TorontoChelsea

That'll do.

That shut their fans up. I'd like another quick one here to put this to bed and allow us to sub off Mata and one of Oscar/Lampard to give them rest.

2-1!!!!!

Good change. Marin had a couple of brilliant moments in the first half, but had not done much since and being his first start, probably doesn't have the stamina to go much longer. Come on Chelsea!

Funny enough, that was one Ashdown probably should have stopped after making three excellent saves in the first half.

There we go!

Oscar was but not well and you can't blame the pivot when a defender runs into the attacking zone and gives it up. It's always going to imbalance the counter-attack. Teams are not set up for that. It was Luiz's fault that we conceded.

That's hardly been the problem. We're dominating the game. It's not like our pivot is to blame for us not scoring and has actually been responsible for a couple of our best chances.

We don't really need to change. We just need to finish. If I were going to change anything, I'd probably take Torres off (He is probably exhausted and certainly ineffective), move Luiz up to midfield, move Lampard to an attacking position (he knows how to get shots on goal) and bring in a defender.

Nice shot from Lampard...we need more of that. (shots on goal). The ball is wet, hard to control. I hate to see these shots flying 10 yards wide.

We were in control, we just can't finish. One horrible error and a goal...Luckily, it's still early enough where we have some time but we need to score!

Fuck me. Luiz!!!!

Wow, Michael Brown is a perfect Leeds player. Completely unlikable and a diving cheat.

Good to see us resting most of our starters. They need it and we should be able to win this game anyhow. Hopefully, we can get to a good lead and get some of our youngsters some playing time in the second half, but as things stand right now, I'll settle for a win. (Would love to thrash Leeds though. I don't dislike many teams, but they're one of them.)

Didn't say Defoe was a perfect comparison, but the best I can think of off the top of my head. Defoe is definitely a better finisher but also was getting regular striker appearances which does make it easier to hone your finishing. Sturridge has been moved all over the pitch in the last couple of years including playing exclusively midfield under RDM which was a horrible fit. It will be interesting to see how he develops (wish it weren't Liverpool) because I think he could be a very good player but he could also self-destruct if he isn't willing to improve (and listen). He was probably our second best player under AVB, carried us in a number of games and to me always disliked by some of the fans more than he should have been. (Some of it was the perception that he should have been passing to Torres because he was the guy who should have been scoring!)

Give 'em hell lads...well, stay safe at least. It's not just the Leeds supporters that like to fight...I remember this particularly shining Leeds moment. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-22823/Savage-attack-Leeds-players.html

It just makes me sad. We've had plenty of players come through that were just not good enough for Chelsea and were sold or not re-signed, but this one is a little different. Usually, they are cases of a player who got plenty of time and didn't show enough (Jody Morris, Carlton Cole, etc...) and other times it's because there simply wasn't room for them to get regular playing time (more common) but to have a player who was our leading goal scorer last season, who has had real success early in his career and who wants to play at a position where we have no depth just seems bizarre. I think it's highly unlikely Sturridge will ever become a fantastic player, but I think he'll be a useful player in the Premier League for the next decade with a chance to be more. (I think a good comparison to what I expect Sturridge to be able to do could be Jermain Defoe. Similar in some ways...speed, powerful shot, accused of selfishness, starts some, comes off the bench some. There's a lot of value in that.)

You're right. It's like our team is being pulled in so many different directions, that our soul has been torn asunder. We have counter-attack players, possession players, press defenders, zone defenders, players that don't defend at all, etc...Now, every team has some imbalance, but not like this.

You're just making stuff up. Liverpool MAY(don't trust quotes like this) have known about his knees. You didn't. Nobody did. Torres had scored 65 goals in 102 games at Liverpool including 18 in 22 the year before. . He started slowly for Liverpool after his surgery which was to be expected, but he was starting to come on well before we signed him. He scored 1 goal in his first 8 games in the Premier League and then 8 in 15 afterwards including killing us with two. He looked fabulous against us. His runs, his touches, his finishing. It looked like he was just coming back from surgery and was back to where he was before it.This idea that everyone knew that Torres was going to fail is revisionist nonsense. In fact, Torres was much more likely to succeed at that point than Falcao would be coming in as Torres had already proven himself in the Premier League-was PFA team of the year 2 of his 3 years at Liverpool. I never liked the signing because I hate January signings and huge dollar signings have a very high chance of failing, but Torres was still thought of as en elite striker at that point.

