TorontoChelsea

Wow...just wow!

Wow....what a save!

Super Frank! Well deserved. He's been fantastic today.

Now THAT is a penalty!

Phew...thought he had awarded a penalty!

Nice to have Cech back in there. Turnbull is passable, but Cech is one of the very best keepers in the world. Just so much more confident with him in net/

I can't really blame him. He's just not a midfielder. To me, it's like when Sturridge played in the midfield. It's not their fault that they're poor. They just don't belong there.

Fuck off Tony Pulis. He's acting all outraged to the referee, even looks like he's yelling at Benitez. Stoke are a dirty team that play an awful brand of football. He needs to keep his mouth shut.

Goal!! Own goal maybe?

Not being able to break down Stoke is one thing, but allowing Stoke to dominate possession? We can't keep giving them chances!

That was close. We really have to limit Stoke's set pieces. Contain, rather than foul.

Well done QPR!

Taarabt is too good for QPR. Not as good as he thinks he is mind you, just too good for QPR.

Julio Cesar with two great saves!

Weird seeing Toronto FC's newest manager in QPR's (Ryan Nelson). Hoping QPR can at least get a point.

So, back to Liverpool it is.

Thought there'd be more porn but maybe that's just because the porn is so spread out that one site doesn't dominate. Here's this site...http://internet-map.net/#11-152.67787142559368-67.96912013007132

Agreed. You need to give players some time to show what they can do. Marin has had what, one Premier League start? I think we need to play him fairly regularly while Moses is away because he provides real width and he crosses into the box much more regularly than anyone else we have which, I think, suits Ba and frees up Hazard and Mata to play more centrally. Maybe he won't ever be good enough for Chelsea, but it's way too early to make that call.

Why don't you change your name to someone who is currently at the club? What if Falcao doesn't join Chelsea (which is very possible), and signs for someone else in the summer. You'll have to change your name again in 6 months. Why not ElMataprodz?

@theonly place to be. Some of those signings were good, some less so. Cahill was in the last 6 months of his contract so was not at all cheap. Moses and De Bruyne transfer fees were about right. Azpilicueta looks like he was a good buy as does Ba. Alan Hansen was not right at the time, but he's right for now. Then, teams barely spent money on transfers. Stan Collymore and Bergkamp were the only players that went for over 7M. You could win by developing young players. You had to to win that way.. Now. you simply don't need to and you can't develop more than one or two at a time.You simply aren't going to beat teams who buy world-class players with your youth team. No, we won't spend like we did in 2004, but we will still be able to spend 50M+ every season which means that we will still be buying a lot of players. That's enough to buy a 2-3 very good players. You need to be smart in the transfer market and Chelsea have shown signs of (finally) looking for bargains rather than going after names. There is no point in positioning your team for "long-term success" because long-term success means short term pain which means long-term pain (worse performance means less money made, less ability to attract top players, etc...) There is simply no point. Look at next season. We want to be winning. What are our choices for say, central midfield? We can bring back one of our loaners and let them try to earn the job or we can spend 15-20M and get someone like Benat or even Modric. Both affordable and both would be better than anyone we have on our squad currently. What will Chelsea do? They'll certainly go and buy a new midfielder. We want to compete and that gives us the best chance to compete. The problem we had is that we spent like crazy in the beginning and then stopped spending at all for a few years and then were horrible in the transfer market. Torres is about 1/5th of all the money we've spent in the past 3 years. Even without him, it's clear that we haven't done well in transfers. I always had higher hopes for Jody Morris. Not that he would have ever made it at the new Chelsea, but I was excited about his potential. Alas...

Recipe: Take one Torres, let it sit for 90 minutes (give or take stoppage time). No need to watch over the omelette as it's been done for a couple of years. In fact, it's already garbage. Move on, make some Ba(tter) instead.

The profit last year was a a fluke mixed with accounting tricks on our transfers (we spent a lot more than we brought in but we count them differently so we had a "profit"). http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/jan/09/chelsea-cancelled-shared-profit-abramovich There's absolutely no way we don't lose a lot of money this year. I don't understand people saying the board is doing a good job. In 2009-2010, we won the double with an incredible +71 goal differential. Since then, we've spent net around 240M pounds and have gotten considerably worse. We could have bought 10 players for 24M pounds each. That's Robin Van Persie or Juan Mata kind of money...for 10 different players. Even without the Torres signing, we've still spent enough to build an entire new elite squad. It's almost impossible to spend the kind of money we've spent and not have an elite team but somehow we've managed. In that period, we've also gone through four managers and we'll have a fifth next year. We have mish-mash of players and styles. We have no depth at all in some places and too much depth in others. All this talk of rebuilding and young talent is pointless. That's what teams that don't spend money have to do. When you're a team that's spending 80M pounds a year, you should be able to field an elite team every year. We all knew that this year wasn't going to be a great year, but that's only because we were in such a horrible place from last year. But they're doing a good job, why? Because we have some youth players that might become good? So what? For big clubs, this is a relatively minor part of the operation. Anyway, we'll be lucky if more than one of our youth players ever becomes a Chelsea regular for any period of time. FFP doesn't mean that teams are going to be paupers. Big teams, will still be able to spend 50-60 million pounds a year in transfers. If they don't have an established starter, they'll just buy someone. Clubs are able to buy established regulars for 10-15M pounds. The transfer market won't really change much (except the extravagant spending). And that's what we'll do too. We're going to spend money this winter or this summer or both buying some new players moving our youth players further down the pecking order. We are in good shape as a club because we have a billionaire owner and so we can spend more than other clubs and we have more stability at the ownership level. That doesn't mean we're run well. That said, the board is doing a few things better. Signing a very nicely priced Ba instead of chasing someone like Falcao was a nice improvement and a hopeful sign for the future.

I'd agree if there weren't hundreds of thousands of people who believed him. Sort of like Fox News. Hilarious until you remember that so many millions take it seriously.

Last season, before January 28th, Eden played 28 games for Lille, scoring 7 goals and adding 7 assists. After that, in 17 games he scored 13 goals and 10 assists.

Problem is that in England, even the smaller clubs mostly have a very rich history and you'd be killing those teams who rely on loans by giving support and talent to your B-team. We just sent Todd Kane to Blackburn. Blackburn was founded in 1875. McEachran is at Middlesborough. They were founded in 1876. These sort clubs have strong local support and tradition and killing these teams off for no real purpose, doesn't make sense to me. It's not like talented Chelsea youngsters won't get opportunities elsewhere as is.