Jype

Searched Twitter for news on this and found a guy saying it's pretty much a done deal for £25m and in addition to the friendly at Stamford Bridge next month there's also an agreement to play another in Spain next summer at their stadium. Just passing the info, no idea whether it's legit. Only way getting Griezmann would make any sense would be if the plan was to play him up front but can't see that happening. Buying him to play AM would be pointless...

Exactly, he's already begun his pre-season training with Atletico and will be ready to join the Chelsea squad the minute he signs but had he been away in Brazil we'd only have him back at the same time as Schürrle, Oscar, Willian and Ramires. Better for us to have our starting left-back ready and hungry for success when the ball starts rolling again.

Then stop being a cheap bastard and pay the six pounds for a one month subscription. Not a bad price for eight pre-season games IMO.

How was he "a bit better than decent" when he couldn't even keep his place in the team after the group stage and only started 3 out of 7 games throughout Oranje's cup run? I do remember him being excellent against Spain in their opening game but other than that I didn't really see anything special and the question is, why didn't Louis Van Gaal trust him when the stakes got higher? Also, players should never be judged based only on their national team performances because there's always those who impress there but fail to live up to expectations when they get their big moves with players like Gregory Van der Wiel and Theodore Gebre-Selassie being prime examples of average full-backs who shined in the last two major international tournaments but have proved shit since. How good has Janmaat been at Feyenoord in the last two or three seasons, can you honestly say you know him enough to tell for sure? And even if he's been impressive there the step up from Eredivisie to the PL is huge, especially for defenders, so I wouldn't be so sure he can reproduce his performances in a much better league, at least not straight away without first going through an adaptation period, so I think a club like Newcastle are pretty ideal for him at the moment and the time to make a move to a big team will come later if he first proves himself in a better league. And even if we disregard the debate on whether Janmaat is actually good enough, there's still the major issue that he's a right-back and that's probably the least of our worries at the moment. Why even consider trying to desperately fit a square peg in a round hole by getting another RB and continuing to play Azpilicueta out of position if the alternative is to get Luis who is exactly what we're looking for? Whether you like him or not, Filipe Luis has proven to be one of the best left-backs in the world based on his form for the last 3-4 years and at least to me £15m for a player like that is not at all unreasonable. The fact he's soon to be 29 doesn't matter at all because it's about time we get a few players in their prime to compliment the 20-24 year olds who are still yet to reach their career peaks. I for one am very much looking forward to seeing Luis at Chelsea and as an attacking left-back he should also help unlock some of Hazard's potential by offering another option out wide so Hazard can't be marked so tightly, and that's something we couldn't achieve last season with Azpilicueta playing as a right footed left-back who didn't go forward much.

ChelseaTV will show it.

So you'd rather buy a few average players for £5m each and hope for a miracle than spend £15m on someone who's been among the best players in the world in his position for a couple of years now? Not sure you'll find many who agree with you there. We don't need quantity as much as we need quality and if the club thinks Luis is worth the £15m then I'm more than okay with that. And it's not like £15m for a class player who can give us three or four years of service at the highest level is some obscure amount of money. Also, Luis has never been injury prone. Sure he just broke his leg a few years back which kept him out for a good while but that's not something we should be concerned about because naturally leg breaks are not recurring injuries like knee ligaments for example.

Don't know about you but I'd sleep much easier if we had at least one proven yet still young player like Varane in case the others fail to live up to expectations. There's more than enough time for some of our current youngsters (Zouma, Kalas, Aké, Omeruo, Christensen) to make the step up within the next couple of years because either way there will still be at least a couple of openings in the squad once Terry and Ivanovic are gone but a chance to buy someone of Varane's class doesn't come by every day. I don't think we should be going all out to sign him this summer because for this season we should be fine with Terry, Cahill, Ivanovic and Zouma but what I'm saying is that we should at least be monitoring Varane's situation at Real Madrid closely and on the off chance he really asks for a move we should get him because within a year or two we'd be in a situation where we need someone like him anyway and at the time there might not be anyone as good available and we'd just have let Varane go to someone like United. If he's happy to stay for now, we shouldn't even consider making a bid and just continue with our current bunch of defenders while still having an eye on this guy in case his situation changes by next summer.

There's a reason as to why Daryl Janmaat at 25 is still playing in the Eredivisie, which if I might add is usually not very well known for the quality of the defending. That's not me saying I don't think he's any good but to even suggest ditching the almost signed deal for Filipe Luis, one of the best left-backs in Europe for the last couple of years, in favour of signing Janmaat and continuing to play Azpilicueta out of position is insane. Good player for Newcastle and will probably be a perfect replacement for Arsenal-bound Debuchy but I don't think he's anywhere close to being what we need right now and we can't sign everyone who's available for a decent price. If you're going to suggest we forget Luis and sign one of the Dutch defenders who impressed at the World Cup, at least go with Daley Blind who had a much better tournament and is actually a left-back.

I would love to see Zouma get some games too but if loaning him out for a year only for him to return once Terry's finished is what it takes to land Varane, my only question is where do we sign? Even if players like Zouma and Kalas were to be ready to really make the step up in the near future we're going to be needing some new CBs in a year or two anyway as Terry and Ivanovic are both on the wrong side of 30 and I consider Varane to be the best U23 centre-back at the moment so getting him would be huge. If he really were to decide this summer that he wants to leave Real Madrid, we simply must get him because otherwise he'd probably go to Manchester United who are 100% to be after a central defender with Ferdinand and Vidic gone. That being said, at the moment I can't see it happening. These things can change quickly in football though.

And we need a new right-back why exactly?

Agreed, we're not but Real Madrid definitely are and they're getting the same amount as us. Reckon Adidas will be getting some angry phonecalls from us and Real Madrid in the near future.

