Strike

too eccentric

umm. hang on. i am changing my team again

still i'd rather take my chances with suarez at home to reading than tevez away at west brom. i am gonna get tevez in for next week

dont be so sure of that. tevez may not start - CL game comin up and Mancini has options. i am gonna go with Suarez and Jelavic who have relatively easy games and then switch to Tevez next week. also, hoping for good games for cazorla (norwich away) and jarvis (soton home)

but as i said, the captain is responsible with handling the affairs with the referee. cech cant do that. and instead of havin 2-3 captains, why not have just one outfield player - Gary Cahill

don't really see the need for more than 1 captain at chelsea when we can hardly pick out one real leader apart from terry and lampard. cahill is the only unanimous name going around and he still needs time

yeah played it. i dunno what to do though. changing the squad every now and then

it is just nonsense to link the policy of more than 1 captain to real madrid's success. now if swindon town makes this policy of 2-3 captains u say they'll succeed? i don't get your point at all, if you are even making one

yeah. i guess they included penalties won by hazard as well.

2nd and 3rd captains simply fly against the face of the whole concept of captaincy in football.

juan mata - nah. he's a class act on the pitch but he hasn't got the temperament to be a captain. Even Cech cannot be captain. the captain needs to speak with ref and defend his players . cech cant do that 50 metres away from the referee gary cahill seems to be a good choice now

1. Gary Cahill - although as a captain i would want him to celebrate cup wins a bit more than he did last season 2. Ryan Bertrand - long term stability although he has loads to improve

moses in for whom?

few plus points to that - he offers width as you said - he has got a good defensive side to his game - strong and quick - spurs fullbacks will be overlapping and moses will find some space out wide on the counter - one of the maestros will be rested for shakhtar but he was poor against Wolves. needs to be much better against Vertonghen(?)

nah. Cole is a better defender, Cole is quicker and Lennon is not great. Ivanovic has been all over the place while defending and Bale is a much better winger

didn't watch that. hopes raised now though

even fereira owned bale last season but still he has got raw pace over ivanovic and given that ivan will have little protection this time around (unless ramires plays on the right) bale will be running at him all game and ivanovic in the form he has been in so far this season will be ripped to shreds

it works both ways though. avb will be worried about hazard and will be tellin bale the same thing but yeah, bale is better defensively and if he gets chances to run at ivanovic he will rip him apart

ashley cole is more than capable of handling lennon, its about ivanovic i worry. bale has a tendency to go AWOL if tightly marked but still his raw pace will blow Ivanovic away

good. players like dembele nip our attacks. we beat an arsenal side which didnt have diaby and now spurs without dembele. nice

that's because AVB's other defensive options were Luiz and Alex

yeah. maybe they thought lukaku and piazon are waiting in the wings and thus no need to sign a striker. the other option was to sell torres for 20-odd million and sign a replacement. maybe they thought it was too soon for that. one more season for torres makes sense

tbf the club shouldn't have been sympathetic with him in the summer and go into the season with only torres and sturridge as the strikers. if we were gonna be ruthless with players like drogba, essien, meireles, malouda...why not torres as well? maybe the 50mil price tag played in their minds

yeah but he has missed a fair few chances this season. sitters. also his goals except for the newcastle one were fairly routine finishes that u shud expect out of him. remarkably better so far but the next few games will show us whether he is main striker material

Chelsea Football Club was engulfed in a flurry of excitement 2 years ago when the club pulled off a British record 50m transfer of Spanish striker Fernando Torres on transfer deadline day. A Torres-Drogba combination up front was something you’d expect to see on FIFA but Roman Abramovich with his abundant wealth made it happen for Chelsea. However, the optimism surrounding Torres’ arrival soon faded as he failed to find the back of the net for 903 mins (14 games) in a Chelsea shirt and 2 years on now, his Chelsea career has been nothing short of a train wreck. Now with Roberto di Matteo in charge and a shift in the style of play, Torres has run into some kind of form but the question still remains, Is he the man to lead Chelsea’s attack? Torres started the season on the back of a horrid 2011-12 season. The shocker of a miss at Old Trafford, the red card after scoring a goal against Swansea and the fact that he was forced to watch our revival under di Matteo from the bench, sums up his season. Sure, he won the FA Cup and the Champions League but he did not start either of the finals. The sight of Salomon Kalou starting ahead of him in Munich clearly got to his head and he had this to say regarding the matter:- But then in the summer, Didier Drogba left the club and Torres was confirmed as the number one striker. In addition to that, the club replaced Kalouda with skillful technical players like Hazard and Oscar who are better suited to Torres’ style of play and now 7 games into the season, things are looking better for the Spaniard with 6 goals already to his name this season (4 in the league) and Chelsea are sitting pretty at the top of the table, 4 points clear of the nearest rival. But despite the better goal return, Torres’ has looked a shadow of the player he once was. There was a time when he took Vidic for a spin at Old Trafford but now he seems to be unable to get past Anton Ferdinand. Take note of the fact that 2 of the goals he has scored are from set-pieces and not due to his prowess in front of goal. He is no longer “terrorizing” the opposition defence and he has been anonymous in a fair few games this season restricting his involvement to linking up with the midfielders and running the channels. The Torres’ of the old would look for the through balls behind the opposition defence and bury his chances but as we saw against Arsenal and against Norwich, he seems reluctant to pull the trigger these days. He was away from Koscielny and bearing down on goal and instead of burying it in the corner he tried to get past the advancing keeper allowing Koscielny to nick possession from him. On the other hand, things have definitely improved. His goal against Newcastle was excellent and showed that his finishing is still good. Now that there is not much competition for the striker’s slot, he has started all of Chelsea’s games this season (the only player to do so) and the continuous run of games has boosted his confidence (see Rabona against Newcastle) Plus, he is now receiving better service from the 3 maestros – Oscar Mata and Hazard. But is he the man to lead our attack? He is 28 now and has got maybe 2-3 seasons in his tank and with Daniel Sturridge and Romelu Lukaku already waiting in the wings at Chelsea. Sturridge, as we all know is a terrific talent and has been waiting for a run of games in the centre-forward role and Lukaku has been in brilliant form on his loan spell at West Brom. I am on the fence regarding the whole Torres matter. Fernando has been good(ish) so far but needs to get much better as the season progresses. Our defenders and midfielders chip in with a fair few goals but it was Didier Drogba who used to fire for us in the big games. He has scored 9 times in Final matches and has scored 8 goals in 8 games at Wembley. Moreover, he has 13 goals against Arsenal and 4 goals in 4 FA Cup finals. Now, with Drogba gone, Torres needs to step up for us in the big games and add that little spark up front. It doesn’t matter how many goals he scores against the likes of Reading and Norwich if he keeps bottling in the big games.This is a key season in that aspect for Torres as the coming months will decide whether he will be remembered for his time in a Blue shirt. Click here to view the article