Barbara

this referee is a clown

as if Moses could ever be talented enough to perform this first touch. AS IF

I love Begovic

Fabregas assist, this is how it's supposed to be

of course he is, that list had X in only 12 players, Courtois being the only bench player... what the fuck was that unnecessary tackle on Willian. Liverpool and Moreno can fuck off. Damned scouses

I know he's injured and this is only pre-season, but what a joy it is to see the lineup with Ivanovic's name nowhere around it

This has been an odd match thread... to say the least. An hour to go. I'm so excited. I hope we get to see a formation closer to what Conte has in mind for the season with the available players.

I agree, but I'm talking strictly about Chelsea here. I don't think Kalidou himself will pick Everton over Chelsea (don't believe they're offering him better wages than we are). Also, who's to say there's a bidding war going on anyway? Sometimes agents spread rumors themselves to make things go their way. If Everton turn this into a bidding war, then good on them, we can move on and find another target. If they decide to pay more than our 38M it means they're willing to pay almost as much for a defender than what they're supposedly getting for Stones. It doesn't look to me they're be willing to do that. They prefer to invest in players they can develop instead of breaking club fee records

There's a thing called honor. Men are supposed to honor their word. If the club said 36.6 at first, then that's the valuation they should follow. Napoli and Laurentis also sign players, so I don't think they want to start going back on their word.If the report was correct and they asked for that much and now we've reached it and they still won't let him go, that's dishonoring their own word, it has nothing to do with de Laurentis being a tough cookie to crack.

If previous reports said Napoli set the price at 36.6£ and we're now offering 38 and the player wants to leave I don't believe Napoli will back out. The Higuain deal has been cooked for as long as this one has, if not longer, so I don't think it should influence the price now Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk

I'm ready!!!! Forgive me but I just got into social media a decade late, so I couldn't resist

I'm sorry about the ignorant on Conte's account I really stretched the ignorant directed to Style's comment to Conte, my bad. But here, at least the post I quoted, I was under the impression you meant it's pretty difficult to be efficient on both attack and defense and as such we should prioritize defending. But I said I understood where you were coming from because indeed it can be difficult to achieve both, I just think we have to at least try. I'm sorry I misinterpreted your posts twice. Can we link pinkies together? I 've missed the forum too and you're definitely one of the posters I've missed the most - if not the very one. I always learn something with your insightful posts about football. Hopefully I'll have the time to be around after vacation is over, with Chelsea playing basically only on weekends I think it'll be also easier to follow everything.

how did I miss this post? You're completely right, if we can't get the defenders we desperately need, we might as well get the attackers.

Actually I meant we need a LB, we have a RB problem because IVa is stealing Azpi's position there. I don't think Baba is reliable at all at this point,maybe some day he will, but not yet imo. So we need a LB because I'm do damn tired of seeing Azpi limiting his crosses and link with attacking players even further because he's playing in the wrong side of the pitch. Damn it, at this point I don't even know if he knows how to properly attack as a LB, we've ruined his development and growth in the attacking aspect of his game by throwing him in the LB. As for Zouma I read him and Conte talking about six weeks more, but then I don't know if that's for him to start training normally or to actually be cleared to play. So maybe you're right about the timeline.

