Barbara

and there it is the 4-2-3-1 thing again. I was so hopeful to see 4-3-3 especially as Mata is in the bench for the first half but I'm so happy Mou has Oscar playing CAM. I really think he works best through the middle.

I think you guys should all move to Brazil. I'm yet to have watched any Chelsea match in the eerie hours... it's either morning or night and all Chelsea matches are on TV...not most, all. Except if you live in England and can actually go to SB that's the best deal you'll get I'm so excited to see the CC boys. I don't suppose they'll play much and I don't think we'll have even a resemblance of what Mourinho might be thinking as a starting XI to the official competitions, but I'm excited either way! Go Chelsea :cfc:

I think he has the tools and now he has a great manager to help him to get there. I'm looking forward to him having a great season. I just don't get some of the expectations about his first season there. Especially based on his personality, on how he plays...I mean while I know he can do much better and I hope he does, I didn't expect him to go to a league like EPL and just continue from where he stopped and show some mild struggle. I don't think that kind of expectation is fair. He definitely deserve some criticism, but I'm giving the kid a break because of the crazy amount of matched he played, the transition itself and his personality. He's not going to be the next Iniesta... then again nobody out there now will

what he said ^^^^^^ I'm going to donate monthly, but much less as a pound is worth nearly 4 R$ (brazilian currency) .

from what I'm watching from Milan x City - we better beat Inter and face that Milan. Hideous football. FFS - did the defenses stay in England and Italy? Because they're nowhere to be found...

It's really great Super Jim. You keep spoiling us. Now let's pay for it

Torres' preparation to the new season: it's going to be a very long season... *sighs*

let's not underestimate Mourinho's preferences for certain kind of players. Oscar is ahead some of his competition because of his style - that suits Mourinho's preferences better than other players. That said, yeah, he may not start tons of matches, but I have a couple of guesses on what Mourinho is planning... I don't think he will play Oscar in the '2' though (in a 4-2-3-1). I think he'll either play him in the MF '3' in a 4-3-3 (as the most advanced MF) or he'll play him as CAM in the 4-2-3-1. Also I see Oscar ending the season in the starting XI and I guess he'll start all UCL matches.

wow mates, wow. I was late to the party - too much real life party even if it's Monday - and everything I could have thought of saying about my bb you guys said and some more. I wouldn't have said better myself. I may have lost some of the transfer gossip last year because as far as I knew Oscar was certainly going to Spurs. I wanted to die because I really love Oscar as a footie and I think he'll become a great player - not world-class (I use the word carefully) - but a great player nonetheless and I despise Spurs with a passion. When I heard he signed us I was over the moon. In addition to everything you guys mentioned, I think talking about his personality may be valid. He is very shy. To a fault. He lost his father when he was very young - 3yo - and maybe this or something else made him very introvert (he lived with only his mother and two sisters, although his father's brother was close and he married his childhood sweetheart at age 18). So what some may call awkward I think is just a shy guy that is incredibly confident and quiet and an astonishingly hard worker. His work rate isn't result of a manager's demand. At Inter he even played as a full back on occasion because they didn't have one for whatever reason (I guess the guy was sent off) and he stepped up and played as a frigging full back. He also played as a DM a few times because the team needed him. A guy that starts supporting his family at 15 is a hard worker, or do you think a guy playing U17, in a club in Brazil - not matter how talented and promising - makes tons of money? But he stepped up and took responsibility with his small wage. So that's his personality. He's in a foreign country, culture, speaking a language he doesn't know, adapting about everything, of course he's going to struggle! I admire the kid, a lot, because of everything he showed. His legal dispute in Brazil made him cry - literally - I remember when he was finally allowed to play again after 45 days he broke down crying scoring in his comeback match for Inter. It wasn't just a few tears, but nearly sobbing in the pitch because he felt terribly for not helping his team mates when they needed him the most (in Libertadores - South America's UCL). That's the value of a man despite being only 20 then. How many 20yo behave like that? So while you guys gave so many technical reasons as to why this guy is class, I think I could add a few things about his motivation, his values, his personality and the hard work that comes from his personality. In many interviews while in Brazil he thanked the club for giving him everything he had... as if he wasn't entitled to his salary by the work he gave the club. Because that's the idea he has... that he has to work hard for the club that is paying him. I was re-watching an interview when he won ESPN's best Brazilian player in Europe and how he talked about Chelsea... it made me happy when he called Chelsea his house (it's not only what he said, but how he said it). He doesn't take those things lightly and he said he plans to spend the best (and many) years of his career here and wants to help Chelsea win everything because Chelsea is now his house. So well, given his skills, his commitment and how he feels about Chelsea, that's enough for me.

