TorontoChelsea

I was counting Oscar as well which would bring the total to around 60M. (Hazard 32, Marin 8, Oscar 20) Liverpool got Caroll a year and a half ago, not last year. And Hazard and Marin cost 40M between them, not 48 and only 5 teams spent that much last year..

Because Chelsea are already at around 60M pounds spent this transfer period and are certainly going to go for a RB as well. Right now, we've already spent more than any club last season except City and us. And you can't compare Oscar to Modric. Modric is a top player in the Premier League and has been for years. He is an established top-notch player at the top level. His chances of being an excellent player at any club are about 97%. He'd immediately become one of our best players (40M is still too steep though)l. Oscar is still mostly potential. Is he ready to come in and play immediately? I don't know. The record for Brazilians in the Premier League is pretty spotty and while he has excellent upside, there is also a lot of downside.

What do you think you're doing using facts and statistics when analysing a player? Madness!!!

Winning a corner doesn't give you credit for the goal that comes from that corner any more than making a pass that leads to someone winning the corner that leads to a goal does. It's not like winning a penalty or something. And the goal against Barca was great, but there was a 1:15 left in extra time when he scored it. Had he just run around in circles with the ball, Chelsea would have gone through. Even if he had missed the net, Chelsea would have 99% gone through. Agree with the Skipper, if you want to discuss this, best to do it on the Sturridge thread.

Exactly...and even more than that, wait until he plays 5-10 games or so to judge him. I hate the "he had a bad first game, so he's crap" or "he had a great first game, so he's a world-class player".

If your'e going to score 30 goals, you're going to have a lot of easy ones in there, but most teams aren't as creative as Arsenal and their strikers still manage to score. Peter Crouch got 10 goals last season for Stoke. Demba Ba scored 16 for Newcastle. etc...I'm not upset that none of our strikers scored 30 goals, on the team we had, that would have been impossible, it's that they scored 11 combined. You have to create your own chances to score and our strikers almost never did. If you are going to rely entirely on fabulous service, you're just not good enough for the top level. Plenty of players can score if they are given great service, what makes a top striker great is the ability to create their own chances and take them. It looks like the fee will be 25M Euros which is a lot better than 25M pounds. Still very expensive, but more in the realm of reasonable.

They don't score easy tap-ins every week and even when they do, a lot of that is down to excellent positioning. When their teams are attacking, top strikers find themselves space and react quickly. Our strikers didn't. Positioning is a skill as well. Obviously, we needed to get more creative and Hazard helped, but strikers have to score goals. 11 goals in a season is just pathetic.

The Olympics can really bring a young player out into the spotlight if they were unknown before (even that is rare), but someone like Hulk? Even if he dominates, it won't make a difference. Brazil is playing Egypt, Belarus, and New Zealand in the opening round. Doing well against the under-23s of these countries is to be expected for a pretty stacked Brazilian side.

Why? I know this is a popular opinion, but I thought Mata was actually better out wide than he was under RDM. He was definitely not as effective in the second half although some of that may have been being tired. The real problem under AVB is that he had to be on the ball too much which was incredibly demanding. Adding Hazard changes that. I'm not pushing for Mata to be moved back outside, I just don't think it's a big deal if a system makes him as he can be effective there as well. (Also, as we saw last year, he is hardly a static player, sticking to his lanes. I would give Hazard and Mata a lot of freedom to cut across the field no matter where they start off playing.)

Our main problem last year is that our strikers scored a combined 11 goals in the league. It's about a third of what they should be scoring. Some of that was due to having only two creative midfielders in Lampard and Mata but most of it was due to the poor form of our strikers. We got Hazard to fill the creative role, but losing Drogba makes our strikers even worse. Going into the transfer period, we needed a creative midfielder, a striker who can score regularly, and a backup RB. The Oscar signing, if it happens, really makes little sense. That's probably the position where we have the most depth as well as our best youth players and the price seems insane for a player who hasn't played in Europe yet.

