TorontoChelsea

It's true, but the fact that Real Madrid would loan him out and bring in Essien (who we all know is a shadow of the player he was) instead doesn't lead me to believe that they think very highly of Sahin.

Liverpool have him on loan and still may not want to keep him. Liverpool are not a top side, but they're good enough where people that play well can show their quality (Suarez, Enrique, etc...) Maybe Sahin needs to play in a certain system to be good or maybe he just had one great season and just isn't that good.

I don't know. We've had magic water for ages. One second, you're rolling around in unimaginable agony and with one spray, you're up and running like brand new.

Interesting. He shoots with his left foot but writes with his right hand.

He makes some sense at Spurs because he's an upgrade on Dempsey but I don't think he really makes sense for any other top Premier League side.

Yeah, I think the piece is accurate. The stuff about FFP is clearly nonsense and he clearly has the talent to still play at a high enough level. Roman wants to clean house and set things anew for a new manager and a new style. The club will have to send him off in style and we have to hope that he goes to L.A. and not somewhere like ManU which would be devastating.

Huge dropped points from Arsenal. Sometimes, they look so dynamic and sometimes they look so one-dimensional and flat. Great for us though.

@spike spiegel-If Leighton Baines looks like the prototypical Englishman, Scott Parker is a pretty damn close second. Baines looks like a guy at the local pub and Parker looks like he belongs in an advertisement for to join the RAF.

I hate Stoke. They actually spend a little bit of money, but play football in the most boring style possible. 10 men behind the ball at all times and try to score on set pieces. Give me a team like Swansea who spend much less money but still manage to play attractive football.

That was coming.

Al-Habsi is a weird goalie, He makes some great saves, but he looks awful a lot of the time.

One of the big reasons ManU are in first-their depth. Today, their bench has Vidic, Kagawa, Valencia, Scholes and Welbeck.

Villa are just awful.

Going to nominate Spike. Haven't yet, but he's deserving. Also, wanted to mention that I thought Corner had a very good month.

I have no problem with fans of other teams being on our board as long as they are respectful and know their place. I'm getting a little fed up with seeing Liverpool fans blabbing on about Rafa. He's our manager now and we can like him or dislike him on our own.

New signing I imagine but maybe Oscar. Oscar is a possibility because he has the skills to succeed there and if we don't play him there, he's not going to play nearly often enough to develop properly (or justify what we paid for him).. McEachran is the right position but he needs to develop more. De Bruyne has excellent offensive skills, but he's been playing much further up the pitch this season and not sure if he has the defensive ability to play there. Anyway, Oscar is the only player on the squad currently, I can see Chelsea considering giving the job too. Also, who knows what happens in the future with a new manager, new style, the deep-lying midfielder might not even exist on the team.

Underrated by many people who watch football. Nobody makes a .gif of somebody positioning themselves well. Nobody makes youtube videos of someone's instincts. Many people massively overrate skill plays and underrate players who position themselves well..There is a legitimate question to be asked about what Chelsea should do with Lampard and obviously, he's not going to be around forever. However, he clearly still has a lot to give. Even last season when he was pilloried by so many Chelsea supporters, he actually was still one of the better central midfielders in the Premier League. This season, he got off to a poor start, but has been generally very good since then. And as or the youngsters, if they're good enough, they'll play. It's not like Chelsea are bursting with central midfielders anyway. As for the money angle, it's an obscenely small amount of money compared to what we throw at people in transfers. Even 120K/week (which is a lot) is still only 6.2M a year. The difference between paying 80K and 120K a week is about 2M a season. We've spent something like 250M on transfers in the past 2.5 seasons. In the past two seasons, we've spent something like 90M pounds on players who aren't in our regular starting XI or are on loan). Suddenly, when it comes to Lampard, we're broke?

100/week would be too much, for sure, but this is where we've shot ourselves in the foot as we have in the transfer market. We've been giving massive wages to players for years so if you're someone like Ba and you come along and you've scored 26 goals in 63 games in the Premier League and Chelsea aren't willing to pay you what they pay Gary Cahill? Half of what they pay Hazard? (He gets 170K week-http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/chelsea/9295242/Chelseas-rebuilding-grows-with-78m-Eden-Hazard-signing.html). There are legitimate reasons for this to fall through. If his agent is demanding big fees, or if he is demanding 100K a week or something, but 80K a week is completely reasonable.

It's not just Torres. Wages aren't always pubic knowledge, but I think we pay Hazard 170/wk, Luiz 120/wk, Cahill, about 80K/week. Really, 80-85/wk is not some ridiculous fee.

Really? We pay Torres 170K a week. The difference between 80 and say 85K a week is 260K a year. To give up on a cheap, solid striker for that would be ridiculous especially because we'd probably have to go out and spend millions extra on transfer fees to get a similar striker.. (with the usual caveat that we don't really know what's happening).

I think the most underrated skill in football is positioning. With all positions on the pitch, knowing where to be, how to read a play, is so difficult. This is one of the reasons opposition fans often call Lampard lucky because he often seems to be in the right place. Yes, you can get lucky, but constantly being in the right place shows great instincts.

This is the signing I wanted. Good striker, excellent value and cheap enough where if he doesn't work out, he only cost you 15% of Torres and you can move on.

I agree. Winning should be everything. I loved the teams under Mourinho and Ancelotti but Roman wants something else. This is a quote from an article about the firing of RDM from an Irish paper....: "The objective had been laid out to Di Matteo in simple terms during the summer. He was charged with creating a team with a distinctive, confident approach. The obvious example was Barcelona, but there are other coaches and teams who are admired at Stamford Bridge and regarded as a template for Chelsea. One is Jurgen Klopp and his young Borussia Dortmund team. Roberto Martinez is well regarded for his determination that Wigan Athletic play bold, attacking football whoever the opponent. Juventus, who were also impressive when they got a 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge in September, are held up as an example of the kind of team Chelsea should be." That, to me, is a massive problem. The objective should be "win" but as long as Roman wants the particular style, I just don't see Benitez being at Chelsea long-term.

I agree with that. It wasn't a bad performance, but he's been excellent recently without scoring and the rest of his game was worse today than it's been recently. BTW, just saw this stat... Chelsea with Lampard this season-11 games-10 wins Without Lampard-8 games, 1 win.

Could be, but it's hard to know what Roman thinks. If he does want Chelsea's own particular attacking style, Rafa is not the guy to bring that and he might decide to try the AVB route again(young coach who brings his own style). I think Rafa has to do exceptionally in order to change that. I don't really know and I don't think it matters much. I'm fine with Rafa as the manager but managers are fungible and every Chelsea manager is just a bad handful of games away from being sacked anyway.