TorontoChelsea

Agree. There is value in that, but you need your top striker to do more than score in massacres against poor squads.When Berbatov led the Premier League in goals, he had scored 10 goals in 3 games against Blackpool and Birmingham. He's a decent striker, but he's a better fit for a Europa League or mid-table sort of team. (And he's 31 so could easily be declining as well.)

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.

I know what you mean. It sounds weird, but some wars are just more interesting than others and some colonizations are more interesting than others.

Glorious padding...gotta love those footnotes. "Ibid" is only one word but it takes up a whole line!

Patois is impossible to understand! There are tons of Jamaicans in Toronto and if you hang out in certain areas, you will hear it all the time. I just know a few swear which always seems to be the first thing most of us learn in new languages.

I hope you've read the book at least! Otherwise, you might have to pull one of these sort of things...http://www.theonion.com/articles/ask-a-highschool-student-who-didnt-do-the-required,12210/

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.

She looked pretty young to me. They might not go to jail, but it's still an awful story. I'll never understand why millionaire athletes go to prostitutes. It's not like there are a shortage of beautiful women willing to go out with these guys even if they look like Ribery does.

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.

I hear this stuff all the time. It's the standard anti-Globalization line, but it just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It's all the fault of the big corporations and some secret cabal of bankers and the US. Corporations are not inherently evil. Capitalism is not evil. The reality is that every single country that has a decent quality of living is a capitalist country that has corporations. Every single strong democracy is a capitalist country with corporations. Capitalism creates wealth and growth. Where it runs into problems is where it has too little regulation and when it comes up against protectionism (And in the case of the US, the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections.). Chile does have problems, but where your argument fails is pretending that these problems are somehow caused by the US and corporations or something. Pretty much every country in South America has these exact same problems.except usually worse. Capitalism does create cheap labour but cheap labour helps build societies up and creates an enormous amount of wealth. China is exploding because of the cheap labour as India is for the same reason. This is what happened in the past to a number of Asian countries like South Korea, Taiwan , and Japan. They moved from a low-wage economies to high-wage economies. The IMF makes some big mistakes but there are two important things to remember 1) You don't have to take loans from them. Don't get into insane debt and you won't need loans.2) They have also done good. Look at India which liberalised its economy about 20 years ago as a condition of the IMF's loan. You know what happened? International investment in India went from $132 million in 1991-1992 to $5.3 Billion in only 3 years. India's economy was stagnant under its previous Socialist monetary policy and is now growing at a fantastic rate. The percentage of people in India in poverty has dropped about 20% in the past decade. It's very appealing to view capitalism and corporations as the bad guys and sometimes they are, but it's a lot more complicated than that. Liberalized, capitalistic countries create wealth. As Churchill said "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings and the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal distribution of misery".

The problem is...what should they do? If they do nothing, they will get criticized for allowing massacres. If they interfere, they will get criticized for interfering. It's not an easy situation by any means.

Usually, I'd agree with you. History tends to overrate individual accomplishments (as does science. It's a human thing I guess.) but Churchill really did fight against his cabinet to stand up to Hitler. It would have been much easier to capitulate as much of his cabinet wanted. Lord Halifax wanted to sign a peace treaty while Churchill did not trust Hitler (for some crazy reason.). John Lukacs' "Five Days in London, May 1940" is a fantastic book about this period and highly recommended. As for the war itself. The Russians and the Americans won it but it would likely never have gotten to that point had the British not been able to hold out as long as they had. The Roosevelt/Churchill relationship is also an interesting one. The Ambassador to London at the time was Joseph Kennedy (father of JFK and RFK) who was so anti thewar (with possible Fascist sympathies) Roosevelt and Churchill actually bypassed him completely when communicating between each other.

I never said Chile was a beacon of Democracy, but it is still a far better country than say Iran in virtually every way. My point was simply that Chile made the decision to move on and other countries haven't. There is inequality in Chile, but there is inequality everywhere. In truth Chile's inequality is standard for South America. The World Bank GINI index which measures income distribution has Brazil, Paraguay, Colombia, and Bolivia all with higher income inequality. This is what I am talking about. The Quality of life index has Chile as having the highest quality of life in South America (the index includes health, gender equality, political stability, job security, etc...) . I am not giving this as a credit to the US, but to the Chilean people who built this society from a pretty awful situation. The main reason Chile is doing relatively well? They have generally resisted the stereotypical South American love of bombastic egomaniacs who swing from socialist revolutionaries to military dictators. Chile's socialist leader was not interested in putting his face everywhere and changing his countries laws so he could rule forever. He was signing free trade agreements, modernizing the economy, and so on.

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.

Mother Theresa should be granted them least of all. Gandhi was a man of his time and I think it's difficult to judge people based on current mores. Lincoln was a great man but by today standards would be considered a racist. Churchill was a great man for standing up to the Nazis and leading Britain through the war, but by today's standards, he was a war criminal. Gandhi was still a great man, but, like all men, he was flawed. Mother Teresa was a media creation. Tariq Ali and Christopher Hitchens have a good documentary about this called Hell's Angel (available on youtube) but there are plenty of other very legitimate criticisms of her. She has somehow acquired this image as the default perfect person.

There is where we disagree. Pilger is a voice of the anti-Colonialist movement but to me that's not journalism, it's a political perspective that's narrow-minded and silly. The US has done a lot wrong, but to portray the US as bad guys and their opposition as good guys is ridiculous. One example that is typical. The US invasion of Iraq was based on a lie. There were no weapons of mass destruction. It was morally right to oppose the invasion of Iraq. However, once the US was in Iraq, even those of us who opposed the invasion, hoped for stability that would lead to Democracy. Pilger and his ilk supported what they called "the resistance" who were blowing up civilians and sending the country down the path to civil war (which he would then blame on the US for destabilizing the country.) His interest is solely in attacking the US. It's the enemy of my enemy way of arguing which is ridiculous. Not only that, but his arguments are the racism of the far left whereby "the other" are mindless children with no responsibility over their own actions. (The racism of low expectations). Every single bad behavior by any group is just a reaction to the US. Al-Qaeda? Well, that's because of American troops on Saudi territory. Iranian instability and crazy religious leaders? That's because of the coup of 1953. There is no responsibility of people for their own actions. Everything is the fault of the powerful. It's just nonsense. In 1973, the US helped overthrow the Chilean government which led to the brutal dictatorship of Pinochet. Chile is now one of the strongest democracies in the region with a modern economy and society. The US killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in the nuclear attacks in the 1945. Japan has a full democracy and a vibrant society. Societies, even greatly wronged societies, can make decisions to improve. It's not simply about reacting to American actions.

I don't rate Pilger at all as a journalist and he has been hung out to dry many times. In fact, people still use the verb "to pilger" to mean "to conduct journalism in a manner supposedly characteristic of Pilger, esp. by presenting information sensationally in support of a particular conclusion.'" (From the Independent) He is obviously incredibly slanted towards a particular worldview. Everyone has their opinions but his viewpoints are just so biased, it's hard to take what he says seriously even if what he says is accurate. I am a big critic of the US, many of its policies are short-sited, some of its actions in the "war on terror" are indefensible, and its income inequality is atrocious, but when people want to pretend that A) The US is always at fault for everything no matter what and That the US is no better than say Saudi Arabia or China, it's impossible to give what they say credence.The world is not just oppressors versus oppressed, it's a lot more complicated. Too many people need to see the world in good versus bad and it's rarely that simple.

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.