I cleaned my cache and it worked.

I did, on Chrome I can sign out okay I did it now and it worked, thanks

I also can't mark all my notifications read and that really annoys me If I could sign out I wouldn't sign in again, but as I can't...

I am. I can't.

it seems like only you, @Reddish-Blue and me are the only ones to think they could possibly struggle because of chemistry. I've said it in numerous threads now. A zone of their team is completely new and the manager is also new. I'm not questioning their squad or saying they won't be on fire in 2014. I think they may struggle for a while especially against teams playing too deep. A few points lost this year and it gives other teams the edge. Of course they could shrug if off, I just don't think football is such an exact science and you just change half the team (mostly in the same zone), have a new manager and plim, everything works out and you're the done.

I think Brazil is one of the best time zones ever. When the team played in Asia it was happening at earliest 10am here. The US (EST) matches are happening 1h later here (at most 4h+ in Pacific time), so the match is 9pm my time. England time is normally 4h- so it's normally the middle of the morning here. The only times I remember waking up in the eerie hours to watch sports is during Australian Open but if the matches were late morning/early afternoon they were evening/night time here. If they were night time there, it was about 6-7am here, so nothing drastic except the middle of the afternoon local time. I really like the timezone here

I don't know if I'm a legend or if I just have way too much time in my hands and don't do anything useful with it I suppose most of my posts make some sense - with either opinions, articles or pictures (gifs) from players and matches, but I do have my share - a considerable large one - of silly posts and useless stuff. Thanks for the compliments, I just have the time of my life in this forum, so I enjoy you guys just as much!

I had the same issue as Hutcho, but it's now fixed. I can't sign out either - nothing happens - and I couldn't sign in anonymously before I couldn't sign out and the user names now (online on threads and the forums) is some sort of individual box colored according with their status (adm, mods, members, waiting approval, etc)... I use FF.

The team is traveling to US on Tuesday, so basically today the CC players are doing some physical and medical assessment, they'll train tomorrow with the rest of the team - as far as I know the guys who were in Asia have the day off today. So they'll train tomorrow, travel Tuesday, train Wednesday and train and play Thursday, that's awfully little for guys who had not played in basically 30 days... so yeah, I don't expect to see much from the CC boys in the first match, but I guess they'll be all there by the third match. Let's not forget Roma's friendly is on the 10th... so it's not like they'll recover form with an average of 10 training sessions from now until August 9th even if in some of those days Mourinho does the double sessions he did in Asia - which I'm not sure he's keeping. I hate International football aside from Euro and WC, it should work like club football. There's relegation and promotion. Depending on how the NT performs on Euro (and other continental competitions) they may go or not to the WC. So you play like 2-3 Euros just like the first, second, third division (all at the same time, 2 years prior do the WC) or how many others Europa needs, the same go to the rest of the world. And then we have this nuisance only every 2 years (one for continental, other for WC) and as we won't need the stupid and annoying international weeks, the calendar will be shorter, and give players more vacation time so even when there's one of the two international competitions, they have time to rest and then go back to pre-season and club football. Too bad it'll never happen otherwise how will FIFA continue to milk and feed its board members' corruption? I don't really care if it doesn't give enough preparation time to NT's, I hate it either way for the most part.