You're joking, right? Sturridge was our second best player in the first half of the season. He scored 9 goals in 19 starts as a RW in the league. He came up big in big games against City and Spurs and others... Torres did nothing at all of any importance.. This stuff drives me crazy. Yes, I know, Torres ran around a lot and wore a headband and did all sorts of secret stuff to help Chelsea and that is much more important than actually producing yada yada yada.

But it's a horrible way to run a transfer policy. Paying huge money because the player might be amazing in two years and cost more? You don't need to buy every single player. You fill needs and if you have needs next year, you fill them. You are always going to miss out on star players because there are hundreds of teams out there. There are dozens of great young players and some of them will become stars and some will be massive disappointments. (Remember Freddy Adu? Javier Saviola? etc???) You can't buy them all. I think what happened here is that Spurs made an offer and Internacional told Chelsea about it and Chelsea just overpaid for him to keep him away from Spurs. Looks like a great young talent but the price is ridiculous. (if true)

Daily Mail has it as 25M pounds which would be an astounding fee. Again, nothing confirmed, so we'll have to see.

Wow...I like this kid, he's got great potential, but 25M for an unproven midfielder with 1 season under his belt in Brazil? That's more than Mata or David Silva or Ya Ya Toure if the number is true which is just crazy. That means Chelsea had better believe that he's ready to play a starring role immediately.

Damn, that would have saved me some time! Obviously, the definitions are somewhat loose but no matter what the conclusions will be the pretty much the same. (Frank Lampard is always a legend!!)

Well, then there comes a dispute about what a game winning goal is. It can either be defined as the goal that puts the team in front for good (which Torres' goal did in this case) or the goal that would have been the difference in the final score (which was Ramires in this case.) To me, the stat in this sort of case is basically semantics. Who cares who scored the first or second goal in a 4-1 win? A real game winning goal is scoring the decisive goal in a close match. Scoring the only goal in a 1-0 game, scoring a late goal to put you ahead 2-1, that sort of thing. Also, tying goals are incredibly important, a late goal to give you a point is vital. And no, Torres hasn't scored a real winning or tying goal with Chelsea. I'll have a look at the goals I consider important winning and tying goals. In the league: Winning goals (goals that put Chelsea from level to winning for good in close games so going up 2-1 late, but not going up 2-0 and then conceding a goal.) Malouda (Late winner against WBA), Lampard (Scored winner in 82nd minute against Norwich), Lampard (only goal against Blackburn), Lampard (89th minute winner against Wolves) ,Lampard (only goal against Sunderland), Lampard (Winner on penalty against City), Drogba (only goal against Stoke), Ivanovic (83rd minute winner against Villa), Mata (only goal against QPR), Mata (90th minute winner against Wigan), Drogba (1-0 goal against Newcastle which stayed that way until 89th minute) Tying goals (goals that put Chelsea from down to level for good) Sturridge (tying goal against Spurs), Neil Taylor (OG off of, what I think was a Bosingwa cross, Swansea 1-1) In other comps (Considering the CL knockouts over 2 legs): Winners: Luiz (Leverkusen won 2-0 but were up 1-0 until the 90th), Mata (1-0, QPR-FA Cup), Sturridge (extra time winner against Everton in CC), Ivanovic (Napoli aggregate win), Kalou (1-0 Benfica), Drogba, (Barcelona), Ramires (Barcelona, put us ahead on aggregate and gave us away goal) Tying goals: Sturridge (1-1 Birmingham FA Cup), Drogba (Bayern) It's possible I missed a game or two and it's possible to disagree with my definition of winning goal, but I do think it's interesting...(Frank Lampard=Legend! Five winning goals in the league and even if you take away the two that were penalties, he still had more than any other player.) And no...Torres didn't score a single one of these goals.

The answer is 1 against Swansea (where he later got sent off). As for games we wouldn't have won without Torres? I think probably the Benfica game where he assisted Kalou and generally played very well. The Barcelona goal sealed it and was Torres' best moment with Chelsea, but he could have walked to the corner with the ball and stood there and we still would have gone through. Other than that, his goals were in games where we either lost (ManU) or easily beat a poor opposition.

