Jype

Quite expensive, the bolded part. Not sure if the club can afford to be paying the new signings £516m / week. Back to being serious, it really is amazing how much the club has progressed in the last couple of years. Can't even begin to imagine how different things would have turned out if we had lost the CL 2012. Not being able to get players like Hazard would only have been the tip of the iceberg, missing out on the CL money and not being able to negotiate such fantastic sponsorship deals would have been a much bigger loss IMO. Now the club is set for the years to come even without getting a dime from the owner's pocket and it's starting to look more and more likely that even with a lot of big name signings the club will still be profitable. The groundwork for all this was set on that night in Munich little over two years ago.

Why wouldn't he? If Lukaku spent as much time impressing Mourinho in training as he does moaning to the media about how miserable his life is, the sky's the limit. We all know Torres is only still at the club because no one will take him because of his wages so he won't be picked if the others (Costa and Lukaku) perform much better. If Torres can't be offloaded this transfer window, he most certainly will be next summer when he only has a year left on his contract and a lot of smaller clubs can afford to match his year's wages at Chelsea with a contract offer of 2-3 years on smaller wages. If Lukaku is not confident enough to think he's got what it takes to get ahead of Torres in the pecking order, he has no place at Mourinho's Chelsea.

What makes you say that? Costa wore 19 both at Atletico and the national team so when it became available at Chelsea it made every sense for him to take it. That being said Torres staying is more than likely but making such assumptions on what squad number Diego Costa took is pointless. Costa will be joining the squad next week and will begin playing pre-season games so he needed the number now, can't afford to wait till the end of August to see whether we can ship out the ladyboy.

If he stays and is happy to share playing time with Costa, great. If not, the club will move on. Simple really.

I know but I was counting the wages there also. A better choice of word would then have been saving £5m (actually over £6m according to Jake Cohen there) but the point still stands.

I lol'd at "Humble guy".

Is that instagram stuff actually even true? I checked and he doesn't have any Chelsea related pictures there but there aren't too many others either so maybe he's deleted pretty much everything. On Twitter he still has a profile picture of him with the Champions League trophy from 2012 and plenty of other CFC pictures as well.

Maybe he's going to Liverpool and it's just their PR department working their usual magic. Next thing we know Bertrand is holding a Liverpool shirt and praising their history while calling us a plastic club. Or maybe not. Either way I'm having a hard time figuring out why he's so bitter all of a sudden.

Read my post above yours. He was good at Lille and there was a time when I even considered him a good option for us but he's been quite bad for a couple of years now and at 29 he still cost Arsenal £12m, at least twice as much than where he was valued a few years ago when he was still younger and in much better form. Maybe his bad form is because of the teams he's played for: Lille without Cabaye, Hazard etc. and especially without manager Rudi Garcia was not a good squad anymore and we all know the state Newcastle have been in for the last couple of years but what if there's more to the story than that? No way to know for sure and that's why I find it funny that people are thinking Arsenal somehow got a bargain for £12m whereas we overspent by getting Luis for £16m.

Costa doesn't look a day older than Thomas Müller, 24.

The bromance is over. I agree. The £4,7m will still cover his remaining £4m FFP book value and to get him off the wage bill is good. Last season he cost the club around £6m with the fee amortisation and wages but now there's around £5m 'profit' for the 14/15 fiscal year. Still good business IMO.

http://www.kap.gov.tr/bildirim-sorgulari/bildirim-detayi.aspx?id=371845 Confirmed, €6m in five installments. Was expecting it to be more tbh.

One of these depending on the opposition. The one on the right is something I predict Mourinho to use against the top teams, especially away from home. These lineups are giving me a boner.

I wasn't saying Debuchy is not a good signing, in fact I think he'll do well for them and was a much better signing than that Serge Aurier kid would have been. Anyone would find it hard to impress in the shambles of a team that is Newcastle United and before going there Debuchy while at Lille was actually along with Azpilicueta my preferred choice for our RB two years ago so I know he's a good player. I just find it funny that pretty much no one is questioning the amount Arsenal paid for him despite the fact he's also 29 before the season starts and has not been in good form for ages now but then a lot of opposition fans are saying our capture of Luis, who was consistently one of Atletico's best players in the last two seasons when they won a bunch of trophies, will be a flop due to his age and the price we paid for him which was actually not that much more than what Arsenal paid for Debuchy. I know we should never be surprised at fickle football fans having double standards but this one's really something.

Arsenal: replaced Sagna, who refused to sign an extension, with a 29-year-old Debuchy who based on the last couple of seasons is certainly is not better than Sagna. Transfer fee £12m Chelsea: replaced Cole, who the club didn't consider good enough for an extension, with a 29-year-old Luis who has been one of the best left-backs in the in the last couple of seasons. Transfer fee £16m, if reports are to be believed. Not bad Chelsea, not bad at all.

Liverpool transfer hit-list now includes Arturo Vidal, Paul Pogba and Marco Reus Most hilarious rumour I've read in the transfer window so far.

I think it's the nicest away kit we've had in years.

"Many inferring that Varane is unhappy with his current deal - and wants a significant boost in his £25,000 a week wages." Varane gets only £25k a week at Real Madrid? That's pretty fucked up when we think about how much all the other first teamers are earning. Anyway, think he'll get a new contract soon enough and our name is just being used as a leverage to get as much money as possible. Would love to be proven wrong though.

Rio at QPR

I agree, at the moment there's really no way to know for sure how Jose is going to set up the team. However, a fair assumption can be made that if Mourinho has identified the left-back position to be a problem enough for him to spend a massive amount of money on a player who was arguably the best in the world at his position last season, he would then at least be played in a role best suited to him and that is definitely a more attacking role than we saw Azpilicueta play last season. Azpilicueta, being a right footed player playing on the left, was forced to play a more restricted role while Ivanovic who is most certainly not known for his attacking contributions other than set-pieces was always allowed to bomb forward. I would hazard a guess that now with Luis who's much better offensively than Ivanovic the roles would be reversed.

Just because he's not a headless chicken like Marcelo who can only attack while neglecting his duties in defense doesn't mean Luis is not good going forward. We all saw at the World Cup how good Brazil's full-backs actually were... Luis IMO is a complete player, great balance between attack / defense and I consider him to be perfect for Hazard. If we only had a full-back who's a complete liability at the back we could see Hazard's role being even more restricted as last season because he'd have to cover for the LB a lot.

Good news IMO, as a Mikel replacement for the backup DM role we could do a lot worse. Romeu's wages are not that high so keeping him around won't cost the club a lot of money but in case he really manages to put the injuries behind him and starts fulfilling his huge potential he could end up being a very valuable player for us for little money, compared to what keeping Mikel let alone signing a player like Khedira would cost us. And if over the course of the season he proves not to be up for it, then there's still Tiago whose arrival looks imminent. Had Romeu been sold now with less than a year left on his contract and big question marks looming over his development as a player he would not have gone for much.

2014/15 game launched earlier today, time to start a new thread and re-create the TC leagues?

And still no Thibaut Courtois, whoever's running the website is clueless.

Bamford most likely, unless Jose plans to try Piazon up front to see if he's got what it takes to play as a lone striker. Bamford was scoring lots of goals in League One and Championship last season.