TorontoChelsea

He only played younger talent because we had so little depth and even then it was exaggerated. Josh had one premier league start in 2010-2011, it wasn't like he was a regular. You can't win in football playing a bunch of young guys and teams wanting to win the Premier League. Take someone like Januzaj. ManU fans love him, consider him a bright star in a dull season but he scored 4 goals in 35 games with awful defence and tons of turnovers as an attacking player. It's how you know ManU had an awful year. Someone like Januzaj got to play a lot. At a team like Chelsea or City,, he wouldn't have got any playing time. You know how many players on the top CL spot teams who played at least 15 games this season had fewer than 25 games in the Premier League or another professional league previous to this season? Jon Flanagan. That's it. Out of 70 or so players on the top 4 teams, only 1 semi-regular was what you could consider an inexperienced youngster. Chelsea's method is to buy players who are already ready to play or to buy young players, loan them out, and sell them for a profit. It works. We're not suddenly going to be regularly playing youngsters. (Although we can do more to bring one or two along a season and get them into 10-15 games a year.).

Not true about Drogba but Costa had one good season. He had 10 goals in 31 La Liga games the year before. He scored a bunch of goals against poor sides in the Spanish Cup and the Europa league though. It wasn't a bad season by any stretch of the imagination, but not the kind of numbers or performances that make you stand out at all. Drogba actually played 2 years in League 1 (and 11 games the previous year). His first full year was good, better than Costa's year two seasons ago (1 goal every 2 games to 1 goal every 3 games). I wish people would keep repeating the same nonsense about Drogba. He finished 3rd in Ligue 1 in goals in back to back years. How is that one great season?

OK signing I'd say. He certainly fits our system but I am a little wary of a player with one great season in a very striker-friendly team/league. There is risk here. His holdup play is also not great as he gives the ball away an absurd amount. (6.5 dispossessed and turnovers a game. Hazard led our team with 4.2 of those a game). Still, he is a legit striker who can score... (finally!!) and a definite major upgrade on what we have there. Bottom line is he makes our team better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMaDBlgp2zY&feature=kp Way way too many moments to even pick a few, but this pass was something else.

Exactly. You can't have a top backup for every position. Every club has players that are irreplaceable. I like Fabergas a lot but I like him more with a different manager/different system.

The greatest Chelsea player ever. Consistent, hard working, and at the centre of our team for over a decade. A true Chelsea legend.

Massive and ludicrous exaggeration. The team is owned partly by Man City. That's it. They are not Man City. They are a separate entity and if City wanted Lampard to play for them, they'd have to give him a contract and he'd have to agree to it, the same as with any other team in the Premier League. He's not playing in the Premier League or even Europe, so who cares if he's playing for a team with some Manchester City ownership?

I get where you are coming from but I disagree with one part of it. The goal of a club like Chelsea is to win every year and Luis would likely be a better player than Shaw for the next few years. .However, 20M pounds is an insane price for a 29 YO fullback. Of course, 30M is an insane price for almost any defender especially an inexperienced one like Shaw. I'd rather we go a different route like we've been doing recently and get a good young player elsewhere. Layvin Kurzawa from Monaco Ricardo Rodriguez from Wolfsburg, etc...I'm not a scout so I don't know I just know that teams can get too hung up on names and end up overspending. We got Azpilicueta for what, 7M pounds? He was a solid player in a pretty good league with lots of room to develop. There are players like that out there!. Alternatively, if we are going to spend big, why not on someone like Coentrao who is only 26 and a top player. Madrid has Marcelo already and wants to spend big bringing in players (Aguero is the latest rumour.) I think we have options.

Our 7th defender last year in terms of playing time was Ryan Bertrand. Our 8th was Kalas. They combined for 6 starts in all competitions. We don't need 8 defenders. We need to replace Cole and Luiz. If Zouma is likely to be in the side (which I think he is), we really only need a LB.

You're way off. Keepers just don't cost that much. Lloris was a young and proven keeper and cost 10M Euros in 2012. If he were a striker of similar age//ability/experience, he would have cost at least triple that. Mignolet is a solid keeper cost 9M pounds last year. Keepers are just not expensive. (And Luiz is not worth 50M PSG just has their own economy where they spent about 75% more than anyone else would, Look at their transfer history. They are reckless idiots. Even worse than we were at the beginning of the Roman Era.

