TorontoChelsea

I'm pretty sure he is just like I am pretty sure he's willing to play a little less. This is not about Lampard's demands as much as it's about Roman wanting a clean break. (If it were about his wage demands, they'd be negotiating right now. They're not.)

A lot of this is down to UEFA's, shall we say, tepid response to racism. It's clearly a problem and they ignore it and hope it goes away. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/jun/18/uefa-2012-bendtner-fine-racism

I would take Grant over Rafa. He's a useless fat guy in a suite, but he's not a useless fat guy in a suite who Liverpool supporters drool over. I think we should actually just hire an actor to pretend to be manager for the rest of the year. Some suggestions... David Attenborough-He'd be useless, but at the press conferences, he could explain the grazing patterns of our striker so we'd understand why he wandered off to the wings and stood there. "the Torres is frightened by the ball so its natural inclination is to run away from it" and so on... Sacha Baron Cohen- He could create a character...maybe like a fat Spanish waiter or something. Mila Kunis/Kate Upton...etc...-Do I really have to explain this one? So many possibilities...

I'd agree with you maybe if it were just Lampard, but a lot of players had problems with AVB. Alex and Anelka were banished from practicing with the first team. Cole was upset. I'm sure other players were also not happy. Porto is different because it's a much smaller club where managers can come in and do sort of what they want. The single most important thing about managing top clubs is managing players. That is, communicating properly, explaining things, massaging egos, etc...AVB didn't think he had to do that. He's a smart guy. I think he learned his lesson.

It's not that different anywhere else. (It's a little different, but not much). In the US, something like 50% of congress are millionaires and people are supposed to believe that they have the good of the people at heart. I'd love to see a congress of 50% homeless people and see what sort of laws they enact. This is my favourite quote of all time which just gets to the heart of so much injustice and how it gets institutionalized. Truly brilliant... from Anatole France-"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

I'd take Balotelli over Torres in a second. Balotelli is still only 22 and is supremely talented. There is a chance that he will mature. There is no chance that Torres is going to get more talented.

We are capable of beating teams without Mata. In the knockout stages of the CL last year, Mata was our worst player, and we still won the CL. Yes, we have a new style, but even this year, early in the year, Mata was terrible (he had played too much and needed to rest) and we won without him. It's the same issue we've had all season. We don't really have a plan of attack. We just hope that a moment of individual brilliance will give us goals. If you watched yesterday's game, you'd think our game-plan was to set up our defenders for 35 yard shots at goal or to try to score from a set piece. Almost like a Stoke game-plan. We could have scored. Moses could have got a hold of Marin's cross, Lampard could have been onside, Torres could have beaten Cesar, one of Ivanovic's close headers could have gone in. Even if we had, the goal wouldn't have been the result of some well thought out game-plan. I also think that it's possible that our managers are under a lot of pressure to win something. We saw RDM use too strong of a lineup against ManU in the league cup which certainly cost us points in the league and now we see Rafa resting people in the league (I assume at least partly) to be able to play in the cups. Maybe it's their choice, but maybe it's helped by pressure to "win something".

Not true. He was very poor in the away game and got a late goal but in the home game, he was our MOTM against them. It wasn't just the goal, he played very well. He was also fantastic at home against Juve scoring a beautiful goal and marking Pirlo excellently.

Such a frustrating player. He's one of the best talents in the world but he can't seem to get his head screwed on right. It would be better for him and for City he moves on. He needs to play regularly and City should free up money to spend on something other than a 4th striker.

I don't fault Rafa for not starting Mata (although sitting both Mata and Hazard on the same day is strange. We can rotate and still play one of them). We need to be able to beat teams without Mata. Early in the year, we played great without Mata doing anything (and Hazard carrying us). We had mostly regulars in our starting XI and they should have done the job. I do find fault with Rafa for waiting so long to bring Mata on. I'm not sure it would have made a difference ultimately, but it was clear we were struggling to get any sort of attack going and the 75th minute was just too late.

We've spent more in each of the last three seasons than we did than we have in any season since 2004-2005. We're actually spending more now. Sure, we're not going to spend like we did in 2004, but no one is (except PSG) ever again. We've spent more than any other club in the Premier League over the past three years. Our problem is not that we thought short-term, it's that our signings were crap. In 07-08 we bought Anelka, Malouda, and Ivanovic. None of them particularly young and all were instrumental in the success we've had since then. The problem is that since then, our transfers have been horrible. We've spent 250M in the past three seasons and only have one excellent player, a few good players,and some nothing players. That's not nearly good enough for what we've spent. The problem recently, is that we are planning too long-term. You should be planning for a few years, not for 10. Our competitors are spending the big money on players who are ready to compete and still buying young talent. City bought Nastasic for what, 10M pounds and he's 20 and now their starting CB. ManU bought Kagawa who was 23 and Bundesliga player of the year for 14M pounds. Spurs spent on Lloris, Vertonghen, and Dembele none were more than 15M pounds. All of them are in their mid-20s and should be top players for years. You don't have to be 19 or 20 to be a buy with the future in mind. Most players aren't going to play more than a few years with any club anyway. We're spending a lot of our big money on young talent who aren't ready yet. No other club is doing that. And building for the future at the expense of the present makes no sense in football because every year you do poorly, you lose a lot of money which hurts your future. Each place in the Premier League costs you around 755K pounds so the difference between winning and finishing lower in the table is millions If you don't make the CL which is unlikely but possible for us, it can cost you up to 35M. Us not making it past the group stages cost something like 15-20M. So, the value of buying players for the future is completely shot if you don't win. Us not having a better team this season is going to cost us millions and millions of pounds which in turn will make us have less money to spend next summer which will make it harder to compete long-term.

