TorontoChelsea

My guess is Ronaldo. They basically just go back and forth with those two. In 2010, it should have been Iniesta or Xavi who were not only excellent for Barcelona, but helped Spain win the World Cup.

Strurridge looks certain to go and is actually our player I'm most interested in seeing as he's likely to play central striker. It will only be a handful of games, so it will be hard to judge either way, but will still be interesting to see.

I think you have to give us a little bit more information. What are you looking for in a trip? Culture? Fun? Beaches? Good food? Some combination? Of those listed, I'd say Italy because you can get whatever you want there (there is incredible culture, history, art, great life, fabulous beaches, amazing food, etc...) but 10 days is not nearly enough to see the country. It also depends if you're looking to do something completely different or something more familiar. Italy and Israel have similar feels although that would apply much more to Tel Aviv than to Nesher. I think you should ask what you are looking for and then find the place that will deliver that to you the best.

Agreed. Torres has become a ridiculous distraction. Every single game devolves into an obsessive rehashing of every Torres move. He didn't score, but he made a nice run in the 73rd minute and had Chelsea played a perfect cross in the 32nd minute, he would have scored, and that shows that he's almost in form and so on. The media also knows that Torres as a flop is a popular story so they mention the "50 million pound striker" and his poor form almost every time he touches the ball.

Balotelli is a phenomenal talent. He reminds me a little of Sturridge in that they are both immensely talented and produce, but are inconstant, selfish, and incredibly young and face a disproportionate amount of fan loathing . I would take Mario in a second. You often gain maturity as you age, you can't learn talent. The guy has scored 19 goals in 40 Premier league games and isn't yet 22. It's not going to happen of course, but so it's all theoretical.

What? You mean that the rumours of Exeter City swooping in with a 50M pound offer for Hulk aren't true either?

Alba makes a lot of sense and Modric make some sense for Barcelona but Hulk doesn't at all. Barcelona has more depth at RW than any other team in the world.They just bought Alexis as a RW last season and Cuenca is his 21 year old back up there. Pedro, Messi, and Villa can also all play RW if needed as well.

Exactly...I never get that attitude. Why are being a Chelsea supporter and being able to recognize and appreciate talent on other teams mutually exclusive? Bale is a terrific player. It doesn't you me a Spurs fan to realize that.

Wiki has Ramires with 6 assists and Soccernet with 5 in 44 matches in all competitions (and 1 or 2 in the league). Either way, I don't think it matters. Ramires simply isn't a creative force. He's good at opening space for other players and making key runs, but he doesn't have the skill-set to replace Lampard. We don't need a Lampard replacement this season, but when we do, it will have to be someone who can open up the other team. It's not just the direct assists that Lampard contributes, it's the probing balls that open up the other team's defence. You need that creativity from midfield, otherwise the offence becomes too stagnant.

Toure is excellent at moving the ball and Milner is fine and Mikel is nothing like Alonso. Mikel is good at making short, accurate passes in tight space but he's not a creative midfielder in the least. His ball movement is actually a little slow and he rarely passes the ball more than few yards. That's fine. He's in the lineup for his defensive skills and intelligence. In the last two years, in 109 league games, Ramires and Mikel combined for 2 assists. They simply are not good enough to create chances with any sort of regularity.. Toure and Milner combined for 11 assists last year alone.

I think Mikel and Ramires together regularly would be a disaster. You need to have good ball movement and creativity from the deep lying midfielders and neither Ramires or Mikel is remotely capable of playing that role. You need someone who can get the ball from the defense to the attackers and who can spring the counter-attack with intelligence. Can you see Ramires or Mikel playing a long ball to Hazard as he streak down the wing? Can you see them playing a 30 yard beautiful through-ball to Mata coming through the middle? Not a chance. So, what you'd have instead is Mata coming back deep to get the ball which would in effect turn the 4-2-3-1 into a 4-3-2-1.I think Lampard backed by Meireles makes the most sense if Chelsea play that system.

Meh...I'm always hesitant to judge a human being based on personal anecdotes. One person doesn't like another and all of a sudden it's "so and so is a cunt". Maybe he just hated signing autographs? Maybe he didn't want to stand around talking to kids half his age. You have to remember their ages. In say, 2003, Tillen was 18 and Desailly was 35. Terry was 23. Of course Terry is going to be talking to the youth players more, they were his contemporaries. Desailly was a grown man who probably wanted to just get home to his wife and kids. To me, Desailly was a great Chelsea defender and all this other stuff seems petty and insignificant.

Interesting...who would sit? Right now, they have Alonso and Khedira as their deep lying midfielders and both deserve to be starting.

That's exactly it. Teams don't win or lose the league because of the order they get to face teams, you win or lose the league on the field.

For me, looking at the schedule, what comes across is not so much the tough end of season, it's the absolutely glorious December. We have a few really tough parts of the schedule (Oct/Nov has the toughest little bit IMO where, in a 6 week period we face City, ManU, Spurs, Liverpool, and Swansea away).However, December1-January 1 is West Ham, Sunderland, Southampton, Villa, Norwich, Everton, and QPR. End of the day, it doesn't really matter. You have to get points no matter when you play teams.

I think I missed maybe 4 or 5 games (all Carling/FA cup matches) which is fewer than usual but my schedule allowed me free time at the right time this year. I also missed the last game against Blackburn because let's face it, what football fan would rather watch a completely meaningless game over watching matches that decide who wins the Premiership. I am a Chelsea supporter, but I love football.