I expect to see Mata playing in the right wing after what Mourinho said to the press last week. He wants to test him there and what better opportunity than pre-season? I can't help but think why Mourinho has avoided to talk about Mata so bluntly. He dismissed questions about him, answered curtly the ones he didn't dismiss and barely acknowledged his importance to the team. I know he said it's harder for a top player to get a compliment from him than the hard worker kind of player, but it was in the same interview that he said Eden was a special/talented kid and listed him along the best guys he worked with (Joe, Robben and Duff, Cristiano Ronaldo, Angel di María and Mesut Ozil). Either he has amazing plans for Mata (and is being coy about his plans) or he doesn't rate him as high as everyone else does and has better plans for Eden and Kevin.

they're back!!!!! :getin:

Thanks a lot for that, I really appreciate it. You just have to love Eden. He's amusing and cute and nice. I love him - for his personality and his capability as a football player. The bold parts are my fave. He made me smile I have no doubts it'll happen quite more often. And it's only going to progress as seasons go by. Mourinho is the best thing that happened to Eden and Eden is the best player Mourinho could find in the team. And Chelsea will benefit from both and the combination of both for years to come.

I want to marry this post and have all its babies. I'm one of those old school kind of people who wants such a legend to retire in their team. I think we can manage that somehow and he may be opened to have a lower wage. And he's special, he's one of those guys that really can continue to contribute even when age and fitness may present issues. I'm with him staying and being used wisely. He doesn't need to start all matches or play all of them. but he can still be deadly and he's such a nice guy and he wants what's best for the team. I'm a huge Frank fan that wanted him to stay not only because of what he represents, but also because of what he can still produce.

I'm going to ignore the three teams I support in Europe are taking part of the same tournament - even if a friendly tournament. I'm a Chelsea fan above anything else - reason why the only forums about football I read/post are Chelsea-related - despite speaking Spanish fluently and understanding Italian quite well. Inter is going through a bad moment now and there are a lot of changes, it's like a transition time in their history. We are definitely favorite to win, but even Inter in a terrible moment is much more challenging than the sides we've played in Asia. Inter is one of the historic European teams, their shirt will always be respected as well as many others. So I think it's going to be a good match, even if we dominate - as we should. But people shouldn't be surprised if for any reason Inter wins or offers more opposition than they initially expected. In football teams like Inter should never be written off because football is totally unpredictable and that's one of the beauties about it. What makes it so amazing. We should win, I hope we do

I don't think it's exciting, I think it's touching. It's a passion that not even the sad and bad stuff we face in modern world can hold back. Of course I'd rather have a stadium filled with people there instead of a sick sounding system, I'm sure those players and manager would also as well, but that's how they coped with offering the team what they needed. Those weren't their voices and they couldn't see their faces, it doesn't mean they couldn't feel the support behind them. It's about that imo, not about the technology used or being cool. It's about those players feeling the supporters behind them, just like players around the world can feel at any match, but they couldn't until then. And it's not for the title, it was a match against relegation, which makes it all more awesome. I know a lot of fans that are more than ready to abandon their teams if they don't win titles, let alone if they're facing relegation. I feel a lot for countries where people lost what we take for granted every day. I feel bad about what humanity is turning into so when I see something like that, I feel better about things, I feel better for people like them and I feel hopeful because I want to believe things like that have the power to change the people in charge who are making so many stupid and inhuman things and decisions.

That's what I said the other day: That's what Mourinho said now: I feel backed up for saying the other day that Mourinho would make Hazard - not Mata - the player he gives freedom to. Eden is going to be his Wesley/Cris. Not backed up by only saying he has favorites (who he called the next day 'untouchable' players - in the exact argument I gave: he has players he doesn't bench no matter how long they slump and he has players he gives freedom from defensive responsibilities. I feel really backed up by his words. I may not understand much about football - I don't -, but after following this guy closely for the last 9 years, I understand a lot about how Mourinho's head works). Which is why I keep insisting, Mata will change under Mourinho for better or for worse. He will have to improve his work rate otherwise he'll lose space. Mourinho knows the star in this team is Hazard. It's not diminishing Mata, it's just putting Eden where he belongs. Even a blind can see that. If he has to sacrifice someone he will sacrifice Mata - because that's the obvious thing to do. thanks for posting the articles