Jype

Well, his full name is Kurt Happy Zouma so maybe his parents knew something when they were picking names.

That yellow shirt is beautiful, will definitely be buying one of those as soon as the price drops a little. Been planning on getting one with Schürrle on the back but now there's also Drogba. My old Drogba shirt is too big for me nowadays so I can't really wear it anymore... Tough decisions.

No, they're joining the squad on 30th July, the day of the match, so there's no way they'll be playing yet. The Spanish lads and Cahill already had a few days of training for the RZ Pellets game but none of them played. Lukaku has trained with Anderlecht so he could be fit enough to play but probably still won't. Drogba has been with the squad since Friday so there's a small chance he will feature.

Except the club gave that to Victor Moses in 2012. Anyway, now that Moses is not in Mourinho's plans Thibaut will get the 13 shirt if he wants it but it was by no means reserved for him.

Some players have them more often than others.

Van Ginkel not afraid to throw himself into a tackle, good to see.

From Fabregas to Costa and a goal. Imagine we'll see a lot of that this season.

No, he and Brown got substituted for Torres and Van Ginkel.

Looks a lot like 4-1-4-1 at times, Cesc is clearly higher up the pitch than Matic.

Come on ref, not every contact between players is a foul.

No one's saying they don't rate him, especially not anyone inside the club. Yes, he obviously has some flaws in his game like every 21-year-old but his career has still been very impressive so far and looking a the transfer market talented youngsters like him go for big money all the time. Also, you left out the part where Lukaku himself is the one pushing for a move. Every player has a price and if they're not willing to stay then they're free to go as soon as someone pays the asking price. I don't think the Lukaku of now is worth that much but in his case the asking price is very high because Chelsea have already paid a lot of money for him three years ago and he has since then improved a lot and still has an even higher ceiling. If a player like Shaw goes for £30m because of how good he can potentially become, why should we price Lukaku based on his current abilities and not his potential?

Why wouldn't he? Jose is all about commitment and if a player doesn't want to work with him, why keep him against his will?

Gay people don't like beer?

Well, to be fair free agents can be signed outside the transfer window.

Delighted to see this back in the 'Current squad' section instead of Ex-Blues. :blue scalf:

Yeah, it's all about the new flavour of the month with them. More James shirts sold -> less Ronaldo shirts sold. Only extra they'll be getting by signing James is the sales peak at the time of the signing when people go crazy and feel they need to have the shirt of a new Galactico despite perhaps already buying some other player's shirt earlier, and also the increased amount of shirts sold in the player's native country Colombia where I would expect them to be buying a lot more Real Madrid shirts now that James is there. This additional income matters very little when we're talking about a player who cost them €80m in transfer fee and another €80m in wages for the duration of the contract.

Everton have a lot of tough fixtures early on (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man United all in the first seven gameweeks) so at the moment I wouldn't go for Barkley nor any other Everton player. Still worth keeping an eye on them because from GW8 all the way till GW20 they only face two top teams and by then some of the prices on their players may even have reduced a little if they don't perform against the big teams and people pull the trigger on them prematurely. Not sure I'd pick Johnson at £6,5m either but that's up to you. If it's between those two I'd go for Johnson early on and then maybe get Barkley later but if you can afford it and are willing to take a chance on some new players there are some pretty interesting choices in the £7,5m price range, for example Tadic, de Jong and maybe even Herrera if he gets the right role under van Gaal. They'd also be a lot easier to swap for Barkley later because you wouldn't need to worry about the price difference when all are more expensive than Barkley whereas with Johnson you'd have to switch some other players too.

Nah, the price difference is only 0.5m and I trust Sigurdsson to be their main man for set-pieces which I consider to be worth the difference alone. I still remember how good Gylfi was in his loan spell at Swansea before joining Spurs and if he can get anywhere close to that form again he'll be back in everyone's teams pretty soon.Shelvey is also a pretty good shout for a mid-price midfielder but I've made up my mind.

Gylfi Sigurdsson the first name on my teamsheet.

So you think the rest of the family didn't come with him to England at the time he joined Chelsea when he was 10? They just stayed back in Marseille while their pre-teen son moved to London to pursue a career of a professional footballer?I don't consider it a good idea to let a 17-year-old lad make that kind of a move on his own just yet and asking his parents to move with him for such a short term loan isn't really fair on them. We've all seen these cautionary tales of players who get too much too young and we don't want Boga to become like that, let's just let him be a kid while he still can and when he's mature enough he'll either get his chance to go on loan or be promoted to the first team.

The lad is 16, you don't loan out kids who probably still stay with their parents and have no idea how to live independently. Absolutely no need to rush him.

Boga to Vitesse?

Ake getting Romeu's number 6 shirt and Romeu switching to 20 is interesting. Wonder if that means Ake is staying with the first team this season?

Costa, Cesc, Cahill and Azpilicueta only have a couple of days training since their holidays so it makes sense for them not to be involved just yet. Luis is only playing because he trained for a while with Atletico before joining the Chelsea squad. No worries, we'll see the rest of the new lads on Sunday then.