Jype

Just like we thought everyone would when facing Torres - Drogba. It's not always so simple. And IMO I think an attack consisting of Rooney with Nani - Kagawa - Valencia behind him is better and more balanced than Rooney, RVP, Nani, Valencia. One of Rooney, RVP and Kagawa will always have to be on the bench and that simply adds more depth and not necessarily improve the quality of their best XI. I didn't think that squad depth was a problem for them to begin with (at least not in attack) so I'm not too concerned. I predict the same to happen to United what happened to City last year, that having many quality strikers doesn't mean they will all score goals like they did when they were the main men at their previous clubs. 15-20 goals for Rooney and RVP each would be my guess and that's not too much better than Rooney 27, Hernandez 10 and Welbeck 9. Welbeck's and that Mexican cunt's goal tally will go close to zero this season, if they stay there at all.

A striker who can't create anything himself and who, if not given excellent service by his teammates goes invisible every time. Yeah, that's exactly what we need.

Nothing wrong with what he said imo, and I for one would be more worried if he wasn't unhappy with sitting on the bench and just focused on ripping off the club à la Bogarde. Only thing is, that after making such comments he must be prepared to make one hell of an impression at West Brom or he will look like an idiot.

I know it's not so simple and not everyone has the same influence as Barcelona, but wouldn't hurt to at least try!

Yep, a cheeky double deal for Azpi & Ayew would be great but can't see it happening because Ayew hasn't even been linked to Chelsea. Still, a great player and shouldn't be too expensive seeing as Marseille are desperate to sell but I suppose we can't buy every half-decent player out there.

So he's off to Marseille then? Maybe somehow related to the Azpilicueta deal? If Kakuta leaves on a permanent basis instead of a loan, I hope we take a lesson from Barca and try to include some sneaky buy-back clause to the contract so that we can try buying him back if he suddenly flourishes when given a proper opportunity and starts to realize his potential which we all know is still there.

You do realize there's a logical reason for that? He's on the last year of his contract, 4 years older than Hulk and would demand much higher wages. Also he also has a history with injuries, next thread please!

Are you implying that Messi couldn't do it on a cold Tuesday night against Stoke?

I don't have any problem with Mikel and I thought I made myself clear enough, guess I was wrong and should've explained myself even better so that everyone could understand. Someone asked to list players I would rather take instead of Mikel, so I was simply answering to him. I consider Mikel to be a quality player but I still think there are players I would rather take over him to play in our 4-2-3-1, not because they are necessarily better players but because in my opinion they would be better suited for our needs. If the correct term to describe a player like that is a box-to-box midfielder, then so be it. I don't really give a shit about the terms but I do like to think I know a thing or two about tactics in football. Having a player like the ones I listed playing next to Mikel could be great, or maybe playing with two of those skillful box-to-box midfielders with good passing abilities as well as a good workrate to do their fair shares of defensive duties (for example De Rossi, Vidal etc.) would be an even better way to go forward. All I know is that our midfield seems to be currently lacking something in the double pivot area and if we are to continue with a similar formation next year too, then maybe it should be time to invest in new midfielders. I'm not expecting any new arrivals there this season, having already spent a shitload of money improving other areas of the team but maybe if Lampard leaves or takes a significantly smaller role next season, then we should be looking to buy a proper top class midfielder there. Like I said, most of them guys on my list are unrealistic for us and either not even wanting to join our team or being way too expensive even if they wanted to come, but the player type is there and that's what we should be aiming at sometime in the future, when improving the midfield comes our first priority. Feel free to think differently, just my two cents.

Not a Mikel critic (far from it actually, I like the man and rate him highly) but if I had to make a list, it would be something like this: Busquets Mascherano Xabi Alonso Javi Martinez De Jong Yaya Toure Tiote Alex Song Vidal De Rossi Schweinsteiger Players I would take over Mikel any day for the double pivot in our current 4-2-3-1 formation. Some guys from my list might not be that much better in terms of quality but are completely different types of DM's who at the moment would be far better suited for our team and it's tactics than Mikel. As can be seen, hardly anyone from that list is a realistic target for us so we have to place our trust in Mikel and I don't have anything against that, in fact just the opposite but let's not be deluded here and think Mikel is the second coming of Jesus Christ or something. edit: someone has just posted a similar list.

I think Mata will be used significantly less this season than last, but only because we now have more options for his position and don't have to rely on one player too much. Mata needs some serious rest after playing over 50 games last season and also taking part in the Euros as well as London2012. This season he needs to be handled properly so we don't burn him out in the middle of the season where he wouldn't be of any use to anyone and Oscar is the perfect replacement to play at CAM whenever needed and considering that he can play elsewhere too, I'm confident that all of our new signings get enough playing time without it being too costly for the players we already had. Song would be absolutely great, but sadly I don't think we stand a chance of getting him. Either he stays at Le Arse or goes to Barcelona.

Granted that's not a lot of competitive matches, but you also have to take into consideration all the friendly matches before the Euros and also before the Olympics so in reality it's a lot more than that. And wouldn't you agree that even though he didn't play too much, spending the whole summer with the Spanish national team and training hard every day is a lot more stressful than simply sitting on a beach somewhere and just relaxing? Clearly he was exhausted even before all that so who knows how tired he must be now... I guess it's a good thing we have Oscar now because he should more than capable of replacing Mata if he needs rest and then we can just take someone like Marin from the bench to play where Oscar would normally be playing (assuming he will be a starter).