And they were all true, mate. Have they or have they not ended in their beloved 4th position? Without us to steal it from them and Spurs doing what they do best, they even went further than usual last season. But they're right on track. They're consistent, they always bring what they need to reach their goals. You can argue many things about Arsenal, but their ability to reach their goals season after season ain't one of them. They're perfect on this. Look their record at that 4th place. They just keep bringing the key pieces to finish their puzzle season after season. I really don't like this kind of assessment Blue_Fox and I totally agree with Styles, although I respect it because I know about the difficulty to achieve it, but I think that we can and should aim for much more than we produced offensively. Conceding a couple more goals in the odd match is completely acceptable (key word is odd, not the routine we became), but a team that doesn't know how to attack in an expertly way can't get too far. Not anymore. We were in a complete and desperate drought of attacking effectiveness. We all know Mourinho left the attacking players do whatever they wanted. Hazard using his talent, Costa his strength and heart, Willian his pace and work rate and using Cesc as a creative outlet. We relied upon their natural abilities and efforts to create anything. That's just too little, too shy and even unacceptable. The way Mourinho overlooked the need of drilling, organizing and training our offensive phase properly, leaving it to players' individuality was terrible and Guus couldn't make any magic arriving at the middle of such a terrible season (don't think he was the guy to have changed that intrinsic mentality around either). Now we have a manager that is clearly bothered about how we 'attack' and approach games. We need solidness in the back, so we can play and dare in the attack. That's why I'm saying we need strong names to build our defense, but that definitely isn't because I'd rather score one-two goals and concede none, absolutely not. Because we need this solidness so the guys up there can do their thing and execute Conte's attacking ideas. When was the last time we looked to Chelsea and could see the manager's attacking ideas exposed there in a tactical way? I honestly can't remember. FSW had some ideas, and I don't like them much better than I liked Mourinho relying on players' individual talent either as I think the Mata-centered team exposed us too much and unnecessarily, but we could see patterns of movements then, players knowing exactly where and what they were supposed to be and do. That's four seasons ago and even then, a poor choice that still was better than we had in recent years simply because there was a plan, not matter how badly thought the plan was. So, I've been very disappointed on our attacking approaches and tactics for the last few years (the only time it wasn't bad was the first few months when we won the league, when Mourinho actually had a good plan, that was mainly helped by having all stars aligned in the universe and our players shining in ways they haven't before, but the first sign of defense fragility, he preferred to give up on his attacking plans and go back to his comfort zone of drilling exhaustively the defensive aspect. He - and we - never looked back after that) . The only reason why I'm not overly concerned about this now is 1 - Conte has a completely different view of football and you can say it's giving him the creeps to see how our players mechanically behave in a defensive way - although they defend pretty badly, 2 - I see our attacking players flourishing under a manager with a different view 3 - I really have faith in Conte, Eden, Willian, Cesc, Diego, Barb'shuayi, Traoré, RLC to have a great season., but we need to fix our attack even more desperately than we need to fix our defensive problems, the difference is that I believe we have the minimum human material to fix the attack, while we are very needing of defensive players to fix our defensive moves.

CB=LB>CB2>ST>MD(AM/DM). That's the short answer. But I can't stop here, objectiveness is boring. we need someone to replace Ivanovic more than we need air. While I think Conte will keep Aina training with the main team, I don't think he'll throw him there now. Then we desperately need CBs. We are a Terry injury away of being left with a partnership between Cahill and Iva himself (at this point Iva just ruins everything). Zouma will take around six more weeks to recover, we don't have a clue of how he'll come back and it's very, very, very usual for players that have his injury to be way too cautious when they come back and while sometimes it lasts a little while, I've seen players that were never the same simply because they don't seem to trust their knees anymore and feel scared of another ligament injury. Being as big as he is, I think Happy will take a little while to feel comfortable on his knees again. So we might have a way-too-cautious Zouma, a slow Terry and two awful backups. It could jeopardize all our plans in all honesty. If we're playing with two strikers, we definitely need one more. Costa and Barb'shuayi are nailed starters imo and Remy while a very good striker, had way too many injury problems with us, started an affair (or is it a marriage) with the offside line and as much as I love Traoré and I want him to stay, Costa is also prone to injury, so we could be left with Barb'shuayi and Traoré at any point, which isn't bad per say, but Barb's is going to be new at the league and having more strikers is never a bad idea. I don't know why these guys seem to get more injured than the other position. After we address all that, I think we could reinforce our attacking midfield. Hazard is probably going to be on his best. Mourinho's passive-aggressiveness, hot-cold treatment of him and completely lack of training, drilling and guiding leaving the kid to do his thing hit Hazard badly. Of course, Eden is to blame too, but I expect him to have a good season. I'm positive Willian will pick up from where he left off last season, and with this we have both wings covered with backups that aren't my favorite, but Kenedy (if he stays), Pedro and RCL can do some work there. Pedro improved towards the end of the season, so maybe he's better adapted. And there's Cesc. I don't know where Conte is going to use him, but he's our most creative player (I know you don't like him, but he can be useful at certain kinds of games). One between Moses and Cuadrado - for my complete despair - is probably staying too. Finally, I expect Matic and Kanté to have great seasons. Matic is probably fresh and Oscar and RLC could be replacements, and even Mikel (unbelievable) as I don't think he's going anywhere. If we were willing to spend, spend, spend I think we could get Kalidou, and then one between Manolas/Lindelof, some striker (I don't like any of the names we're linked to), than Mahrez, Witsel, Naingolan (although that ship sailed) and why not Griezmann lol lol lol. Kidding on the last part. It's not that I think we should settle for our attacking from last season, it's just I truly believe the lads will be on their best version again under Conte and maybe even improve further more. Hazard and Willian at their bests and Cesc being used as a creative man in some sort of matches, serves us well imo.

