TorontoChelsea

In Finland, you get speeding tickets based on how much you make, right? I know Teemu Selanne got like a $40, 000 speeding ticket.

think most things in life are neither inherently good nor bad and driving is no exception. It has opened up the world and made people be able to travel long distances, allowed people to live outside the city and work in it and generally gave people freedom. However, it also created soulless suburbs, an insane amount of pollution, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and has lead to people living much less healthy lives. Needing a car depends on how the city is constructed. You need a car in L.A. You don't in New York. Some places, you do need a car and nobody can fault you for getting one. I just wish that more emphasis was put on public transit and urban density so that fewer people needed to drive.

It depends. I mostly hate driving because 90% of real driving is awful. This quote by the Bogota mayor has become a meme, but I agree with the principle."A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.". I'm going to L.A. next week and there you have to drive everywhere. It's insane. In major developed cities, the public transportation should be such where nobody has to drive. The US is different as really that's only the case in New York and a couple other cities. Yes, cars give you freedom, but they also take it way. They make you spend ridiculous money on gas and insurance and maintenance. They make your lifestyle generally worse. If you can't walk to work, you can't walk to the store, and you can't walk to your friends', you will basically never walk.

Think he's a great system striker and would work on the right team but for us, he has some serious weaknesses in his game. It's pretty obvious that a striker on this team is going to need to do a fair bit other than score. They're going to need to hold up the ball, to make good runs, to put in defensive work, etc...Lewandowski is an excellent finisher and strong in the air, but he's poor at holding up the ball. He averages 5.1 turnovers/dispossessions a game. By comparison, Torres only averages 3.8 of those and Cavani 3.4. Cavani also, no matter what, puts in excellent defensive work and is overall one of the best defensive forwards in football. Cavani is also a capable passer who is not afraid to play long balls to teammates and get involved i n build-up play. Lewandowski is cheaper but there's a reason he's going to be cheaper. What kind of striker will he be outside of Dortmund's particular style? It's all about value and we don't know how much either player would cost so I can't say I prefer one buy over another (or even either of them at all) but I'd much rather have Cavani all other things being equal.

Definitely a red but not as bad as I thought it was going to be. He was clearly going for the ball and it was one footed. He deserves a suspension but I've seen many worse tackles-it's the awful injury, the outcome of the tackle that makes it so bad.

I did love Terry "stretching" in front of the West Ham fans (waving his ass at them).

Agreed. Most of the games, he just hasn't gotten opportunities, he had 3 or 4 very good chances to score. I think people sometimes are too hard on misses, even the best strikers probably only cover half their very good chances, but if you keep getting opportunities, you need to put one away.

What a performance by Hazard. He's quickly becoming as important to the team as Mata. Great performance overall, although West Ham played pretty decently actually. Carroll is a beast in the air and fantastic at holding the ball up but luckily his finishing is poor and West Ham have no one to play off him. Lampard, Azpilicueta, and Ramires were also all excellent and most of our performances were very good. We really should have scored 4 or 5. Our place in the top-4 is looking very good right now.

Great game, generally dominant performance and got the 3 points.

Damn Frank, should have scored that one. Beautiful pass by Oscar.

Wow, Hazard...

Chelsea have an 86% passing rate and 70% possession yet I'm still nervous. We need to put away one of these many chances.

Great block by Ramires.

200!!!!!

Carroll gets some stick (because his transfer rate was ridiculous) but he is amazing in the air 10.5 aerial duels won a game. Easily leads the Premier League.

I disagree. If we bought Cavani or Falcao, Lukaku would be a great #2 striker and a #2 striker can play a lot and get is crucial to a team winning. Even if the new striker were to start 40 games, that's still 20 starts and probably 30 sub appearances. It would mean we'd have to sell Ba and Torres though.

New stadiums IMO tend to make crowds even quieter for a couple of reasons. 1) Corporate seats/boxes means lots of people going to games as a business expense so plenty of quiet crowds and people who aren't supporters. 2) Generally more expensive tickets means a different type of atmosphere. (In theory, prices could come down, but in new stadiums with a successful team, it's more likely they'll go up.) That said, we do need a new stadium to compete long-term and if it's done right, it will be a massive help for Chelsea and allow more people to go to games.

Absolutely stoked. Going to Vegas and L.A for a bit next week. All of this sort of thing is so much easier and cheaper with priceline and hotwire. Staying at this historic hotel for like 1/3 of the normal price thanks to Priceliine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westin_Bonaventure_Hotel

I agree. The third striker will probably never play anyway but I'd be completely fine with Moses as an emergency striker. Lukaku has certainly earned his chance at Chelsea. In an ideal world, I'd prefer to see him as our #2 striker, starting about 25 games and subbing into another 25 behind a world-class striker but we're sort of in between as I see Ba more as a #2 striker as well and Torres as #3. The Torres signing has been so awful, I think pretty easily the worst in history not just for the insane money he cost and his incompetence, but because of the seemingly endless negative domino effect it has had. The only downside of bringing Lukaku back to me is that we have to fix our system so that strikers can succeed. Lukaku or anyone would not score many goals on this Chelsea team because we don't create chances for strikers. A new manager should be able to install a system that benefits our strikers more though.

Again. ManU and City play with 2 or 3 strikers in their starting XI. We play with 1. 4 strikers for 2 spots is fine. 3 strikers for 1 spot means the #3 striker will basically never play.

I agree with you about Fabergas/Iniesta/Xavi combo. All of them are fantastic players but in football you need more than just talent and I think Fabergas actually imbalances the squad. (Which I think is a similar problem that we're having but on a lower scale). It's one of the many problems of some teams having too much money. Fabergas is an elite player and would be running most teams in the world, but in Barcelona, he's probably best used as a squad player. I think Alba is incredible going forward but a little lightweight defensively. He's still be the defender I'd choose from them. Puyol at this point is a lot like Terry IMO. Still a very solid defender and a leader but he's really slow and if Barcelona weren't so dominant in controlling the ball, he'd be exposed by quick forwards. (He's also missed a lot of time over the past 3 years.)

I disagree. They had a great performance against Milan but...they were bad in the first leg and the second leg, they dominated for the first 20-30 minutes but still gave Milan plenty of chances on the counter. (And Milan is hardly a European powerhouse this year). I think Barcelona is as good as anyone in Europe, but they also are definitely not the team they were a few years ago. Some of it is a lack of a manager, but I also think it's more. They are predictable offensively and if you can shut down the centre of the pitch, you can limit them. Against us last season, yes, they were unlucky, but by the end of the second leg, despite being up by a man, they had run out of ideas. If you are an organized team like Madrid or Juventus or Bayern, I definitely see Barcelona as beatable. Their defenders are also vastly overrated. I don't think any of them are all that good but years of never conceding possession and not having to defend has people thinking they are world-class (and I think Valdes is not all that great either).

Yeah, you feel smarter with a beard. It's like glasses for your chin. You can stroke it and look wise like Moses, Aristotle, or Dumbeldore.

I only grew a real beard once and that was only because my girlfriend at the time told me not to. The best thing about it was when it came to shaving it off, I gave myself a ridiculous 19th century facial hair thing for a couple of days. (mustache that goes into mutton chops) then just a mustache which made me look like a pedophile or a fireman. It's actually really fun to play around with facial hair because it changes your face a fair bit. I should do it more.

I don't know. I think Bayern is maybe the best team in Europe right now. They've conceded 10 goals in 25 matches. Barcelona have actually been in relatively pretty poor form recently. Barcelona is a great team, but they're not unbeatable, they are quite vulnerable defensively, and they certainly aren't vastly better than a number of other teams still alive in the CL.