Leif

Love hearing about Ake going to Amsterdam from the commentator. My hopes are just getting higher and higher for him. He seems to play better at senior level than youth level in my opinion, quite like Chalobah.

What a pathetic dive lol. How can you expect to save the ball like that

We need to invest in an absolute top quality youth striker next season. Someone tall, big, lanky, with a physical presence. Lukaku or Drogba in their teens would score for fun in this team.

Starting to feel Feruz isn't good enough.

And what if the first-option on 2 players would turn out to be Lewandowski and Subotic/Hummels/Gundogan? Hard to resist you know. Sure, in the future, De Bruyne could be one of the best, but we're stacked in his position right now and have priorities. We need a Terry replacement (Subo/Hum) and a playmaker (Gundogan) and also a striker (Lew). Unless De Bruyne is okay about playing out wide on the right, I'd see this as a good deal. Then again, we are Chelsea. Why not keep De Bruyne and just sign all of those Dortmund players mentioned? We certainly have the money.

Real Madrid appointing Mourinho and then trying to appoint Ancelotti? Chelsea wannabes

If anyone remembers my comments regarding Lukaku when I first signed up here I'd like to retract them. I stand by strongly that he's no "new Drogba" and all that rubbish, but I definitely said I couldn't see him making it to the highest level of football. He's changed my mind at West Brom.

Strootman would be a great signing! I think he's basically built for AC Milan or Manchester United however (Man United more-so than Milan). He's exactly what their midfield is missing. He's amazing.

Just a reminder that money in football isn't everything and shouldn't be envied so much when you're simply used as a pawn like Falcao. He doesn't get to choose where he lives, who he plays for or even what he does unless he breaks his contract and then (likely) loses a lawsuit. Anyway, the moment his Monaco move is confirmed I think I'll leave this thread. FOREVER.

It is, but it's not his motive; it's his management's motive. He has literally no say at all whether he joins them or not. I'm sure if it was down to him he'd be a Chelsea player.

Rival by definition according to Google is: "A person or thing competing with another for the same objective or for superiority in the same field of activity." 2nd definition: "Compete for superiority with; be or seem to be equal or comparable to." Liverpool are certainly not competing for the same objective or for superiority over us! They're just dicks I think that definition would only apply to Manchester United really. You could say Arsenal but they don't compete with us at all in Europe or in the cups. Neither to Tottenham. But I do understand people saying Tottenham/Arsenal/Liverpool.

From what I'm reading today it seems that Falcao doesn't negotiate his own contracts, doesn't get to choose the club he goes to, and probably the most say he has is what he eats for dinner. I doubt he could have predicted this when he first signed the deal. Many players, musicians, talents spreading across all forms have fallen for this sort of 'management' before. Falcao has done nothing wrong as a person and thus should not be slated. The company who manage him should. They're bad for football more than they're good. Edit: At least Ligue 1 will get more foreign viewers next season.

No, no it's not. People are calling him a mercenary when he clearly isn't. Did you read it or just skim through it? The whole point of it is explaining he has 0 choice in whether he joins Monaco or Chelsea or some random team in Japan. Everything written above is factual. Just because it doesn't rub well with you and you perhaps can't accept that this is the modern era of football and they'll make shit loads of money regardless doesn't mean it's 'complete balls'.

He's been played all over the field this season and performed average or slightly above average in each and every role. I feel he's the type of player who'd join Arsenal yet not actually improve them. Checked out an AS Roma forum and they all seem to be ready for him to leave and not unhappy about it. Apparently Roma are letting Pjanic go and raising money for this Alderweireld transfer. They're also considering offers in the region of 30m for Marquinhos. Also got an eye on Jovetic to replace Totti.

