Jype

Oh for fucks sake, just made a live bet on Southampton to win after watching them batter Villa for 25 minutes but not managing to score and then Agbonlahor scores 30 seconds later.

Glad for the nomination but he's not going to win, this is Neuer's year. No worries though, Neuer is six years older and the fact that we can even compare them for who's the best in the world is amazing because Neuer at 22 was nowhere near Courtois' current level. Thibaut will have plenty of opportunities to claim this title in the years to come, maybe after we win the CL again some day. On another note, what on earth have Casillas and Bravo done to get nominated ahead of players like De Gea and Lloris? Just because they play for Barcelona and Real Madrid does not automatically make them the best in the world.

Wrong. If we draw our remaining two games we'll top the group regardless of the other results. If both Schalke and Sporting were to get a point from us and three from Maribor, Schalke will end up with 9 points and Sporting at 8 points whereas we'd have 10. Unless Schalke or Sporting beat us there's no way either of them could finish in first place.

That doesn't really mean anything. Did anyone really expect Mourinho to just say at this point in the season "I think our current players are shit and we're doing everything we can to bring in a quality player like Reus" when any potential deal is still very, very far from being completed and there's still a long time before the transfer window even opens. That being said I don't believe for a second that we'll get him be it in January or next summer but Mourinho denying everything means very little.

Incoming and outgoing transfers work out differently. When a player gets sold the received transfer fee is, after writing off any remaining book value, counted as a one-off profit but the fee for a bought player is divided equally to the length of the contract. Basically if both Luiz and Fabregas were included in the 13/14 books, the profit from selling Luiz was around £36m but the cost of Fabregas would only have been a 1 / 60 fraction of the £27m transfer fee and a few weeks worth of his wages, totaling less than £1m.

Okay, well that sucks. Despite that at the moment I’m still feeling slightly sceptical about reports saying it was included because by my math it shouldn't have been, guess we’ll have to wait till December 31st when the club has to release a full report on the financial year 13/14 to know for certain. If the Luiz money indeed was there, then it'll be interesting to see what the result for next year will be like because the income from player sales would again be much, much lower with only Lukaku as a noticeable outgoing transfer.

He's not coming to Chelsea, let's not do this to ourselves guys because we'll only going to end up disappointed when he joins Bayern next summer.

The Luiz money was not included. I made a post on page 14 explaining why I think so and at the time was like 90% sure but since reading Jake Cohen's article analyzing the figures I am now 100% certain of it. Because the transfer did not become official until the 1st of July 2014, no payments were made by PSG before that date so it would be ridiculous to include any money from the sale in the financial reports for the 13/14 year. Including it would be almost comparable if the club had a year ago counted the £££ from the improved PL broadcasting deal for the 12/13 financial year to make it look better than it really was just because they knew the money was coming in sometime later. For the 14/15 financial year the club already have a £62.3m 'profit' from the sales of David Luiz, Romelu Lukaku, Demba Ba, Patrick van Aanholt and George Saville. We may also see some players being sold in the January window so that figure may still rise. Even now the amount is roughly £25m more than the sales profits from the whole 13/14 season so assuming the club's expenses stay pretty much the same with newcomers such as Costa and Fabregas merely replacing former expensive players like Lampard, Cole, Eto'o, Luiz then I see no problem for the club in making an even bigger total profit next year. It's true that we can't rely on making such significant sales every year while also remaining competitive but for the next year or so we're pretty much set with the sales we've already made now and then there's the army of loanees like Ryan Bertrand, Victor Moses, Oriol Romeu, Lucas Piazon and Marco van Ginkel, most of whom will almost certainly not have a future at the club but will still produce a significant amount of book profit when sold. And let's not forget the big elephant in the room named Fernando Torres, whose annual £18.5m cost will soon be off the books completely. There will also be new and improved sponsorship deals kicking in every year, for example the rumoured Turkish Airlines shirt sponsorship alone will fetch the club around £10m more annually. I wouldn't be concerned at all about the current situation, quite the opposite really.

Correct, but your figures are still somewhat off. You substracted the whole of Fabregas' £27m fee from the profits made on selling Luiz when it should have been amortised over the length of his contract and even if a part of the Fabregas deal was somehow included in the 13/14 finances because the transfer went through already in June it would not have been a significant amount because the amortised fee for half a month as well as two weeks worth of his wages do not count for much. Also the Luiz deal, whether it was in these figures or the next year's, did not profit the club all of the £50m but rather somewhere around £36m when his remaining amortised book value became due. No matter what Ian Herbert is saying in his article I'm still yet to be convinced that the Luiz money was really included here because it'd make no sense. The deal was announced in June before the deadline for the 13/14 financial year, that much is true, but it did not officially go through until the 1st of July when the transfer window opened in France and therefore any money gained from the sale should only affect the club's finances for the 14/15 season, which goes from the 1st of July 2014 to June 30th 2015. Guess we'll have to wait for one of the experts (The Swiss Ramble, Jake Cohen etc.) to put their minds to it and give us a proper answer on the matter.

