Jype

Yep, that's right. France didn't really have any other interesting teams aside from PSG so naturally they get the lion's share from the French broadcasting revenue.

http://web3.cmvm.pt/sdi2004/emitentes/docs/FR51732.pdf This is Porto's statement to the Portuguese stock exchange on the transfer, it confirms they owned just 56.67% of Mangala and received a total of €30.5m for their part. The rest of the player was owned by Jorge Mendes and I'm having a really hard time believing he would have valued his share low enough to sell the 43% for just €9.5m. Some media outlets, at least Independent, say the total amount was £42.9m which would mean that Mendes' share was valued the same as Porto's but without an official statement to support either of the claims I suppose we'll never get to know the truth.

Agent Didier trying to destroy Liverpool FC?

Costa: "It's a club with great history. That's the reason I chose Chelsea and why I want to defend this shirt." Not sure if he just joined Liverpool or Chelsea.

Would be a great signing. Cheap, versatile and PL proven. Could play out wide or up front where he'd offer a whole new dimension compared to Costa, DD and Torres. Already settled in London too.

Marca are saying 4-6 months, take that with a pinch of salt for now but gutted if true. If he really is out for most of the season we'll definitely have to go after another striker now.

Ridiculously overpriced though. Porto just announced to the stock exchange to have received €30.5m for 56.7% of Mangala's rights so in total City paid around €54m for Mangala. That equals almost 43 million pounds.

Javi Garcia is not in there but Nastasic still qualifies as U21 for the PL and can be registered on the B-list for Champions League so they've got a total of 18 non-HG players. For the Champions League they can only name 16 non-HG players due to their FFP sanctions so two of them have to go but for the Premier League they only need to sell one. Javi Garcia will probably be the first to go but after that they can't really afford to lose anyone so it will be interesting to see who will miss out on the CL squad.

Maybe the fact he went to Liverpool, praised their club's glorious fucking history and told everyone how he knew straight away they were going to win the league ahead of Chelsea has something to do with many of us disliking him. In his one season at Chelsea I would say he pretty much did what was asked of him. He was bought only as a squad player and was not completely useless but not very good either.

TX has already done that plenty of times and as they say, what has been seen cannot be unseen.

After Rodwell maybe they'd fancy another washed up injury-ravaged player, we got this kid they call the German Messi and I reckon Sunderland could get him for £15m.

Loaning players gives Everton a chance to attract better talent than they would get if they bought them. Worked pretty well for them last year as the loanees got them to fifth place and now they were even able to get the two most important loanees (Lukaku and Barry) on permanent deals. It's not degrading at all, if anything I'd say it's very smart business for a club that can't really afford to have any expensive flops. If they had tried to buy Lukaku and Barry last year they'd have been told to fuck off because they wouldn't have offered much for players they weren't sure would be good for them but now they were able to have a first hand look at how the players fit their team and were allowed to postpone the decision of whether they really want to pursue these players or not.

And what exactly were you planning on doing with your life if you think you'll never have to face a situation where you're asked to do something you don't really want to? Even business owners have to suck it up every once in a while and just do what their clients want. At 15/16 it might seem like you know everything and have it all figured out but life is much easier if you just accept that you're not always right. If you don't, you'll turn into one of those 'insecure egomaniacs' sooner rather than later.

Got to love the 'teenage rebellion' attitude. Maybe you haven't heard but in real life people must do plenty of things they don't give a fuck about.

I have an idea. The first person to post a picture of Lampard holding a Manchester City shirt gets IP banned?

I want whatever it is that Alex is smoking.