I wouldn't mind him here, it just doesn't look like the board wants to splash money like it used to, so if Conte really gets the numbers (4-5), I don't think he'll get all the names and in such scenario I don't see us breaking the bank for a position that while needed isn't one of our biggest issues. Which just tells a bit about how much rebuilding this team needs. It's not that don't need am efficient attacking mid, it's just we need other positions mroe.

Happy for you man, losing the phone is a headache. Cheers

And I didn't say I don't care and I didn't take anything personally I just don't understand what you doing because you just post some things that are very weird. and I'm not questioning your loyalty to the club I just don't understand why you say some of the things you do here like hoping Mourinho's United beat us, but to each their own, this is just a weird thing to post on a Chelsea forum Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk

I just received a full and detailed report. If it was productive I would screencap the whole thing, but it's Portuguese. So this guy is a kid I started working with very recently (recording a Chelsea podcast), and when we were recording it I really enjoyed his views on the sport, we basically agreed on every assessment we did about the points raised by the anchor, so despite knowing the kid for a very short time, he seems like a reasonable person and seems to understand a lot about football. So let's test my summarizing abilities (lol, as if I have any). The Gabi kid is vain - in a Ronaldo way - he cares a lot about his physical image, but he isn't arrogant as the others pointed out, he wants to look pretty and love himself. I don't know among you lads, but among us - girls - those are very standard things He didn't leave Santos yet because he didn't want, he wants to develop further, but also wants a bigger price tag as he owns 20% of himself (LOL, that's so funny). So 20% of the bid goes to himself, 40% to his agent and 40% to Santos. Don't ask me how players buy themselves, but they do somehow. That's some weird Brazilian culture. So he's enjoying his time at Santos,trying to learn as much as he can, but also trying to get as much money from the transfer as possible. Playing he's much better than Walcott according my trusted new source and is comparable to Solanke (<3) being only one year older. Leftie, who shoots pretty well with both feet, he's adaptable, having played as a #9 for most of his career, but recently switched to second striker and AM positions and flared very well on both. He's also very versatile, being capable of playing in all attacking positions and tactical roles with a certain easiness (doesn't mean he aces them all). He's very talented, his dribbles are the same sort of Neymar's (that's a loose comparison related only to style, not quality). His preferred and best side to play (as AM, 2nd striker) is the right - which would be very welcomed at Chelsea after years of having players who do better in the left, but play in the right for us detracting some of their best potential). Despite being small, he's strong for his size and age and has been working on his work rate - which is still precarious as he still very bad in the defensive/marking/closing defensive gaps aspect of the game,but he's very willing to go back and help his team mates (I believe at age 19 that's already good enough). Deficiencies: heading, small height, temper. He's known for getting angry easily when things get hot, showing that he still has a way to go mentally. The temper/mental aspect I think could be worked on, after all the kid is still 19. As usual in life, you don't need to know everything, you just need to know the right people So I cosign with everything my mate reported me, even if I don't know him for long and you can quote me in those things when the guy comes to Europe. Worth mentioning, there's another Gabriel who's also very, very very good. Gabriel Jesus.