MERCENARY!!!!! No, not quite. (Partially written by me so that it'd make more sense with clips taken from various (I assume) articles and information gathered from many sources. This is a long one but worth the read.) (I also love posting things which let me underline and bold titles ) The Choice: It's not really Falcao's choice to move to Monaco. This often happens with South American players; Hulk, Tevez and Mascherano being examples. It's his third-party ownership pushing the move. It helps even poor clubs in a bad financial state capture really expensive players - as Atletico did with Falcao. They didn't actually pay the reported figure. We'll get to that in a moment. The way 3rd-party ownership works is that investment groups will purchase the registration rights of an upcoming player that they can see profit in. This is sometimes done while the player is at a club but also often done as part of a transfer. The reason a player would take this deal is simple - They get approached by an agent at a young age who asks him if the player wants support and marketing in Europe so that he can 'make it big'. The other pluses to this is usually better wages for the player, better management & better sponsorship deals. If the player agrees to the terms in a complicated contract (almost like signing a major record label deal), the 3rd-party owners will then go to the club where he is currently registered (which would have been either River Plate or Porto in this instance; I'm not sure which one) and negotiate to buy his registration rights. While the player will then continue to play for clubs and be listed as a "Porto player" or whatever, Porto don't actually own him anymore. It's now like he's being loaned to them by the 3rd-party group! The player is then in the hands of the management and third party ownership group, who manage every aspect of his career from that point on. That usually involves paying him a larger salary on top of his club salary, placing him in clubs where he will get more exposure, etc. How this particular group works, Dissected: The other way third-party ownership happens is that the investment group finances a transfer for a player. For eg. Porto want to sign a player from Argentina but don't have the funds. They would approach an investment group and have them stake 50-60% of the deal in return for the players registration rights. The investment group make all of this upfront investment with the hope that at some point in the future the player proves himself, becomes a star, and can then exit at a very large valuation. When Falcao was transferred to Porto, I believe that's when this group came in and bought around 60% of his rights. They also gave him extra wages and then pushed the move to Atletico Madrid to get him more exposure so that a 'top club' could eventually buy him, which would bring in money for the 3rd-party group through shared transfer fee income and future promotions. Atletico never had the money to support this Falcao move. Almost all of it is down to this 3rd-party group. The money from the sales of Aguero and De Gea went into partially clearing their huge debt. The group I talk about is called Doyen Sports and it was founded by Jorge Mendes (most famous as Ronaldo's agent, but an infamous player agent who is involved in a lot of third-party deals) and Peter Kenyon (our former chairman.) Falcao, like Hulk, ended up in a situation where there was so much invested in him that it would take a lot of money for the investors to see a return (known as being highly leveraged). They were paying his salary for a few seasons, had floated Atleti some money to keep them alive (they got some shirt sponsorship in return) and had made the initial investment when he first transferred. Falcao ends up moving to Atletico in a 40M move - despite Atleti the previous season stating that they had to clear players out because of their 50M euro tax bill with the Spanish government. What this ended up being is a 20 + 20M deal. 20M never gets paid because its just the third-party owners paying themselves, and of the other 20M only 16M is owed by Atleti, who take an option of paying in two 8M installments (they were late on the first one, to the point of Porto suing). End situation is that around 60% of the rights are with the Doylen group. It also appears that while Falcao was at Atletico that Doylen took an option for a larger stake in him since Atleti were late on their payments. So basically Atletico Madrid just paid a big amount in fees for a Falcao loan! They have the minority of his registration rights! The Money!!! Falcao is on a wage of 10M euros per year, and the return the investors wanted is 60M euros in transfer fees. This narrows down the list of potential clubs that can buy you out to very few. Atletico have no say in where Falcao goes; they had an option in the winter transfer window, but that expired. The owners needed their return and they were going to get it one way or another. The list can be narrowed down to PSG, Monaco, Real Madrid, Chelsea and City. City aren't making the same large investments at this point while PSG have their fix of strikers. Of the remaining three, it is apparent that Real Madrid didn't want to pay up the 60M + 50M in contracts for Falcao. Apparently we, Chelsea, matched the 60M clause but to pay Falcao the 10M per season in wages would involve a total gross salary of 300k+ per week, which just isn't manageable or viable really. We would also have the issue of not being allowed to directly purchase a player from a third-party owner (apparently this is what turned Man United off a move) so it would have required a two-step sale with Falcao going to one club outright and then to Chelsea. Apparently with the David Luiz transfer on the same day he moved to us, Benfica bought out the entirety of his rights from third-party owners (so you can get that Chelsea gave them the money to buy out that deal so that we could purchase 100% of Luiz directly from Benfica, thus avoiding the third-party rule in England which came about when Mascherano and Tevez joined West Ham United). With all of these factors you end up with only one target: Monaco. They have the 60M to pay out the investors, they have the funds to pay his wages of 10M per year and better yet they have no income tax so they don't have to supplement the gross.So in the end Falcao is moved around Europe by his investors with the only goal of making a return for them. He has little to no say in his final destination because of a deal he agreed to years ago while he was still in South America. Falcao isn't a mercenary. Hulk isn't a mercenary. They just signed bad deals.

