Jype

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.

Reading the new article probably, on the forum there's not many people online at the moment.

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.

Can't even begin to describe how shit I consider this 'music' to be but the atmosphere seems good and I'd happily go if I had a chance. A few days of heavy partying and hitting on beautiful women in nice summertime weather doesn't sound too bad to me.

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.

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.