Dion

Avoiding the majority, a.k.a hive mind.

HAHAHAHAHHAHAAH. So you know what I mean.

What can I say. I will never forget that day, Choo Choo and Liquidator in the hotel room, the sun was rising on the horizon, the sunlight starting to reach our bed. Choulo making train noises... You had to be there to understand.

No offense to the others, but Stingray wins this for his gifs knowledge alone. In addition to that he can maintain a level-headed conversation in many different subjects. He has a broad spectrum of knowledge - from kinky gifs to football, psychology, history, politics etc.

Another tough decision. Going for TOPTB because although I don't always agree with him I can respect his reasoning to think the way he does. And in doing that, he often brings new perspective that I would not have thought of otherwise.

Skipper for me. I find myself agreeing with so much of what he says that sometimes I have to double-check if I wasn't the one to write it.

Spike because aussie humour.

Every staff member deserves it but I'm sorry, Choo Choo has a special place in my heart

Tough decision. Going for Barbara to make up for the fact she was not nominated for best newcomer and because if I recall correctly I voted for The Skipper last time and he has already won it. ps: what am I even doing there? I thought I got like 3 nominations

There can't be any other winner than Lord Assburner.

I agree entirely with you. Key pass stats doesn't always mean he's putting other players in position to score, but it means he's at least finding them in forward/dangerous positions. If he's the top in that regard, It means he's not misplacing too many passes in the final third, which is wonderful by itself. I didn't know where to look for clear-cut chances statistics (I was not even sure they kept track of that). The fact there is such a discrepancy between his key passes and clear-cut chances could mean he's playing it a bit conservative. I'll try to follow Hazard more closely this season.

Hazard's rate is really incredible. His numbers are mesmerizing both in percentage and total. His key passes are too far above the others as well. And then you see that, despite all those numbers, he has one of the lowest assists + goals / 90 minutes. We're really in need of improvement in our end product. He's also the one with fewest shots. Definitely in need to take matters into his own hands more frequently and be more clinical in his finishing, other than that he's golden. Thoses assists are probably going to build up with Costa though.

Are those stats considering every game of this season? Domestic League only? Does it include World Cup stats?

Luiz can be the best defender in the world in one game just to become the worst in the following. Sometimes he can even transition between the two extremes in the same game. And defense is all about consistency. Every defender has ups and downs, problem with Luiz is his down is too low. His bad games are really bad and sometimes atrocious - the type of game that will make you think, how is this guy even a pro? You can never know which Luiz will show up. And when you think he got his shit together he screws up badly again. He was arguably one of the best, if not the sole best centre-back, up until the last two games when he decided he was done with being a centre-back and was his time to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time for those entire matches and do the silliest mistakes possible. And I don't know why am I even surprised. If you think about it, Luiz is always attempting the high risk, high reward choice. When he's on his day and can pull it off, it looks amazing, when he can't he fucks up the whole defensive system. When he tries to anticipate a pass or long ball and he succeeds, it looks wonderful and is indeed wonderful, he killed the opposing attack right there and can start a quick counter, whereas if he tried only to mark the player, that player could possibly be able to pass to another player or dribble past him, which keeps Luiz's team on the defensive. But when he tries to anticipate and fails, the attacking player may now be 1v1 against the gk or 2v1 against the other cb. The same applies to Luiz bombing forward, he may be another player to be dealt with by the opposition, but if he fails and allows a counter, now his team has one less defender. He does this sort of decision a lot. Most of these problems can be solved somewhat with a proper tactical plan for covering his craziness, but is it even worth it to take theses risks and to always have the doubt of when is his high risk play going to fail? That's just the essence of Luiz as a player, the way he plays he's fated to whether have wonderful plays or terrible ones, which isn't ideal for a consistent defender, it is suited for highly skilled attacking players like Hazard, Messi, Neymar, Robben. Also, regarding his personality, I disagree with @TOPTB here, I know he's skeptical from his experience with other footballers but I honestly don't think Luiz does it for the fame or to get his value up. It may not be as common in Europe or England but there are lots of people in Brazil with that kind of personality. I've had a few friend a bit like David Luiz myself. He's just that way, there are people who are shy, that are people who are outgoing, there are funny people, serious people, in this world you can find it all. It just happens that his fun personality makes him more likable and sort of a unique character - Neymar and some other players are a bit like that too. It's not really that uncommon in Brazil. There are a bunch of videos showing how Neymar used to be the cheerful fun prankster guy when playing for Santos, not very different from David. However, Neymar has adopted a more low-profile personality after going to Barcelona, probably due to advices from his media consultants that he's got after a few problems he's had in Brazil. With that I'm leaving this thread. David Luiz is not our problem anymore. If anything, I hope he can sort out his flaws someday and have the best of luck in PSG.

