different level

LOL Is it just me or people get banned on a quite regular basis lately? Anyway as a Chelsea fan I am quite unsure who should I support in the final. We have Luiz and Oscar vs Azpilicueta, Mata and Torres (probably only Nando will start for Spain though as Del Bosque will likely choose Arbeloa over Azpi and some Barcelona cunt over Juan).

Yeah, right... Even though he would be an upgrade to Giroud, Arsenal still can't afford to pay even half his wages.

We also have the match for 3rd place between Italy and Uruguay. And like the last couple of Uruguay games this one will cause either a wankfest or bashing for Cavani. If he scores the Cavani thread will explode with posts like "Why haven't we paid the release clause already??" and if he doesn't - "Why are we wasting our time with this shit? Even Torres is better!"

It's awesome! I admit I didn't pay much attention to the old one, because my opera browser couldn't open it properly, but it does well with this one

Depends on your vision of a pure winger, but I don't agree with that statement. I think Hazard is a natural winger, but it might be debatable as many people believe he excels in the number 10 role. Also when he is playing alongside Mata and Oscar they don't play strictly in their positions and regularly switch their places. And what about Schurrle? Now, tbh, I haven't seen that much of him, but he seems like a better, faster version of Moses with better finishing and long shots that provides some direct attacking approach from the wing. That being said I agree with the part that he still can bring his fair share of contribution to our squad and I'd like him to stay.

That was in 2001 and I was referring to De Rossi.

I recently read an interview with Totti and he was explaining how much he regrets not moving to Madrid in the early 2000s when he had a chance. I've never really rated him, but still fair play to him I guess (and Gerrard as well) that he decided to stick with the club he loves instead of going to one of the big ones. However I think he'd have been rated higher by everybody, had he joined Madrid's dream team in 2002 and even he realises it.

He has won Coppa Italia twice, yeah. Maybe I should've said that he's never won any meaningful trophy on club level.

Soldado? I thought we are looking for an uprade of Torres. Why should we buy his back-up in the national team?

IMO we should concentrate on this deal. He only has a year left of his contract and that gives us better negotiating power, so instead of wasting our time with that idiot ADL we can snap up this guy. I know Dortmund said he is not for sale but that could probably be only because everybody is trying to get him with a cheeky bid of €30 mil or under. If we were (reportedly) ready to offer €40 mil + Torres for Cavani, I'd rather we use that amount for Lewy.

It's not really that much about the money. It's all about Napoli (and other clubs) trying to force us to overpay and somehow they believe we will do anything to get what we want and we'll be just sitting there like idiots letting them dictate the terms of the deal. If, in fact, we had sent an offer of £40-45 mil and they went on to reject it with the demand of the release clause, then all I have to say to them and their fans is keep your Matador, you can suck my El Niño.

Hopefully unlike Totti he'll move to a big club in his prime before growing old and useless.

I don't think acquiring his services is that impossible. It's more like we are not that interested in that deal apparently as the rumours were never that strong. Yeah he is becoming a legendary figure in his club as he has spent his entire career with them bla bla bla, but then again he has never won a single important trophy and that + the salary increase could be the incentive to make him move.

I think either him or Essien should be loaned out and then again we know how close the latter is with Jose... Moreover we are looking for a new player who plays in his position.

So now that his daddy is in charge, the Bison will probably get a role as a squad player for the double pivot or RB if both Azpi and Bane are unavailable for some match. Who knows he could surprise us and there out of the blue we see Bison of old.

Hardly a surprise. With his poor first season and the return of De Bruyne and the arrival of Schurrle he is the 7th choice attacking midfielder (after Mata, Hazard, Oscar, Schurrle, KDB and Moses). Still good luck to Marko, hopefully he'll impress at Seville and show some of the stuff that made the people call him "German Messi" (I hate that moniker btw as I can't stand the Argentinian dwarf) .

I think if we can't get Cavani/Lewandowski/Rooney then we might as well don't buy any other striker and just go with Lukaku, Torres and Ba. The only available "top" strikers other than those are Gomez and Dzeko (if they can even be considered top strikers) and while I'm not a fan of the former for being completely one dimensional, buying the latter wouldn't be easy as I doubt City would sell to a PL rival.

My idea of the back up keeper is a player who should be used as little as possible: when the first choice GK is injured or against lower league sides in the cup ties. In that aspect £10 mln for someone, who would play in less than 10 games unless some emergency is on the way, makes no sense. If the club has some doubts over Cech's fitness they should've kept Courtois as even a keeper rotation would be better than overspending for a benchwarmer.

Out of the three top strikers (Cavani, Lewy and Rooney) Lewandowski is on top of the "price-quality" scale IMO + he is younger than both of them and would fit better to the idea of rejuvenating the squad. Too bad he has decided to stay in Dortmund and if he is going somewhere that'd be Munich.

Well they've sold Tevez to Juventus and now you can expect them to stick their noses into our business for a new striker.

LOL at the Napoli fans trying to convince us that Cavani's price should be even more inflated . I'm tired of clubs trying to milk us by slapping some ridiculous price tags on the players we are interested in. I'd like Cavani here as he's a great player and fantastic striker, but if Napoli and their president continue being so arrogant by publicly demanding the release clause and stating that is the only option to sell him, I'd rather we look elsewhere. You could argue that they can do as they please as they hold his rights..., well, you can ask Edinson how does he feel about being prevented to join a top team, because of his team's lunacy.

It kinda looks like a training kit. I'll pass on that

I think he has a point there to a certain extent. He's been gradually improving from his horrible second half of the season in 2010/2011. However he either fails to realize or doesn't want to admit out loud his overall performance is still not good enough for a club like Chelsea. I can't see him leave, because no one would pay his sky high wages and he still has 3 more years of his contract, so one can only hope he'll be better this time around.

Good luck, Andre! Hopefully this is the beginning of a long and successful partnership!

The news are all over the internet. I still won't start celebrating until I see him posing with a Chelsea shirt or at least an announcement in the official website, because last year the Hulk deal was also supposedly agreed, but we all know how it ended up.