Jype

Six players for four positions is too thin for a team that plays 50-60 games a season IMO. I know we only had seven defenders last season and of them Kalas hardly even played but we've been really lucky injury-wise at the back this past year so that should be considered the exception, not the rule. There's no way to know if JT will be able to have another injury-free season and some of the others could be getting some unfortunate knocks too but with just six defenders we'd be two injuries or suspensions away from not having any defenders left on the bench so I would consider it very risky to not get another defender in. Not sure if I'd want us to sign another CB because I'm still hoping for Kalas to come good but maybe another rotation option for the full-back department would be good, just to be safe. Ideally that would be Bertrand but I've got a feeling he's not willing to come back and still be a backup. Maybe get Chalobah back and use him at CB if needed, while primarily playing him in midfield? Or in addition to Zouma also keep Omeruo who can play both CB and RB?

Wow, seems there are some massive cunts around the internet. My faith in humanity is dying just a bit by bit every day... When is the payment of the £300 due? Would love to help but atm there are a lot of question marks over my financial situation so for now I can't make any promises. Will know more within the next couple of weeks and if things are looking good, I could do my part in helping to keep this site alive. Muzchap an absolute legend for chipping in almost 20% of the total sum, massive respect.

Why do people have to be so damn negative all the time? If we'd released Terry to make room for the likes of Kalas and Zouma, the meltdown would have been unimaginable but other than that I fail to see what the club should be doing differently to make enough room for Kalas to have a big enough role so his development won't stall and wasting another season in the stands wouldn't do Tomas any good. Yet loaning him out is somehow still the wrong decision? At least now he will go and play regular first team football at a high level and hopefully return in a year or two when JT is very close to retirement and Ivanovic also well into his 30s. Within a couple of years there will definitely be a place or two up for grabs in the CB department and if these young players make the most of their loan spells I can honestly see them making it. The situation is unlike never before because earlier the youngsters have had to compete with players in their prime and that's not an easy task, especially with managerial instability, but a year or two from now we would ideally still have Mourinho in charge and there would be a smooth transition between generations if the players are good enough. I would also consider this current crop of young players at the club a much better one than say maybe five years ago, so I consider their chances to be a little higher than those of the previous generations.

If Jose is planning on getting Fabregas to use him in the pivot of a 4-2-3-1 and if Ramires is going nowhere, we'd have Matic, Fabregas, Ramires and Van Ginkel as our four midfield choices. Sell Mikel and promote a youngster for the fifth place, no point having a player like Mikel sitting in the stands most weeks because he could still fetch the club around 10m in transfer fee and free up a lot of wages too

You're right, some (not all) of the journalists reporting the details of the transfer were nobodies to me a few days ago but I've seen enough people to verify that they are indeed credible to make me believe them too. Believe me, I am highly critical on what I choose to believe but I'm not disregarding some of these reports because they're from journalists I have never heard of because it's quite easy to check if the blokes are reliable or not. If you think that when journo is not from Sky or BBC and the fact you haven't heard of them before makes their stories somehow less true, that's just being ignorant. No one is taking the stories from twitter accounts such as "TransferSources" seriously but when we're talking about verified journalists who publish this stuff under their own name and I see plenty of people telling me to trust them, who am I to say otherwise?

L'Equipe apparently reporting that PSG have given up on their pursuit of Hazard.

Now that's just being ignorant. Most of the stories people have been posting here are actually from respected Spanish media outlets like Mundo Deportivo, Cadena Ser or something along those lines. Of course there's always the occasional 'Sky Nigeria' but then again they're always laughed off as not true. If you're not willing to hear what certain respected Spanish journalists have to say and refuse to believe anything until it's breaking news on BBC or Sky then go right ahead, but maybe then it's also best for you to stay out of this thread until everything has been confirmed to be finalized.

If Luiz went for 48m, there's definitely hope for Ramires to go for around 35 million if Real Madrid really are in for him. Still undecided on whether I'd want him to stay or go. First I would need to know what kind of football Mourinho is planning for next season and what box-to-box midfielder replacements there would be available in the market. Not many better than Ramires, I would suppose, because then Real Madrid would be after them and not Rambo... He's actually a pretty good player when properly utilised so if Jose still sees him as a key player and will alter his tactics to get the best out of him, I really wouldn't mind him staying but if the idea is to play him in a similar role to what he played last season I wouldn't say no to anything over 25m.