Wrong on just about every count. Torres was not sold because he was worthless, he was sold because we paid 50M pounds. Nobody at that time was saying what you are saying people thought. He was worse the previous 6 months than he was previously, but he wasn't close to as bad as he's been for us.. Shevchenko was the best striker in the world the previous decade. He had led the Champions League in scoring the year before. He had scored 26 or more goals in 3 straight years in a league that was very difficult to score in. He had won the Ballon D'or two seasons before. It's the difference between a striker who was considered one of the best players in the world for about a decade and a striker who is in form. And why do people compare Falcao to Shevchenko and Torres, simply because of how much Falcao will cost. Hassailbank and Anelka cost under 20M pounds. Drogba cost 24M. Falcao would cost close to 50M. This is the curse of the new Chelsea. Every supporter wants to go out and buy the most expensive player. Villa is worthless! Demba Ba sucks! Grant Holt sucks! Everyone except the flavour of the moment sucks! @Rmpr-NOBODY is saying that because Shevchenko and Torres failed therefore Falcao will. What we are saying is that anybody can fail even players like Shevchenko and Torres who were regarded as world-class players (the revisionism around here is ridiculous). We have spent so much money as a club that people have insane ideas of market value. You know how many players in the world went for more than 20M pounds this year? Maybe 5-10. 45-50M pounds on one player is insane unless that player is a Ronaldo/Messi/Zidane sort of player. Falcao simply isn't that kind of player. (And as for a tactical analysis, ask SeB, maybe he'll do one for you. The short version for me is that Falcao is a target man, feeds of a system that feeds him. Chelsea don't play in our strikers very much at all and we certainly don't have a team set-up for one player to score. Falcao would score more than Torres because he's a better scorer and Torres misses too many easy goals which Falcao would knock home, but you don't need to spend 50M pounds to get someone better than Torres. I feel like it's the same thing that happened with Hulk (although I like Falcao more than Hulk) with supporters saying "he's amazing, he'll never fail, he's worth 40M pounds, etc.." If we don't get Falcao, it will be someone else in the summer.

The problem with the "he'll sell kits" line is that anybody will sell kits so you have to measure the number of kits sold versus the potential number of kits sold of any other player. Unless the player is incredibly marketable (say, Messi or Ronaldo) or maybe opens up a market the way African and Asian players might (although I am dubious on that front as well) it doesn't really factor in for two reasons. 1) Would they have bought the shirt with a different name? In most cases, yes.The vast majority of Chelsea supporters are due to their success rather than to any individual players being bought. How many new fans will Chelsea attract because of Falcao? I'd have to think...very few. This isn't a game-changer or anything. 2) If Chelsea bought a cheaper player who has still successful, would they sell the same number of shirts? Let's say Chelsea bought Demba Ba and he scored goals for us, would he sell us any fewer shirts than Falcao? People were using the same argument for Hulk. I've never bought it.

This is exactly it. Falcao or anyone might fail at Chelsea. You can rationalize why it's different this time, but it really isn't. Anyone can fail even players as good as Shevchenko (who was a better player than Falcao). People make it sound as if Torres was useless before we bought him. He looked great when he scored a brace against us earlier in the year. If you watched that game and thought "he's losing it", you're lying. He hasn't played a single game against a top club with Chelsea as good as that. On paper, both of those players should have worked out and it's easy to make retrospective sense as to why they didn't work, but if Falcao or Cavani or whomever doesn't work out, we'll be able to do the same thing. Hindsight is 20/20. It just doesn't make sense to put all your eggs in one basket when you have so many holes to fill. It's an enormous risk, that if fails will basically mean Chelsea are screwed for years. I'd much rather someone like David Villa who would cost about 1/5th of Falcao/Cavani and then let a couple of young strikers play behind him to get experience and to prove that they can play at this level and make themselves ready to take over as the #1 when the time comes. It doesn't have to be Villa, it could be Demba Ba or Grant Holt or another cheaper striker than can score. Then, you can spend money on other positions (CM, new LB, young, promising striker). But we always have to chase the hot player...that's what they tell you in business school...buy high, sell low, right?

I read it. The problem is that expiring contracts don't save enough money. Lampard+Ferrier+Hilario=roughly what we'd give Falcao which means that we'd save Cole and Malouda's salaries except that we've also given new contracts and raises to Luiz, Bertrand, and Mikel which eat a lot of that which means that for all the money we'd be saving would be at best, around 6-10M a year. And that's without players coming back from loan whose salaries we would have to take on (and if they do well, that means a deserved increase in salary). Even if we could do it, it makes no sense. We are a team that has multiple needs.

I don't agree generally with the piece because there is no way we are going to break even this year no matter what. We spent much more this summer, are going to be losing 20+M in the CL, gave a few new contracts out, and still have to pay amortized payments for previous transfers. At the minimum, we'll lose 20M+ Even if we could scrape things together and cut corners to sign Falcao,could afford to sign Falcao and nobody else. With Cole and Lampard leaving and with some pretty obvious holes already in the lineup, spending everything on one player is ridiculous. For 50M, we could be able to buy an elite LB, an excellent CM, and an excellent striker. We're not one player away from being a top team.

Long passes is a stat that can be greatly improved upon because it's so misleading right now. For example, David Luiz has 6.3 successful long balls a game because he plays a lot of 25-30 yard passes to unmarked players ahead of him or on the wings. It's not a particularly difficult pass. How successful has Luiz been when he tries his long balls way up the field? Not successful at all. The long balls that some midfielders hit are sometimes back to the keeper or to a defender yet these long balls are not differentiated from say a long ball that hits a streaking winger who is well covered which is an incredible pass. There is no differentiation in the stat between types of long balls. I would love to see the stat broken down into forward, sideways, and backwards long balls as well as long balls from which zone to which zone at the least.