The only place to be

Good article It's that stat about first or only goals in matches that's always astounded me. He scores important goals in matches, and that's what you'd have thought we might struggle to replace but Juan Mata seems to have stepped up in that regard. If Lamps does leave this season, then it's arguably as poetic a way to go out as Drogba's was in May.

Not really much of a story in the Mail, but this line did make me smile. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2295131/Neymar-snubs-Manchester-City-sets-sights-Barcelona-Real-Madrid-Chelsea-move.html 'I dream of playing in Europe, for a big club like Barcelona, Real Madrid and Chelsea. Poor City, not getting a mention.

Number 5 on that list always leaves me in tears. We've always created emotional moments at this club, but that was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen a sportsman do. The amount of bottle, heart and soul that took is something only a handful of people in any sport could do.

The question is whether we should be committing close to £100 million to him when we have needs in other areas. Personally I'm not sure we do need an 'out and out goal machine' when we've never really needed one in the past. I've always thought we were at our best when we had goals throughout the team and let's not forget we won two league without a 15 goal a season striker (incidentally we'll probably have two of those next season).

The most satisfying thing was actually the clean sheet for me. There's still that nagging fear in the back of my head that we could ship two goals when we've got a two-goal lead but we held on yesterday despite having to make a shuffle. And the changes made sense. I said to my mate that I hoped he brought on Mikel for a bit of protection and a minute later he did. The best thing i can say is that it felt like an old-fashioned (circa 2005) Chelsea win, although with a bit more clnical finishing it could've easily have been 5 or 6 goals to us. It must be noted that West Ham were poor and missing some key players, which allowed us to totally dominate the midfield without having to worry too much about them hitting us. A better team would've taken advantage of the lack of midfield protection. I'd also ignore Carroll's dominance in the air - no he isn't worth £35 million but the guy is still one of the biggest aerial threats in the league. On his day he can dominate any defence and sometimes you just have to throw your hands up and accept he's going to win a fair few headers. What you have to do is cut them off at source (which we didn't do quite enough of, especially late on when some players got a bit lazy with tracking back) or clean up the knock-downs which we did fairly well. But a good, solid result and one that might ease the anxieties of the crowd. Hazard continues to improve (like I said he would) and is building an amazing rapport with Mata. Lamps got his 200th in the best game possible and Rami put in another hard-working shift. All in all, a great weekend. Spurs dropping points is great, but it should make everyone realise how tough that Fulham game will be for us. Could've done without Arsenal winning, but it puts more pressure on Spurs than us at this moment. A four point cushion is surmountable in this league, which does make second place a viable target for us but I think third is still the most realistic target. Despite all that, four games in eight days will probably decide our season.

Phenomenal result and another sign that we've got something special happening at our club. Beating the likes of Barca and Juventus, progressing in the Youth Cup and seeing players getting playing time on loan is all encouraging for our future. The number of times I've been impressed by Lewis Baker's impact is surprising. Thought he was a step below the likes of Feruz but he's really stepped up his game. Still not convinced he'll succeed here but if he continues the way he has been, who knows?

Tell me one day in the next decade when Lukaku playing for Chelsea doesn't come with pressure to succeed? He's a Chelsea fan who cried when he came to the stadium for the first time, and he's clearly something of a perfectionist - there is not a crowd in the world who could put the pressure on him that he will put on himself, and yet he seems to have lived up to some of those lofty expectations at West Brom. He has amazing tangible skills, but he also has the intangibles that very few pros seem to have. You have to sometimes ignore the stats (which are actually pretty impressive) and trust a guy's heart. Man United 1995-96. And can we please stop with this Arsenal comparison. Arsenal didn't get where they are by taking a chance on youngsters, they got where they are by selling their best players in their prime and buying crap replacements. We aren't doing that. Cahill is experienced. Ivanovic is experienced. Hazard is experienced. Lukaku has 20 international caps (almost) playing in a team which carries a whole nation's hopes and expectations. Azpi wasn't experienced but has turned into arguably one of most dependable players this season. Luiz is actually quite experienced despite what people might think. You know who isn't experienced in the Premier League? Falcao. Cavani. Lewandowski. I'm not going to throw the 'wet night in Stoke around', but these guys probably don't even know who Stoke are, what the stadium's like and what the pitch is like to run on. That would be the Barca team we be in the NextGen? One result doesn't prove everything but our youth setup is good and we need to start recognising that. Barca go out and but Sanchez and he's hardly set the world alight whilst Tello comes in and does a good job. In fact most of Barca's better signings are players that they let go in the first place as kids. They aren't infallible despite what the media might say.

