Thomas Williams

Why not Kalas? Azpilicueta is EXTREMELY overworked, and almost all of his bad performances can be attributed to absolute fatigue. He hustles all game long and doing 2 games a week for several weeks is doing him more harm than good. From what I've seen of Kalas he's more than ready to handle our capital one/bottom table opponents, and with our 60 + game schedules, he could easily see 20-25 games a year as well as training with the team, and Ivanovic could always be a cover if one got injured. I kind of like the idea of Kalas competing with Azpi for minutes. The only sad thing is they are both such quality young RB's that I'd hate to see one hold back the other, although I think it would be good for the season and free. ....I'll stop derailing the thread.

Benfica were quite good, but that was expected by me at least. They aren't a Basel/Sparta Prague, they are UCL quality just like we are. I'm glad we had the character to beat them even though the team is obviously on its last legs after such a grueling season. Chelsea FC certainly has had some dramatic finishes as of late, glad they're finally starting to turn in our favor.

I think he's very underrated in the air,and probably one of the best last ditch tacklers in current football. That said he can be caught ball watching a lot and can certainly make a goal-costing mistake. I'm surprised he and Luiz don't make a better combination, with David pressuring earlier and Cahill defending the aerial and last second balls. Edit: I suppose it's because they're both so error prone, that if they both make a mistake then it's a guaranteed goal against us. My favorite CB pairings are Luiz and Ivanovic/terry or if Luiz can't play Cahill and Ivanovic. Still believe Cahill will only be a squad player for us, although one of the best squad CB's in the league if you ask me. It's a shame because he would be a sure starter at midtable team and would probably develop better with more regular playing (and having a regular CB partner).

I'm sure he meant if Lampard get's the deal! English idioms are difficult for those learning the language, so I can understand the confusion in "goes through" and "falls through." Perhaps you know, being Israeli yourself?

Most hated who doesn't deserve our hatred----------------- QPR Most hated because of history---------------------------------- Leeds Most hated in London-------------------------------------------- Tottenham (can't bring myself to hate the luckless arses as much) Most hated personally(because they keep beating us)---- Man City Most hated for teething and general hatability---------------Liverpool Our true rivals, domestically and in Europe, the true team in my opinion to rival us in the Abramovich era in being the best team in England -----Manchester United-------

Can't hate him, I feel like he really does try for us now, it's obvious he's been putting work into his fitness as well. For some reason he's lost his true striker qualities and I think it's impossible for him to find them. I genuinely want him to succeed, both here but I'd rather him do it at another club. If he went to another league and did well, I wouldn't be infuriated, just upset that he could never do well here. I can appreciate what he's done in Europa if I don't factor in his wages/transfer fee. Honestly, if he was signed for 12 million and was on 50,000 a week wages, he'd be one of my more liked players for his hustle and goal scoring in Europe. Sadly we pay much, much more for him and he can't live up to it so I'd like the club to move on from him as soon as possible of course. Certainly can't say I hate him personally at all, even if I hate that we signed him.

I do think Luiz could become a great captain one day, but he'd have to learn from Terry and Lamps. Terry was always the perfect captain to me, like you guys said, always so passionate but seemed to be level-headed and intelligent when needed. Such a tough act to follow, but where Luiz will always shine is by showing more passion than humanly possible.

The issue is, if we put him on the squad and he doesn't deliver, we'll almost certainly bench him and severely stunt the growth he could have at another club. Putting him in Chelsea shirt would be a gamble that could definitely turn out brilliantly if he succeeds quickly but awful if he doesn't, but certainly it would be a gamble.

That being said, I'm not horribly against Lewandowski if we can get him cheap, having a star striker ALWAYS helps (united) and Lewan has proven himself in European football, which Lukaku has not. However, I will only take him in addition to sorting out our midfield, not in place of.

That's not how my football teams saw it. If you were a DM you were "defensive" but you were a part of the midfield not part of defense. I guess we're just arguing semantics at this point and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Americans did categorize it like that (so many of our sports, e.g. American Football have such clear offense and defense that we probably like to make all sports like that) But I agree with the idea of trying out Lukaku as our starting striker and just heavily investing in defense and the defensive/playmaking midfield. If Lukaku has that kind of excellent foundation, he will score and assist loads, I can promise you that (his service from West Brom borderlines on terrible sometimes IMO). I think that would make us a more sound team than buying Falcao and still having a problematic pivot and ever-aging Terry. Besides, with Azpi, Luiz, cole/bertrand and a world class CB signing, along with Cech/courtois and good DM's, who is going to score on us? mata and hazard alone could score enough to let us win, much less having the beast of Lukaku up top. Think how well we'd maintain the ball.

