Jype

Finland - France 0-1, shocking defending from our centre backs. Diaby the goalscorer.

David is captaining Brazil today!

Yes, the draw is pretty much down to luck. It makes one hell of a difference if teams like Norway and Slovenia are drawn to your group from pots 1 and 2 instead of Spain and France which were no doubt the hardest from both pots. The title holder of two previous Euros as well as the WC and an underachieving giant who are better than most teams seeded in the Pot 1. Belarus and Georgia are both beatable even to Finland, but third is the best we can possibly do from this group.

Great, hopefully he'll be ready to make his debut at QPR away. Maybe a few games off the bench at first for Marko and then his first start against Wolves in the cup?

The way I see it we have three options with Cole: a one year deal with his current wages matched and yet another season as our first choice left-back, a two year deal with a wage cut and a smaller role or if he won't accept either one of those then he can go next summer when his current deal is expiring. Bertrand is already an excellent player and will keep on improving so I'm not too worried if Cole were to leave.

Hard to be optimistic about our chances when we have never qualified for a major international tournament before and there certainly has been easier groups in the past. At the moment our aim is to qualify for Euro2016 when 24 nations qualify instead of only 16. Hopefully we'll finish third after Spain and France to increase our chances in the 2016 draw!

Finland v France in a few hours. I think it's safe to say we got screwed in the draw with Spain and France both in our group. Oh well, there's always the next qualifying campaign. And then the one after that...

Yes, I know it's pointless to complain about this now if the decision was made years ago and seemed like a good idea at the time, but are things ever really going to improve if no one tells them they fucked it up this time? And as for the speculation whether they wanted to continue being our sponsor or not, the truth is they couldn't have dumped us after Munich because there was still a year left and had they decided not to continue sponsoring a team that's not playing in the Champions League we would have had more than enough time to negotiate a new deal with someone else before next summer. Had that happened, I'm sure we could have got at least that same £15m because even clubs like Sunderland get more than that and Chelsea without even playing in the CL is still a lot better than Sunderland. But yeah, it's not that bad actually. Only two additional years and hopefully the board are constantly negotiating with Samsung to improve things. Surely they realize it themselves at Samsung that we got the short end of the stick this time (if it's true what they say about the option) and if they want to continue being our sponsor from 2015 onwards they better be prepared to open their wallets or we'll take our business elsewhere.

You lost to Napoli in the cup final.

Of course it matters. If we have done well in getting a lot of money from our secondary sponsors, why should we then settle for a lower amount with the main sponsor if we could / should get more? Having great sponsorships with Gazprom, Audi and Delta doesn't rule out negotiating a monster deal for the shirt sponsor as well. Chelsea's status as a major European club has gone up significantly since the previous contract with Samsung was signed and during that time every other top club have negotiated a lot higher deals which we should have used as a benchmark, but for some reason the club just accepted whatever Samsung were offering. Or was there even a choice? I read somewhere that Samsung had a written option in the previous contract of renewing for an additional three years if they wanted to. There was speculation before the CL final that if we lose the game, Samsung will dump us next year. Now we won it and Samsung basically got to be the shirt sponsor of the European Champions for peanuts because someone at the Chelsea board gave them the option of renewing without even first negotiating a proper value based on today's market. All this is speculation of course, but imo that's the only way any of this makes sense and it would explain why this new contract doesn't give the club any more money than the last, even though we just won the CL and Chelsea became an even more prestigious club (= more money and more coverage for the sponsor too). If that's the case, then someone at the board should get sacked for negotiating a deal like that which pretty much gave Samsung the upper hand and now proved to be a costly mistake.

No, it is really our loss. The previous contract was expiring next year and as the current Champions League title holders we should have been able to negotiate a better deal, be it with Samsung or someone else. An extra £10m / year would surely have meant a lot with the FFP right around the corner.

£15m seems a bit low for the Champions of Europe imo, considering that United's Chevrolet deal which begins in 2014 is worth well over £40m a year.

Pull your head out of your ass, he didn't say they're better but only that they have a chance of beating us in a one-off game. Any team we play against have this chance but that hardly means they're all better than Chelsea.

AVB treatment it is then. That's harsh imo.

Great news.

Nice tricks by Oscar during Brazil's training session.

Yep. Same thing with Zlatan and Thiago Silva but that doesn't stop the majority of people from saying they're just greedy, money-grabbing cunts who chose money over football.

Naming Piazon there in the A-list is the only way he can play because he's not eligible for the B-list. I believe using him against Nordsjaelland could be an option.

You're once again too slow, that list has been posted to two different topics already..

http://www.chelseafc..._medium=twitter Malouda is not in the Champions League squad. As good as gone then.

Malouda is not the answer to our problems in the 4-2-3-1, not even as a backup player. He can't play in the deeper role where we are seriously lacking in numbers and we already have more than enough options to play at LW with Hazard, Mata, Marin, Moses and even Bertrand if needed, so having a guy who makes £115k / week to be the fifth / sixth choice winger and a makeshift defensive midfielder for something like 5-10 games at most (and I'm being generous here) would be ridiculous.

We won't realize what we're missing until we are struck by an injury or two. If we're very lucky, then maybe we can survive the season without any major injuries and maybe Lampard & Mikel could play at their absolute best for the whole season but I believe that only happens in Football Manager when you load the game again when something goes wrong.

Deschamps on Lloris—"Hugo didn't appreciate what his manager AVB said the other day about him being behind Friedel in the pecking order" So basically AVB just bought one of the best goalkeepers in Europe and even before giving the new signing his debut he has already made him unhappy by planning to keep him as backup to Brad fucking Friedel? Keep going AVB, you're doing a great job! :lol:

http://www.kap.gov.t....aspx?id=235556 I take it that is the official site of the Turkish stock exchange, pretty much confirming the deal? Transfer fee at 10m€ and a decent contract for Raul himself. edit: http://www.chelseafc.com/news-article/article/2909772/title/meireles-departs-for-turkey Now also confirmed at chelseafc.com

To be honest the Russian league is way above the French one at the moment. PSG are spending big and buying all the fancy players, but what else is there really? In Russia they have a lot of good teams and a bunch of big spending clubs (Anzhi, Zenit) who can attract most top class players these days, or at least the ones whose level are just below the likes of Barca, Real and the big English clubs. The league is very competitive and they can even play in Europe while also earning a shitload of money. What's wrong with that? Personally I probably wouldn't want to move to Russia and there sure are a lot of downsides to the country too (racism, shit weather etc.) but if they're okay with that, then it's their choice to make.