The only place to be

You said we were shit after about 6 minutes.

A cynical person might suggest that Rafa benefits personally more from a photo holding a cup than a top-four finish. I agree we should've picked a stronger team against QPR.

These Demba Ba puns are shit - Some of you really need to raise the Ba and that goes for all of you, Ba none! Lukaku's starting for West Brom against QPR and Chalobah is starting for Watford at Man City. No McEachran in the Boro squad today. Kane starting for Preston against Millwall.

Pretty much the team we should've played against QPR in midweek, bar ba (black sheep!). Ba needs to score goals so he can't be dropped and I'm looking for Luiz to have a massive game after a slightly disappointing one against QPR. Nice to see Ashley made captain too and hopefully this is an overture to get him to sign an extension.

Starting today against Man City. Be a good chance to gauge just how well he's adjusting.

Cech's contract runs unti 2016 so we're going to have a real problem at some point. Would be absurd to sell one of the most promising young keepers around to Barca, but at some point he's going to want a bit of certainty with his career.

That's almost exactly the team I'd like to see. Luiz looks like he needs a breather to be honest, but Mata and Hazard look nailed-on to start, Ba is ready to go and I want to see Oscar play deeper. If Moses and Mikel aren't available then I'd go for Marin and Luiz.

I said this at the time. It's a tough enough time without the captain wading in and making such emotive statements at this time. Leave it to the end of the season. Although I suspect his actions had nothing at all to do with his own contract about to enter it's final year.

This comparison between Lamps and Torres and their contract situations has been brought up a few times and it's rubbish. It's not like the club decides at the end of each week how much a player should be paid based on their contribution. Torres is overpaid, but it's hard to do anything about that if he doesn't want to renegotiate. I expect that if Torres was coming to the end of his contract it wouldn't be renewed either. But we're stuck with him unless someone comes in with a bid of about £20 million. I agree that getting rid of Cole is a bit daft though. He's still one of the premier players in his position and would cost a lot to replace unless Bertrand steps up. JT is becoming ever more injury-prone which isn't surprising, and he has a ton of baggage too. I expect him to leave at the end of next season. The simple fact is that players don't go on forever, but clubs do. We've lost great players before and we'll lose great players in the future, but I think the club is doing a sterling job of going about replacing them. It's not inconceivable that we go from a spine of Cech, Terry, Lampard and Drogba to Courtois, Chalobah, McEachran and Feruz. We could create new legends for fans who haven't even been born yet to treasure, but for something new to take root something old has to move on.

I think he's good at scouting teams and breaking down their gameplans for players and coaches to understand. I think he's awful with people. Managed to piss off so many people at the club and still wanted some credit for our successes last year. But I'll give him credit for spotting Romeu for us, and if that ain't worth £13 million I don't know what is.

I can't imagine we'd sign many 20 year old unproven players from the second division in Spain. A highly-rated young midfielder from the best team in the world on other other hand.... But I'll give him credit for that one.

Because transfers at big clubs are done by committee - the same probably applies at clubs like Spurs too. I actually think he is a good scout, but I don't think many of the signings made at clubs he's been at in this country and involved him a huge amount.

Prat.

How does signing a player that you've known of for 5 years make AVB a good scout?

I've not seen anything that suggests Roman is the cunt you think he is. In fact I think it's massively unfair. Lamps isn't a young man anymore. He's going to be 35, he's not the player he once was and we have a number of youngsters who are going to be pushing for a spot in the team. What more do you actually want?

That's not what she told me......BOOM!! Sorry.

Makes sense - Torres does play like a Donkey.

It's both. Even if we ignore the money side, there's always the point that Roman might want to move on to a new era and make a break with the old one. Sometimes age and experience is a good thing to have around, and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it can be a barrier to change. I'm not saying that's definitely the case here, but it's a possible factor.

He was probably in the wrong place - based on his positioning skills at City, that isn't unlikely.

How is it ruthless? He signs a contract for a certain number of years, he's well paid and looked after during them and then the contract comes to an end. That's how a lot of people spend their working lives. Both parties will then move on and in a few year's time he'll probably come back and be part of the Chelsea family again. Hard as it may be for some to believe, this club did exist before 2001.

I really don't want to think our captain is trying to play 'angles' on social media in order to get the board to sign up certain players. That seems a tad bit unprofessional if you ask me. Pay tribute to a guy when he's leaving, but JT seems to be going by newspaper rumours.

We've been going for value for about two years now - Cahill, Azpi, Moses, Mata and now Ba. This could have a great effect on the team because he'll just do the basics and keep defenders honest which creates space for people behind him.

Good news. We've got a nice run of games for him to establish himself in the team.

Stoke Away Southampton Home Arsenal Home in 8 days? Then I look forward to Mata being rested and Lambert scoring a 79th minute winner.

We don't officially retire numbers, but Zola's hasn't been used since he left and I doubt JT's will be either. If I had to guess, I'd say it won't be issued to a player next season and someone will have to win it. I'd love for that to be Josh.