Jype

I agree to the extent of Lukaku having much more room for improvement and being more familiar with the PL. Also, after three seasons in England between 18 and 21 he will qualify as homegrown sometime in August which in our case can never be underestimated due to our lack of homegrown talent. For the short-term having Mandzukic would be a better fit for us, of that I have no doubt. He's a proven +20 goal a season striker with a lot more experience of winning and also a completely different type of player to Costa so tactically he would offer more versatility than Lukaku would. Not going to call him world class because that word is overused these days, but for now he is definitely a better player than Lukaku. However, this kind of shortsighted thinking has been a big part of the problem with the club until the last couple of years when the transfer policy finally started being more sensible. Would it really be worth getting a player like Mandzukic for 3-4 years at most if it meant saying goodbye to Lukaku who could easily offer us over 10 years? Personally I would love nothing more than to see Lukaku be a success at the club but that doesn't entirely depend on what Mourinho / the board decide. If Lukaku wants to leave for a team where he will be the top dog or if his relationship with Mourinho has suffered because of whatever happened last summer, I would understand if we sold him and in that case getting someone like Mandzukic to replace him would be the best possible option. Whatever happens, I will leave this one to the hands of those who have more information about the situation than me and won't complain with the outcome. I rate Mandzukic highly and the blow of losing Lukaku would be significantly easier to take if we already had a great player lined up to replace him with.

Don't get me wrong, I'd take him immediately if it was an option but it's just I can't see him coming.

I wouldn't be so sure the time spent with the reserves will count in this case because back then he didn't even have a visa IIRC and couldn't play official youth nor reserve games before the transfer became official in 2012 so it wasn't like other academy players. And even if it did count it wouldn't make a difference because there's still no way he should count as homegrown, at least not yet, because he definitely only joined the reserve team sometime in the summer of 2011 and your sources are wrong if they're saying 2010. By the time he went on loan to Malaga he had only been training at the club for a year and a half, a year of that under contract, and the requirement to be homegrown is three years which Piazon sure as hell did not meet. e: Just checked wikipedia and turns out he was able to play official reserve and youth games back in 2011 but still that doesn't change anything, fact remains he had only been at the club for 1.5 years before being shipped out on loan.

Luis Enrique confirmed as Barcelona manager and they also announced the signing of Ter Stegen immediately after. If / when they are still after Luiz we could start seeing some developments in the coming days. Also, Guillem Balague just tweeted a list of Barca players who are definitely going (Valdés, Pinto, Puyol, Song, J. Dos Santos, Afellay, Tello, Cuenca, S. Roberto, Oier) and players they will be listening offers for (Cesc, Alves, Adriano, Alexis, Mascherano, Pedro) so any one of these who are still under contract could be available if we asked for someone in exchange for Luiz. Can't see us having much use for anyone except Song or Fabregas (even though the latter would never come, also he's also a cunt). Sanchez or Pedro could be good too but we don't need another winger at the moment.

Piazon joined Chelsea in 2012, on the day he turned 18 sometime in January. The transfer was made official a year earlier and he started training with the reserves sometime later that year but surely that time won't count towards him being homegrown as he didn't even have a contract yet? Then in January 2013 he went on loan to Malaga having only spent a year at the club and after that he headed straight to Vitesse for the 13/14 season. In short, he's been on loan more than he has been at Chelsea so I'm having a really hard time figuring out how he's supposed to be homegrown when for example Tomas Kalas is not when he too has been under contract with the club ever since he was 18 years old and that was almost four years ago. If time spent on loan counts towards a player being HG, then surely Kalas should qualify as one too.

He's there as an U21 but will Kalas be homegrown when he no longer qualifies as an U21? Also, how is Piazon HG? He's only been at the club for two and a half years, most of that time on loan at clubs outside England. That's what has always been unclear to me, does it matter homegrown-wise if a player goes on loan to a foreign club? Did a check on the HG status of our squad last week and we should be fine, even with a few signings, because there will be some departures as well but long-term it would be great to have a few new HG players in, either from our own academy or bought from other English clubs..

Actually, he can. If both are still at the club come August and Courtois has had a good pre-season while Cech has just been recovering from his injury and not play at all, anything other than Courtois beginning the season as number one would be ridiculous.

Just signed a contract extension at Roma a couple of weeks ago and is happy to stay now that they're in the CL next season.

The More Carefully Chosen One, perhaps?

Not that much worse goalscoring ability. I would say Mandzukic is a solid 15-20 league goal a season striker with good link-up play. Physically he is much like Dzeko, maybe a little stronger. Dominant in the air so he would have to be supplied with a lot of crosses to get the best out of him, not sure if at the moment we're set up to do that.