Falcao will cost Monaco £50m. Yes, that's in pounds. Are a club who're mega-rich with huge ambitions to be one of the best (think PSG) sign a player for that then just sell him to Madrid the following season like "Aw, here's a favour for a club we have nothing to do with. Here. Enjoy Falcao. We don't want him."? I also doubt Madrid would pay anything over or even near £50m for him, so Monaco would also be taking a loss.. and then have to go out and buy another striker. I don't ever see him playing in Spain again after this move.

His tackling, when I watch him, is borderline horrific or non-existent at times when he's played in a central role, but when he's been playing on the right wing recently he's been getting in quite a lot of clean tackles. I'M SO CONFUSED ABOUT WHERE HE'D PLAY HERE. He's a great passer but I genuinely think he's wasted in a deep role. You don't put someone with his sort of crossing ability in a position which nullifies it. Unless you're Mancini or Rafa. He also has great long shots but hitting them in from just in front of our defence would be a big ask.

So, which was the less ambitious move? Falcao to Monaco or Hulk to Zenit?

Chelsea, City, Anzhi, PSG and so on have all had the money to sign him for around 2 seasons now. Before that, when he was at Porto, you could easily add Man United, Arsenal, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, even teams like Tottenham, Roma, Malaga & Bayer Leverkusen. (He was sold to Atletico for £33m, but they definitely got ripped off IMO. Coulda left for around £25m had someone played hard-ball.) My question is - Why did none of these clubs, and so many more, not sign him? Could it be that the collective wisdom of football personnel on those club's boards saw through the media hype too? He wasn't 'unknown' like some claim. Any follower of Portuguese football, South American football, even just Europa League football knew who this guy was because of his stats. The stats look enticing, but once upon a time so did Diego Forlan's, Robinho's, Juan Veron's, Kleberson's, Anderson's, Jo's, Crespo's, Shevchenko's, Kezman's & Afonso Alves's. If my memory serves me correctly, the only player to actually bring their sort of stats from a smaller league to the big league was Van Nistelrooy.

@Eviltwinz93, But that's my point. That's just 3 paragraphs (well-written and all valid) about finishing. Just being a good finisher doesn't make you world-class. If Messi had his current level of finishing but none of the work-rate, passing, pace, dribbling and creativity, he wouldn't be 'world class'. If you took away Ronaldo's exact same traits and just left him with his finishing no one would consider him world class. So why the exception for Falcao? If he's been deemed for greatness, why is he plying his trade at Madrid's 2nd club and looking likely to move to one of French football's smallest clubs?

