Jype

"Woah, what's happening here?" - Romelu Lukaku a year ago when Chelsea signed a has-been Samuel Eto'o If that was his reaction when faced with a challenge to compete with Eto'o and Torres for a place, do you honestly think he fancies going up against Costa either? If he goes, it was most certainly by his own request.

I know it's €12m gross but it's still a a lot of money, around €230k / week before tax to be precise. That's more than Torres and around the same as Hazard, who are our two best paid players. And I don't think Götze is even the highest paid player at Bayern so there's absolutely no way they couldn't financially challenge Barca and Real for Reus' signature and the other factors I mentioned might make him sign for them even if the Spanish clubs offered him a little more. edit: I see you changed your post while I was writing the reply. I agree, for many reasons we don't really stand a chance of getting him and that's perfectly fine by me, we don't have to be after every quality player on the planet like Real Madrid. As disgusting a move as it would be I hope he ends up at Bayern, don't want to see him play for one of our English rivals.

So, they have signed three decent squad players and one starter whereas we have improved massively by adding four amazing players to be starters (Costa, Fabregas, Luis, Courtois) and a bunch of good squad players (Drogba, Van Ginkel, Romeu, Zouma). Then we also have fully adjusted and cup-eligible players in Matic, Salah and like we all know Mourinho's teams are always better the second time around so we can easily expect more from all the others as well. I wasn't saying City haven't gotten a little better, because they have addressed some problems in their squad even though none of the players they've signed so far would make our team, but it's way too pessimistic to be thinking they've somehow become unbeatable after signing average squad players like Sagna and Fernando because in reality we weren't all that much worse than them even last season and we've improved enough to easily get 10 more point if things go our way. Whether that's enough for the title or not remains to be seen, but at the moment I only see us having improved enormously and I will much rather be happy about our chances than all doom and gloom. Living your life that way must be hard...

Where have they gotten better exactly? As of now they have got Caballero, Sagna, Fernando and judging by the leaked video presentation Mangala is about to join too. Mangala is a good signing for them and improves their central defense but the rest are squad players at best. They got Caballero, we got Courtois They got Sagna, we got Filipe Luis They got Fernando, we got Fabregas We also got Costa and Drogba to replace Eto'o and Ba plus Van Ginkel and Romeu to replace Lampard. Don't know about you but I would say we are winning them so far in the transfer window.

They don't have to spend anywhere near the amounts Real and Barca pay for their 'Galacticos'. Next year Reus has a fixed €35m release clause so Bayern will most certainly be willing to match that and as for wages they gave Götze a €12m a year contract (£180k / wk) and most of their other key players are also on massive wages so when Reus, the gem of German football, will be available for a modest transfer fee Bayern will be all over it. Unlike the Spanish giants Bayern also have attractions such as staying in his home country and being re-united with former BVB teammates Götze / Lewandowski and getting to play with plenty of his German NT buddies.

You can't really compare that to City's strikers and do a 1+1=2 and just assume that because their overkill strikeforce barely won them the league that our's will have no chance. At the back we are much stronger and with a full season of Matic and newly-signed Fabregas our midfield has also suddenly become pretty good compared to last season's Ramires - Mikel. Our attacking midfielders score much more goal than City's apart from Yaya Toure, whose commitment to City is still somewhat unclear and it's not guaranteed he has another 20 goal season in him. There's absolutely no reason to be all doom and gloom as you seem to be, with or without Lukaku it's an excellent time to be a Chelsea fan and with the squad we have there is a very good chance we will win back the title after five years of waiting.

Normally I'd agree with you but this is Torres we're talking about, after three and a half years of torture I'd enjoy watching him suffer at QPR.

Don't you think you're being a little bit overdramatic there? Anyway, maybe it's just me but I consider the attacking trio of Costa, Torres and DD to be enough for a season if Lukaku goes (and at the moment that's still 'IF'). It's not ideal but in addition to our other signings still IMO good enough to win us the title. Hell, with the kind of through balls Fabregas was playing in the last game even Torres might yet have a goal or two in him. Looking at the big picture I can see nearly everyone raising their game with these new quality additions to the squad and at least for me that's reassuring enough to go into the season with the players we have now and I'm confident we'll win the league.

