EBH

It's happening again!

3 in 4 now

Any and every big club. They're all scum. Although of course there are varying levels, for instance, I can never dislike Man City or PSG to the same extent that I do Real Madrid or Barcelona. I only support mid-table mediocrity and below, it's the only club football left that has any integrity and any pretense of actually being a sporting team rather than a commercial investment vehicle for sponsors and shareholders. The only club football left that has any connection to where football began, as a pastime for the lumpenproletariat, a throwback to the times when everyone hated the rich instead of wanting to be like them. In short, I prefer the coal miner to the tycoon and have a bitter resentment to anything I perceive as being the embodiment of the evils of modern football. I mean look at this shit. You've got clubs buying up other clubs in different continents to avoid running afoul of financial legislation; completely disrupting the dynamics of the foreign league, stunting the development of that league, and for what? Football has become just like big business, and the MLS and the A-League have become tax havens, not sporting competitions.

I thought it was going to be Chelsea playing a composite team made up of players from Besiktas and Fenerbache.

Funny you should mention Soulja Boy Kalou, TX, because he is one of the few exceptions to the rule of 'football stars must be cunts or they wouldn't be stars'. Guess what. He isn't a star. Because of his lack of 'killer instinct'.

He's much overrated as a person. Man's always been about what's best for Frank Lampard, at the detriment of everything else. The same goes for Drogba, Terry, and every other Chelsea favourite. But you're a fool if you think anybody actually cares. You don't get to the top of sport without being a massive, massive, cunt. You just don't. You need to be selfish. You need to be greedy. You need to have a strong contempt for your fellow competitors and you need to constantly put down your teammates (either by demonstrating your superior skills or by straight out telling them to fuck off) to retain your place at the top of the tree. Otherwise you'll never make it in the world of lucrative professional sport, where ego reigns supreme. Footballers spare no thought for each other/fans/whatever. It's dressed up as 'killer instinct' or 'making the most of a short career span', but the world of sport is a morally bankrupt cesspit where everybody only thinks about themselves. It's cut-throat and cynical and if you have the tiniest little weakness in personality, if you can't be a granite wall of selfishness, it will be found out and it will harm your earning potential as well as how well you can play. How else are you going to get by in the most alpha-male dominated, testosterone abusing profession known to humanity?

He better wear 11

The two time running player of the season, at any club, should be an automatic selection unless there's somebody significantly better or injury or something like that. Binning him for Oscar was it? What was the point? As far as I'm aware he's been worse than what Mata was. Perhaps it's less apparent at Chelsea than at other clubs because there's a galaxy of other 'stars' to choose from, but a few years ago a 'luxury' player like Mata would have been accommodated for, even at Chelsea. I can't get around how lol the drive towards bits and pieces allrounders in football is. An attacking midfielder attacks. That's the whole point. You play somebody behind him who's got a high workrate and some defensive ability so that the AM can do what he's supposed to do. Why would anybody want a number 10 to waste his time learning to position himself defensively and improve his tackling; or waste his energy running up and down the pitch? Create chances, score some goals. That's all there is to it. You can add onto that the obsession with having 'ball playing' central defenders. Why on earth would a manager expect his centre back to carry the ball out of defence, ripp past half a dozen pressing opponents and then play a pinpoint long pass for the striker? Or more pertinently, how can somebody expect a centre back to be so talented in attacking skill and still be a solid defender?

That looks like something straight out of RAWK

I'd love to see these you beaut airconditioned stadiums. What a fucking pipe dream. Airconditioned stadiums what next, the 2026 tournament will be played on Neptune?

Lukaku is a fantastic player (I never got the sudden insistence that strikers need to be good at anything other than scoring goals) but if I had a chance to sign Pogba I'd give away everything I owned. Mind, if Chelsea sign him, then the list of Chelsea midfielders will read miles long: Pogba, Fabregas, Ramires, Hazard, Mikel, Oscar, van Ginkel, Willian, Matic, Atsu. Not counting those on the fringes of the first team like Chalobah. That's way too many.

Alvaro Recoba is a pretty good shout. Amazing player but so inconsistent.

He wanted to succeed Ferguson, that much was clear. Having to settle for Chelsea was obviously very disappointing for him early doors.

I would say that Chelsea failed more in the transfer market than on the pitch. There wasn't enough money, or it wasn't being used properly in the years between Mourinho leaving and Villas-Boas being appointed. The squad needed some improvements to compete with that amazing Man United team and instead the only notable additions were Malouda, Anelka, and Bosingwa. The three definitely had their moments but weren't consistently performing. Also some key players left and weren't replaced, such as Makelele.Those four-five years saw a slowly ageing and declining team getting beaten by an insanely strong United team. That was when money was really needed.

I agree with what you're saying but sport isn't business. You can't expect a fixed return on investment, spending £1bn doesn't mean a club needs to win x amount of trophies to justify the expenditure. Looking at money spent and coming to a conclusion from that; that a team has under or overachieved, can be very misleading. Money spent doesn't mean money well spent - I think we can all agree that the likes of Chelsea, Man City, PSG and AS Monaco have at times spent very poorly. A team with fewer resources but a stronger transfer strategy would outperform a team with bottomless pockets being wasted on Fernando Torres or Roque Santa Cruz. Also you have to consider that Chelsea and friends would all have had to pay way over the odds for players as selling clubs know and exploit the well endowed transfer budgets of the noveau rich. For exampe, Man City, if I remember right, were being held to ransom by AC Milan for Kaka but they eventually let him go to Real for a substantially lower fee.