Actually the exclusions for youth development costs, infrastructure etc. are way more than £5m a year, in fact I think it's closer to £15m p/a. Basically that makes sure we have absolutely nothing to worry about regarding FFP because like you said, the rules allow a certain amount of operating loss made during the monitoring period and I believe that as things stand with the excludable costs Chelsea's total FFP result for the years 2012-2014 will be a profit instead of a loss so for now I think we could even afford missing out on the CL for one season and still not be in any kind of trouble. Yep, that is correct. The sales of Luiz and Lukaku will be included next year and given the fact that the club's spending this year was much less than it was for the 13/14 season, which also ended trophyless if I might add, I wouldn't be surprised if the annual profit was in the region of £30-40m next year. Just had a look at the FFP topic on Bluemoon to see what the City fans think about the news and it was really cute. According to them we would have made an £80m loss without the sales of Mata and Luiz, therefore failing FFP, and the only reason we passed was because of creative accounting and PSG laundering money with the David Luiz deal even though the Luiz deal was not even in the books for the 13/14 season. Fuck logic.

Chelsea FC announces annual profit £18.4m to be precise. I made a prediction in this thread a few months ago that for the 13/14 season the club would be posting a nice profit and I wasn't wrong. Bear in mind that these figures don't even include the sales of Luiz, Lukaku, Ba etc. from this summer. The transfer business of 13/14 was around £115m spent on new arrivals and roughly £60m from the sales of Mata and De Bruyne. With the fees being amortized and all that other complicated stuff we can't really draw a clear line here but surely breaking even on the market this year rather than make a big loss like last year will only give a huge boost to the profits for the 14/15 financial year and even more so if we also manage to pick up some silverware along the way. Good times.

No, still injured.

You said only strikers and Zidane go for that sort of money and I gave you three examples from the last year alone to prove you wrong so clearly it wouldn't be just a case of a player going for a ridiculous inflated fee out of the blue like David Luiz for example. Hazard, if he signs the extension and stays for another couple of years, will almost certainly have developed further from the player he is today and be at least as good as any of those three if not even better and I don't think around £60m would be over the odds for a player like that, quite the opposite actually. The market is what it is but for a world class attacking player 50m seems to be the starting rate these days and for a guy being hyped as a potential future Ballon d'Or winner it's not at all unreasonable to ask for even more. Anyway, we shouldn't even talk about selling Hazard at this point. I'd rather just enjoy the qualities he brings to the team and if (right now a very big IF mind you) he wants to go after a couple of more seasons then we'll talk more.

Bale, James, Di Maria... Need I go on?

You really didn't get the joke? I didn't think it would need explaining...

Matic, Fabregas, Hazard, Oscar and Costa. For me, as good as they are none of the defenders are untouchable because we have five equally excellent players in Ivanovic, Cahill, Terry, Azpilicueta and Filipe Luis. If one of them is sidelined with an injury or a suspension, the replacement will fit right in and we hardly even notice anyone's missing. Same can't be said about the players mentioned above because their replacements are nowhere near their class.

Courtois Ivanovic - Cahill - Zouma - Filipe Fabregas - Matic Schürrle - Oscar - Hazard Drogba Get Costa on for the second half if needed. Maybe fit Ramires in there somewhere to allow him to get some match fitness and also keep one of the other midfielders fresh for Liverpool.

He's nothing till he's showed he's got what it takes on a cold rainy Tuesday night at Strawberry.

Right on schedule.

Fitting, given Gerrard just slipped on his ass seconds before. While that's true I still don't rate Moreno all that highly. He could be better if he was at Chelsea but still not as good as our lads. Lovren on the other hand is a really good player and him playing like shit at Liverpool as well goes a long way in showing Rodgers' complete lack of managerial ability. "Anyone can coach defending, it's easy" - Brendan Rodgers Hard to stop laughing at the man.

Moreno is shit, I'm really glad we opted for Filipe Luis instead.

This Liverpool is incredibly similar to AVB's Spurs. One season of success having built the team around a proper world class player in Suarez and Bale but with the star man gone neither team can produce shit. Called it already this summer but was constantly laughed at by nearly everyone.

Personally I don't rate him and always considered him to have been a freeloader in Barcelona's success. He'd count as HG having spent four years at United as a youngster but other than that I don't see why we should go for him. There are plenty of better value for money options out there if we decide to go for another CB, which I'm not even sure we need to.

Ivanovic will serve his suspension tomorrow so he'll be back for QPR and there's no chance Zouma will play RB for that one. Other than that I agree, playing well against Shrewsbury and Maribor would go a long way in convincing Mourinho he can do the job when called upon and that there's no need to move Ivanovic to CB if Terry or Cahill get injured.

Yep, had that been Ramires to come on it would have been a different story.Fucking disappointed is all I can say at the moment...