They should add a category for the user who posted more hotties on the forum, @Steve would have won that one easily. If there was one for who posted the hottest chick than I would win it with Barbara Palvin But even then Steve could have a chance with Axelle.

For me it's definitely Fabregas. I can't even believe he's playing for us right now.

The real question is, when can I find a Fabregas Chelsea shirt to buy? I think it will take sometime to reach the stores in my city, damn.

FTFY.

I think he did as good as one could expect when you're linking up with Jo, Ramires and Hulk in a team that just lost by 3-0 and 7-1. I remember some good passes and crosses, didn't shy away from the game and was by far the best brazilian player on the pitch.

Best football knowledge: So many I could say here... I'll go with some less nominated people just so they know their contribution is appreciated - @MrExcalibur100; @The Mak Best general knowledge: @Stingray; @CHOULO19(Choo Choo) Best newcomer: @Mohammed Seif, @iseah100 - Almost made the cut: @Viper22 and @Daniel1980. Best article writer: @. Best graphics and video producer: @Amels. Best staff member: @CHOULO19(Choo Choo), @Rmpr. Funniest forumer: @Stingray; @. Most-liked forumer: @Mohammed Seif; @The Skipper - Close calls: @Barbara and @Liquidator. Wisest forumer: @zolayes; @Mohammed Seif. Most controversial: @Henrique, @The only place to be. Biggest contributor: @Barbara, @Jason. British Member of the Year: @Tomo; @The only place to be. International Member of the Year: @Barbara; @The Skipper. They should allow at least 3 nominations, this is way too hard and my list seems rubbish when I cannot nominate everyone who I feel deserved it. Meh.

It's funny and everything but when you can understand what's actually being said it feels a tad disrespectful. That was quite the emotional speech from the geezer. It's harder to laugh when you're feeling sorry for him.

What's more exciting about this thread is realizing the amount of options we have right now. When I first joined the forum, Mazacar was pretty much immutable and we had like no options for pivot. We saw a lot of Ramires - Mikel IIRC. And our strikers back then... HAHAHAHA. Well, let's skip this part. To think now we got a midfield of Fabregas, Matic, Hazard, Willian, Schürrle, Oscar, Salah, Van Ginkel, Mikel, Ramires... possibly Pogba. Just let it sink for a moment. There are just so many ways we can build it, we have it all right now. We can build the midfield pretty much in any way we want, defensive, offensive, slow, fast, based on possession, based on directness, based on pressing. Our defense looks very good too. Terry is still a solid CB, Ivanovic is a beast and I fucking love him, Cahill has proved he can be a good CB, Zouma has every tool to become a top CB in the future and so does Aké. Azpi was the steal of the year when we bought him, probably even better than Fabregas in the bang-for-buck ratio, and Luis has everything to succeed on the left. Courtois is amazing and so is Cech. If Costa doesn't flop this is probably the best squad I've ever seen Chelsea have since the times of young Terry, Lampard, Cech, Drogba e Co. And the icing on the cake is we've got Mourinho with us. We've come a long way in these past years, I'm really confident we have a real chance in every tournament if Mourinho makes the right choices, and knowing Mourinho he probably will. This wall of text is meant to conceal the fact that I'm having trouble coming up with the best line-up.

Luis is a really good fullback. It was really stupid of Felipão not calling him, but that's understandable since brazilian football has always preferred overly offensive fullbacks (or as some like to call, wing backs - even if they're a moderate/big defensive liability) over solid fullbacks with just good offensive capabilities, the better compromise we can find is when Brazil chooses a full back who is equally good attacking and defending. Also, Felipão likes to stick with the players that got him to where he is, with few or no exceptions. In Luis we get an experienced player who is probably going to improve our defense even further and also add a bit of quality going forward over the aged Ashley Cole. I just hope people don't expect him to be better than prime Cole, because that he's never going to be. But I expect him to be a solid brick in our defense and I would not expect any different from Mourinho, great signing if true.

I have a weak spot for compliments so I won't be the one to change your mind, but I'm sure there are people who don't like me, I'm a brazilian after all, you know how our fame goes these days Instead I'm gonna promise I'll try harder not to disappear as much in this season. I know I probably said something along those lines before but truth is I'm really bad at managing my own time, something always gets put a little aside because I tend to try to do too much at once, but I'll make an effort not to leave the forum aside this time, deal?

Thank you @Barbara for nominating me. There's a lot of people deserving it more than I do as I went missing for large portions of the season but I still appreciate it very much. Love you Edit: thank you to all the others too, I just sort of didn't expect any other nominations, really appreciate you guys.