'Interesting', as in whoever wrote that agrees with you. If only it was that simple. Lukaku was not just "wanting to see his impressive performances rewarded with a chance at first team football" as much as he was demanding that we give up on signing Costa and give him the undisputed number one striker role intended for Diego. Comparisons between Lukaku and Torres, Ba, Eto'o are moronic because that's not the one people should be comparing, it's rather Lukaku against Costa where I know which one I would choose 100 times out of 100. Yeah, let's just knowingly keep a player who's been throwing a tantrum for the last year because that's what's best for squad morale. Fuck logic. The part about FFP and Cavani is also pretty much bullshit. Lukaku's FFP cost to the club was around £6m a year but selling him now gave the club a lump sum profit of well over £20m so overall a difference of almost £30m this year. If we now signed Cavani, who'd be hands down the most expensive realistic option for us on the market, he'd cost around £15m a year so with the Lukaku money in the bank we'd only have to worry about his effect on FFP in two years from now and by then we are 100% certain to have Torres (£18.5m a year) off the books when his contract expires so even then it would make little difference. And if we signed a cheaper alternative or no one at all, the profit made from selling Lukaku is enormous.

That doesn't really make much sense. For FFP it doesn't matter if or when players are sold, all they care about is the money. Should we stay inside the deficit limits set by FFP (max. €30m total loss for seasons 12/13, 13/14 and 14/15) we can have a squad as big as we want and no one will be forcing us to sell anyone if we don't want to. Also, like I just said the second FFP monitoring period is for those three seasons so FFP-wise it makes no difference if a player is sold this season or the next because it will still be during the same monitoring period. Therefore, it would be wisest to sell unwanted players as soon as possible because at the moment they're still costing the club money both in wages and amortised fees. For example Torres costs around £18,5m a year so if there was even a small chance of selling him I'm pretty sure he'd be gone because it's not very smart to keep such expensive deadwood lying around. For 12/13 season Chelsea's FFP loss was €42m so there will have to be a total FFP profit of around €12m for the 13/14 and 14/15 seasons to comply with the rules. With the new broadcasting deal and improved sponsorship contracts kicking in for these two seasons the club will already be getting a lot more income than before and then there are the player sales of around €180m this year for which club have made an FFP profit of approximately €120m so there's absolutely no need to worry about not passing the FFP limits. A lot of money has been spent on new players as well but their prices are amortised for the years to come so FFP-wise we've done a HUGE profit this year in the market. We could easily be able to sign at least one player costing Torres-level FFP money (£55m fee and £150k a week) and it wouldn't affect our future dealings at all. With the aforementioned income I predict the club to be posting a very large profit for years 13/14 and 14/15, which should take us free and clear for the second FFP period. Then for the 15/16 season we would even be allowed to post at least an equal loss equal to that of 12/13, which was somewhere in the region of €42m, to still pass the third monitoring period and unless we drop out of the Champions League that kind of a heavy loss is not looking so likely anymore. There is some weird myth doing rounds that Chelsea are in trouble with the FFP but this couldn't be further away from the truth.

Please be true, Wolfsburg are one of few clubs who could actually afford his wages. Not going to get excited just yet but at least he keeps being linked with various clubs which is infinitely better than what we've had in the last few years when there were not even rumours that he might be on the way out and there was absolutely no hope.

"Thibaut Courtois can’t wait to start writing a new chapter of his career at Chelsea." From the club's official website, cheeky dig at Lukaku?

I know, but somehow I got a feeling Cech will move on and at least one of Mikel, Romeu and MvG will no doubt leave as well so adding another striker would only depend on whether or not we can get rid of Torres.

Probably not, they need money to get Di Maria.

A Spanish journalist, working for Marca, quoting Diego Forlan saying Cavani is a fan of Chelsea. Don't know how wise it would be to have Costa and Cavani in the same team but if both of them are up for the challenge and Jose wants to get Cavani, I wouldn't say no if we somehow managed to offload Torres first. Costa, Cavani, Drogba would be one of the best strikeforces in world football and a nice change from last seasons Eto'o, Torres, Ba.

Well, it's not rocket science to assume it was a condition since he's no longer a Chelsea player?

Not to mention the signings we've made in that time. Matic, Costa, Cesc and Filipe Luis all arrived for reasonable prices in today's market to improve the very areas that needed improving and young lads like Salah and Zouma also have all the potential in the world to become great players. If only the board still managed to sell Torres in this transfer window... With the way they've been going about their business this year I wouldn't be surprised if they were able to ship out the ladyboy for another £15m!