TorontoChelsea

Exactly...we are 3 points clear of fifth. We need to concentrate on the league first and foremost. Getting top-4 is vastly more important than winning the UEFA Cup.

He'll be 32 in November. He might have a couple of years at the top level, but he might not. I'd take him, but there's significant risk there.

Welcome brah.

Young is different than inexperience in a league. In North America, we have rookie of the year awards which is different. Bale is only 1.5 years older than Hazard or something. I don't like the criteria either, but I don't really care about awards and for the criteria that exist, Bale actually did deserve it. The PFA team of the year is OK except for Ferdinand who shouldn't be on it. Cazorla probably should have been on it as well but they'd have to take off someone deserving to do that.

BTW, whoscored ranks our top-5 as Hazard, Mata, Luiz, Ramires, and Ivanovic.

I don't get the Azpilicueta love. He had a solid debut season, and he's still quite young for a fullback so improvement is quite likely, but he wasn't anywhere close to being player of the season. He was about a league-average RB. Certainly someone it looks like Chelsea can pencil in for regular playing time for years, but player of the year?

Mata and Hazard only real options IMO. Mata edging out Eden though.

Loved this game. Not a fan of Bayern of course, but nice to see Barcelona get trounced.

Not even remotely close. That's 2M a year with his wages paid for one and a half years by other teams. He was a flop, but a flop of normal standards. Torres is one of the biggest, if not the biggest flop ever.

Get lost.

Utter joke and it's taken me a while to process it. 7 minutes of extra time...why? Forget about the Suarez bite (he really is an animal...this is the second time!) but how could the referee justify that? How?

Spending last 3 seasons (the amount of time Pelligrini has been at Malaga) by position in standings in Spain Barcelona-56M Real Madrid-115M Athletico- (negative 13M) Real Sociedad- 6M Malaga-37M Valencia- (Negative 55M) Real Betis-500K etc...Yes, Malaga had to sell a lot of players this year, but almost every Spanish team does that. Malaga's spending over the past 3 years (or 5 years) is easily the third highest in Spain. They simply are not doing particularly well for the money they've spent. La Liga is spectacularly noncompetitive after the top-2. The league is in massive disarray with bankrupt teams everywhere. Even a tiny bit of spending will propel a team into competition for a CL spot. It's not the same in England. It's much harder to reach CL spots. I'm not saying Pellegrini is a bad coach, he'd be fine, most managers would do well at Chelsea, just that he's hardly some genius.

That only works if you don't look at how much money their teams spent. Since team spending is the single most important factor in success (sorry, not even arguable) ignoring it is absurd. Malaga is easily the 3rd highest spending team in Spain over the past five years. Despite that, Malaga have never come top three. They've actually unperformed based on their spending. Everton, on the other hand, actually have a positive transfer balance over the past five years and in 3 of those five seasons. Based on their spending, you'd expect them to be mid-table or lower, yet in 10 of Moyes' 12 years as manager, Everton has finished top-8. That's exceeding their spending expectation.

Hazard is only 1.5 years younger than Bale. Bale's just seems like he's been around forever.

I would add: 1) Even when Mata is played as a winger, he comes through the middle 2) Mata is terrible defensively which is easier to deal with in the middle of the pitch. On the wings, it isolates the wingback too much. 3) The middle is the most important offensive position in setting up the attack and Mata is our best player for that. Moving him to the wings would de-emphasize his role.

You need competition and depth, but not nearly as much as people are making out. You don't need or want six starting-calibre players for 3 positions. It's a massive waste of money and talent. And we don't actually need to strengthen attacking midfield much at all. Just replace Benayoun with someone better. (Don't have to replace Marin because Marin never plays) Also, I think calling Schurrle's style of play direct is confusing (as terms like "direct" and "technical" are). Yes, he takes a ton of shots (way more than anyone on Chelsea shoots), but also likes to dribble and play slick passes. His game is very much like Hazard's and in the same position. He doesn't cross the ball much and he shoots a lot, mostly by cutting in from the left. I like him as a player and he'd be a great fit for a team like Arsenal or Spurs, but I don't see where he fits in at Chelsea. Additionally, he'd have the same difficult task as KDB would which is learning to adjust from being able to do what you want on a team (shoot when you want, try difficult passes maybe you shouldn't, etc...) to being able to fit in a role on a bigger club.

Makes no sense to me. The only reason our top guys (Mata and Hazard) have been overplayed is because our managers have been playing them in every competition. Hazard and Mata each have 12-15 starts in games that weren't in the Premier League or the Champions League. They've started against competition they should have been rested for many times. We need another player to be able to come in and play-someone better than Benayoun or Marin who can start 20 games in a season. Schurrle is a very gifted player but his game is a lot like Hazard's. He likes to cut in and shoot and is not the sort of winger that is going to be happy or at his best playing down the side and providing crosses (He has 0.4 accurate crosses per game which is nothing). He also has played almost exactly the same position as Hazard this season (on the left). He's very talented, I just don't really see the point. I'd much rather go after a real winger and probably someone on the right who can challenge Moses for playing time..

It is but we'd also have spent 100M pounds on 6 players in the past 3 years, only 3 of whom will be playing at any given time. Facing either limited resources or, as in our case, upcoming FFP, it doesn't really make sense to spend so extravagantly in one area of the pitch. It also makes little sense in terms of talent. 6 attacking midfielders will not all play regularly. Mata and Hazard will each play most of the games leaving Schurrle, KDB, Oscar, and Moses to fight it out for playing time. It's why I don't see KDB coming back next season if Chelsea buy Schurrle. If it were up to me, I'd just bring back KDB and spend our money elsewhere.

Everton just hanging on

It depends what you mean by high cost. There were really only 3 expensive players coming into the Premier League this season (over 20M) so obviously not going to be a lot of bargains there. Lots of good value at lower costs though. (Nestasic, Michu, Vertonghen, Benteke, etc...)

Yeah, that's true and it was a poor signing. He's a decent player, but not near elite. Still, the overall group of midfielders signed in this range (and even lower) is excellent.

I can't blame Foy for that one. In real time, nobody saw how bad it was. It actually looked unintentional. It was only after watching the replays that you could see it for what it really was. The Torres non-call was much worse because it was obvious even in real time.

I wanted something in between one choice and everybody. I don't think either of our managers this season really deserve blame for the current general state of the club and I don't think managers matter that much anyway. We wouldn't win with this club under any manager. We're simply not as talented as the top teams, we have less depth, and we have bigger holes in our roster despite generally outspending them. To me, that means that most of the fault lies with the board.

I agree except that City were also unlucky not to score more. Milner would have scored had the ball not hit Aguero who was off-side. Kompany had almost an open net and missed it by a mile. They outplayed us and actually dominated us for much of the game. The ref was awful, but we deserved to lose. (I can actually excuse Foy for not seeing the Aguero stomp because it was difficult to see in real time, but the Kompany tug on Torres' shirt was the centre of play. He had to see that!)

No...he was atrocious. His crossing was awful and his defending was terrible.