Superblue

i enjoyed his reaction to drogba's penalty Him and Lampard went mental at the final whistle! When he scored his superb penalty aswell he was thumping the badge on his chest. He was once an Arsenal fan but the high regard in which he's held and success he's enjoyed will leave him a Chelsea legend when he retires. Carragher was an Everton fan when a boy, Lampard a West Ham fan, etc. a lot of footballers change allegiances in their careers as they make a name for themselves at a club - Ashley to me is a converted Chelsea boy! As a side note, his performances against Barcelona and Bayern confirmed when it comes to the big games there isn't a left back in the world thats a patch on him!

Are you taking the piss mate? You come on here, make 2 posts, one being a goal scored against Chelsea. And it has nothing to do with Meireles. Forget spammers and those who like to be controversial, it's idiots like you who need banning from the forum, coming on here contributing fuck all.

Well Sahin had already moved to the scousers and i think that Real moved for Essien on deadline day. HOWEVER Madrid moved for Essien because they were willing to let Lassana Diarra move out on loan. He has since gone to Anzhi i believe. Why the hell didn't we go for Diarra in return. He's developed since we had him and would offer a very good option for the pivot. He has played there for Real and would have offered so much more mobility and defensive protection.

http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2896/premier-league/2012/09/04/3352435/chelsea-may-regret-discarding-mr-expendable-meireles Never thought I'd ever say this about a goal.com article, but this is actually written pretty well and sums up Meireles about as perfectly as possible, and also sums up my own worries on letting him leave. It's an ironic thing but some players are destined to be squad players. However they become such important squad players generally through their reliability and versatility that they are actually missed more than some first team players when they leave.

I don't follow the Russian league. Are Zenit looking to buy anybody else and did they have any other big names prior to these signings? Hulk and Witsel have their best years in front of them - forget the money for a minute and these are two serious signings for zenit.

There's a lot of games before January. As the cliche goes you can't win the competitions by then but you can lose them!

A massive influential personality and a top professional. I believe he has had a number of big money offers to play in the MLS and the Middle East but I think he is still weighing up his options because he feels he can still have one last hurrah at the top level - that is the character and desire of the man. I don't care if people outside of the club see it as a sign of desperation - Liverpool resigned what many considered a finished Robbie Fowler and he provided very capable backup for them. Arsenal did the same with Henry. Man Utd with Scholes. Hell even Spurs brought back Klinsmann to help them out of trouble. There is no shame in it for either party. During a busy period around Xmas, what if we have Mikel at the African Cup of Nations and Lampard injured. I don't doubt the ability of Romeu, Ramires and Oscar but teams will look to expose an inexperienced and physically weak looking midfield. Ballack could add some real steel and experience in times of need. We could also use him in the domestic cups and also a few games in our U-21 league as an overage player. Some of the younger players having the opportunity to play alongside him would be fantastic for them. I personally think Ballack would relish the chance and wouldn't be surprised if he played for this season and then hung up his boots at the top level and took on some sort of ambassadorial or coaching role like Vieira at City. Would take him in a heartbeat.

Zenit will be a good club to be on football manager next season...

I wouldn't mind playing two defensive midfielders. It would strengthen up our midfield and give added protection to the defence to negate the risk of being counter attacked. We could also then play three genuinely attacking options behind the striker rather than a defensive winger.

Agree with this. The only thing i would say about selling Meireles now is that i think the board have seen this summer how hard it has been to offload older fringe players on high wages. You only loan out a 29 year old and 32 year old if you can't sell them. Malouda, Essien and Benayoun all proved difficult to ship out. Meireles could do a good job this season bit he still has a 3 year contract. The club have maybe looked at this and made a decision to sell him now rather than be stuck with him later. I hope this doesn't backfire on us and Robbie.

I would seriously look at taking him back this season. He's a massive personality, tonnes of experience and while clearly past his prime, could still offer a calm head and quality in a deep position a la scholes.

At the time i was screaming at him to play Ramires through. The finish was sensational and right in front of the Benfica fans

Taking that booking for the team in the final minutes at the Nou Camp when he knew he would be suspended for the final was incredibly unselfish. You only have to watch the other semi, Xabi Alonso pulled out of a few tackles for fear of getting booked and suspended and his team didn't even make it. He played an important part in our Champions League triumph and I wish him the best of luck at Fenerbache.

Joined Fenerbache - just been confirmed by Sky Sports. Be interesting to hear what Robbie says about it and how he will set up our midfield this season. (or at least until January)

I really want Torres to be a success but his transfer was a complete and utter fucking disaster. We were struggling in January 2011 and Roman wanted to give the club some impetus to try and go for the Champions League. It was confirmed at the time that a few days before the end of the window we put in a combined bid in excess of £50m for Aguero and Godin at Atletico Madrid. It got rejected and Atletico told us they would sell to us in the summer. Roman however panicked at the season falling apart so spent £75m on David Luiz and Torres. The season still flopped and then the problems occured. Having already brought Torres, the club couldn't justify buying then Aguero in the summer who was basically ours for the taking, or Falcao who AVB I'm pretty sure wanted but the club wouldn't buy because they wanted Torres to be a success. Ironically in the short term buying Torres may have indirectly contributed to us finally winning the Champions League. With Falcao or Aguero, Drogba may have not had a sniff last season, and for how good both are and will continue to be, Drogba last season in the Champions League was a man possessed and quite frankly, unstoppable. Long term however, it's a problem unless Torres bangs in 25-30 goals a season over the next 3 years which is what Aguero and Falcao would almost guarantee.

