegoat of the team.

Dear Chelsea FC Scouts, Next time you decide to raid the Bundesliga, please get one of Draxler, Bittencourt, Leitner or Gotze instead... not some washed up midget called Marko Marin who hasn't been anywhere near as good as he was in 2010. Yours, Ryan.

Ivanovic = bullshit this year. Terry = falling to pieces, surprised hes in one piece still. Luiz = crazy, can play good for 89 minutes then shoot himself in the foot in the 90th minute. His random long passes to nobody are very annoying too. Cahill = average CB, gives his all at least, dependable but not a top quality defender. Best partnership probably is Luiz and Terry. Need to get a quality center back in soon though. Either this summer or next.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT 9-2 BAYERN VS HAMBURG....... Speaks volumes about Bayerns quality by the time Claudio Pizzaro is somehow scoring 4 goals hahaha wow, did he even score 4 goals for us?

Exactly. I was telling my mate today he is utter useless in games when teams press us and give us little time on the ball. Everyone, well not everyone, a lot of Chelsea fans seem to think hes still the player he was 3-4 years ago when he clearly isn't. I've heard 'he should be given a contract because of the fact hes scored 180 odd goals for Chelsea' far too many times this year too (before he scored a lot of his goals this season and ultimately his 200th). Maybe a 20 goal a season central midfielder is irreplaceable but a central midfielder of high quality that fits a philosophy and formation isn't. This team isn't built around the likes of Lampard, Drogba, Makelele, Terry etc anymore. Also the point about him taking a pay cut, even for a player who's going to play against all the smaller teams, 80k a week is a lot. I doubt Mata is even on 80k a week. That money could be reinvested elsewhere.

That goal Bale scored, wow. It seems hes really improved technically, I said on twitter that a year ago I wouldn't have said hes that good technically but hes doing all sorts of things very impressively. I wonder if that's down to Villas-Boas' coaching or just Bale wanting to improve in that aspect. How many people in the PL could score a goal similar to that? 5? Suarez, Bale, RVP, Hazard, Rooney and even possibly Mata or Silva? In fact in Europe there are only a few other players I believe who could score a similar goal including Messi, Ronaldo, Inieista and Zlatan possibly. Incredible really.

I'm just trying to avoid getting banned here

Haha...