TorontoChelsea

It's a terrible idea. Ramires' has a few great strengths. He's fast, he has great stamina, and he's very good at winning battles in the midfield. Very useful stuff, but he is not a creative midfielder in the least. Last season, he went 124 minutes in between chances created. Lampard went 43 minutes in between chance created. In other words, Lampard was basically creating 3 chances for every chance Ramires created. Ramires has a good passing percentage because the vast majority of his passes are short. He's not a great passer, so it's a sign of his football intelligence that he doesn't try too many long passes. Lampard, who plays a lot of long passes still had a better pass percentage last season. It's a sign of his skill and intelligence that he could open up play so succesfully. Ramires can open up play with his speed, but he's not a creative player at all. Ramires has 7 goals and 2 assists in 57 league games with Chelsea. Lampard has 21 goals and 9 assists in his last 54 leagues games with Chelsea. Ramires is a good player, but he's a complimentary player who relies on other players to get him the ball when he makes his runs. If Chelsea play Ramires as their deep-lying playmaker, they'd be screwed. (They won't as RDM knows this.) You simply cannot play a 4-2-3-1 with no creative players in the 2. This criticism of Lampard has gone insane. He was one of Chelsea's best players last season. EA Sports PPI rated Lampard as the 22nd best player in the entire Premier League last season. He was maybe Chelsea's best player through most of the pre-season. He's the greatest player in Chelsea history. He is a great leader on the team. Yet, for some reason, people want to blame everything on him.Our defenders are out of position and the opposition scores? Lampard's fault for not providing cover. Our striker can't score? Lampard's fault for not laying perfect passes that would lead to tap ins. Luckily, RDM realizes his importance and Lampard will once again play a key roll for us.

It's not an excess of 15M difference. The add-ons will probably take the Madrid deal to about 30-35M. So, they lost out on probably about 5-10M pounds, but got to keep Modric for a year and got to sell him out of England. In retrospect, they probably should have sold him to Chelsea last season (40M is an insane offer for a central midfielder) but they didn't know they were going to miss out on the CL and be forced to get rid of Modric. Under the circumstance, 30M is definitely a decent price but we'll see how they choose to spend it. Not nearly as worried about Spurs as I am about the Manchester clubs.

I think this one is going to happen, Marseille are willing to let him go, Chelsea want him, the asking price is not astronomical. It just makes too much sense not to happen. (I hope).

RVP is not exactly what ManU need and they paid a lot for him, but he was the maybe best player in the Premier League last season so his addition does help them enormously. They are a vastly improved team over last season, essentially adding Van Persie, Kagawa, and Vidic (who barely played last season) to their starting XI. They could win the league but they need to stay healthy. City have ridiculous depth so can afford injuries much more than United can.

Not only that, but we are absolutely fine with our forward 3 spots. We will rotate Mata, Hazard, Marin, Ramires, and Oscar (and Meireles and Malouda if they stay) in those 3 spots. You only need a true winger if you're going to play a system that requires a true winger (such as a 4-3-3). I can see the logic in getting someone like Moses who would be relatively cheap and add some flexibility and he doesn't need to start.

Your English is fine! Lampard gets too much stick on this forum. He was one of our best players last season and the team clearly missed his presence when he didn't play. He is not going to be around forever, but he is still one of Chelsea's key players (and the best player in Chelsea history).

Yeah, but knowing Arsenal, they'll probably buy a decent player for 9M pounds and just keep the rest for profit.

Yes, I can. If a player makes 100 crosses in a season, and 4 crosses are great and 96 are poor, does the fact that he made 4 great crosses show anything? It just shows that he's not good at crossing the ball. Every player playing for Chelsea has incredible ability. You don't get to the top of the Premiership without it. There isn't a single player that can't occasionally make a great cross or score a beautiful goal or pull off some skill move. It doesn't prove anything. The average footballer makes about 20 passes a game .Ramires made a pass every 2.5 minutes last season. That's a lot of passes. Some of them are going to be great.

The injury-prone label is a little unfair. He's played 8 seasons with Arsenal and has played at least 31 matches in 6 of them. He's had some injury problems, but he's hardly Owen Hargraves.

No he isn't. He's not even close. Luiz loves to get forward and he's very good for a defender with the ball at his feet, he's excellent at carrying the ball out of defence, and when his head is in the game he's a fine short passer, but he's not a great passer in the least and he's not a great shooter either. I wish people would stop pretending Luiz was secretly Iniesta because he makes a few very good runs a year. In fact, I would love for Luiz to stop his long passes as they are mostly poor and just turn the ball over needlessly. Luiz is at his best, by far, when he stays at home and plays a simplified game. When he does that, he's excellent because his quickness allows him to break up plays beautifully and quickly turn the play around into a counter-attack . When he tries to run around the pitch, he's a massive liability. (And please spare me the youtube video nonsense.)

The 4-3-3, but I don't see it happening. Had RDM wanted to change, he would have done it pre-season. One of the biggest problems at Chelsea is the complete lack of continuity of coaches and lack of a coherent transfer policy so we have a whole bunch of players who suite different systems and complete imbalance at depth in different positions.We have players built for counter-attack, some for ball movement, some for defensive play, some are adaptable but some will get lost in style or tactical changes .Chelsea have spent 70M pounds in the last two seasons buying three central and left-sided attacking midfielders who require a lot of the ball to be effective and have basically ignored every other position where we have a spectacular lack of depth. We need a long-term coach who has tremendous say in transfers in order to fix this re-occurring problem.