They're just bluffing and trying if someone is stupid enough to pay €36m. Everyone knows their club's financial situation and they simply can't afford to let him go for free next summer and they are going to accept much less than the full buy-out clause. Something like 15 to 20m would be my guess, depending on how much competition there will be for his signature. If (and right now that's a biggish 'if') we are going to buy another striker in this transfer window, Llorente would be by far the most sensible signing and I would love it if we could pull this off. Much cheaper transfer fee and lower wages than Cavani and also I get the feeling he would be more suited to our needs, meaning he wouldn't necessarily be the undisputed #1 striker like Cavani would be and that would also give Torres a fair chance as well. Llorente has also always struck me as a levelheaded guy and with the other Spanish players already in our team getting Llorente too would make sense. If he really is available and whoever decides these things at Chelsea thinks we need another striker, I say this is our man and we should buy him and fast!

The way I see it, Brana is now banned for three Community Shields, am I right? Hilarious if that's the case.

Actually it's pretty much the same here and that's not what is bothering me tbh. I'm more pissed off thinkin about what it's going to be like in a few months and I get all moody in advance. If you thought you had your winter time bad in Scotland, you haven't seen anything yet. Winter in here is about as bad as it gets, think about Siberia and you'd be pretty close.

Promised a while back I would donate to the cause when I get some extra money and I usually try to be a man of my word so I just put in a fiver. Not much, but it's a start.

Summer seems to be over here, was fun while it lasted. Every day it's 15 degrees celsius at most and almost every day it rains. Day by day it's only going to get worse and in a couple of months it's going to be cold as fuck and snow up to my balls everywhere.

That's nothing new, as Brazilians are always overpriced and now even more so when Brazil's economy is in a much better state than it was earlier and the clubs can now afford to keep their most prized assets for themselves if they don't receive an offer too good to turn down. Also for some reason the players don't seem to have a problem with staying in the Brazilian league for a while longer because they know they can still go to some European club in the future and have a respectable career in European football even if they stayed at Brazil till the age of 22 or so. It's basically a win-win when both sides are happy. This year clubs haven't spent as much as before for numerous reasons (FFP lurking around the corner and also the European economy being what it is now etc.) but that hasn't stopped some quality players from moving clubs, for example the likes of Kagawa and Cazorla. There are always exceptions to be found one way or the other from previous years and the present, but in general I have found the fees to have slightly lowered recently, though I fully expect them to skyrocket once again when the FFP turns out to be nothing but big fancy words with no action to show for it and when the economy in general has recovered from it's current state.

Agreed. Me and that other guy who started this thread weren't by any means suggesting we push the panic button and switch the formation instantly after a few bad results with the 4-2-3-1 because that stuff happens only in FIFA and FM, but just some food for thought and if /when sometime in the future it has come to the point where a change in formation is necessary, then something like this 3-4-3 (or 3-4-2-1, whatever) should be taken into serious consideration. At least on paper we seem to have the right players for it, apart from central midfield which seems to be our problem with any formation but more likely than not we are going to improve our midfield next year at the latest so it really shouldn't be a problem then. Interesting times...

Actually I think the average prices of players have decreased a little this year, probably because some clubs are afraid of the FFP and don't want to spend too much. Only PSG has been splashing the cash like there's no tomorrow but most clubs have been mostly sensible this year. Some could even include us in the big spenders together with PSG but we as Chelsea fans know there's a reason for this spending with the long-awaited squad rebuilding finally starting and many important players on high wages left on free transfers this summer. Also our income has been much greater (and constantly rising even higher with better sponsor deals, compliments of being Champions of Europe) than let's say Man City's or PSG's so that allows us to spend more than those two without having to worry too much. How many player this year have even cost more than 20m? Hazard, Oscar and a couple of PSG signings? Last summer we had the likes of Sanchez, Fabregas, Coentrao, Falcao, Ibrahimovic, Mata, Young, De Gea, Aguero, Nasri, Downing ( ) etc. all moving for big transfer fees and surely I'm even forgetting someone. Of course there's still a couple of weeks before the transfer window shuts and some big money moves can still happen, but so far there have been far less than last year and generally the fees have stayed reasonable.

Of course I know these things now, but it was 2004 or something. No one even knew that shit was illegal and like I said, we were very young at the time but that didn't stop those greedy bastards for suing us. And just so you know, the site I used back then was a private tracker and that's the reason we got into that mess, when the police raided that site and started going after all the most active users. I still download some stuff occasionally because being a poor student I simply can't afford to buy everything but I certainly have learned from that experience. Them greedy cunts originally demanded something like 300k€ and if they had fined us some crazy amount like that, it would pretty much have been life over and I was still in middle school ffs.

Don't you guys know that downloading torrents is illegal. I should know because some years back me and my brother were prosecuted for this shit and even received some 3000 euro fine. It was badass stuff back then, the police coming to our house with a search warrant and taking all our computers. My brother was 15 at the time and I was 13.

He was poor at the Euros and because of that no one wants him anymore. I never wanted him from the start, having seen him play quite often but for the majority of fans the wankfest over Van der Wiel stopped instantly after he was shit for the Netherlands. I would guess the same goes for our scouts too because before the Euros he was widely rumoured to be on our radar (in 2011 Arnesen even admitted that VDW was one of our major targets for RB) but haven't seen him being linked to any decent club anymore, and rightly so. Anyway, back to Debuchy. Can't see him coming to Chelsea and haven't even seen any rumours in a very long time. Too bad, because I rate him very highly.

Of course we should be them. Only question is, will we? I honestly don't know what to expect. Could turn out ugly if our players play like we all know they're capable of, but a frustrating 1-1 draw or something like that would also be typical.

So I take it you're happy now he's gone? After all, your club did receive a hefty fee for him. Any news on his replacement or is someone from the youth team being promoted to take Rodwell's place?