I nominated @bushman but since he didn't get the appreciation he deserved I'm going with @The Skipper.

More than double Real Madrid's deal too. Something's not right here..

That's not to say it won't happen because they might still be in negotiations but I think they were just reacting to reports that said both deals are already done. It's just shareholders needing to know exactly what's going on and all that.

Nope. I used translate and it says the reports are not true. That's something Turkish clubs are obligated to do, I think.

Doubt it. If the deal is all but done as they say I don't see why they wouldn't announce it sometime this week and get him ready to join the squad when they leave London for the European tour. So far there's been no rush but if they delay for another few weeks it will hurt his preparation for the season because he's not even training properly at Atletico now. Triple announcement together with his mates Costa and Tiago, maybe?

Yay first nomination achieved, thanks @! Appreciate the recognition, especially coming from the boss around here.

Aww, that's so nice of you.

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I think it's more than fair that we as fans give Willian the benefit of the doubt for his somewhat disappointing debut season and only judge him now that he's fully settled in the country, the league and most importantly the team. He has lived in London for a year and gotten to know what it's like playing in the Premier League so he SHOULD now be more ready to make an impact than he was last season. Players are different, some of them settle in immediately like Mata three years ago or Matic this January but then there are also those who require the learning curve like Ramires, Oscar, Schürrle, Salah and maybe Willian too. Hell, Ivanovic didn't play a game for the club until almost a year after signing for £10m and look how far he's come now. Some players don't know the language and maybe get homesick while others, even some of the ones I just mentioned, have been very surprised at just how tough the PL actually is and they've had to do some extra individual training to bulk up and get better prepared to playing in England so I don't think it's fair to judge anyone too harsh after just one season. However if there's no improvement to be seen this year, all bets are off and there's no excuses anymore so fair criticism is very much okay if these boys still don't perform. Torres was a player who'd already played in the PL for three and a half years at the time of the transfer and was supposedly a world class player, so at least for me the expectations were a lot higher from the start. It's players like Torres that are supposed to hit the ground running but for younger and more unproven players, especially those who come from different leagues and maybe don't know the language I like to allow a year-long adaption period before starting to really forge an opinion on whether I think they're good enough to play for the club.

I've seen enough of him at Shakhtar to tell his end product, while could still be better, is nowhere near as bad as we saw last season. A valid point that the others have shown more glimpses of what's to come if things go according to plan but I think Willian is also capable of great things and there is a reason why a bunch of clubs were willing to pay £30m for him last year. Coming into a new club and country is no easy task for a foreigner, especially for one who didn't speak English at the time, but he has already shown he's capable of adapting to living in countries like Ukraine and Russia which for a Brazilian are surely harder places to fit in than London so the mental strength should be there somewhere and hopefully by the start of the season he's fully ready for the challenges that lie ahead. If not, then there's always Schürrle who will definitely be a hit this year.

And almost true. Since June 2012 Oscar has played 111 games for Chelsea, 4 games for Internacional, 6 games for Brazil U23s in the Olympics and 33 games for the senior Brazil side. A total of 154 official games and if we include pre-season games there as well I'm pretty sure we'll end up with around 160 matches. Crazy numbers really, got to be some kind of a record.

They haven't really been spending big in the past, maybe on paper someone like Falcao looked expensive but in reality Atletico only paid a small portion of the €40m with the majority of his rights owned by an investment group led by Jorge Mendes. That's all well and good because unlike in England, in Spain such things are allowed and it gives teams like Atletico a chance of attracting top players with relatively little risk but then again the downside is that they can't keep hold of such players for too long and when they finally move on Atletico don't receive much of the transfer fees. That's what I predict will happen with Rodrigo too if he ends up there and I think Atletico are happy to agree deals like that because it at least gives them a shot of going up against Barcelona and Real Madrid who, no matter if it has changed a little in recent times, still earn at least three times as much money from broadcasting revenue than Atletico do. But yeah, one thing people can always count on is Atletico having a world class front line. Players come and go but they always seem to find the perfect replacements to suit their needs and I think this time it will be no different. Correa is another interesting prospect and it will be great to finally see him in a European league playing for a big team, been hearing good things about him for a while now but never really watched the Argentinian league so can't say if he's as good as they say he is. They'll definitely do well again next year but I think it's still safe to say Atletico getting back-to-back titles won't happen. Would love to be proven wrong though.

Yeah, no chance of them winning the title again this season. To lose roughly half their starting lineup (Costa, Villa, Tiago, Luis, Courtois) will be too much no matter how good the replacements. I think Rodrigo would be amazing for them. Atletico have history of developing world class strikers and Rodrigo at the moment is a rough diamond, a player who's got all the talent to be one of the best players in the world but so far hasn't really been able to fulfill his potential playing in the low-level Portuguese league so Atleti would be a perfect team for him. Hope they get him, I like Rodrigo and would be nice to get to see him more often. He's way too expensive for Atletico though because he's owned by a third party who earlier this year bought his rights for €40m from Benfica but with the rules being what they are in Spain I think Atletico could just buy a part of him with the majority of his ownership still remaining with the investment group but to buy 100% of his rights is too much for a team like Atletico.

Can't see them missing Adrian at all, 3 goals in 39 games simply put it is not enough and to get €11m from selling Porto 60% of the player is fantastic business by Atletico. Sure, he was a substitute in most of those games but still should have done a lot better to earn a future at the club. Atletico have already replaced the Costa - Villa partnership with the purchases of Mandzukic and Correa who will probably be their starters, now they just need to get someone to replace Adrian as the backup forward and they're set to go as far as the strikers are concerned. Replacing Luis with Siqueira and Courtois with Oblak will be much bigger losses for them than the forwards IMO.