Wonder if QPR are willing to take Torres in exchange?

I was thinking more like long term. Torres, even if he survives the ongoing transfer window, won't be a part of Chelsea FC for any more than a season or two and clearly everyone at the club knows that we can't really rely on him so eventually he will be replaced and probably by a very good player too. If in two years from now we have Costa and another very good striker banging in goals every game do you really think people will cry over what could have been if we had Lukaku? I honestly don't see the big deal in all this. Costa / Torres / Drogba, which is still the worst case scenario and might even change if we somehow manage to ship off Torres, is more than enough to compete for some trophies this year when you consider the other improvements to the team and how close we came to winning some major trophies last season with a squad clearly worse than what we have now even without Lukaku. Like I said, I'm still hoping he stays but it's not the end of the world if he goes and £24m + bonuses is a good price.

Selling a player who's unhappy at the club for over his market value is always good business IMO. Sturridge's contract was about to expire and it was clear he wasn't going to renew so it was a case of getting £12m for him in January or letting him go for free in the summer so yes, getting £12m was good business. Selling Mata for £37m and De Bruyne for £18m were no different. As long as the other strikers, Costa and whoever the club will end up with in the next couple of years, are living to expectations and we're not left second guessing how things would have been if Lukaku had stayed, I don't see us missing him at all. Look at De Bruyne, no matter how good he's performing for Wolfsburg you don't see many people moaning that it was a wrong decision to sell him because we still have AMs that perform.

"I know it's a club with a great history, great fans and a lot of great players. For me, Liverpool is one of the greatest clubs in the world and I'm very excited to be part of this great history." - Divock Origi For fucks sake, these cunts really are obsessed about their history when they force every new signing to go on and on about it. Fact is Origi was born in 1995 in Belgium so he probably doesn't give a fuck about that club's ancient history.

According to Di Marzio, Everton's offer is €30m + bonuses. Still sort of hoping for him to stay because he's a quality player who also fills the HG requirements, but I've already accepted the fact he's as good as gone. If he doesn't want to stay and fight for his place I'd be more than okay with selling him for that kind of money. Together with the £3m loan fee Everton paid for Lukaku last year we'd receive a lot of money for a player who's done fuck all for us and supposedly doesn't even want to be at the club anymore. Assuming the add-on payments to Anderlecht haven't been triggered with Lukaku only playing 15 games for the club and not scoring a single goal, the price we paid for him was only around £11m and now he's about to go for over double that amount which I consider to be a good piece of business once again.

Why would he get a squad number before he even joins the team?

Maybe Jose can lock him inside the locker room of Vitesse's stadium tomorrow and leave him behind.

Because I have Dzeko as well.

http://www.chelseafc.com/news/latest-news/2014/07/blues-to-take-part-in-turkish-charity-tournament0.html Two 45-minute games, one against Fenerbahce and the other against Besiktas. Will be seeing Demba Ba again in that game!

Haha, didn't even notice. I hate my phone...

In that case there's probably no chance of him playing in this game. Oh well, all the more reason to wait for the Welder Bremen match. Hazard, Courtois and Lusaka should be back for that one as well.

http://metro.co.uk/2014/07/27/joe-cole-says-liverpool-thought-they-were-bigger-than-chelsea-4812154/

Sure, I just don't consider having three attacking players from the same team to be a good idea no matter which team we're talking about and the fact it's Liverpool makes it even worse.

Too much Liverpool.

Why not both? I've got a monster of a team at the moment, still trying to fit in Alexis Sanchez somewhere in there but it's not so easy because I don't want to lose anyone else. At the moment I have Giroud in the team but if I can figure out a way to get the extra £2m I think I'll upgrade him to Sanchez.

The Belgians will be back in training on Wednesday this week when we play Vitesse but think that'll be too early for them so they'll probably play their first pre-season game against Werder Bremen on Sunday the 3rd of August. Still plenty of pre-season action for them with games against Ferencvaros and Real Sociedad coming up and also the mini tournament in Istanbul against Fenerbahce and Besiktas.

Yep, check Wikipedia. I noticed it a while back and thought it was funny, he must have epic parents for them to give him his first name after a Van Damme character and middle name Happy!