Jype

No, just no. A case can never be made for Torres starting a crucial away match against his former club because we've seen enough of him in the last three and a half years to know he will bottle it. Hell, even Drogba in his prime turned shit when we played against Marseille a few years ago and this season he was nowhere to be seen against us too. In fact, a case could be made to keep Torres as far away from the pitch as possible for the rest of the season because: 1) Ba and Eto'o are both much better players 2) Both of said players are also in much better form

Well isn't this typical, Chelsea fans have wanked over this guy all season and when it gets reported that Mourinho has made Costa his primary target and that we're finally close to signing him (for a reasonable price if I might add), the same people begin questioning his talent and start suggesting other players instead.

For €42m this would be a fantastic piece of business. If it's really happening, I hope it will be done before the World Cup.

Hope so. Would it be too much to ask for both Norwich and West Brom to help us out this weekend?

Even if they did lose to Norwich, we'd still need the three points from Anfield to ensure City stay behind us.

He's not only a 'wife stealing sex addict', he's also a huge cunt in general. Saw his goal celebration when he scored against his former club Sampdoria last weekend and also heard from a couple of Inter fans that throughout the game he was having a go at Maxi (the guy who's wife he 'stole', plays for Sampdoria). After the game he put pictures on Instagram of Maxi's children wearing Inter shirts with 'Icardi 9' on the back. To me, that's a whole new level of cuntishness compared to Terry having an affair with Bridge's missus, at least JT didn't constantly rub it to Bridge's face on social media how he's shagging his girl.

A cunt of the highest order, don't want him anywhere near our club.

If we are kind enough to give them Courtois for another two years, surely they could repay the favour by letting DC leave with us simply paying them €40m without having to activate the clause and pay additional €10m in taxes when the money gets transferred via Diego Costa's personal bank account. It will make absolutely no difference to Atletico where the money comes from because they get €40m all the same but for Chelsea it will be a matter of €10m. Release clauses in Spain are typically only activated when the club in question have no intention of selling but here the relationship between the clubs is supposedly a good one so why the fuck would we still end up paying €10m over the release clause for the player? Other than that, I would have no problem with that scenario. We'd get one of the best strikers in the world at the moment and Courtois would be able to continue his development in Spain until Cech's contract expires in 2016. I would say Courtois is already at least as good as Cech, perhaps even better at some things, but this way we'd at least get to keep him on a long term contract and the transition from Cech to Courtois would be a very simple one when Cech's contract would be up and he would either extend it and stay as a backup on smaller wages or leave chasing new challenges for the last couple of years of his career. Of course, if there was an option of recalling Courtois and making him our number one keeper for next season as well as getting Diego Costa that would still be my preference but the one mentioned in Marca is a close second.

Barcelona's transfer ban was given to them by FIFA, not UEFA.

Looks like both of them have had enough of being knocked out by Chelsea in the QFs after winning the first leg. If you can't beat them, try to join them. Seriously speaking though, don't know what we'd need Lavezzi for. I rate him very highly having watched him at Napoli and now occasionally at PSG but surely we don't need another AM. I know Lavezzi can also play as a forward but usually that's been next to another striker (Cavani or Zlatan) and I'm having doubts whether Mourinho would use him that way. Maybe if we sold for example Oscar to them in exchange, we could play Willian behind the striker and have Lavezzi rotating with Hazard, Schürrle and Salah for the two places on the wings but other than that I don't see how we would have use for him.

Who says we couldn't play a defensive full-back pairing like Azpi - Ivanovic against the teams you mentioned? Right now we don't have any other options and that's partly why we're struggling against the teams that sit deep but if we had an attacking LB like Shaw or Rodriguez we could alter our approach to the game depending on the opposition. edit: Oh come on, The Skipper said pretty much the exact same things seconds earlier.

