103 replies to this topic

[skippy]

footballoholic, on 28 January 2012 - 01:19 AM, said:

Where do you get that? According to this, he has two and a half years left, which makes more sense tbh.

From here which must be wrong.
http://en.wikipedia....Borges_da_Silva

[Andreas]

Shakhtar's Willian has signed a pre-contract with Chelsea and will join the blues this summer according to a Brazilian based tabloid. #CFC

That is currently being talked about on twitter, have no idea how reliable they are - coming from the usual "sources" on twitter.


Have to add its apparently coming from the Santos president, not that I know why he would know it.

Edited by Andreas, 02 February 2012 - 10:25 PM.

[geezer]

The press rumours in Brazil may have been fuelled by a comment allegedly made by the President of Santos who is claimed to have said "we wanted to bring Willian on loan but were told he had agreed to join Chelsea in the summer"

[Martin_plumb]

Now I like this idea but i Have 2 concerns

• I hope it is not as an alternative to Hazard as Hazard would be my much preferred option
  
• If it is in additon to Hazard, where would he play?

Now I won't pretend I know a huge amount about him but from what I know he is a small, creative pacey player who can make things happen. The same can be said of Hazard and Mata and could a team really survive if it had all those creative players on the pitch at the same time (assuming none of them got injured). There needs to be some strength and grit in the middle of the park or we would become too much like arsenal, where on days with a frozen snow covered pitch where you can not play your usual passing game and have to rely on a more direct format we would fall apart.

To be honest I think we play our current formation because thats what suits the players we have, but if AVB gets all the players he wants I feel our whole formation would change to suit a different sort of play

[Zeta Orionis]

Willian on one wing, Hazard on the other. Mata just behind the striker. Kakuta on the bench.

[Lane]

Martin_plumb, on 05 February 2012 - 11:36 AM, said:

Now I like this idea but i Have 2 concerns

• I hope it is not as an alternative to Hazard as Hazard would be my much preferred option
  
• If it is in additon to Hazard, where would he play?

Now I won't pretend I know a huge amount about him but from what I know he is a small, creative pacey player who can make things happen. The same can be said of Hazard and Mata and could a team really survive if it had all those creative players on the pitch at the same time (assuming none of them got injured). There needs to be some strength and grit in the middle of the park or we would become too much like arsenal, where on days with a frozen snow covered pitch where you can not play your usual passing game and have to rely on a more direct format we would fall apart.

To be honest I think we play our current formation because thats what suits the players we have, but if AVB gets all the players he wants I feel our whole formation would change to suit a different sort of play

you wont find many top tier wingers that are actually strong. ronaldo comes to mind but thats it. also, hazard has coped with the physicality of the french league just fine so i wouldnt make an issue out of it

i dont feel our players/future players are on the weaker side. we got terry, luiz, romeu, mikel, ivanovic, lukaku . . .

Edited by Lane, 05 February 2012 - 03:50 PM.

[Martin_plumb]

Lane, on 05 February 2012 - 03:45 PM, said:

you wont find many top tier wingers that are actually strong. ronaldo comes to mind but thats it. also, hazard has coped with the physicality of the french league just fine so i wouldnt make an issue out of it

i dont feel our players/future players are on the weaker side. we got terry, luiz, romeu, mikel, ivanovic, lukaku . . .

No my point was we still need the grit in the team to be able to switch styles when plan 'A' isn't working.

We have been built on the spine of terry->Lamps>Drogba for the last few years, all of who were in for the fight and could really force the issue sometimes. If our creative play wasn't working on any particular day, taking off mata and bringing on Willian for example will not change anything. We still need some steel in the middle of the park, not just physically but the power to lead.

