The only place to be

84% pass completion, 4 interceptions and a team high 7 tackles for the people who care about stats. Looked like he gave a shit about his club, his teammates and the supporters for 90 minutes for the people who care about such things.

He needs a commitment to play him, and he needs good players around him. That means the best place might be here, but it could be bumpy along the way and there's no guarantee that it will work out. The other option is to send him on a long-term loan or sell him but include a buy-back clause. That gives a club the chance to build around him over time which he needs. He's a fairly unique player and that has a fairly unique set of issues.

Are you fucking kidding me? How is that in any way, shape or form important? We probably need to start with the same team that started the semi-final. Mikel needs to step up his game, but I expect Mata to have a biggie too.

Sorry, how do you know for certain?

1. The post is still there for you to read. 2. It's okay - you didn't need to answer. 3. Actually Choulo's original post was a question. He asked Why should the lives of people in Boston be worth more than those in Syria, or Mali or Bahrain or Somalia...etc? despite the fact that he almost certainly understood 'why' the story was given greater prominence and knew exactly the type of response he'd get. 4. Again, I agree to a certain extent and actually referenced it in my original post. 5. Post is still there.

He spent £200 million on players, including arguably the second best player in the world, and was knocked out of the Champions League by Lyon. This is not a fair analysis of a manager, but a love letter. When you skirt over serious issues like his complete lack of experience on the Premier League with 'he's experienced enough to adapt' and don't actually acknowledge that there is a real issue with not understanding the rigours of our league, you undermine the rest of your points.

I don't hate him - I love him. Behind Drogba, Lamps, Ashley and Cech this guy was probably our best player in Munich.

Sorry, I probably didn't make it clear. News companies have a financial component. Say you get a newspaper - you have to actually hand over some money for it right (yes I'm aware there are free dailies, and I'll come to that)? Then when you look inside, there's advertisements right? Well companies pay to have their ads in the newspaper. Now advertisement costs increase based on circulation (and other things, but let's keep it simple). Ergo, news companies want as many readers as possible so they give greater prominence to stories that appeal to their readership and that is a complex equation based on numerous factors. That is how market realities impact on journalism. Marketing is not journalism though.

He's 59 and the only thing of note he's won is the Intertoto Cup, and he doesn't know the league either. Scolari mk.2.

I don't mean to sound cruel, but that's adorable. You think there's a distinction.....awwww. For better or worse, the people who watch these stations tend to have a closer cultural relationship with America and in particular places like Boston. It might sound facile, but British runners were involved in this event. Beyond that, people have a cultural awareness of Boston through films, tv, music, literature, sports etc. It's different for Iran/Pakistan etc. on the whole.

Actually it's you who doesn't seem to know shit about journalism. You don't go with the story that is most current. That would be moronic. You go with the one that holds the most interest for your readers/viewers. Things like photos are important too, as are relationships to existing storylines. I'm sorry that the news has a commercial aspect to it (even if it's publicly funded) but that's the way the world works.

The stories that will drive more traffic to the site. In fact the most shared story is this one, about double yellow lines in an alleyway - but that's just what us imperialist pigdogs care about. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-22158829

He played the first-half and about 15 minutes of the second-half against Man City. He played just the second-half against Rubin. When you're talking about Mikel's bad performances, you have to be specific which one you're referring to.

And that's not what you wanted when you posted in this thread? Give it a rest. Oh look, those people are getting lots of attention. I don't understand why....it's all so confusing to me. You're not an idiot so don't act like one. You knew exactly what you were doing and you knew the answers to the questions you were asking. If you want to moan about someone, moan about someone like me. I watch the news and the ads in between are targetted at people like me. Unfortunately I'm going to tune in to events that impact people that look like me. You want to know what people like me see when we see people blown up at Marathons? Asics trainers, Adidas windcheaters - I own those and there were people wearing similar things being knocked down by the force of the explosion. People sadly (or not) watch news that impacts on their lives, or on people like them. IEDS in marketplaces in Syria or Iraq are anathema to my way of life. It's not something I have to imagine, so why would I sit through the ads waiting for the next update on a story about that? Now you already knew all this, yet you still asked. When we won the league in 2010, did you ask people why the winners of the Syrian, Iraqi, Pakistan or whatever's league wasn't getting the same media attention? Isn't that unfair, or were you able to understand how the media works in that instance?