No, just need to leave some free space in the 25 man squad if there aren't enough homegrown players. 17 is the maximum amount of non-homegrown players allowed, so if we only had like 4 homegrown players in the team we could only name a squad of 21 players. U21 players don't count so for example a player like Zouma would only need to be named in the squad for the 15/16 season. Also the homegrown players don't need ne to be English, just need to have been playing for an English club for three years before their 21st birthday. Not sure how loans affect that, for example in the case of our Vitesse loanees?

That's because he's always good enough to dribble his way into the box and score a goal from there. Nothing wrong with that, it's not like he's a 'poacher' type of player who only scores when the ball is played to him inside the penalty box. Would fit our team pefectly IMO.

Seriously? To which club exactly would you loan him out to, a team like Stoke or one of our title rivals? He's been one of the very best in the world for the last couple of years and right now he's fighting for the Champions League and also for the league title in Spain, with a team outside the two giants no less. He's already won a few trophies with Atletico and this summer will lead Belgium's defense at the World Cup, what could he possibly gain from going on loan to a midtable club in England?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/manchester-city/10766475/Manchester-City-to-be-made-to-pay-a-high-price-for-spending-spree-under-Uefa-Financial-Fair-Play-rules.html The plot thickens.

I do. You simply don't drop a player who's scored two crucial match winning goals in a row when the team were starting to get desperate. Deserves to start at least the next three games (Sunderland, Atletico, Liverpool) and after that we'll see how he's done and think about whether he should still start the second leg of the Atletico tie. Use Eto'o as the impact sub with Torres to be dropped completely because I seriously don't want to see him anywhere near the pitch when we play against either of his former clubs, the guy has the mental strength of a 10-year-old.

Exactly. Ivanovic should play this one and then rest get some rest while the others are playing Atletico and he's suspended. Letting Cole have some time on the pitch before the massive game next Tuesday wouldn't be a bad idea however, so maybe Cesar could sit this one out. Then again, Azpilicueta too could benefit from playing a game at RB after such a long period at LB... Maybe rest one of the CB's and play Ivanovic there with Cole and Azpi as the full-backs? Cahill and Terry have been playing some insane minutes since new year so either of them could use some rest.

Seriously? The shirt sale argument has been proven wrong hundreds of times in the three and a half years Torres has been at the club (holy fuck, has this nightmare really been going on for that long?). Torres costs the club around 18 million pounds per year, half of that in wages and half in amortisation of his transfer fee. From every shirt sold with his name the club will get a couple of pounds extra at most, because most of the people buying his shirts would buy one with someone else's name anyway if the ladyboy wasn't around. He'd have to sell a lot of shirts to recover even half of what he costs to the club and when we consider that his value on the pitch is fuck all, it'd would be horrible business to keep him beyond this season. Hell, it's better to ship him out for free and even pay some of his wages for the last two years of his contract, at least that way we wouldn't have to endure watching him anymore and someone better would be able to get his place in the squad, which almost certainly would equal more goals and therefore more points in the Premier League.

Romeu? He'll be facing Real Madrid with Valencia in a few weeks.

Had €20 on Everton, Chelsea and Atletico to win their league games this weekend. Got a return of €88 and bet half of that again on the likes of Liverpool, Man City and Arsenal to win their games next week. They're all expected to win their matches so if they do, I'll at least get some money but if they don't I will be more than delighted because it's all for the good of Chelsea. A perfect example of a win-win scenario.

Feel bad for the guy, if it's broken he will miss not only the deciding match in the La Liga and the Champions League but also his first ever World Cup, not to mention also probably being denied the chance to get a big transfer this summer.

Meeting Atletico without Courtois and Costa would give us a huge advantage. Everything's already been said about the Courtois situation and I think that the contract clause should be respected but hope Costa will be fit, never nice to see players missing such big games with an injury.

Doesn't have to be pretty, three points is all that matters when talking about a match against a team parking the bus after having a man sent off. Massive contribution from Demba Ba this week, nothing but respect for the guy. Now, let's win the next seven games as well and end the season on the biggest high in the history of the club. Have faith, boys and girls.

Henderson suspended from the game against us, good news.

What on earth was Kompany doing?