TorontoChelsea

Spain played the Euro without a striker and won! I generally agree with you that Belgian players were younger then and so on, but even so, I have a very difficult time believing that this group of Belgian players are all stars. This is nothing against Belgians, they have a young and exciting squad, it's just the fact that people almost always overrated players that they hardly ever see.

Spain was very different. Everyone knew Spain was incredibly talented and their national team players were excellent and pretty much all playing at a high level. The problem was that they were always falling apart and under-performing. These were teams filled with fabulous players. Raul, Hierrro, Zubbizaratta, Guardiola etc..They were also making tournaments and doing OK in them but just not winning. They got to the quarter-finals in the World Cup in 86, 94, and 02. They got to the quarter finals in the Euro in 96 and 00. Belgium has not even qualified for their last 5 attempts at the Euro and World Cup. Belgium is currently the 53rd ranked team in the world. It's like comparing England (disappointing, often advance past the group stage, but never win) to Scotland (almost never get in.) Also,this generation of players generally first started playing regularly for Spain around 2004 and really became the core of the squad in 2006 when they made it to the round of 16 in the World Cup. The disappointments belonged to a different generation. On the other hand, it was this generation of Belgian players that finished third in qualifying. It was Fellaini, Hazard, Dembele, Witsel, etc... My point is that if these Belgian players were all as good as people said they were, they would be cruising through the group stages of the Euro tournament. England won their group and the team was quite poor. I bet if you asked people here who had a more talented squad, many, if not most people would say Belgium but it's not true. I think a lot of this is the tendency to overrate players that we don't see as much which is something that happens constantly when assessing transfers. Now, I think Belgium is likely to make the World Cup. Their qualifying group is very easy and they should be improving, but this past qualifying for the Euro has all of these supposed excellent players and they finished with something like the 22nd best record in qualifying. This is not slight on Witsel or on any particular player for Belgium, just that I can't believe that all these players are great.

Haven't seen much of him but I'm starting to get pretty sceptical that all these Belgians are as good as advertised.

How has this not been dragging on too long already? We were first linked with him when AVB came and it hasn't stopped since. If Porto want more money than Chelsea feel he's worth, then just move on. (and 38M is ridiculously overpriced.)

The two Manchester Clubs for sure are the best bets, but if Arsenal manage to keep Van Persie and sign a defender, they could be difficult to beat. They were absolutely decimated by injuries last season (so were United, but City has no serious injuries) but have enormous talent in midfield and attack. Spurs are not a pushover either, but their lack of a CL spot will really hurt them. I wouldn't take any of those teams for granted. Newcastle got a little lucky last season (goal differential of +5 was actually worse than Liverpool's) and should be bunched with Liverpool and Everton behind the top-5.

Absolutely agree but then again I think that pretty much no young players are going to make it. Chelsea have probably had at least 50 highly-touted young players in the last 20 years and only one has become a world-class player, good enough to start for Chelsea (Terry) and only a few have ever contributed at all at a top level. (Huth, Carlton Cole, Jody Morris). Predicting success from academy players is a fool's game.

Not necessarily true. We'll obviously see if/when the deal goes down, but some of these deals involve a fee that rises with performance and some don't .

A little odd considering Chelsea have two pretty good LB prospects in Bertrand and Van Aanholt, but I suppose you can never have enough depth and potential. Agree with Joker that 4m seems steep for an unproven teenage LB. Jordi Alba just went for 11M and he's one of the best LBs in the world. I guess Chelsea must think very highly of him.

Neither did Lampard.

I wish AVB luck with Spurs (of course, we will still finish above them). He is likely a fine coach, but he was not the right coach for Chelsea and deserved to be sacked. My guess is that he learned a lot from his time at Chelsea and won't repeat the same mistakes.

You're right. There is nothing he could have done at the Euros to make me think that he's suddenly become a great player for Chelsea. I don't care about Spain, I care about Chelsea and he's been bad for a year and a half with us. Playing well in a couple of games for Spain is not going to change that. Playing brilliantly for an entire tournament wouldn't change that. Reading some of these posts it's as if people think that getting 3 goals for Spain suddenly wipes out being bad for a season and a half or that it is is a better indicator of future performance that what he's done so far. Torres needs to be scoring 25-35 goals a season (in all competitions) in order to deserve to be the starting striker for a top club. The bottom line is that the only thing that will prove that Torres deserves to be a regular striker for Chelsea is him scoring regularly for Chelsea. So far, he has only proven the opposite. It looks like he'll get another chance again this year and we all hope he does well, but my doubts are not based on some irrational hatred, it's based purely on his play with us so far.

