Dion

Oh my God, WOW! Take a bow, mate

What you said is all true. But it is kind of the same situation as City has in Fernandinho and Yaya. Fernandinho is by no means bad offensively, he's quite good actually - has good passing, speed and a good long shot - but Yaya is simply better, therefore Fernandinho's attacking instincts must be restrained because Yaya will be bombing forward here and there. If we play Matic Cesc the same should apply - Matic should tone down the risks he's taking and be more conservative with his positioning to allow Fabregas to be offensive. The holding CM will always get restricted in favour of the other. I've always said 4 3 3 would be better for us too - although not with Ramires there, but supposing we do play 4 2 3 1, Mat - Cesc isn't a certain recipe for disaster if done right. I think it could work very well - and because the pressure is lower when playing in the pivot, misplaced passes should be even fewer for Fab there - unless they deploy an AM to specifically chase Fab there, he would impact and control the game a lot better than playing as a #10. And the evidence we have to this moment is that Fabregas has performed better as #8 than as #10 in the pre-season.

I think for Lukaku, Costa was more of a problem than Drogba. If he's afraid of competition with a 36 years old Drogba and fucking Torres, God help him. He left because unless he performed significantly better than Costa, he wouldn't be getting a lot of game time. The choice has never been between Lukaku and Drogba.

Alex = Roman Abramovich confirmed.

At the same time his passing accuracy is the highest amongst our strikers and he's fairly strong which implies his link up play and ability to maintain the team in possession is really good when he can't shoot from close-medium range. If he isn't confident in his long shooting he shouldn't be overly trying them, I'd rather have him pass the ball while we keep looking for chances to infiltrate the box.

I wouldn't say disgusted. But certainly most are displeased. In all honesty he's probably not going to face us anyway. I reckon he won't even play that many minutes. He's going to be a super sub at most, no reason to be alarmed. Of course every one of us would have liked if his last game at the EPL had been for us but it's not that big of a deal. The fact that there wasn't a bigger fuss over him leaving us should be enough to perceive that the aged Lampard isn't the same player, he's not really a threat to us. Also if it was so important that he wouldn't end up in another EPL team maybe we should have kept him in the first place. I don't even dislike Citeh as much as Spurs, Loserpool and Utd.

Neymar's is wrong. He scored 60 domestic league goals when 21. 54 at Santos + 6 at Barcelona. Just sayin'. Also this information is all out of context but whatever.

It's more likely to wreck him mentally even further. Seeing what a striker should at least remotely look like and knowing he won't ever reach that level? Blondie is probably gonna cry on his bed every night. I won't even start to talk about Drogba. He's probably still got nightmares about him.

I wonder how would you know that :eyebrows:

Between Hernandez and Remy I'd take the former if prices were close. I think Cuntarito is better, younger and brings a different dimension from Costa and DD, even though I hate him.

I'd really, really like Di Maria here. He's so underrated... IMO he was Argentina's best player in the WC. Problem is we're already stacked with AMs and he would cost a fortune so I'm not sure. I wouldn't mind buying him at all, but I think our squad looks good as it is. If we get rid of Torres maybe we could use Costa/Drogba/Bamford and save some bucks. I'd even call it an improvement over Torres. Probably the best option and what makes more sense from a financial point of view. We'd have a proven and reaching his peak striker in Costa, a proven and experienced striker in DD and a young and promising one who is probably already better than Torres in Bamford.

I wasn't. I'm saying that no matter how awesome that may look if we discard the costs of those 3 players, it still only pays for Torres fee, which helps putting in perspective how bad of a business the blondie turned out to be.

In other words, if we don't consider Matic, Salah and Zouma, all these awesome pieces of business could only finally recover what we payed for Torres in fee. It just goes to show how terrible of a buying he was.

That's what I meant by better player. I was totally expecting him to be more of a slower and get the ball to the back of the net with limited technical ability kind of player.

Any individual highlights video?

I must admit he's playing better and looking to be a better player than I expected, granted I'm only watching highlights because my internet sucks for streams right now. I just hope this isn't one of those misleading pre-season performances.

How can you guys forget to mention Schweinsteiger amongst the best players in Germany is beyond me.