Van Persie, Rooney, and Aguero scored, respectively, 30, 27, and 23 goals in the league. That's what you need from your striker.

That's not true. Cavani had been a very good striker with Palermo the previous two seasons. You have to remember that Seria A scores are much lower. The best teams are scoring 65-70 goals a season. In England, the top teams are scoring 90 or so. That means that there are many fewer goals in Italy so getting 13-15 goals even as a striker is pretty good. Cavani was 3rd in the Seria A in goals last season, 2nd the year before, 10th the year before, and tied for 7th, four seasons ago. That's 4 straight seasons of being a top-10 scorer in Seria A since he was 21. I very highly doubt Chelsea are going to buy Cavani because Napoli don't want to sell him, but he's a fantastic striker with an excellent record. (And calling his last two years "decent" is patently absurd. He's scored 49 goals over that period, the only player in Seria A to score more has been Di Nitale. He's also been excellent n the UCL, he scored 5 goals in 8 games and not against Genk either, he scored 4 goals in 4 matches against Man City and Chelsea. He hasn't been decent, he's been fabulous.)

That's the way it should be. Everyone has bad stretches and that's fine, but in general, you have to earn your starting spot. If you produce, you'll play, if you don't, you'll have to earn the right to start again.

Sturridge scored more goals for us than anyone else last season, how is that "no production?". Yeah, he was crap in 2012, but that's mostly because he was playing as a right midfielder which was never going to work. Every player goes through down periods. Our best player last season was Mata and he was much better in the first half than the second and was basically useless in the later rounds of the UCL. People have this idea that players are great every single week and it's just nonsense. Most players, even top players, will have down periods. To give up on an extremely talented 22-year old because he had a bad patch playing way out of position is just ridiculous. And only players that produce have egos? Did you not notice how upset Torres was that he didn't start in the CL final? How he needed reassurances from Roman that he was the starter? Every player at Chelsea has an ego. They are among the best footballers in the world, they get millions, they have girls chasing them, it's pretty natural to be full of yourself at 21 even without that stuff.

It's true but that's why youtube reels are ridiculous.

People stick up for Sturridge because he's young, talented, and produces. He led us in scoring as a 21-year old playing out of position. He has ego issues, but most top players do. I'll take big ego and production over the opposite any day.To me, this is a very English attitude and a big reason why England isn't any good on the National level. They love the quiet, humble players who do their jobs and have mediocre ability. Players like Downing and Henderson and James Milner are perfect examples of this. Balotelli wouldn't get near the English squad. "His ego is too big, he only thinks about himself, etc..." If Sturridge had been playing in another country, people here would be salivating over his youtube videos and talking about making a 30M bid.

They've only really been a problem for a year. Anelka and Malouda were top scorers before that. We've had striker problems for two years. I think people are massively over-selling the need for more elite offensive talent. You really only need a few guys who are going to score and a few guys who are going to be the creators. When Chelsea set the record for goals (103), we only had 4 players with more than 5 goals and 4 players with more than 5 assists. Last year, Man City, the top scoring team had 3 players with more than 6 goals (and 2 of them played the same position) and 3 players with more than 6 assists. Real Madrid scored a ridiculous 121 goals and only 3 players scored more than 5 times (and 2 of them played the same position) and only 3 had double digit assists. You're generally going to get almost all of your offensive production from 3-4 players no matter what. You need the rest of the squad to be able to play quieter roles building up and opening up play and being responsible defensively. Right now, our big question mark going into the season is Torres. If he can score regularly, Chelsea will be OK, if he can't, we'll be in big trouble again.

Don't see Kane getting into any games. He doesn't fit the profile of a player ready to play at Chelsea as he hasn't played at all professionally yet. Chelsea will almost certainly buy a RB. Bertrand was on loan for years before he was given a chance to backup Cole. I can see Bertrand and Romeu both getting into some games again ,but this year I don't think there's anybody else really ready for much action at Chelsea. Maybe De Bruyne if he impresses in pre-season.