Don't care in the least. We have to play everyone anyway and every team will have new players and/or systems to get used. .

He has been great for us. To be honest though, I think that there is very little separating the top keepers. I think there are basically keepers who are good enough to play at the top level and keepers that aren't but trying to rank them individually is impossible. Ask 10 people who the best 3 keepesr were in the Premier League last season, and you might not get a single repeating list. You'd also probably get about 10 different names on it. Contrast that to say, striker, where I think everybody would have had RVP, Aguero, and Rooney, as their #-1-3 strikers in some order. All top keepers make fantastic saves and all make mistakes. This is why keepers are probably the cheapest position to buy. Neuer who is a great keeper was the second most expensive keeper ever and cost 22M euros. Cech who is one of the better keepers in the world, cost £7M pounds. Cech has solidified our defence for many years and come up big in some big games. He is a very good goalie.

It's as if you want every sub to be a star and it's simply not going to happen. Malouda had a poor year but he's a regular for one of the best international sides in the world. He won player of the year in the French league in 2007.He led Chelsea in goals a season ago.And he was one of our worst platers. Kalou is very useful as a sub as he can score, play some defence, and has a great work rate. Meireles can play a number of positions and do a little of everything.2 years ago, he was starting for Portugal ahead of Moutinho. These players are all internationals and are all useful. They are all underrated because everyone watches a couple of games of another player or even worse a youtube compilation and falls in love with some player or other and thinks they are great and that if they came to Chelsea, they'd play like Messi or something . It doesn't work like that. Players are all flawed and they all have poor games. Mata was our player of the season this year and was pretty bad the last couple of months. He was basically useless against Barca. Peoples' expectations of constant dominance are just never going to be met by anyone. Also, the seasons you mentioned were very different. This season was the only time we had given up on the league. Normally, players would be rotated in and out of the lineup but RDM chose to go all-or-nothing which led to weak lineups in league games. Yes, we did completely give up on the league after the Spurs game.We played 8 more matches. Mata started 3 of them. Cole started 2 of them. Lampard started 3 of them. Drogba started 1 of them. Yes, we need more talent to move forward and Chelsea are going in that direction, but people have to be realistic. You have to spend money wisely upgrading where it will make a big difference, not spending 25M pounds to get a better player who will start 15 games.

So you're saying that our squad players should be good enough to beat the Arsenal and Newcastle's starting XI?? That's never going to happen. The situation that happened last year is very rare. We were going all out for two cups and had basically given up on the league. Normally, squad players are worked into the starting XI. Most teams don't have XI players they start every single week, they'll have about 15 players that they start regularly. You look at Man City, the team with the most depth in the Premier League last season, and they started 9 players for more than 30 games and and 6 for more than 20. ManU started 8 for 30 games and 5 more started more than 20 games. You are not going to have world-class backups because A) they will be miserable being squad players nobody can afford that. Instead, you need a group of 15-20 players who can play regularly and cover all the positions. Chelsea, right now have Cech, Cole, Bertrand, Terry, Luiz, Cahill, Ivanovic, Mikel, Romeu, Lampard, Ramires, Meireles, Hazard, Mata, Malouda, Benayoun, Marin, Sturridge, Torres which is more than enough in terms of actual players who are of a decent quality. We don't have any proper cover for RB which is obviously a need.

For me, Meireles is a very useful squad player. He can cover a lot of ground, can be dangerous going forward, can play all over the midfield, and can mark his man. He lacks the quality to be starting regularly IMO, but Chelsea don't need him to any more and he is a useful guy to have around.

He had a poor run of games under AVB and his ball movement is a little too slow if Chelsea wants to play a quick moving 4-3-3, but Mikel has definitely been under-appreciated by many Chelsea fans. His positioning is excellent and he makes short, sure passes.

So, you missed it when Chelsea fans boo other players? Nobody has ever booed Sturridge or Drogba or Mikel or Malouda or Kalou or even Drogba? All of whom contributed more to Chelsea that Torres has. This is not about supporting players or not supporting players. We all support any player who plays for Chelsea. This is about the absurd amount of love that a player who has been awful for us gets. Nobody here has Kezman or Bogarde or Chris Sutton as their avatar. Nobody bangs on and on about how Claudio Pizzaro was secretly amazing despite his stats and just needed to be surrounded by world-class talent to show his true class. The level of support for Torres is one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen in football. He consistently gets more love for Chelsea fans than any other player and it just makes no sense. (My best guess is that Torres is "an icon"-he's on posters and video games and what not, so he will always get support no matter his form, especially from younger fans. I assume it's the same for someone like Beckham. I really have no other explanation.) And talking about Chelsea pride? He is the worst transfer in Chelsea history, he's the highest paid player on the club, been historically awful, and he's complained on more than one occasion. If people were writing "I think Torres will turn it around this season" it's a valid position to take, but the "Torres has been good for us" or even "Torres played well at all" is just nonsense. And the idea that if you don't love Torres, you don't love Chelsea, is backwards. I want what's best for Chelsea and I don't think Torres is what's best. You want what's best for Torres even if it's not what's best for Chelsea.

Nope. I support Chelsea. Not Torres. And I certainly am not some kid who makes a profile just to slag someone off. (As if there's a 51 YO who says things like "what a hater!")

See no problem with this thread. It was obviously tongue in cheek. Where's the "Hazard sucks. What a waste of money. He hasn't scored in the first 27 minutes" thread?