If teams are waiting for a counter, we have all the time in the world to build plays as long as we keep possession, and a partnership of Matic and Fabregas are the best we have to give us exactly that, pace would be good but not a must - stamina is a must for pretty much any pivot player though. On the other hand, teams that attack and give us counters leave more space behind, their defenses will usually sit a bit higher up for compactness or else they will leave a big gap between midfield and defense. In that kind of situation long passes and through balls are even deadlier than in the first. Pace is absolutely not needed in the pivot for counter-attacks, the players on the receiving end of passes are the ones who must be pacey, the ball can travel faster in a pass than any Ramires or Usain Bolt could do while running in possession. For those reasons I think it works in both situations. Mourinho probably thinks that's possible as well. And he's testing Fabregas there against weak teams in the preseason, sides that are expected to give us a parked bus circumstance, which should provide a rough idea to how it may work. Of course nobody is giving these games much importance and teams who are going to park the bus in the PL are stronger than those we're facing right now, but still.

I disagree. I think Torres and Liverpool jersey are a perfect match, both are shit.

Probably the same reason I had when I did it. I was curious to know how I'd look like if I went bald or shaved my head but I ended up hating it

Yes. His whole point was to blame Fabregas the most he could but if you look behind that, there is some useful information. Still I wonder if that's the widespread feeling towards Cesc from most Barca fans and the board.

Maybe he tried to convey it in that way but to me he's blaming the coaches nevertheless. Unless we're assuming that he owned Barca and gave orders to their coaches, no one in their right mind can blame Cesc because the managers were trying to accommodate him - assuming it to be true. And it was still acknowledged that Barca had problems with their centre-backs, Xavi's aging, tiki-taka vs directness approach, so I don't think it was all that bad - every fan is biased in what concerns his own team. But my main reason to post that article was to give insight on Barca's perspective on Fabregas (or their fans view at least). I was genuinely curious to know why they were getting rid of Fabregas and I thought that maybe others were too. It just occurred at the same time that he seemed to be convinced that Fabregas is terrible at defending beyond normal fan bias or fan hatred, so I brought that up because I don't particularly agree with. And I think he mentioned what you said about Cesc being played everywhere and never being given the chance to really adapt to the role, even if he didn't give it enough emphasis - of course, because it didn't suit his argument.

That wasn't the understanding I've got from reading it. The article seems to split the blame between multiple people (Guardiola, Barca's board, Tito, Martino, the way Barca's midfield used to work and Fabregas himself). What it blames Fabregas for is he alleged inability to adapt himself to the tactical needs of the team (positioning to play as a sucessor to Xavi or awareness to swap positions with Iniesta on the left) and to play Messi's role as false 9 (which isn't really his fault, it's just about who he is or isn't as a player, he simply doesn't possess the pace or dribbling of Messi, nor is as clinical in his finishing). It also says he builds up his numbers against shitty sides amongst a few other unfair criticisms but I guess it should be expected coming from a Barca fan about Cesc.In addition, when anyone suggests him in the pivot, they suggests it as a deep-lying playmaker. The point about that role is that you don't need to excel in any defensive aspect but positioning. As long as you can limit passing options and slow down attacking players you're already good to go being average at all the rest. The defensive side of a DLP is mostly tactical. That's why it got me concerned, the article criticizes his tactical awareness heavily. If he displays erratic behaviour and lack of positioning as the text suggests, he must be played as a #10 only. However, from what I've seen from Fabregas and considering the type of player Mourinho tends to praise and look for, I'd say it shouldn't be the case. All in all, it only makes me even more eager to see how he's going to be deployed.

I SWEAR on my life that I had never visited that site before :ph34r2:

While looking for an answer to why Barcelona let Fabregas go, I stumbled upon this: http://neymarketing.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/requiem-for-a-dream-how-barcelonas-prodigal-son-became-their-most-damaging-signing-in-a-generation/ Haven't finished reading yet but it seems like an interesting read. Edit: If the article can be any trusted, maybe we should be more concerned about his defensive capabilities than previously thought. I must confess I never saw Fabregas as this massive defensive liability that the article portrays. Yet I hope the author is right about this at least: "he will probably win more there (Chelsea) than he ever did".