Corner

He would be a useful squad player but we already have a useful squad player at centre-back in Cahill. Don't think we really need Lescott. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't come to us even if we were interested anyway. He probably wants regular first-team football, which he wouldn't get here.

It bothers me that for the next few weeks, with Mikel gone to ACON, we have no holding midfielders. Of course, we have Ramires, Lampard and Luiz. But let's face it, none of them are true holding midfielders. We need to sign someone! I really hope the board are working on it as we speak. Someone like Capoue would be perfect. Assuming the Benat rumours are true also, Capoue, Benat + Ba would be a very good January transfer window for us.

Didn't Wenger say that whether or not Walcott signs a contract could have an effect on whether they sign any players or not? Interesting, this could either mean Walcott signed a contract or has refused to.

I'm sick of him, his 'personality' and his 'potential'. He does absolutely nothing on the pitch for 99% of the time and doesn't deserve most of the praise he gets.

Welcome! Hope you enjoy it here.

Great player but I'm not so sure about the 20m price tag. To be honest, I'm surprised Bilbao haven't tried to sign him by now.

Having a proper striker ahead of our midfield, oh yes. Sounds amazing already.

I think Juan is pretty much there already.

Of course I don't think Lampard is solely to blame for the sacking of AVB. I'm not that narrow-minded. But like I said, I just try to read between the lines, and I think it's safe to say that Lampard did play some part in it. Silly to just go with it, I don't think so. If anything, he was silly to take on the job and the task he was giving. I'm sure he had one look at the abilities of the squad we had and knew it would be difficult. But he's a young manager and he had a lot to prove, so I can understand why he took it over. 'Explain it to our board'. There is no explaining to our board. If history has taught us anything, you do what they ask in a short amount of time with no compromises or you get sacked. RDM knew playing such open and attacking football at the start of the season would make us leak goals, but he persisted. I think it's safe to say he knew he had no other hand and had to play the one the board had given him.

I don't understand this. Since I first began supporting Chelsea, we now have a completely different squad, manager and board. But I still love the club as much as I did back then, if not more.

I do agree but you could also argue that it works both ways between players and manager. But it's vital that there's some degree of trust. And we can only speculate about what actually happened behind the scenes. It's possible that AVB explained things to Lampard about his team selections but Lampard's ego was just too big to handle it which led to the inevitable. I'm not saying I believe this, but it's possible. I try to read between the lines before I believe anything the media spurts out. Once again, I completely agree. But you can't overlook the fact that AVB was brought in to play that style of play and was told to do so. We could even say forced. But he wasn't given the players with the necessary abilities to carry this out. You can't heap the blame on AVB for this. It was terrible decision making by our board.

I agree to some extent. Managing players in the right manner is important but they're not a bunch of 10 year-old kids. And Lampard is an extremely intelligent individual. So intelligent that I'm pretty sure he knew exactly what he was doing and once he started to 'speak up' the effects it caused within the squad were massive. And this eventually led to the sacking of AVB. Of course, AVB made some tactical errors along the way but I don't view him as a dreadful manager like a lot of people seem to. He was instructed to play with younger players and that's what he did. I still think AVB was the way forward for us but unfortunately things got in his way. And one thing I still like about him... he cares. When his team scores, he celebrates more than half of the players. He's very tactically aware but a lot of the players either weren't willing to play to his tactics or could not understand them.

I voted for @Leif as I probably liked more of his comments than any other member's this month. But all of above posters have been great over the past month and are some of my favourite posters on here.

God, I hope he's not having problems with the medical because of his knee, which would explain the lack of any announcement.

Wow. That is really upsetting.

Sign him up!

Who would buy Torres for 60m? I doubt even Anzhi or Zenit would be that stupid.

Agree with all of that. And it's possible he was receiving orders from above, but it's unlikely. If you look back at the pre-match thread you'll actually see that I was one of the few people saying we need to field a full-strength team, which is why everyone calling for Rafa's head because of his rotation is annoying me. Those same people were wanted to see rotation for match as well. To be honest, I don't care too much about cups this season. I would love if we won them, but I'm more worried about setting ourselves up for next season. In other words, getting ourselves into a CL spot and preparing for when we actually have a full-time manager.

I can understand people's anger towards Rada, of course I can. I was angry with the team he fielded last night. And I agree that the league is top priority for us. But wishing to see the club you support lose? That's crossing the line and it's something I will never be able to understand.

Rafa resting both Mata and Hazard was a mistake, and it cost us the game. But what really annoys me is that the line-ups most people on here posted before the game, the line-ups they wanted to see, had an attacking midfield trio of Oscar, Moses and Marin (the exact trio that Rafa played). A lot of people saying 'we need to rotate players' etc. But after the match they're willing to say Rafa is an idiot and should be sacked. You can't get much more hypocritical than that. All of those people called it wrong, just like Rafa. The people who said we needed to field a strong 11 are the people who have the right to criticize Rafa here.

Except for scoring 5 goals and being our top scorer in the CL. So you're willing to ignore the obvious potential he has to be one of the best players in the world, because he has had a few bad games?

That's a disgraceful attitude to have.

He's so bad that he makes you angry? (I've also never seen him play).

Likely ins: - Demba Ba. Fuck yes.

His knees are fine!