Superblue

Although not Asian, Hulk is apparently a MASSIVE deal in Japan.

I shit myself ever season that Cech will pick up a serious injury and we'll be left with the train wreckage of our backup keepers. Hilario's handling and distribution are poor and Turnbull has at least one mistake in him every game. Just the comfort of having a genuinely solid keeper behind Cech would be fantastic. As you said I'm sure he would get 10-15 games at least in the season and anything where Cech is injured.

I agree with the general consensus that Hazard's skillset is better suited to the wing than Mata's. Also Mata has had a year in the Prem to adapt. The pace and intensity will take Hazard time to adapt and playing wide will hopefully give him more time and space to adapt, compared to the middle which can get congested. However there is another spin on Mata playing in the wing and that is also due to his year in the Prem. He has shown although not great or strong defensively, he does possess the desire and mindset to track back and defend with discipline. You don't play both legs against Barcelona or the final against Bayern without the willingness to sacrifice aspects of your play for the good of the team. As people have said however, the two are extemely intelligent, skillful young players and can hopefully strike up a solid understanding over the next few months.

With all the problems going on at Rangers, I wondered whether anybody feels signing Alan McGregor would be a good move. He has good experience playing at a high level in the Champions League, and the ferocity and pressure of the Glasgow derby. He is better than Hilario and Turnbull as much more reliable backup to Cech. And a free agent (one assumes) he wouldn't be an expensive gamble. Others thoughts?

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/football/view/259078/Chelsea-told-25million-is-enough-for-Stevan-Jovetic/ I like Jovetic but he isn't a right winger. Hulk would give our team far more balance being a natural RW.

He can't take a penalty so he should be perfect for us! (with the exception of the last month of course!)

He has been immense so far. Problem is he would cost the earth - Porto must lick their fucking lips when we come looking for their players and managers!

He has likely been told that he won't be leaving this summer because Modric will. If Spurs miss Champions League again next summer then he may have something in his contract to allow him to go then. And I suspect a healthy pay rise for staying at least next season.

I read this as Hulk isn't confident that Porto will sell him for a fee deemed realistic to pay by Chelsea. If he comes out publicly stating he wants to leave and then still a fee cannot be agreed, he will isolate himself from the club and it's fans. He probably feels added responsibility to act 'correctly' as captain of the club.

News I've been waiting for since Robbie's appointment

Newspaper reports are suggesting that Porto have rejected an informal bid of £30m from Man United for James Rodriguez. If (and that's a big IF) that's true then surely they will be demanding more than £30m for Hulk. This potential deal looks like it could get messier and messier by the day!

Good luck to David Luiz. Ok it's not the most ideal situation but at the end of the day he is going to be getting match fitness which is one of the main reasons for pre season, and if anything, playing in the Olympics will be far more intense than playing in meaningless friendlies. The other main point of pre season is for a new manager and/or players to become accustomed to it's new group of players/teammates. In this summer it is not as big an issue as previous ones. David Luiz has already worked with Robbie Di Matteo and vice versa. With the exception of perhaps a new right back we are also unlikely to make any significant changes to our backline, so David Luiz has already struck up a good relationship with them. The same goes for Juan Mata if picked. These players may never get the same chances again so good luck to them. Although it would have been nice for Mata to strike up a creative partnership with Hazard in pre season, but I'm sure this can be developed as the season progresses.

Schweinsteiger it is then In all seriousness if this boy is going to cost £15-20m, are we not better off 'upping' our offer for Moses to something likely to be accepted, say £6-8m?

He would be worth a punt perhaps in 2014 at the end of his contract. He would only be 24 then, and we would have a better idea of whether he is capable of overcoming his injury problems. The boy is very good, his goal this season against Barcelona showed an exceptional turn of skill and acceleration. However any transfer of monetary value would be too big a risk at the moment, given his injury record.

5-10 appearances a season over the next couple of seasons at Chelsea will not aid his development. Yes there is a case of training alongside better players but he has been training with our first team for the last 2 years. The lad needs games. I agree with Leif. He isn't ready for the Premier League yet. Let's loan him to a Championship club, hopefully one which will be pushing for promotion and therefore there will be expectations upon him to perform. I know a lot of people are critical of Owen Coyle, but I am thinking perhaps a team like Bolton. Apparently they have first choice on one of our youngsters on loan next season as part of the Cahill deal. Having lost Reo Coker in the middle of the park and woefully short of creativity, McEachran would do well there IMO. In regards to his size, I'm not too concerned about that. If he bulked up too much, he would lose some of the nimbleness about his play. By playing a full season of first team football he would adapt his game, mind and body to get the best out of himself. And the issue about him turning 20 next March - so what? Bertrand is only starting to get a break now and he's 23 at the beginning of next season. There is a mentality in England that if a player hasn't broken through whilst a teenager, then he never will. Patience is required. A season in the Championship and then a season in the Premiership to follow would hopefully give him 50-60 games at least over the next 2 seasons under his belt. Then we can make a genuine judgement on him and how he may develop - he will only be 21 by then! And the same goes for the likes of Piazon, Chalobah, Ake, Feruz, etc. All have the potential to break into Chelsea's first team squad, but they're all years away currently.

If it were Man Utd I would perhaps understand, but Arsenal have won fuck all for what is it now, 7 or 8 years? The lad clearly hasn't got enough about himself to be tested at the top aiming for trophies year on year.

It will probably mean we'll buy maicon! Hope not from what i've seen from debuchy he looks good and anything under £10m would be good value.

They can think what they want but the big boys play in the champions league, and they aren't in it!

Apparently spurs buying gylfi sigurdsson for £8m which is likely to pave the way for modric to leave. (as per sky sports)

We can say anything we want now - we're european champions

Hopefully the transfer activity is going to start heating up now teams are going out of the euros and the final is less than a week away.

We're never likely to know. The board could have said to Robbie to go and enjoy a holiday and they'll sort out the contract when he gets back. Sure enough as soon as he was back from a holiday the appointment was confirmed. I'm sure I saw something somewhere that Hazard had spoken to Robbie about his role in the team and this was before Robbie was confirmed. It is also a little weird that if Robbie wasn't fully confident in landing the Chelsea job, then why didn't he hold talks with any of the clubs who needed a manager during that end of season window - Liverpool, Villa, Lazio, etc. Are you telling me after what he achieved with us that none of the mentioned wouldn't be interested in him?!

In all seriousness, no. However you do feel a little mugged off that we could quite easily pay upwards of £20m for a new midfielder and they aren't even likely to be as good as Pirlo is now.

In fairness his penalty against Bayern was one of the best I've ever seen taken. He was never going to repeat one like that!

The only argument for keeping Malouda would be to allow KDB to go out on loan for a season and play a whole year of first team football in a higher standard before coming back to us. However if that were the case we should have retained Kalou instead. If the club feels KDB would get enough games during the season then Malouda should leave.