TorontoChelsea

Cech is our #1 goalie until he's not good enough. Keepers can last a long time (Friedel is 40 and still a very good goalie) so it might not be for a while.

The problem is that we also spent more than any other club in the transfer market. We gave David Luiz an unneeded and massive new contract. You can't have massive spending and then making little cuts to try to save money. It's ridiculous... It's like weightlifting. If you're lifting weights, one thing you figure out early is that you can't build muscle and lose weight at the same time.

Inflation is real and player are generally costing more, but it's mostly because there are now a few more teams that have gone crazy. Zenit, City, and PSG have all joined the high spenders in the past few years You look at the spending on players now, and almost all of them are going to be poor value. A handful of teams overspend to a ridiculous level now. That doesn't mean we have to. Also, your inflation numbers are off. Inflation hasn't been 100% in the last decade. If you account for inflation, there are still only 6 players who would have cost more than 50M today (the 6 I mentioned in my first post). (And BTW, in terms of yearly salaries, it's very different. Most players are actually worth what they are paid and top players are generally underpaid compare to how much money they bring in for the club.) And as for bringing new fans, that's what clubs like PSG and Zenit try to do by the big buys. Chelsea are already at a high level with as much exposure as possible.Buying a big name won't change anything. (And every player we buy from one country means that we don't buy another player from another country.) You can't win trophies in England without expensive players. It's not possible but the notion of what an expensive player is has been so skewed by a few clubs, that people have lost all perspective. There are almost no transfers of 20M pounds. That's a very expensive player. (I think maybe 4 players in the Premier League went for more than that last season). 15-20M pounds still gets you very good players. Dembele, Cazorla, etc...10-15M pounds gets you starters-Steven Fletcher, Natasic, Giroud, Vertonghen, Lloris, etc...We have spent so much money that, spending 40M seems like nothing, but it's an enormous amount of money even in modern transfers. The average Premier League club spent 14M pounds in the summer. You can't win without ever spending big, but you certainly can win without ever spending more than 30-35M on anybody.

I'll vote for Rmpr. Excellent poster and also a high volume of posts which is a combination of quality and quantity. Some of my favourite posters (SeB, Joke10, etc...) need to post more!

Ummm...what? Lampard won Chelsea player of the year 3 times (04, 05, 09) which is more than any other Chelsea player in history (the award was started in 1967). He came in second in the Ballon D'or in 2005. (And had he and Gerrard not split votes. he probably would have won. Also, the award is generally pretty anti-EPL . Despite being overall the best league in the world for a while and a top-3 league for a very long time, only two players playing in England have won the award since 1968 which is ridiculous.) So, basically, you're saying Lampard is shit because he never achieved things he actually did achieve. Comparing people who think love Torres and love Lampard is like comparing apples with blond apples that can't score. Lampard is the best midfielder in Premier League history. He was one of the best players in the world for years. He is probably the best player in Chelsea history. Every Chelsea supporter loves Lampard and what he's done for our club. How you can compare that to supporting Torres is beyond me.

Almost nobody is worth 40-50M no matter what. There have been 4 players in history who have gone for 50M+. (Ronaldo, Torres, Ibrahimovic, and Kaka) Only 2 other players went between 40-50M (Figo and Zidane) 4 of those 6 players were Real Madrid buys and all 4 of those were previous Ballon D'or winners. Other teams are somehow still able to win trophies and get strikers that score goals without spending that much money on a single player. You can get players that will fit your team and not cost 50M pounds. It's amazing. Chelsea have gone after big-name strikers twice. We bought Shevchenko who was a ballon d'or winner and probably the best striker in the world in a league that's always been difficult to score in. He was almost useless for us. Then, we spent 50M on Torres who had scored 65 goals in just over 100 games in England, the starting striker for the best national team in the world. Utterly useless at Chelsea. (That's without mentioning Chris Sutton who cost a lot of money and was even worse than Torres). You're acting like this is a new situation. Like we've never seen a case where there was a striker that everyone thought was amazing who came to Chelsea and flopped. We don't need to spend 50M on players, especially a player who relies on service to score. (Which he absolutely does). Here are the top goal-scorers in the Premier League and how much they cost Suarez-22.8M, Van Persie-24M , Ba-Free, Michu-2M, Defoe-15.75M, Fellaini-15M-Not one costing more than 24M pounds (and Van Persie cost Arsenal about 1M pounds) The five most expensive strikers in Premier League history Torres, Shevchenko, Aguero, Robinho, Caroll...4 complete and utter flops out of 5. This is why the board needs to be better than fans. They need to actually go out and find players that will fit into the (theoretical) manager's vision of the club, not just splurge on whoever the biggest name is. @FAnta-whoscored.com has very good free access to statistics.

I don't care about youtube videos of players...I hate them.. They tell you nothing about a footballer except that someone wanted to make a youtube video of them. I never said that Falcao was a bad finisher, just that he's not automatic. (And how do you get 48% when he has 11 goals on 47 shots (including 5 or 6 penalties which makes him 5 or 6 for 42 in open play). Look at the numbers of Falcao tin comparison o players I'd consider a more well-rounded strikers in Van Persie and Cavani and his one-dimensional is obvious. Van Persie is also a fantastic passer. He has double the number of key passes..Falcao has 1 cross all season. Van Persie has 14. Falcao turns the ball over 2,8 times a game. Van Persie 1.2. Or take someone like Cavani who is much better defensively. Falcao has 8 tackles all season. Cavani has 21. Falcao has 4 clearances, Cavani has 25. Etc...Falcao is excellent at scoring but he doesn't do anything else particularly well. Falcao is not a player that's going to win you games by himself, he's going to finish chances that are provided for him at a very good rate. .For 40-50M pounds, you need a hell of a lot more than that.

