TorontoChelsea

This is exactly it. Torres has a lot of goals, but not all goals are equal. A breakdown of his goals in Europe, the league, and in domestic cups. Goals against top 7 teams in England-One Goals against mid-table teams (8-13)-Zero Goals against bottom table (15-20)- Seven Goals against domestic sides below Premier League-Four Goals against top European sides (CL)-One (and that's being generous to Shakhtar) Goals against other European sides-Seven Against Shakhtar, Juventus, and top of the table through mid-table teams in the Premier League, Torres has played 29 games and scored 2 goals. (numbers might be a tiny bit off due to error in manual calculations, but the effect is the same. Torres has sucked against decent opposition. We didn't pay 50M pounds and insane wages to buy someone who can score against Leeds and Rubin Kazan.)

The question with Alonso is at what price? He's still a great player but even on a free, do we want to lock into a 3 or 4 year deal at 120K/week or whatever? What if he declines suddenly which is possible and not even unlikely and then we are left paying elite wages to a squad player. (This happened with Lampard on the last year of his contract, imagine that for 3 or 4 years. People love Ferriera, but his contract with us is one of the worst in Chelsea history because we are paying him like a starter for 5 years when he's barely played.) As for Josh, he is a long long way from Chelsea. In all likelihood, he will never be good enough to play regularly for us, but even if he is, it will take years for him to get good enough.

Don't like it. Both Ramires and Luiz are one yellow away from being suspended. We can beat (or draw, or lose 1-0) Basel at home without risking them.

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.

This is my thought on the subject. Any city which is international and multicultural and big with decent healthcare/standard of living will have beautiful women. You might like a certain type of woman, but for me, if they all have the same sort of look, it's boring. I like variety.

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.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/NaturalNews

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.

1) Not true at all. Modern history is filled with refugees. Syria has more refugees in the past year than were kicked/out fled from Palestine over 50 years. Kuwait after the first Gulf war kicked out about half a million Palestinians. 2) Not true at all. The same year, Indian and Pakistan had something like 25 million refugees during partition. They were replaced with other Muslims and/or Hindus. Actually also, a similar amount of Jews from Arab countries were driven out/fled in the same period as well. Anyway, in history there have been relatively few (still plenty) of masses of people being kicked out, because usually they just got slaughtered, segregated, and/or forcibly converted. Is that any better? 3) So has every other similar modern event. The difference is that those countries who were the the supposed protectors of morals were the invaders themselves. Look at the map of the world. This is simply how countries were always formed. 4) Completely not true. The British actually were generally neutral about Jews entering Palestine. (Or rather some were for it, some against)When the Arab population of Palestine started to riot, they put quotas on Jewish refugees . Also, most war refugees are pretty similar. The difference between being forced out and fleeing is not as big as you might think. (People generally flee because they are afraid of being killed). Anyway, there has been exhaustive research done on this subject, and the vast majority of Palestinians fled like every other war refugee. They were afraid because soldiers were attacking their towns and seizing them. And this...is the crux of the issue..."I won't get into the complicated political reasons that would probably take several books to fully explain, but why should they have forgotten their land and homes and just moved on? That's just ridiculous to me. If someone goes and steals your car, would your reaction be: "Meh, let him have it, I'll just go and get another one"?" Because, at some point you have to move on. You can't hold on to past wrongs done to you forever. My house was on property that was, I am sure Native property not that long ago. Europeans were slaughtering each other less than 70 years ago (for centuries with no stop). I'm not saying forget who you are (although everyone always does and forges new identities), but you can't hold on to the past if it's not actually in your best interest. This isn't a few years after the war where the refugees were still seeing what would happen. This is 65 years later. It's ridiculous for them to be kept in camps waiting for something that will ever happen in their lifetimes. If someone stole my car 65 years ago, would I never buy a new car because I legally still own one that someone stole? It's not even at that point anymore. It's "my grandfather had his car stolen 65 years ago, so I can't move on." There are very few actual refugees left and in another couple of decades, there will be none. (This is a very different issue than the right of the Palestinians to their own state. That is a current wrong that needs to be righted not for something that happened 65 years ago but for something happening today.).

Everton just hanging on