Better to be realistic and acknowledge the fact that deals involving a money transfer worth tens of millions are not so simple and there are plenty of different little things that need considering, rather than go full meltdown when the transfer is not concluded when some idiot journo said it would be. If you don't want to speculate on why it hasn't been announced yet, you are more than welcome to stay away and only check the thread once everything has officially been agreed.

Got to love the guy's attitude. Started the last season with absolutely no guarantees he would be getting regular first team football and at first it didn't look very promising for him but he fought hard, got given a chance after a couple of months and hasn't looked back since. Now after being one of the best players in the team last season there are rumors linking world class players for his position but he's not scared of losing his place to a new addition and just wants what's best for the team. I'd seriously consider turning gay for Azpi, his heart is in the right place.

Maybe Arsenal have internally decided they won't be using their first-refusal and that got leaked to the press but why should they have officially given the Fabregas deal their blessing when by the looks of things the Chelsea board too are trying to do everything in their power to prevent Arsenal from getting anything from the deal? If I was on the Arsenal board and a move like this was on the cards, I wouldn't mind if it took a rival team a week longer to conclude the deal because at least in that case there's still some hope for them that someone like PSG would come in and hijack the deal. Or even if no one did, it would still make things harder for a club they dislike and that can only be a good thing.

The very same Luiz who last season played maybe ten games at CB? Now especially with the imminent arrival of Filipe Luis and Azpilicueta being moved back to his preferred right-back position, he would also need to compete with Ivanovic who will essentially replace Luiz in the CB department so without injuries Kalas would hardly play any more than he did last season and he's at an age where he really needs to start playing more often for the good of his development as a player. Much better to get Zouma as the 4th choice CB because I suppose he would be happier of the two to play a smaller role and use the year to just settle in the squad while occasionally playing when called upon. Next season it will be either Zouma or Kalas in the team as the 4th CB, and considering the wishes of the players in question I think it would be wiser to go with the former. People like to go on about how young players need to be given a chance but were then seriously against Terry being released when his contract was about to expire. Make up your minds, it's either go with the youth and give them a proper chance or stick with the more experienced players we already have, can't have it both ways. This way I think Kalas will at least still have a chance of making it at Chelsea but if he stayed for another year like the last one I think that ship would slowly be sailing away.

Actually not a bad idea IMO to loan him out for two years to the same team. He's not likely to get many games at Chelsea next season with Terry and Cahill still very much the preferred pairing and Ivanovic to cover for them once Azpilicueta rightfully takes his place in the RB position so I think it's better to get Zouma as fourth choice for next season to get him familiar with his new surroundings and new team mates. Kalas already had that last season and he's at a point in his career where he really needs to play regular first team football to maximize his development and while he would ideally get that at Chelsea, it's not looking very likely for him when he has to compete with the best CB pairing in the Premier League. If he succeeds in making a name for himself at Köln he could then come back in 2016 and really claim his place in the Chelsea squad as a proven top division level player, like for example Courtois is now about to do, instead of sticking around playing a bit-part role. In two years from now Terry will be 36, Ivanovic 32 and Cahill 31 so there will definitely be a few openings in the team and hopefully players like Zouma and Kalas will be ready to take over by then. Got a feeling the story of Kalas at Chelsea isn't over even if he now gets shipped out on loan.

"Interesting" would not be the first word I can think of when describing that fine piece of "journalism". As plenty of people have been saying in the comment section of that article, the part about Fabregas not caring about John Terry's "life-threatening injury" is a lie, when in fact Fabregas was actually one of the first people calling for the medical staff to come help JT. I'll happily admit I've never really liked the guy in the past but it has got nothing to do with his "feud" with Lampard or anything else, it's more just him being a world class player that has been playing for teams I seriously dislike. To me, and from my experience to most Chelsea fans, Fabregas is nothing like Rafael Benitez and for the "journalist" to even suggest so is just a pathetic attempt to paint Chelsea fans as cunts once again in the eyes of opposition supporters. Daily Mail will probably get a lot of clicks for that article and people will have a laugh at us but to these "journalists" that's all that matters, who cares if the article is full of lies.

