TorontoChelsea

But that's an insane waste of money. Essien and Meireles will likely play reduced roles this season anyway, so you're essentially spending 30M pounds to cover 15 starts or something. And that's assuming that none of the youngsters stay at Chelsea. And Chelsea would have spent about 100M pounds in one transfer period only on attacking midfielders. I know people want to buy every single young player they like, but it's ridiculous.

Yes, let's spend 100M pounds on midfielders. Where would Lucas play? We have Oscar, Lampard, Marin, Mata, Hazard, Meireles, Ramires, Mikel, Essien, and Romeu (not to mention Malouda, Benayoun, KDB, Piazon, McEachran, and Kakuta). At this point, buying another midfielder is just taking time away from someone else who deserves playing time. And Kagawa was primarily a central attacking midfielder with Dortmund. I assume that's where he'll play for United.

Agree. City had much more talent than United last season and were much healthier and they still finished even on points. I think the goal this season should be a CL Spot and to be competitive in all competitions while transitioning successfully into the new style that Roman wants. If we win something, obviously that's even better.

I've never said otherwise but there is a difference between "it's best for everyone if Malouda moves on" and the ridiculous disrespect he gets on here.

Not only that, but Malouda scored 45 goals for Chelsea. He was our player of the season in 2009-2010. He led us in goals in 2010-2011. Have some humanity but also show some respect for what the man accomplished for Chelsea.

This should be on the top of every single pre-season thread. Managers repeatedly say the same thing-these games are about building fitness and having a look at some of the younger players. Whether or not Mikel or Hazard or Cole have a good 45 minutes or not is meaningless.

And Kane. This will be like the last game-just getting guys up to a decent fitness level and getting them playing together.

No. This is NRA propaganda. Guns don't kill people on their own, they just make it much much easier to kill and to kill many more people. Not only that, but it lets disagreements which would be fist-fights in other countries, to turn into shootouts.The murder rate in the US vastly higher than any other Western country. Other Western countries are in the 0.50-1.60 murders 100, 000 people. The US is is at around 5 which is 3-10X higher. (Not saying gun ownership is the sole reason, a sense of individualism, a gun-loving culture, hopeless poverty, as well as people actually carrying around guns in public contribute to this.) It is statistically irrefutable that more guns lead to more murders. (And logical besides. There will always be lunatics, but a lunatic with a knife or a baseball bat is generally is going to do a lot less damage than a lunatic with a gun.)

Torres was one of the best strikers in the world 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 (Last time he was PFA team of the year). We're going into the 2012-2013 season. He wasn't particularly good with Liverpool before we signed him so he's been bad for 2 consecutive years. He might come good, but he might not and I am almost positive that his days as a world-class player are over. It's not just a lack of form, it's a lack of class as he is consistently knocked off the ball by mediocre defenders. It hasn't just been the misses, it's been an overall lack of quality in finishing and positioning.. He might come good with excellent service, but if it takes excellent service for him to score, he's not a particularly good striker. World-class strikers need to create some of their own chances and need to turn half chances into goals. I am not pushing for Cavani per se although I think he's a fantastic striker, I am just baffled by Chelsea spending enormous amounts of money to fix one of our two biggest problems and zero money to fix the other one.

What's stopping Cavani from having a similar record? Quality. It's crazy to spend as much as we spend and build massive depth in midfield only to rely on a striker who has been awful for a year and a half. Yes, he might come good, but what if he doesn't?

Drogba first season saw him score 10 goals in 26 Premier league matches with Chelsea and that was with having a serious muscle pull that kept him out of action or two months and he was still considered a disappointment. Torres has scored 7 goals in 46 Premier League matches for Chelsea. A massive difference.

It's a combination of things and different players put different emphasis on different priorities (just like other people.) Players' priorities also change. As they get married and have families, they often want to move closer to their homes and be in a place where there are good schools and stability for their families. That isn't a factor at all for a single 21-year old.For most players money and the opportunity to play at the highest level are the two biggest factors I also think too many people expect players to have club loyalty.I don't really think it's any more likely than us having loyalty to our workplaces. If a new job comes along and offers us double the pay and a better opportunity, how many of us would turn it down?

It's hard to evolve when you're not playing. Right now, he's our third string striker which is the same role he had last year. The choice is either for Lukaku to develop on another team on loan or to play a handful of games at Chelsea. I am almost certain Lukaku will go on loan which is the best thing for him and for us.

