Jype

Well, they did pay David Villa €160k a week + bonuses last season and they've now got him off the wage bill. Paying high wages is not unheard of at Atletico. While even the €160k figure is not close to Torres' current wages, approximately €220k a week, I would assume he's willing to accept a little less to re-join Atletico, the club he supposedly loves.

If the board manage to get £50m for Luiz and £13m for Torres in the same window, someone deserves a raise.

Plenty of people do the respectable thing by joining another club and taking a pay cut if they feel they're not good enough for a big club and don't want to be a burden anymore. For example Kaká took a pay cut from €10m to just €4m a year when he left Real Madrid for Milan last year. That being said it's definitely not the norm among these greedy modern footballers and I perfectly understand Torres if he desperately wants to hold onto the contract that was given to him but then again going to a smaller club might make him actually enjoy playing again, not to mention it going a long way in getting the Chelsea fans to remember him more fondly as compared to the abuse he'll get if he actually stays till the end of the contract and further hinders the club's development. I suppose it's just a matter of what kind of a person he is and what he values most. He has already earned himself a ridiculous fortune after playing a decade of top level football and earning tens of millions in the process so he doesn't really need the money but he's more than entitled for it, having signed a legally binding contract. Winston Bogarde signed one too but that doesn't make him any less of a cunt. You can't really compare his situation to regular people like us because none of us here are multi-millionaires, at least not that I know of.

Of course it's legal, happens all the time. With Torres that's not going to happen because no team will consider him to be worth even a fraction of the wages he's earning.

Of course, I fully trust them to do what needs to be done but what I meant was that we can start speculating on who will be left out. We have a very balanced squad at the moment and there's not many players in there we could afford to lose without it affecting the strength of the team, maybe one of the three non-HG keepers, Mikel, one of Romeu / Van Ginkel and dare I say Torres. Personally I would be delighted if the club pulled the trigger on the ladyboy and left him out of the squad but that's not very likely unless we somehow miraculously managed to sell or loan him.

Before even going into the discussion on whether or not bringing him back is a good idea, I would raise an important subject the club needs to solve if we sign Drogba and that is the HG quota. We had a discussion earlier today in the Victor Moses thread about the team's homegrown status for the season and as it stands our squad is already full with one player even missing out (Van Ginkel, Romeu, Mikel, Schwarzer, Cech or whoever, take your pick). If the plan is to still add Drogba and Tiago is coming back too like the rumours suggest, we're going to have to make room for them by offloading some of the existing non-HG players. Players like Lukaku, Zouma, Aké etc. will still be U21 so they won't matter but some of the others have to go.

Going back to Middlesbrough for another season, good for him.

Lukaku was born in 1993 so he'll be considered U21. The rules can also be interpreted in a way that would make him even count as homegrown but I'm not sure about that. Even if he doesn't get the HG status he will definitely still count as U21 this season, no doubt about that. Salah and MvG will have to be registered, like I already said in my post above. One of Romeu, Mikel, Cech, Schwarzer will most likely have to make room if the plan is to get both of them in the squad.

I don't think Salah and Van Ginkel count as U21 anymore, IIRC it's players born on 1st January 1993 or later for the 14/15 season and both of them were born in 1992. Salah I think will no doubt be in the squad and he would fill out the remaining non-HG spot but out of Van Ginkel, Mikel and Romeu we can have only two and therefore one of them has to go. For any further signings we would have to make room by selling someone.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/chelseas-romelu-lukaku-transfer-hold-3885510?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter Right decision IMO, at least now Lukaku and Jose can sit down together and have a proper man to man talk about what's going on with his situation. If they come to an agreement and both of them are happy for Lukaku to stay then that's great but if their relationship is still not good enough, he can always be sold later in the window and we'll still easily get around £20m for him so there's no hurry to sell him just yet. If the end result is him going to Everton I'd perhaps even go as far as delay the transfer until deadline day because we'll be playing them at the Goodison near the end of August and it wouldn't be ideal to face him so soon.

Nah, there's no advantages whatsoever and it's just a huge waste of everyone's time and most of all the taxpayers' money because let's face it, who the fuck is interested in going to war with Finland?

I know, I don't believe for a second they would actually force him to go. We also have mandatory military service here in Finland and athletes pretty much get a free pass if they want but for some reason some of them still decide to go, for example former Chelsea man Mikael Forssell did go at the age of 27.

Maybe Willian is switching to 8 and Salah gets his preferred 22? Willian doesn't really look like an 8 to me so I don't know. Could also be a sign of Drogba coming back, he did wear number 15 in his first couple of years at the club so he could be taking that back with Salah just getting 17 or some other free number. Or maybe the rumours of Salah having to join the army were true after all and he's getting no number at all.

He's changing numbers by the looks of things, any idea which he'll take? He had 22 at Basel but that one's already taken so unless Willian is changing too, I can't see any decent numbers available to him except Hazard's old 17. Surely he's not getting number 8.

On Monday, you sure about that? I'm pretty sure Hazard and Courtois aren't coming back for almost another two weeks because of Belgium reaching the QFs and Lukaku was a part of the same team so he's probably been given the same time off. Cutting his holiday short in favour of joining the squad early would be a great way to show Mourinho he's finally ready to let the football do the talking but I won't believe it till I see it.

You forgot Torres

Terry for the PL Golden Boot next season?

Ivanovic playing up front.

Beeney, Ivanovic, Chalobah, Terry, Dasilva, Romeu, Houghton, Boga, Brown, Solanke.

Schwarzer ©; Aina, Zouma, Christensen, Ake; Van Ginkel, Matic; Salah, Baker, Swift; Bamford Very young lineup again. Interesting to see the Matic - Van Ginkel pivot for the first time.

What do you mean by that? Starting over 80% of the league games and playing full minutes in each of the decisive Champions League matches does not scream 'being in the dog house', at least not to me.

Oh, you mean the season where Marcelo started 31 league games compared to Coentrao's 12. At least in one of the El Clasico's they both played, Marcelo at LB and Coentrao in midfield. In the Champions League they pretty much shared the games. Don't remember either if one of them was injured for some of the games but at least in the knockout stages there looks to have been a trend of Coentrao starting the first leg and then Marcelo starting the decisive second leg. Happened each round against CSKA, APOEL and Bayern.

Actually no he didn't. Marcelo played pretty much every game when fit, including the important games, but in Mourinho's last year at Real Madrid he was injured for much of the season. Either way, Coentrao is not exactly what you'd describe a defending full-back either and he was mostly deployed in pretty much the same role as Marcelo whenever he played. Azpilicueta played as a defending full-back last season, that much is clear. However, I would assume that if Mourinho was fully satisfied with his performances there he would just continue with Azpilicueta and not spend a lot of money on a left-back who is known to be excellent both in defense and attack. When buying such a specialist for the position, the ideal thing would then be to actually play him in a role where we can get the most out of him on both ends of the pitch. If the plan was to keep playing a defending left-back who rarely goes forward, why would we not have just bought someone like Marcus Rojo who, like Ivanovic, is a CB by trade but can still play perfectly well as a defending left-back?

Now which stripes are these? The ones where he played Marcelo as a very attacking left-back or the ones where he was last season pretty much forced to play a right-back out of position on the left? I get it, you have this agenda against Mourinho but let's not still be ignorant. To even talk about 'stripes' with Mourinho is wrong, the man's more like a chameleon who can adapt to work with what he's got (to some extent).

Torres costs £18.5m a year for the club, considering wages and the amortised fee. Just let that sink in for a moment.