He does need to step it up if Chelsea hope to stay in the Champion's League spot. It's not fair, but Oscar is one of the most expensive midfielders in history and one of the most expensive players we've ever bought (6th), and because of that, we need to be getting better performances. Oscar was more expensive than Mata, David Silva, Alexis, Cazorla, Reus, Kagawa, Ozil, Dembele,etc... Young players who had established themselves in top leagues. It's not his fault he cost so much money which is why I'm not upset with him. but it's an insane amount of money to spend on someone you need to develop. Think of it this way, if Chelsea had chosen to sign (in a theoretical world) say Van Persie or Dembele and Ba i(or any other combination of ready players instead of Oscar in the summer, where would they be right now? Probably seriously challenging for the Premier League. So, Oscar might be worth it in the long run, but every year of development, costs us short-term both in terms of results and in terms of money. And every young player is a gamble. Every player period is a bit of a gamble, but for someone who has not proven themselves, it's a big gamble. Ronaldo could have turned out to be Quaresma or any other number of flops. Yes, people knew Messi was going to be great when he was young but there are tons of players people "know" are going to be great and most of them aren't.. Here is a list of Don Balon's top-100 young footballers in 2001 (apologies for posting a link to a ManU blog, I feel dirty) http://www.redcafe.net/f7/top-100-young-players-2001-a-205125/ You can see what a complete crap-shoot young talent is. Even the elite of the elite of young players are vastly more likely to fail than to succeed. I do think Oscar will likely be a great player and his chances of being a complete flop are tiny because he has a lot of very good fundamental skills, but it's still a risk.

I'm just ruling it out because we simply aren't going to win anything this year. We're out of the CL and we're way back in the PL. Next year, we absolutely could win. And I agree, you can mix youth in there if you do it right and it's only a couple of players at time. It will be very interesting to see next year how players like Lukaku and De Bruyne get worked in.

I'll make it clear. I'm not upset with Oscar or anything. This is sort of what I expected from him. Brazilian league is well below the Premier League and the style is very different and it will take some adjustment (not to mention language, culture, etc...) I like Oscar, I think he is immensely talented with almost unlimited upside. I'm upset with Roman and the board. If you want to buy players for the future, great, but then you can't expect to also win now. You can't spend tens of millions on players you need to develop over years and then fire the manager because your expectations are for a first place squad. We have a much worse team now than we otherwise would, because we've spent a ton of resources on players with potential instead of players for now. In a year or two, this might turn out fantastically, but it the players don't develop into stars, it will be a disaster and for right now, it means we can't compete with the top clubs. (And yes, Ronaldo turned out fantastic, but for every Ronaldo that gets developed, there are 100 Klebersons (who they bought the same year) and 100 Andersons (who cost double what Ronaldo cost two years later.) Also, Ronaldo was 18 when ManU bought him, not 21. That's a big difference in development.)

You're right. Oscar simply needs to do more. This is a typical game from him for me. Some dazzling moves (such as the one by the corner flag where he embarrassed the defender) but at the end of the game, you realise that he's really done nothing. In 18 games in the Premier League, apart from the meaningless stats he piled up against Villa when the game was already out of reach, he has basically contributed next to nothing. (In the CL, he was fabulous) It's his first year and it takes some adjustment for sure, but we paid 20-25M pounds for him. For that kind of money, you should be getting an elite impact midfielder immediately. (Unless you're PSG) He has the skills to succeed for sure and I still think he will, but it's incredibly frustrating at the moment. The only way he'll improve is to play, so he needs to keep playing, but right now, we can't rely on him the way we can on Mata and to a lesser extent Hazard,

We've spent something like 250M pounds on transfers in the past 3 seasons. How the hell are we so reliant on Juan Mata for our entire offense? QPR has maybe one or two players that would even make our rotation. We should be able to rotate and still beat QPR at home. (Anyway, it's not like Hazard and Mata came on and changed things around. We were awful then as well.) I'm less concerned about the rotation to today than I am about our complete lack of a plan of attack. To get the ball to defensive players to take shots from 35 yards out? There was no urgency at all, no tempo. Everything was slow and yes, it's clear that nobody trusts Torres. It's not the misses that bother me, Cesar made a good save today, it's his complete inability to hold up the ball. I don't blame him for our players horrible shot selection, but he certainly doesn't help. The shot selection today was just horrendous.

Stat of the game for me. 26 shots, 2 on target. We were dire. I don't blame the construction of the starting Xi, any single starting XI of ours should have been able to beat QPR. Instead, we played once again without any plan of attack. Just sort of wander around aimlessly and try to score. The loss eliminates us from Premier League title contention and makes the battle for Champion's League spot tougher.

There go the (admittedly already faint) title hopes.

Great chance here.

Fuck me!

Time for Mata and maybe Ramires as well.

On the replay, it was tight. Not sure if it was off-side.

Crap!

Saved by a Cahill tackle.

Definitely much better start this half.