Has the ability to be that swing striker who can do a job from wide as well as leading the line in 15-20 games, but everytime I think about that position I wonder why Moses hasn't been given a go. When he was at Wigan he excelled at playing on the break against teams who had pushed up. Then when he came to us he showed an ability to break down teams who sat deeper, beating the first man and forcing them to re-organise. I'd love to see what he could do in another position for us, running the channels and holding the ball up. Jovetic deserves a lot of credit for coming back from that injury though. It shows a lot of character to come back arguably better than you were before you got injured, but it's still a lot of money to fill a position that we arguably already have solutions in. Until we get that midfield sorted, anything else runs the risk of being superfluous decoration.

So average age wins you cups? I thought it was talent, passion, attitude and skill. Basically Lukaku's problem isn't in his feet or his heart - it's is birth certificate. If only he was older, because that's what people actually mean. They don't mean experience, because until he comes to Chelsea he'll never have the experience of playing in the Champions League. He'll never have the experience of leading the line not just for a big club, but for the club he loves. I'd buy into the bullshit about him needing more experience if the people saying it were talking about him getting a loan at a comparable club (ya know, to earn XP) and not sticking around at fucking West Brom. As for the average age, we have Cech, Cole, Ivanovic, Terry, Cahill, Luiz, Mikel, Ramires, Mata and Ba who are all around 25-33 at the start of next year. This idea that signing a 27 year old Columbian who is completely unproven in the Premier League is going to be a better bet than going with a player we already own who will probably end up on 15-20 goals in his first proper season in the league (despite limited minutes) is not something I personally agree with and I don't want to see my club going down that route again.

How many goals has Benzema scored this season? How many goals has Higuain scored this season? Isn't the answer to both 'Less than Ba and Lukaku have each scored'? Too young to do what? He's not too young to drink and he's not too young to drive (not at the same time please). Now he is too young to teach someone how to drive and he might struggle to get a loan at his age, but I doubt he needs one. The funny thing about the Premier League is that there isn't an age restriction to get in. He isn't some child who fits in football between homework and Pokemon. He's a man. Football is his job. Support him. What is that job? Scoring goals in the Premier League? Fine, name some.... Oh, I see you haven't. 10 players? Fuck no. Squad cohesion and financial responsibility play a part in my thinking. The point is that we are changing the way we handle youth and they will get more of a chance. You act like it's 2004 and we can go buy anyone we want - that ship has sailed. We're doing things differently because we have to do things differently. The good thing is we're doing pretty well. We have players like Lukaku and De Bruyne ready to come in so we don't have to spend £30 million on a player. That to me is far more exciting than seeing some 'star' come to us as an established player. I want us to make stars, not buy them.

So we sign some striker on big money who either does well and means we sell Lukaku who is a genuine Chelsea supporter and has done everything asked of him in a decent manner, or Falcao flops and we're out another £100 million. Signing Falcao is not what I'd recommend if I cared about the health of this club.

Fuck spending that much #playlukaku

Which we won't.

That's amazing - you can predict that based solely on our strikers and not making any mention of the midfield (which is the root of every single fucking problem we have right now) we might have? We can win the league with Ba and Lukaku up front, although I think we need a third similar to Kalou (could well be Moses) IF we strengthen the double pivot. We have enough goals behind the striker in my opinion, we just need a striker who does what Lukaku does. It's very easy to say we should buy a big name striker but that has implications - to our ability to spend in other areas, our promotion of young players like Lukaku and it's not without risk. We need to start doing things the right way and if we're not going do that voluntarily, then maybe we need to be forced to do it by missing out on the CL for a season. There are instances throughout sport of circumstances forcing teams to make the changes that eventually bring them success - maybe we need to be forced to do things we're too stupid/scared/timid to do ourselves.

Give the kid some fucking support. I know you love the idea of us buying every single player in the world, but saying we can't finish top 2 with a guy who shows so much already is ridiculous. He has the right attitude, he loves this club and he's scored 13 goals in his first proper season in the league. The teams you're mentioning DON'T have the goals from other areas like we do. Look at Mata and Hazard - we need a guy who runs the right lines to create space for these guys, and chips in with a dozen or so league goals. I'm fed up with the constant slighting of our youngsters. You said Chalobah wasn't ready in another thread, I asked why and I got radio fucking silence. This kid has the tools. This kid has the attitude. He needs the support and he needs a chance. But yeah, let's go buy Cavani who is UNPROVEN IN THE ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE (that's the one we play in FYI).