In a way, I'm glad Courtois had a poor game. (And he did) I don't care about Atletico and peoples expectations were absurd. Every time Cech let in any goal this season there were those who said "Courtois would have had that". He's a great young goalie and very likely the future at the position for the club for a long time, but he's not Superman and he probably isn't even an upgrade on Cech right now. Unreasonable expectations lead to unreasonable reactions to performances.

Where is Bosingwa to jump in front of this photo?

Better team won. Di Maria and Modric were exceptional.

Yes.

Yeah. He was a good player for us with an occasional great performance. He also managed to get benched by just about every manager we had at some point for brainless mistakes. He'll do well at PSG because PSG doesn't require their defenders to defend much. They are dominant in their league and just go for attack. The Premier League requires a more consistent, responsible defender who takes fewer risks and turns the ball over less. I would have been happy with 30M for him.

Not similar at all. To summarize-Mata is a better player who did more for Chelsea whose loss hurt us more and who we got less money for. (And a lot less money when you consider the difference in position).

Would be a fantastic deal for us. Luiz is a very good defender at times, but he simply doesn't fit into Mourinho's system and his offensive game has always been overrated (especially by himself). Occasional great passes and rare excellent free kicks never made up for the many loose passes and ill-advised shots IMO. I don't think I've ever seen a player so smart and so stupid at the same time. (Reading plays beautifully, stepping up to intercept passes and then making idiotic challenges and taking stupid shots) PSG are crazy to pay this reported amount for him but I'm not complaining.

Maybe a factor but I am sure he also doesn't want to start once every 3 months when he could be playing every week.

The right move for both parties. Cole is still good enough to play very good LB for someone but just not at Chelsea level anymore. I'd be surprised if Aziplicueta is the starter there next year though. He had a very good year as an extremely defensive player in an extremely defensive system but if we want to improve, Chelsea need to get a LB who can offer more in the attack as well. I'd be shocked if we don't buy a left back.

Liverpool chasing the goal difference looks hilarious now. City is THIRTEEN goals better on GD.. Was this absurdly slim chance worth risking a real chance at the title Brendan?

City only need 4 points from 2 easy games to win the title. This was a horribly managed game by Liverpool. They were never going to catch up on goal difference. The only way it would matter is if Liverpool and City both won both their games. City was +9. They would need to win a minimum of +2 overall in the next 2 games meaning Liverpool would have to score a MINIMUM of 11 goals in 2 games without conceding. That wasn't going to happen. Even if they added a 4th against Palace, they'd need to beat Newcastle 7-0 and even then it almost certainly wouldn't have been enough. The 3 points mattered so much more and once Palace pulled back that first goal, Liverpool should have shut things down instead of going for it still, What a game!

Hahahahaha!!!

I don't think we've overachieved at all. We got to the point where we faced a team better than us and then lost. We played Schalke, Basel, Bucharest, and Galatasaray and then PSG . The only team we faced who we weren't heavy favourites against was PSG and that was probably a 50/50 thing and we won last second on away goals . Had we faced the same quality group stage as we did last year, based on the way we played, we might not have have got out of the group and we certainly wouldn't have won it and then we would have been forced to play a quality team right away. We had one of the easiest groups (3 easy ones) and then one of easiest matchups in the round of 16 and even in the quarter-finals PSG was one of the best matchups we could have hoped for. We went about as far in the tournament as we should have gone based on the teams we played. I doubt we get as easy a route for years. Still, there's no blame to be had here. Atletico are a better team and they beat us. It isn't always someone's fault.

Bad loss although didn't play as badly as it may have seemed. The first and the third goal were both very lucky bounces that led to them. Still, we deserved to lose and in retrospect, despite making the semi-final of the CL, we only beat one good team the entire tournament (and that was on away goals) so we were very lucky to have come this far. We are a team in progress but the most disappointing thing for me is that we don't seem to be improving as the year goes on. The lack of a striker who can score regularly is a big issue for us but so is finding a good balance between defensive solidity and attack.

I hate this not celebrating crap. You got a massive goal in the semi-finals on the CL. Smile!