His own age doesn't matter one bit. It's a well known fact that you only win trophies with a squad full of teenagers in Football Manager, not in real life. It's great that we have all these young stars in our team and I can only imagine how good they'll be within five years but to balance things out we need players who are at their peak and have more experience, for example Falcao. People who say Falcao is too old at the age of 26/27 have played way too much FM and Fifa. For example, does anyone consider Manchester United to have done bad business in buying Robin Van Persie who is 29 years old? Henrique was not trying to bash Hazard, Oscar etc. but he only meant that in addition to those we need experienced players with leadership skills.
Prague and possibly Amsterdam too, the traveling Chelsea fans are going to have a great time in a few months. Would love to go, too bad I can't afford to.
Way better than Turnbull and Hilario combined. A no-brainer if he's willing to be Cech's backup instead of playing regular football for some smaller French team.
Mata has 13 goals and 14 assists already this season. He already has more goals than he did last season and only a few more assists to go and it's only December. Some scary shit going on here, from the opponent's point of view of course.
He's been that way for two years now and last season he definitely didn't play too much but the end result was the same. Torres ran out of excuses ages ago.. Oh well, let's hope he can score a few goals today. A team playing in the Championship should match his current level just fine.
No full team news yet but I'm hearing Marko Marin starts. The world really is going to end in two days. edit: Cech, Azpi, Ivanovic, Luiz , Bertrand, Oscar, Lampard, Marin, Mata, Moses, Torres
"The crazy transfer season has started and nobody attracts more attention than Falcao. Mostly because it is clear that at least four clubs (Real Madrid, City, PSG and Chelsea) are willing or thinking about paying his buy out clause of 60 million euros. This is what I have been told: Chelsea are favourite for his signing but Florentino Perez at Madrid would like him to be the galactico signing of next season. Atletico will not contemplate him leaving in January. It is not totally up to the club as the payment of the buy out clause leaves the decision in the player's hands. But IMPORTANTLY the player has told the club that he wants to stay till the end of the season. Ideally he wants to decide where to move next by February or March, and he has told some team mates Madrid or London are his preferred destinations. So, Atletico Madrid insists, negotiations are not as advanced as people are claiming. And the have the word of the player to stay to help the club fight for a top two or three finish." By Guillem Balague. Sounds about right. To me it has been clear all along that he's not leaving in January but is likely to sign for us or Real Madrid in the summer. Atletico would no doubt prefer Chelsea over their local rivals Real Madrid and I would think Falcao respects Atletico and their fans too much to insult them by going to Real Madrid, especially if he is given a choice to join another club (in this case us) instead.