There's also the on the bottom right corner of his post, which gave it away immediately.

I think every Spanish media outlet seem to agree that Rakitic to Barca will be announced today. Would already have been announced yesterday but they were still negotiating the deal that takes Denis Suarez to Sevilla and that one's complicated because I believe Manchester City have a buy-back clause on Suarez so they have to include them in the negotiations as well. Hopefully we see Cesc announced soon after.

I agree, but I'm not sure if Mourinho does. Maybe he's trying to get Fabregas to play as the DLP and all will be good after also getting Costa and Luis, but there is a real possibility that he still considers Ramires a key player and is planning on playing a pivot of Matic-Ramires with Cesc ahead of them in the position Oscar has so far been playing in. Maybe I'm alone with my opinion but for me that midfield trio would work much better with Matic sitting deep and the other two roaming more freely ahead of him while still not forgetting their defensive duties, compared to Matic and Ramires sitting deeper and Fabregas in the 'number ten position'. Never been impressed with Ramires in the pivot but I also haven't forgotten how good his performances were in a three man midfield and I think Fabregas in a deeper role would also benefit from having more players close to him because that way he wouldn't get so easily exposed defensively. 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3 are basically the same formation with some minor tweaks to suit different kinds of players so whichever we end up with I'm confident in Mourinho's abilities to get the best out of it.

Not necessarily. If there was a buy-out clause in Hazard's contract, maybe in the 100-150m region, and PSG or someone else was interested in getting him we could just refer to the clause by telling them we won't negotiate and it's either "pay up or fuck off". If the clause is set high enough and any interested parties told loud and clear that the club won't entertain offers below that, it will basically serve as a hands-off warning. That's what the Spanish giants do and it doesn't encourage anyone to try and buy their best players, just the opposite really. Anyway, English clubs don't do buy-out clauses. Look at what happened to Suarez last year when everyone thought he had a 40m clause and Arsenal tried to trigger it.

I wasn't commenting on whether the current 4-2-3-1 works or not, more like speculation on what I think Mourinho might be considering. If we sold Oscar too after already selling Mata we'd have no reason to continue with the 4-2-3-1 because players like Ramires, MvG and Fabregas, should we get him, would work much better in a three man midfield than in the pivot of a 4-2-3-1. I don't think changing the formation is some magic cure for our problems but if some minor tactical changes helped Mourinho get the best out of some players, I'm all for it.

Isn't Jose a bit too old for girls your age?

Sylvain Distin replying to some Liverpool fans who abused him.

Got ahead of yourself there for a minute. At least this time it wasn't Sky Nigeria.

It's not like he's going to Qatar or China because of the money, in fact he's actually joining one of the biggest clubs in the world to play under Louis Van Gaal who is known for developing young players into world beaters and if he also makes £160k a week in the process then all the better for him. Being a fan of a club usually goes out the window once players start signing professional contracts that have a huge effect on the rest of their lives. While I would prefer Shaw coming to Chelsea, I won't be holding a grudge if he ends up at United and earns double the amount of money he would have received at his supposed 'dream club' because if I was in his shoes I would probably do just the same thing and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Would you turn down a ridiculous contract like that if it was offered to you? People like to talk about how he would eventually get that kind of money anyway once he becomes truly world class but what if he never makes it? What if he just turns out to be a promising two season wonder who never develops further than that, or what if he gets a career changing injury that means he will never get the chance to be offered that kind of money again if he now turns it down? £160k a week for five years amounts to a total of £42m over the length of the contract no matter happens with his development and any 19-year-old would be very stupid to snub that be it from any team in the world, especially a traditional huge club like Manchester United who play in the best league in the world and have the potential to be challenging for the title again in a year or two. Anyway, I'm having a really hard time believing United would actually pay him that kind of money. If he got £160k a week now, how much would he demand when the club would be willing to extend his contract? £250k a week?

I know it would be ideal to get it done before the World Cup but who knows maybe it's already completed, just pending the official announcement. Just seen some stories that Mundo Deportivo are today saying it won't be announced for a few more days because there's some sort of legal things with the first-refusal clause Arsenal has and the clubs will need to wait till the clause expires before the deal can officially be completed. Makes sense IMO and that's nothing to worry about. As long as no one else is reported to be interested in hijacking the deal, we're fine.