Maybe not more, but definitely as much and with less cause. When Lampard had a bad patch this season, half the fans wanted him gone and nobody was saying "oh, he's secretly playing great, you just can't tell" or "It's everyone else on the team's fault".. I love Lampard, but he had a very poor stretch. It happens. When Cole and Cech had a few screw-ups early in the year, nobody denied that they made some horrible plays. Do you think that there would be a single other player at Chelsea who could be useless for a year and a half and still get his name sung?

It shouldn't be "Torres is shit" based on a bad game or two either. The difference though is that Torres actually has been shit for us so a bad game just seems like a continuation of that whereas a good game seems meaningless. What so many of us find frustrating is that Torres has been one of Chelsea's worst players and still gets more love than anyone. Take someone like Malouda- He averaged 9 goals and 9 assists over 5 years with Chelsea. He led us in goals a season ago, he has contributed so much more to Chelsea than Torres has but fans loathe him. Kalou has been involved with 100 Chelsea goals in his career despite playing largely on the bench, had excellent work-rate and was great defensively and fans loved seeing him go. Sturridge led us in goals last season despite playing out of position. Fans hate him. But Torres? Torres gets more love than Lampard, Terry, Cole or Cech all of whom are Chelsea legends. Torres has done virtually nothing but is still adored. It's just mind-boggling.

1) The shit players around Torres managed to win the Champions League last season. It's amazing how players can be shit and yet still be the champions of Europe? Drogba, despite having malaria, going off to the African Cup for a month, and being 33 and 34, had a far better strike rate than Torres in the last year and a half. 2) Scoring goals is about 90% of a striker's job. If you don't score, you aren't doing your job. Striker is unique like that. It's much harder to say how good a defensive midfielder or a keeper has been, but strikers are paid to score. Work rate is meaningless without production. On top of that, even Torres' production has been almost exclusively in one-sided games against poor squads. He's scored 12 goals in 67 games with Chelsea and 9 of them were against Championship quality sides and 11 of them were in games decided by more than goal. It's an absolutely abysmal record. This thread is ridiculous because every time Torres does anything, it explodes into "Torres is amazing!!". It was a nice goal, well taken, good for him, but it does not erase a year and a half of horrible play with Chelsea. Even if he scored five goals, perhaps it would help his confidence, but it would never change the past. I don't understand this desire to try to pretend that Torres has been anything but terrible for us. Torres has objectively been one of the worst strikers in the Premier league in the past year and a half with Chelsea.

Agree. It's possible that Sturridge will never be a top-class player and he does need to mature mentally, but if Chelsea let him go, without giving him a shot at playing striker, it's something I am certain we will regret. He has talent and that's something you can't teach.

Good post...It's a very tough balance because you need to have international quality players on your bench at this level but you also need to give younger players a shot. There is room for younger players but it needs to be at the end of the bench so to speak. Ideally for me, is we'd replace Malouda with a younger player. We have the depth at midfield/winger where the player wouldn't be relied on and wouldn't need to start even with an injury, but Malouda still started 11 games and came on as a sub in 15 and that would be pretty decent development. It's also tough, because you can't predict injuries. Lukaku was our third striker and third strikers can get in a lot of game time if there's an injury. Look how depleted our central defence was at the end of last season. We were using our 4th and 5th choice central defenders at one point. Had Torres been hurt when Drogba was in Africa or late in the season when Drogba needed to be rested, Lukaku would have had a ton of game time. As it is, he only started one game in the Premier League which was awful for his development. It's a tricky balance.

I'm uncertain and generally I think that short of incitement to violence, racism shouldn't be in the purview of the courts, but it will be surprising if Terry isn't suspended. The worst part of this is how its being dragged out. The incident took place (or didn't) October 23rd. We're 8 months later and there's been no resolution. The Suarez incident was resolved after 2 months. I think it's extremely unlikely we're going to get Modric as Spurs want to sell him outside of England. He's an excellent player and would be a great fit on any team, but it's not going to happen for Chelsea unless they make some insane bid. (Most likely now seems Modric to Real Madrid and then Spurs buy Moutinho or Spurs getting Sahin back as a makeweight or...even both.)

He would not be a go to guy like he was at Porto. Mata and Hazard would be the main ball handlers for Chelsea and while Hulk would get plenty of touches, there's a big difference in taking 2-3 shots a game and taking 6 or 7 which nobody on Chelsea would be able to do. Also, you say that if someone had Hulk's scoring rate, he should shoot? Well, Sturridge actually had a better scoring rate last season despite playing out of position. (7 of Hulks goals came via penalties). Sturridge had 11 goals in 28 games, many of them as a midfielder. Hulk had 9 non-penalty goals in 26 games.