Saw this is an online Forbes article http://b-i.forbesimg.com/zachslaton/files/2013/04/Top-Four-Odds.png came from this article http://www.forbes.com/sites/zachslaton/2013/04/19/projected-epl-table-with-5-matches-to-go/ It predicts the final position in the EPL based off current success, but also factors in the amount paid on players and also some sophisticated modeling that includes pythagorean expectations (if you are unfamiliar it was really successful with american baseball, it basically calculates the "luck of a team" based off the goals they score an allow. E.g. Manchester United had more points than they deserved mathematically, and therefore should lose some points over time as luck tends to balance itself out). Anyway, it gave Chelsea a 90% chance of finishing top 4 a few weeks ago (week 33) when we were in a much more worrisome position imo, and I thought that prediction was bollocks- I thought we were looking at much closer to 50% considering our remaining schedule. Looking back now though, it seems Chelsea now have all but guaranteed a spot in the Champions league, so maybe all that math and such has something to it after all. It also predicted United would start dropping points, but I feel that's more easily explained by the fact they don't care anymore, lol. EDIT: In his most recent article: This now means that Spurs only have a 41% chance of finishing in the Top 4 while Arsenal sit at 66% and Chelsea have a 92% :cfc:

That tottenham forum is getting so pathetic its almost sad, they're coming up with hypothetical situations where they beat us and we "tie aston villa" I'd hate to be in a situation where I had to hope my rival team draw against a team they be EIGHT NIL back in December.

Yes, we're going to finish top 4. You heard it here last!

beating tottenham is almost guaranteed enough, but beating United certainly won't hurt

Honestly, I think Cahill has improved on not making mistakes maybe even more than Luiz. Just not as noticeable because an error free Cahill is still not on the same plane as a few error Luiz

Eh, fair enough, but I think he's been better about it in recent times. I must just remember the good things in people.

Theonlyplace to be for me as well. Very well spoken, nonaggressive, and to me he always comes off as a true supporter.

In terms of talent alone, I might be tempted to take 40 mil for a defender with as short a period of consitency as Luiz has had (he's getting there). But his intangibles and the fact that i just plain love him mean it would take way more than he's worth to pry him from my grasp, haha

I agree, with a good CDM who has the vision and discipline to effectively cover Luiz whever he makes his bursts forward, that's when I see Luiz most deadly and effective---I think in that case he's even more dangerous offensively than he is as a CDM, because the defense doesn't know what to do with him. That's why choosing our CDM(s?) this summer is p̶r̶o̶b̶a̶b̶l̶y̶ the most essential thing we do over the summer if we want to succeed next season.

Looking back now, as disappointing as our UCL performance was this year, it looks a bit more understandable now that we see the quality of the group we were in. It contained Juventus, who are well and away the best team in Italy, and only got knocked out by Bayern (in a much more respectable way than the infamous Barcelona did). Shakhtar is obviously the best in the Ukraine but also were only knocked out by what is a verryy good Dortmund team (who they managed to tie in one leg). That factored in with the fact that Chelsea was within 2 points of Juve and only lost out on away goals to Shaktar meant that Chelsea only narrowly managed to slip out of that very stacked group. Put us in any other group (except probably dortmunds) and I'm sure we would have advanced and could have definitely beat a celtic/galatasaray, etc. type team. Obviously this is very speculative and no excuse for the fact that we should have done better in our group, but I think now it seems even sillier that Roman so hastily sacked RDM. (To again reiterate, I wasn't impressed with Chelsea's performance, just think it wasn't quite as dreadful as it seemed at the time.) Makes me wonder how differently the season would have played out had we just closed out that first Juventus game (advanced in UCL, RDM not sacked.....)

Don't get me wrong fellows, I don't like the FSW nor am I glad we hired him to be our interim manager. But he has come a long way in how he has managed our squad and has improved a lot of the glaringly dumb things he used to do. Again, he is VERY far from perfect but I think we can all admit he is improving how he deals with the squad, and if he were somehow our manager next season (thank goodness he won't) I believe we would be more successful than we were under him this year. If we finish top four (especially top 3) and win the Europa he will have managed to redeem his abysmal start into some kind of mediocre but salvageable season. What I'm trying to say is when he leaves, I think it's fine for us all to dislike him, but considering how bad he started and how awfully our fans treated him for months,the fact that he has managed to improve to the point he has tells me that we shouldn't hate him. He could have done worse and I always want to be fair when fairness is deserved. Hoping and praying for Mou next season, but I'm glad Rafa didn't crash our season as bad I thought he was going to.

You sure? Garay starts for the Argentinian national team and has been very strongly linked with United and other big clubs, he will be a top 10 CB in the world some day IMO (he's only 25 or 26 I think?) Their fullbacks are much weaker in my opinion, Their left back in particular, I forget his name, but although he looked very pacy and decent in attack, is only 23 and didn't seem the best at defending from what I've seen (not much.)

I wish we would have subbed him out earlier, I want him to be in full form when he plays United! I feel like a lot of times it is Luiz's form that makes or breaks our team, do you guys ever get that feeling as well?

Don't worry, I don't think Rafa cares too much for old Frank, anyway, Frank played all game today. It will be almost certainly mikel and Ramires in the pivot.

I couldn't agree more, it's a shame though. I'm sadly almost certain that between this and the whole Swansea debacle that it's undeservedly cost him the chance to ever play in our starting 11. Hope I'm wrong though.