They aren't worth more - we just care more in this country about them because we have deep cultural ties with America. In fact America and Britain simply garner more attention in the news because they have a greater cultural reach. I'm sorry if this is the first you're learning of this, since in a thread about a possible terrorist attack your confusion reached such proportions that you felt compelled to ask such a question whilst bodies were still being dragged off the streets, but that's simply the way the modern world works. It's much like the way people from Lebanon spend time on forums talking about English Premier League teams - our lives, our culture simply have an attraction. It's why people take an interest in them around the world and also why some people want to attack them.

I actually think you have a good point. When he was last 'in-form' he was simply doing the basics a little better, but our expectations of him were so low that it excited us all a little. Now he actually seems to be doing better than that. There's a little spark that hasn't been there in all of his time at Chelsea. However, that doesn't mean that he's back. Hopefully this just makes him a little more attractive to prospective buyers, and even if he leads us to Europa League glory with a hat-trick in the final I'd still be inclined to want him out.

I think you, and a couple of others, are blind to his character problems. We need people who will fight for this club every time they put on the shirt. We need people who are leaders and will make players around them better. How people can what this guy representing the club they profess to support when he shows such disdain for the badge is beyond me. The funny thing is that you guys defend him and he repays you by putting in such disgraceful performances....and then you continue to defend him. :lol2: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2:

He benefitted from the defensive set-up we used against Bayern (and Barca) but it's stupid to think we're going to play like that anymore. That performance is also horrendously overrated by his supporters considering they keep saying his job is to protect the back four. Here's a little secret about that game - we got lucky. Bayern created over 30 chances and if you play that game 100 times, we get beaten 99 times. He's not Chelsea material at the end of the day. We need leaders in the spine of the team, not passengers.

Which second-half? The Rubin one?

But these are problems years in the making. Torres cost us around £100 million in total, so he needed every chance to prove himself before we wrote him off. This meant Lukaku wouldn't have got that many games, so he went on loan and now we have one of the hottest young strikers in European football ready to come into the squad next season (fingers crossed). It's just another of the results of a lack of long-term planning. Now there seems to be some direction in the club in terms of recruiting and developing young players which simply wasn't there (and if it was, it wasn't good enough) even 12 months ago. Look at the Josh situation - he could've been loaned out at the start of the season and tried to win a place in a team, but AVB kept him around because he said he'd use him and by the time he went to Swansea their team was settled. Now we have 23-24 players out on loan and some will come back next season, whilst others will spend another season on loan probably joined by the likes of Lewis Baker, Nathan Ake and possibly Islam Feruz. We talk about this conveyor belt of talent, but we've had to repurpose the machine that is Chelsea Football Club in a very short period of time and that's obviously going to be uncomfortable and have a number of mishaps along the way. But I'd rather a short, sharp pain than a long drawn out death (hello Liverpool).

Because God forbid fans could watch a player over a number of years and come to a conclusion independently. He's done well in his last few games and I doubt he'd give you many performances that were less than 7/10-type performances. But we need a guy who gives 9/10 performances because we're a top team. That's why he'll make a grand squad player.

But didn't Lukaku need that loan? Weren't people calling him a flop last summer?

I'm sure he could choose to spend 4 years in the reserves, wasting his peak playing years but even my opinion of him isn't so low that I'd think he'd do it. He may well have a squad position next year anyway, but I think we need a real DM like Khedira to become a real force in England. I criticised Rami in the past, but he's put in some excellent shifts and never let us down. Mikel let us all down on Thursday and did nothing to rectify it yesterday. I don't know if the character issues he has can be fixed, especially at his age.