Take Terry=>Lamps=>drogba away and who can you see as captain, of standing up in the dressing room and dishing it out? its the grit and determination that always seperate the good teams from the great and at this rate drogba and possibly lamps will be gone in the summer, and terry in 2-3 years

[Lane]

Martin_plumb, on 05 February 2012 - 07:50 PM, said:

Take Terry=>Lamps=>drogba away and who can you see as captain, of standing up in the dressing room and dishing it out? its the grit and determination that always seperate the good teams from the great and at this rate drogba and possibly lamps will be gone in the summer, and terry in 2-3 years

who knows how some of our players will develop mentally in 2-3 years? essien can be the captain, i wouldnt put it past luiz either, ivan . . . lets see how romeu establishes himself. and who knows who well bring this summer? our future captain? maybe?

Edited by Lane, 05 February 2012 - 10:49 PM.

[Spiller86]

Interesting if true.

The lure of Hazard is a strong one, but you have to ask whether he'll be worth the 35m that he will go for, particularly given he has never really lit up the highest level (either CL or international)

Willian's performance away at Roma still stands out in my mind. Roma is an intimidating place to go and to tear them apart like he did marks him out as something special.

I'll be trying to get a look at them whenever I can, but the options available during the summer will make it a much more broad search, that should also include the likes of Jovetic, Gotze, Ayew, Lucas etc.

[Martin_plumb]

Lane, on 05 February 2012 - 10:48 PM, said:

who knows how some of our players will develop mentally in 2-3 years? essien can be the captain, i wouldnt put it past luiz either, ivan . . . lets see how romeu establishes himself. and who knows who well bring this summer? our future captain? maybe?

Yeah I think we would have to bring in a captain. Essien could be vice captain, and your right, if luiz steady's himself he could be.

Someone like snjieder would go nicely for me but aside from the captaincy we need some real leaders on the pitch. For the first 30 minutes at least against utd in Sunday we looked completely lost. Passes were crap, no one was sticking to position and there was no one to stand up tall, put his foot on the ball and rufuse to let UTD dictate the game in our own back yard.

Don't get me wrong, mata tried to make things happen and played well and by the end a few others had raised their game.

I'm not 100% but I think Cech was captain in that game and I'm not a great fan of keepers as captains as its harder to influence things directly in play although they often have the best view if the game

It's just grit, drive, determination, focus and leadership that everyone thrives on and its vital we always have that at our core

[darren2607]

Does anyone know if he is a player that AVB wants or whether this is another target that the club identified before he was brought in?

[skippy]

More Willian news

http://www.dailymail...y-Shakhtar.html

[Ozztheboss]

What kind of player is this? Fast? Strong? Not-ego? Show-off?

I want two wingers this summer. One of them with the ability Malouda had the last half season 09-10 (very strong, skillfull, good passer and good finisher), the other with the ability Robben had 04-05 (extremely fast, good crosser and good finisher).

Which one is Willian?

[Mod]

Looks alright from his Youtube videos

[KrazyTea]

I think we really need to focus on rebuilding our midfield if we want to compete. An example would be the play against Barcelona, players like Mata are neutralized if they never have possession of the ball, we need a midfield that can run, complete passes, hold the ball and get the ball forward to our wingers and centre forward. Until we do that we can buy all the forwards in the world but it will likely not help us all that much in regaining our former dominance in my opinion.

[SydneyChelsea]

Willian is the kind of player who generally plays a game of two halves. His main aim is to score more goals than the opposition.

[dkw]

SydneyChelsea, on 19 April 2012 - 11:47 PM, said:

Willian is the kind of player who generally plays a game of two halves. His main aim is to score more goals than the opposition.

As long as he gives 110% then I`ll be happy.

[dkw]

I wonder if we will be in for this fella again, we seemed to be after him in a big way last winter window.

[u no it makes sense]

Its all gone quiet now. Maybe we have other targets.

[Spiller86]

There is a lot of white noise going around. Just because he isn't in the papers doesn't mean we aren't interested.

I think most at the club would still be very hungover, or possibly still drinking! Things will firm up over the next few weeks. I'd say alot of teams will want to get their business with players participating at Euros done before then. The deals with those not participating can wait.