Cavani is similar to Torres except better in every way. There is really nothing Cavani doesn't do well. He's also a lot more willing to mix it up physically that Torres. And Lukaku right now is not at the level he can play for Chelsea. Scoring a couple of goals in a meaningless pre-season match doesn't change that. He needs to go out on loan and play regularly somewhere.

There is no correlation. McEachran was our best player last pre-season and he had a lost season. Malouda played well in the pre-season and he was probably our worst player during the year. Mata was our best player and didn't even play in pre-season. The leading scorer for Man City in last' year's World Football Challenge was Wright-Phillips. Fredrico Mechada had two goals for ManU. It just doesn't mean anything. When people say "so and so had a good or bad game" that's normal and fine, it's the making generalizations on the overall quality of a player based on pre-season matches which is ridiculous.

Fun first half and good to see the lads get their running in, but the overreactions to individual performances are insane. Pre-season matches are all about fitness, the games themselves are meaningless and players' individual performances are pretty close to that. There is no correlation between pre-season performance and in-season performance. Judging a player's quality based on 45 minutes in a pre-season match is ridiculous. You need at least 5-10 matches into the season before you can really start to form a decent first impression of a player and even that is premature. The games are interesting to watch to try to see what kind of qualities new players might bring and because we're all excited to see Chelsea again.

First of all, it was us that let him go to Arsenal. What should he have done? Refused? How can you possibly be angry at a player for going out on loan? And the "shite so far?" Give me a break. 25 minutes in and he's been fine. Had a great give and go with Marin and hasn't done anything wrong. Haters need to hate and without Kalou and Malouda around it seems Benayoun is the new guy to go after. When he is (likely) sold, wonder who it will be next.

Not to start anyway.

Sutton....well, he did score in that fabulous massacre of ManU. The rest I have repressed. There are almost no Chelsea players I have hated but Sutton is one of them...(Bosnich and Bogarde as well perhaps)

They won't fall apart. They'll still finish top-5. Even without Van Persie, who is going to finish above them? City, us, ManU and maybe Spurs and Newcastle although maybe not the last two. They still have a lot of talent.

I'd understand it pre-Oscar, but now? We only need a striker and a RB.

Stein was a striker. I never saw him play, but he was great for Chelsea. I know he had the record for consecutive games with a goal for a long time. I also know that his father was an anti-Apartheid activist in South Africa. http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/worldcup/mark-steins-so-proud-his-father-helped-south-africa-win-its-biggest-battle-6481608.html Good idea for a thread. Would like to hear more about Chelsea legends from those who saw them. Chelsea do have a rich history and I think a lot of us would like to hear more about it.

Hulk can play striker, but he's a much better player as a RW. Cavani is a much better striker who has proven himself at the highest levels. As for your complaining about Sturridge, yeah, he's so selfish to want to play striker. When Chelsea moved him from RW to LAM ro RAM last season, he flatly refused...right? The anti-Sturridge stuff on this board is ridiculous.

Hulk is a midfielder if we are playing a 4-2-3-1 the same way Mata and Hazard will be. You're right that labels like that are kind of silly, but it's just a short-hand. Either way, we have enough attacking, creative players as is. You're right that Torres wasn't the only poor performer last season but Drogba was better despite being 33-34 years old. We definitely needed to upgrade our ball movement and we did that but we also need a striker who can score regularly. Torres might do that, but it's a massive risk and when you're trying to build a winning team, you can't take a risk like that.

First of all, Torres did not start to get better and better towards the end of the year. He had 4 good games under RDM out of 18.. Second of all, Torres hasn't really been considered one of the best strikers in the world for about 3-4 years. In the last year and a half, he's been one of the worst strikers in the Premier League. Third of all, we have enough midfielders. We actually have too many. We don't need another creative passing player. We dWe have Hazard, Mata, Lampard, and Oscar for that. As of right now, we probably have Ramires, Meireles, and Marin on the bench to start. We're going to play in a system that doesn't have a real RW position. We are almost certainly going to play 3 midfielders behind the striker. We don't need Hulk at all any more. We've spent 65M on creative midfielders. Buying Hulk would mean Chelsea will have spent 100M pounds or so on 4 attacking midfielders. It just makes no sense. What if Torres continues to be useless? It's a real possibility and then what? Relying on players playing out of position? It's an insane risk for us. We need a striker who can score. We had 11 goals in total from our strikers last year. It's just not good enough to compete at this level.