I never said that Jovetic would be great at Chelsea. There are definitely questions. I said simply that comparing Hulk and Jovetic based on stats is ridiculous. The Premier League is overall a better league than Seria A, but Seria A is much closer to the Premier League in skill than to the Portuguese league. This is a league with Inter, Juventus, Milan, Napoil, Udinese, Roma, Lazio, etc.. Also, you're worried about Jovetic being a big fish in a small pond at Fiorentina but not for Hulk coming from Porto? No matter who Chelsea buys, it will be someone coming from a team where they will have to learn to play a smaller role. For example, in six UCL games last season, Hulk took an incredible 42 shots, or 7 shots a game. Sturridge who many hate for being selfish took 7 shots just twice in 47 matches. How is Hulk going to respond when he is only able to take 2 or 3 shots a game, when he is no longer the go-to guy on the club?

Jovetic plays in Seria A where he has to face fantastic teams (Juventus, Milan, Lazio, Napoli, etc...), Hulk plays in Portugal with the only excellent team that dominates everyone else. Fiorentina as a team scored 37 goals. Porto scored 69. Jovetic scored about 1/3 of all of Fiorentina's goals. Jovetic was Fiorentina's leading scorer. with 13 goals-2nd best on his team was 4. Jovetic is 3 1/2 years younger than Hulk. He's cheaper than Hulk. Unlike Hulk, Jovetic has scored against top clubs. He scored goals against Milan, Roma, Juventus, etc... None of this is to say that he'll be better or worse or even worth buying, just that comparing statistics from very different quality leagues to players in different situations is ridiculous. Oscar Cardoza and Lima were the leading goal scorers in Portugal with 26 goals in 44 games and 28 in 45 respectively. You really think that these players are in the same class as Aguero, Cavani, Di Nitale, Higuain, Benzema, and all these players with similar strike rates in the top leagues?

It does matter to some extent. You have to treat legends with some respect. That said, you can't play someone simply because they are a legend. Certainly, long-term, Chelsea need to replace Lampard long-term, but long-term doesn't mean now. Next season perhaps maybe even 2 seasons down the road. Ideally, they'd have an understudy ready to be able to play 20 games this season and gradually learn to take over, but unfortunately, that's not generally Chelsea's way. And the "Lampard was useless" under AVB is just nonsense. He certainly wasn't as good, but he had 12 goals and 5 assists and generally still set up a large number of Chelsea's chances when AVB was coach. He had a couple of bad stretched and the media got on him as being "done" which they like to do. Also, all the AVB fanboys who thought he was some kind of Messiah, blamed Lampard for everything and started seeing every mistake he made while being willfully blind to the class he brought. Yes, he was better playing deeper and a lot of that has to do with having to run less. Overall, according to PPI, Lampard was the 12th best midfielder in the Premier League last season and the 22nd best overall player behind only Mata and Terry at Chelsea. He still has more to give.

That's absolute nonsense. I compared Lampard to Giggs and Scholes by showing how top players can remain very productive well into their mid to late 30's. Lampard is an elite level player, maybe the best midfielder in Premier League history, there's no reason to believe that he's suddenly going to be useless . Lampard was very good last year playing 49 games, so what is your basis for thinking that he's suddenly not good enough to play regularly? Your logic is basically "well, he's 34 so he's going to be bad, so let's go out and spend 25 million on somebody new". This exactly the same "let's just go out and buy players because it's fun" crap. It's not only ridiculous in football terms, it's treating the best player in Chelsea history who is still a good player like garbage because you want a shiny new toy.

Sparingly? Lampard played 49 matches last season and was one of our better players and we suddenly have to cut his playing time in half simply because he's 34? Scholes was playing 33-38 games a season in his last 4 years before retiring (and coming back).Giggs has averaged almost 39 games a season in the last 5 seasons and he's 5 years older than Lampard. The idea that we have to bench a good player simply because of his age, is ridiculous. It's probably best that he doesn't play 49 games again, but he could easily play 40 and still be very effective. Lampard is probably the greatest player in Chelsea history and is still a very good player and this board is filled with people who want to see him gone.

The exact opposite. Torres was Chelsea going after a specific player and paying way more than he was worth because we were obsessed with getting him. I'm not saying Chelsea should get Pato or any player in particular, but we should be looking for value everywhere and previous injuries can bring down someone's price enormously thereby making them a bargain.

The injuries might actually make him a bargain. Every signing is a risk, but the risk to get a talent like Pato for fairly cheap because of injuries could pay off enormously.