Well, according to my sources (:P they're still better than the DM, Sun and Mirror) the kid is talented, technical, killer instinct ,but already has an arrogant attitude about himself (not as bad as Lukaku though) thinking he's something very special. He's small, but fast, and in a sense could be compared to Walcott. He could develop into a very good player, but he isn't on the level to move to big team yet. Discussing with my boys, we came to the conclusion it'd be good for his career to go to one of the three Portuguese teams, a medium team in Spain or maybe even a big in Italy and see how he develops after it. I don't know anything myself, as I stated before, but I've never rated Theo, so I don't think I'd rate Gabriel either. Also his picture when you google him is ridiculous, omg, he has terrible styling(footballers normally do these days). Between the three guys I asked, only one thought maybe he could come to Chelsea, the other two don't think it'd be good for Chelsea (or the kid). Unfortunately I start working in a week from now, and God knows how my life will be after vacation is over. I hope to make some time to be around more often. Dude, I really don't have a problem with you, I swear, I even got along with you while I used to post, but seriously, what are you still doing here? I don't mean as a Chelsea fan, but in the forum. You seem delighted with the possibility of Conte having trouble with the board or vice-versa, you want Mourinho's team to beat Chelsea to punish players that Mourinho himself brought here and who Mourinho himself burned bridges with when he started behaving in an improper way, you're more active in Mourinho's thread than you seem to be in the rest of the forum. So I ask again, what are you still doing here - picking silly discussions and collecting people to dislike you? Of course, I'm not kicking you out (don't have the power or even the will to do that), I'm just questioning what's the point of come here to post about this kind of stuff. You're making no friends with such statements and it's very clear to everyone how you feel about Mourinho, what Chelsea and Mourinho did to each other last year and the current team and manager. Maybe you could take a break from the forum. And talking about naive, let me tell you something, managers - let alone head coaches - don't have such things on their contracts about transfers. They could have a line or two mentioning they must have a saying in new contracts, but in a club with loan culture such as Chelsea, it's really irrelevant. Less and less managers have this power in football nowadays, as their tenure are shorter and shorter . Clubs keep making investments in the kind of people they hire to make part of their boards, and there's a reason for that. Suggesting that Conte or anyone else should have such a clause in their contract is beyond naive... which is ironic. It's not only his propaganda of what he did to those players, but how some of them were picked by him and he had the ability to develop them into those talents they became. He has an eye for players with potential and a good hand to work with them. Not only this could be good propaganda to attract players that want similar development in their careers, but also tells a lot about Conte himself. We should definitely trust the unproven players he brings because if he has his eye on them is because he sees a potential he could help develop, which is great because it makes for good bargain tag prices and have players develop to meet our needs, not the other way around. It's always better to develop the player rather than get the final product because there's no guarantee a big name in one league will be as successful in another, except the very, very very top players that could play anywhere. Also, developing a player means that he already knows and has been adapted not only to the league, but to the club style and philosophy (two things Chelsea desperate need to establish and start working on).

Good luck to my boy in the only team in Germany I can stand watching

I have a big girly crush on him... his smirk, the way he talks, how cute he looks at all times. Oh, and he plays good football too, so that's nice and all. Kidding. I do have a big crush on him (what can I say, kid is my number even though I'm almost old enough to be his mom), but I really enjoy his football above anything else. I was delighted when we announced him even though during the Euros I kept saying his name wrong. Oops

sorry love, but I don't watch Brazilian football anymore. Is that Gabigol (nickname)? I could ask around guys I trust their assessment if you really wanna know

Are we really comparing Costa to Lukaku? They're worlds apart, but then again Diego is far from being technical and still far superior to Lukaku in that department. That tells everything you need to know about Lukaku. I must admit his big mouth made me have a huge dislike for him, but if I got over my personal problems with Cesc I can with anyone. Being completely unbiased by my personal dislike for Lukaku, he's the farthest kind of striker we should be aiming for. He has strength on his side and the odd day when he actually does something worth mentioning. Other than this sloppy passing, limited reading of the game, idiotic positioning at many times, easily marked out of matches, terrible first touch, he comes with an ego bigger than the whole UK, self-entitlement and complete lack of knowledge of what earning recognition is, instead of simply bagging a bunch of tap-ins against second rated sides in the league to inflate his stats numbers. If we paid half of what we sold him for, it would be stupidity, let alone double that. Emenalo needs to get over stupid obsessions if the report of this being his dream target for months is true. Actually if that's true it just reinforces my idea that we need to get rid of him asap.