What Falcao doesn't bring to a team:- Defensive contribution - He has good aerial ability, but he's rarely brought back for corners or opposition free-kicks as since he's used to having a team built around him, he's relied upon to finish the chances. He can't do that from a counter-attack if he's in his own box. He also doesn't have the pace to counter-attack greatly. (I'm not saying he has zero pace so no one bring that up.) Decent passing - You expect a striker to be able to pass a ball. From what I see, he's slightly above Torres when it comes to passing - not a compliment. The amount of times he tries to pass to Turan or Koke only to see it go well wide of his target and out for a throw-in is baffling. Set-piece taking - He can't take consistent free-kicks to save his life. He scored 1 'screamer' free-kick I believe at Porto and 1 injury-time free-kick game winner a month ago or so for Atletico. All his other hits have been over the bar, over the wall, or into the 'keeper's hands. Physical presence - Yes, he may be 'strong' for his size and have decent aerial ability, but he doesn't bring it all together. He can't act as a focal point. He can barely hold the ball up for his teammates unless he's against a novice defender who tries to hack at his legs from behind. Crossing ability - Force him out wide and he won't be getting a cheeky rabona cross in like Torres or a low-driven cross in like Drogba, but instead a 'was that a shot or a cross?', cross. A 'never give up' attitude - That's not to say he won't score at the end of the game to save a point or win all 3, but he doesn't fight for his team - ever. He rarely chases the opposition. He never seems to break a sweat. If you go to Madrid and look up their most recent dictionary, find "Lazy" or even "Lethargic" on one of the pages. I'd put the chances of seeing a little scribbled Falcao face next to one of the words very high. What he does bring to a team: - Great finishing in 1-on-1 situations and long-shots which will almost always test the 'keeper. 'Movement' apparently which'll get him into the position to do the above. Creativity. Not when it comes to movement or passing, but when it comes down to "shall i chip the ball into the net? shall i take an athletic shot? how about both!". He'll head the ball into the net if you cross the ball to his head. But let's just break this down even further. 1: Do we have decent crossers in our team? No! Our players can barely cross to save their lives. That's his aerial ability already useless aside from when Cech boots it up-field. Don't think Schurrle will fix this either if he arrives. He'd much rather shoot at goal and leave a frustrated Falcao with his hands pointing where he wanted the ball. Can you picture it? I can. 2: If the opposition 'keeper is on top form and thus nullifies Falcao's finishing, what else can he do? ... Does he have that Drogba-like understanding of the striker role where he can drag defenders away and create space for another goal-threat? From what I've seen, no. Can he act as a Target Man simply to offer support to the players around him? No. Aerial ability can't be confused with target man ability. That can wind up dangerous. 3: Is he versatile? I've never seen him play anywhere but as the loan striker up front with supporting players out-wide. I'll assume not but I could be wrong. Yet still it seems to boil down to people on here wanting to pay tens of millions for a player who they simply see as a 'great' finisher (if you go by his Youtube clips or his freak game against us, that is. He misses just as many shots as other strikers. Only his technique is better in my and many pundits eyes, not finishing.). Yes? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity Now, realistic alternatives who'd likely cost less than Falcao's price-tag yet offer far more and have on-par or close-enough 'finishing': Lewandowski Lukaku Rooney Cavani (He's leaving Napoli at the end of season. The reported prices are rubbish and he'll go for what he's worth.) Kalou That's just off the top of my head. If i revise the list in the morning i'll be able to add 20 players. You know that Jackson Martinez player at Porto? Ask around Porto fans and even Benfica fans. He is considered to be much better, yes, much better than Falcao. He doesn't have as many 'show-reel goals', but when it comes to your own team that's not what you want. You want the player who is better for your team. Martinez is much more of an all-round striker who actually contributes to the team when he's on a dry-run without scoring. (That said, he currently has 25 goals in 27 league games with Porto.) My conclusion: Falcao has been given the title: "King Of The Europa League". It's for good reason. That is his level; Europe's 2nd-tier, playing for Madrid's 2nd-tier club. He's a player for the highlight reels. The fact he even seems to entertain the idea of moving to LIGUE 2 club (but soon to be Ligue 1) Monaco shows that he knows this. For every 'wondergoal' you show me of his, if it's on Youtube or Vimeo, I'll be able to find an easy miss. The teams he's played in have all been built around him. No Premier League teams work like that. It's not how the league works. You won't survive if you rely on one player no matter how good they may be. I feel like the casual fan of football who sees the media hype surrounding Falcao (the media are clueless at times), a few Youtube goals and was lucky enough to conveniently watch one of his better games get the impression he'd somehow improve their team. In this case regarding Chelsea you would be wrong. He'd be the 'team'. And what happens when you build the players around you to suit Falcao (it's the only way he performs to a decent level) and he gets injured? No Falcao, no party. (But if Summer ends, the transfer window closes and there's no Falcao here, I'll have my own party.)

But what does he do with that movement exactly? Get himself into scoring positions - but I said to discount finishing, so in this respect it's useless. He doesn't use that 'movement' like Drogba does; To drag away defenders and create space specifically for a teammate to take advantage of. It would and will also be debated that his movement is as good as 'great'. He's like a ton of led stood still for most of the game until his teammates get into the final 3rd.

Take away his finishing. Make it irrelevant for a second. Someone name 1 attribute he has which is 'great' please. I may grow a full beard before someone can think of something.

@The Skipper, You look cooler than I would have expected and now I feel intimidated to talk to you.