He's just come back from illness hasn't he?

Falcao? Isco? Modric? Benat?

Alan Pardew?

No, it's one of the idiosyncrasies of English football although it's by no means something that happens every game. That's what we already have - people start chants. We don't telepathically decide to sing Ten Men Went To Mow. If you're proposing some people actually leading the crowd in singing, I give it 3 minutes before they get called a cunt and 5 minutes before they're ducking for cover. We tried cheerleaders in the 90s in football grounds and it didn't work. This is just what English football is. On a good day it's the best atmosphere in the world but we can have periods of quiet contemplation.

What's a boo crowd?

I don't know why we haven't looked at Moses as a third striker. If we bring back De Bruyne and Piazon then that's more players for the wing, so why not just look at him for that position? I don't know if our board are that brave, but I think they might be that stupid. We have holes around the pitch that need filling and buying a 26 year old striker, unproven in the EPL to play instead of one of the brightest striking talents in the British Isles would be about 10 steps back into 2010-2011territory. People can always say Lukaku isn't the finished product because footballers never stop developing. He could realistically score 20 goals at West Brom this year and people would still say he isn't ready because he hasn't been tested at Champions League level, and that's a fair comment. But at some point you have to take the plunge. The kid has wanted to play for this club all his life and he seems to be something of a perfectionist - I guarantee that there won't be a point in time in the next 10 years when he won't put pressure on himself in his Chelsea (second) debut. But you see some people in life who just have 'it'. They step up when they need to and he seems to be one of those guys. I love what he said about the Champions League trophy because it shows he's a real winner and real winners don't put any value on unearned success, whereas cunts like Bosingwa want to make sure everyone knows they had a part in winning a trophy. Put the ball in this guy's hands and I think he'll do us proud.

It is normal in English football though, and despite what some people might think we are still an English club. It's just one of those things that makes us unique. Talking about a new stadium, it could make a big difference to the noise. Our ground isn't the best one in the world for keeping noise in to be honest. It's not as bad as it was before the mid-90s in that regard but because it's not really a unified structure it's not as good as modern stadiums. You'd also be able to get more corporate seating in which can be used to subsidise the cost of normal seating, which could remain at it's current price or even come down a bit because of increased supply. But I can pretty much guarantee that if you go on any big English club's forum, you'll see a thread like this. It's just the way English football is nowadays.

I still haven't forgiven Torres for failing to make a proper run into the box in the game at Upton Park when Azpi put in a beautiful cross when we were 1-0 up. Like fuck should he start after doing alright against some Romanian part-timers. Two interesting ideas popping up in this thread - some people saying it's destiny that Frank should score, others saying we should play our strongest team. Not entirely sure those things are compatible nowadays. If Carroll's playing I could see rafa going with Cahill and Terry, and maybe Ivanovic at right-back for set-pieces. Ba, Moses, Hazard and Mata should probably make up the front four and I think Rami and Mikel (despite being shit in the game at Upton Park in the second-half) start in the pivot. Cech Ivanovic Cahill Terry Cole Mikel Ramires Moses Mata Hazard Ba

So that makes you the Benitez's Sam Allardyce? Do you grow a dodgy moustache sometimes? Does Rafa like the way the bristles tickle his mushroom cap?

You get a like just for giving Leboeuf some love - I loved watching him when I was younger and spent a lot of time in the Shed watching him spray balls to each side of the pitch, with either foot (Terry clearly modelled that part of his game on him). I also agree that we need an elite centre-back. When I defend Cahill or Bane, I say they're good third-choice centre-backs but we need that numer-one choice to play alongside Luiz still. I'd love for it to be someone from the Academy but I haven't seen enough of Omeruo or Kalas and the rest are all some way off. Ake and Chalobah seem to be looking to play in midfield as well. The ideal guy would be Kompany but we've got fuck-all chance of getting him so we'll need to look further afield. Maybe Hummels, but again that's a long shot now. I kinda agree that we need a winger, but I think Moses, Piazon and De Bruyne need to be given next season to fight it out with Hazard nailed-on for the left-wing. But fixing the pivot is essential and we need a manager to decide what type of football we're going to play before we go into the market.