1) Because it's exactly what's wrong with Chelsea. The team isn't gelling, so go out and buy the biggest name available. This is why we're in the shape we're in. We need to be building a team, a philosophy rather than this. Falcao doesn't fit with players like Mata, Oscar, and Hazard. He needs a team built for him. 2) Falcao is a pretty-one dimensional player-much more so than people want to believe. He needs service to score and is limited in a number of other ways. 3) The amount of money it would cost to buy him is insane. Especially for someone who will be 27 in a couple of months.

Falcao needs more than 6 shots on goal to score. People have this idea that Falcao would come into Chelsea and just score every shot or something. He has limited skills apart from his finishing.Would he be better than Torres? Yeah, but a lot of strikers would be. Would he be a good fit for Chelsea? No. I'm happy that he only has 1 goal in his last five games because maybe it means the hype will start to die down. If Chelsea go out and sign Falcao, it will prove that they've learned nothing. Going after a big name for ridiculous amounts of money who doesn't really fit with the squad.

Ironically, I'm pretty sure RDM was fired when he was fired because Roman felt like he had a small window to fire him. Nobody would have been shocked had we lost to City and the next 9 matches were all quite easy (although we got only 1 point from the first 2). I'm sure we'll go on a good streak soon because our competition is so weak, but I thought that streak was going to start against Fulham.

Probably but really unfair IMO. Arsenal are a club that's built for making money for their shareholders. In the past five years, look at this difference Net spending on transfers: Man City-430M Chelsea-250M ManU-59M Arsenal- -30.5M They've actually made a profit in the past 5 years. How do you expect to compete long-term, being out-spent by 50M pounds every year? Wenger has done a fantastic job at Arsenal.

He should have scored one goal. Nobody is denying that. But 1) Every striker misses more opportunities than they score. Everyone here is gaga about how clinical Falcao is and he has scored 6 goals on 38 shots (not including penalties). 2) We didn't lose because Torres missed. I want to be clear. I've never though Torres was the right player for Chelsea and was pissed off by all the love he got despite being awful last season and he needs to go, but am just sick of the way people on here want to blame everything on one or two players. Your cataloguing is exactly what happens when people look to do that. If you do that, you can make any single player look at fault for everything.

We won under Mourinho/Ancelotti/RDM without basically any help from the academy. The problem is that our transfers have been awful and our policy for them have been terrible. We have chased players that don't fit into the system bjust because they are big names or are exciting or whatever. We are spending massive amounts of money to buy players that are highly skilled with no idea how to fit them into the squad. We've spent 80M pounds in the last 2 seasons on 3 offensively-minded #10 players. Why do we need three different players who play the same position? And then leaving the centre of the midfield and our depth at striker completely bare. How can you go into the season with 1 striker even if he were in great form (which he certainly never was). We have a board and owner that's so obsessed with buying skilled offensive players , that that's basically the only thing we ever look for-even in defenders. We don't have a team, we have a collection of players.

My guess is that Sturridge, Lampard, and Terry will all be back either for Sunderland on Dec 8th or more likely Southampton on the 15th which is good because things get really hectic around Christmas and we need the depth.(Not to mention the cojones)

Exactly...And a board who understand football more than the average supporter. Know about how to build a squad rather that just going "oh my god, did you see his youtube skillz video, let's go and buy him!!"

No,, we're not. He's shit, but we also play in a system where nobody crashes the net (we miss Sturridge for that). Some of that is because we generally almost never cross the ball, some of it is a lack of physicality. Torres himself had two excellent crosses right through the box and nobody was near them. Torres played like shit for some of the game but he also had a number of excellent moments which is more than can be said for most of the club. He's not good enough, but I'm getting sick of how everyone just blames him for everything. You don't lose 3-1 to West Ham because your striker missed a great chance. We were absolutely dominated in the second half, not because Torres couldn't finish, but because our squad played like crap.

Sigh...really dispiriting time to be a Chelsea supporter. We're just a mess right now. Torres had one very bad miss but actually was one of our better players overall today. He isn't good enough to be our #1 striker, but he's not to blame for everything. We were just atrocious in the second half and it was the entire team, not Torres. Maybe it's time to accept that we're just not good enough. We have an owner and a board whose demands are obscure and probably unattainable and whose decision to sack managers and buy big-name, one-dimensional players at inflated prices has been disasterous. We have a squad without any identity or leaders.

We badly badly need Lampard and Terry back. We are completely soulless and rudderless right now. Worst few weeks following Chelsea in my life. A complete and utter clusterfuck.

Fuck me

Ashley Cole-line clearing expert extraordinaire

Woodwork!

We should have scored there.

Jesus...

Except Liverpool at least have some talent. Not saying West Ham can't come back, but they certainly have the feel of a team that will end up near the relegation zone. Also, not the type of team that is comfortable coming back from behind. This is a team that's scored 0 or 1 goal in 11 of their 14 league matches coming into today.

Wondering if Cech is more aggressive on Rafa's say-so. Reina was always like that under him at Liverpool, or if it's just down to Cech.