Damn is that confirmed? I was hoping Chelsea would look at Witsel or M'Vila as the long term enforcer of our midfield

Not just lesser teams. We were crying out for width on friday night to stretch atletico. Moses should have come on for Ramires rather than Oscar.

I would take him but it would have to be in January. We brought Torres a year or two too late and paying that kind of money, the player needs to be in the middle of their prime, which is now for Falcao. If he got us 25-30 goals a season for the next 4-5 years he would be well worth the money. I would try and do a deal involving Torres though. If thats £20-30m and Torres then so be it. There would be no point having both at the club. Lets see come January and hope that regardless Torres has been banging the goals in the first half of this season.

Yep and the same goes for Azpi. Ivanovic was poor against Atletico and there are weaknesses to his game as a full back, but it wouldn't be right to throw Azpi right into the mix away from home. The atmosphere at this game is also going to be very sour given the shit that went down last season, and I think we need an experienced defence which can hopefully keep their heads for this game. It is also why I would take Cahill over Luiz for this game. The Carling Cup match is shortly after the international break which gives the likes of Oscar and Azpi a full 90 minutes remember. In midfield I would like to see an energetic and dynamic midfielder alongside Mikel in the middle. I would love to see Ramires get a chance in the pivot, but failing that Meireles or Romeu alongside Mikel. This should hopefully give the pivot more solidity, which would allow us to place three offensively minded attacking midfielders. Mata and Hazard obviously take up two slots at the moment and I would like to see Moses who would give us an outlet out wide. Failing this if Lampard is to remain in the pivot alongside Mikel, then I expect to see a more defensive winger on show and if that is the case I would currently prefer Bertrand over Ramires due to the contrasting forms of each.

Have you not watched them yet this season? They got outplayed for large parts today at home to Norwich, have 2 points from 3 games, 2 of them being at home, and are already 7 points behind us. They have made some good signings, I'm not arguing with that but they are still weak in vital areas IMO (defence and up front) and have a manager who is vastly overrated for one season he enjoyed with a Porto side which was stronger than the one Mourinho had nearly a decade ago.

Things could be a lot worse lads...just ask any Tottenham fan

City's backbone is world class or the next level down - hart, kompany, toure, silva, aguero. Compare that to ours cech, terry, lampard, hazard, torres. The only definites in that are cech and hazard, question marks on torres and terry and lampard are no longer at that level.

I feel Laudrup will take Swansea on to the next level. It is a little bit like when Gullit took over us. His name around Europe automatically gave us a stronger, more attractive image which allowed us to bring in Lebouef, Di Matteo, Vialli and Zola in 1996. The rest is history. Michu and Pablo Hernandez are massive upgrades on what Swansea had. A lot of media thought they were relegation candidates this year, which shows how naive they are to the work Laudrup did in Spain with an unfancied Getafe.

Don't quite know what to think about Spurs this window. They have signed some very good players, however have lost three first team starters in Modric, Van der Vaart and King. Dembele is a different sort of player to Modric, and Vertonghen and Sigurdsson will kick on and replace King and Van der Vaart eventually but I don't think they yet improve Spurs until they have settled and proven themselves. Dempsey is a good player but I don't know where he will fit in at Spurs. Is he vying for one place against Sigurdsson behind the striker, because I wouldn't play him out wide over Lennon or Bale who offer a lot of threat out wide with their pace, it stretches a lot of teams. Lloris will take a bit of time to settle but will certainly be a long term good buy. I do however think they lack a genuine quality striker. They lacked one last season and haven't changed their front line. I also think that defence can be got at. Assou Ekotto and Walker are good attacking full backs but weak defensively, whilst Vertonghen showed against West Brom he'll take time to adjust. AVB seems to also prefer Gallas They have also offloaded loads of squad players, which could stretch their squad later in the season. Add to that a manager who IMO is overrated for obvious reasons, and has already pissed some players off by the looks of things and I cannot make a decision. I think we'll finish ahead of them but they may have brought enough quality in to make fourth.

One thing that has been clearly shown this window is the ridiculous wages we're paying older members of the squad who are now not good enough. Benayoun on £90k pw??!! Essien and Malouda will be on similar wages. Its the reason we couldn't permanently sell any of them, let alone recoup some money. Add to that Terry, Lampard and Cole are within our top five earners, all of who will be phased out over the next couple of years. A big positive of our new transfer policy is most buys are promising talents but not yet fully established at the highest level. I'm pretty sure i've read that players like Marin, Moses and Azpi are on £40-50k pw. Its a good move to streamline our wages to a more manageable level over the next couple of years.