Yeah, it's going to be Lampard and Mikel as the popular scapegoats.

When he is disciplined, he's excellent, but he still makes so many mistakes. It's not just the stupid tackles or being out of position, it's trying Hollywood passes when he should be playing it short, it's forgetting where he is. If Luiz were 21, I'd think he'd become one of the top defenders in the world, but he's 25. He shouldn't be making these mistakes over and over again. I haven't given up on him because the raw talent is there, but he's incredibly frustrating.

Not yet and unlikely to happen in my opinion. (Cela n'a pas encore eu lieu.)

Exactly...I hate when people use youtube videos to try to prove a point or even to show a player's quality. They are purposefully selective moments and do not show anything other than those selected moments. Youtube videos do not prove anything. Ramires is not a great passer. I know that because I've probably seen him play in about 75 matches for Chelsea.

Expectations? Third and maybe the quarterfinals of the CL League. Go pretty far in both of the Cups and maybe win one. Don't care about the world club championship (Champion of Europe IS champion of the world), the UEFA Super Cup (The Champions League is THE European Championship. Europa League is second tier.), or the Community Shield (really just a friendly). Obviously would prefer to win, but don't care much at all. More than anything, I'd like to see the team gel over the course of the season and get better and better as the year goes on and by the end of the season, us to be playing the attractive, flowing, exciting football we are building towards. .

I'll be shocked if Chelsea are going to go with anything other than Lampard and Mikel as the starting deeper pairing. They played brilliantly together under RDM last season and are easily our best choice in the 4-2-3-1.

And Ramires and possibly Meireles, Malouda, Benayoun if any of them stay.Minimum of 7 players for 3 spots. Ramires is going to get playing time and he simply is not a true defensive midfielder and not even close to the type of player needed to provide cover for Lampard so he will play in the forward 3 when he does play. It's a very crowded grouping in a position where we were very weak last season. So far, Chelsea has bought exclusively attacking midfielders this transfer period.

Lennon, Walcott, and SWP are not all the same player. SWP is a mediocre player, Lennon is a decent player, and Walcott is quite a good player. If we get Walcott's production out of Marin, Chelsea will be ecstatic. This is someone Chelsea paid 8M pounds for and who was erratic in the Bundesliga. I like the way he looks, but expecting him to develop into a top player is probably too ambitious. People just expect too much from new signings.

I never said Mata was shit, but Mata is not one of Spain's best players. He played five minutes in the Euros. You're arguing the same thing which makes no sense that the other chap is arguing. I never said I didn't know why Spain didn't bring their best players, only that they didn't. I know why they didn't. Because they just played the Euros and the Euros are a massive tournament and Olympic football is a minor event and everyone outside of South American countries, view it as such. It's not just this year, it's every Olympics. The previous Olympics the Dutch brought 2 over-age players, Kew Jaliens and Gerald Sibons. Belgium brought no over-age players, and Italy brought 1, Tomosso Rocchi. Ivory Coast brought no over-age players. No Drogba, no Ya Ya Toure. That's what countries do in the Olympics. It's a small, under-23 tournament where the South American countries go all out to win. I don't know why you people keep trying to pretend that this tournament is any good.

Of course not. Mata doesn't struggle against physical opponents, he struggles in the defensive counter-attack system we played late in the CL last season. We played it in 3 matches and Mata was poor in those matches. It's not a system we will be looking to play so it shouldn't matter. Mata shouldn't play a full match though because the game really doesn't matter. Better now than when it would hurt us.

Doubt they come close to winning the CL. It's hard to integrate so many new players so quickly. How will they fit together? Who knows but it will likely take time. Think Man City from two seasons ago. They bought Silva, Balotelli, Ya Ya Toure, Dzeko, Milner, Kolerov, and Boatang. They only won the FA Cup. Even last season, City was clearly the most talented team on paper, they got lucky with virtually no serious injuries, and they still only won the league on goal differential and were knocked out early on from the CL 9And City had a better squad than PSG does). I expect PSG to easily win the French League because there's not a lot of competition there, but in Europe? Anyone can win (as we well know!) but I wouldn't be putting money on it. (They are also going to start out as a #3 or #4 seed so are going to get a tough group)

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I said that the Spain didn't bring their best players and you said "what top players did Spain not bring" and I told you which top players they didn't bring and you said "why would you expect them to bring them"? I don't expect them to take good players because it's a minor tournament but you asked.

Spain didn't bring any of their best senior players. No Xavi, no Iniesta, no Ramos, etc...The logic that the competition must be good because good players have looked mediocre is ridiculous. Because Chelsea lost to Brighton, does that mean that Brighton are Champions' League contenders? Hazard played poorly, so therefore Brighton's players are really amazing. It doesn't work like that. Good players will have mediocre games against poor teams sometimes.(Especially, as was the case for most teams apart from Brazil, when the players have barely played together.) And yes, Egypt and Korea might almost be as good as Mexico because they are all poor.

No, it doesn't. Uruguay had a pretty good roster and lost to some poor teams. Britain was one of the better teams in the tournament and they weren't any good. It happens. The best team doesn't always win. It doesn't mean that the other teams were necessarily good. Brazil could have easily lost to Honduras, it doesn't mean they are a worse team., Just go and look at the Olympic rosters of the teams. Saying that they are quality is just ridiculous. Mexico is in the final and every single player except Dos Santos plays in the Mexican League which is a pretty poor league.