Think Edin Dzeko with a slightly worse goalscoring ability but better link-up play.

Tapatalk doesn't have ignore. And even when browsing the forum on a computer, there's just something about your posts that make me want to open them even when they're on ignore. You should take it as a compliment.

Only a few days ago you disregarded quotes reported by a respectable British newspaper as bullshit, yet you link us news from a site called 'footballdirectnews' and assume they're telling the truth? You really are a piece of work. Not saying the quotes from Atletico president aren't true because they most certainly are, but what else is he going to say a few days before the most important game in the history of their club? Last thing they need is any unrest within the squad...

Should we get both Costa and Mandzukic, the safest assumption would be that Lukaku won't be at the club come August. Whether out on loan or a permanent move, he won't stay as a third option behind Costa and Mandzukic if last year he thought competing with Torres and Eto'o was too much for him to handle. And yes, I believe Mandzukic would get plenty of games even if we got Costa as well. At Bayern he's had to share the lone striker position with Gomez / Pizarro last year and Pizarro this season with Guardiola also quite often playing Müller / Götze as a false nine. He has still managed to get enough games to be the top scorer of their team in both seasons. Now Lewandowski is coming too and will undoubtedly be their number one strike so sharing the spare minutes with Pizarro and Guardiola sometimes preferring to play without a striker at all definitely means less games than a player of his quality should be playing. Whether he prefers a number one striker spot at a team like Arsenal or an equal role with someone like Costa at Chelsea remains to be seen, but I have a feeling he would be happy to share the place with another striker because after all he did join Bayern when they had both Gomez and Pizarro there and he had no guarantees about his playing time.

Define concrete. At the moment it's just reports in the media but as they say, there's no smoke without fire and something is definitely going on here. Guardiola has already wished him good luck in his next team and he has cleared out his stuff from Bayern's training center so it's not a question of whether he'll stay or leave, more like just a matter of where he ends up at and so far Chelsea look to be leading the race to sign him with a fee reportedly having been agreed. Season is now over for both clubs and the player will be going to the World Cup with Croatia so if we're going to get him, I suppose it will be soon. Arsenal also interested.

Yep, Bild are saying he has already cleared out his locker at Bayern and that a fee has been agreed by the clubs. Looks like Mandzu is coming, regardless of what happens with Luiz.

That too, but I didn't want to sound too harsh.

Worked out well for you guys at international level in the last 45 years or so. Let's face it, England are shit. It doesn't matter if the English clubs (United, Chelsea, Liverpool) have shown great spirit in Europe against some of the top teams in the continent because in addition to having some English players these teams have always relied massively on foreign talent so it's hardly the same thing as the national team. Saying England are worse than the likes of Ecuador, Costa Rica or Honduras is just ridiculous but there are still plenty of teams better than them in the tournament so I would be surprised if England even make it to the QFs.

Shit, two years already? Time flies...

I'm sorry I must have missed something here but since when do we have any use for Alexis Sanchez? Sure he's good and would probably do well in our team but another AM is the last thing we need and someone like Reus would be the only one worth getting if it meant upsetting the balance of our current players in that department.

Just visited Bluemoon, they're having a meltdown over these comments and don't want him anymore.

Like I said, next season we can make things more interesting if we get a few of the most active players at TC and everyone puts some money in it.

Got to admit, I was fully in the Ba > Sturridge bandwagon at the time. Ba was a proven +15 goal a season striker whereas Sturridge was a cocky youngster who had done fuck all. Honestly thought Ba might be good for a couple of years and by that time Lukaku would be ready to take over but things haven't really been going according to plan so far... All the other 'classics' are just plain ridiculous.

So suddenly Costa is 'injury prone' and people don't want him anymore? That's just ridiculous, he's been injured a lot in the last few months because Atletico can't afford to lose him as they don't have a good enough replacement so they've had to hurry him back too soon and it has backfired on them. That's what happened to Torres at Liverpool and it's one of the reasons why his decline was so rapid, only in his case the injuries were far more serious and this happened over a much longer period of time, but Costa having some niggling injuries for a couple of months doesn't really matter. If the deal is close to being done, the Chelsea medical staff will have a lot of time to do a thorough medical on him and assess his situation, with Torres I wouldn't be so sure they even did a medical at all before he signed because it was getting so late in the window. It's not too uncommon for players signed on deadline day to only have their's on the next morning because in normal cases where there are no problems, the medical is mostly done for insurance reasons only.