cfc_cfc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9mbOcNZS8o

20 million is a f**king bargain

Given the nature of the game, it being his PL full debut, Matic can be very proud of himself (as can they all). It was a great battle in there.

As a Benfica fan, devastated.  
 
The Benfica forums are in a state of disbelief, anger and depression.  If you want to see what a great deal Chelsea got just go on to the forums.  Everybody's saying daylight robbery.
 
The thing is the Matic-Perez partnership is so central to how we play, allowing our wingers to bomb forward and it let's us play two attackers. 
 
Perez has been superb recently but there is no one to replace Matic.  All we have is limited destroyer types ala Javi Garcia which would probably mean we have to switch to 4-3-3. It's just a pity because Benfica fans felt that once injury free and if our coach stopped tinkering we were on the verge of becoming a special side.  
 
This will set us back big time and i think we may not win anything this year.
 
Having said that as a fan of Chelsea also i'm excited to see what he can do here.

The thing is nowadays to be a top team i believe you need all your players to be technical especially in centre midfield. 
 
I believe that Javi Garcia, although a good player in Portugal, will never be in a starting eleven for a top team, he's just too limited.
 
That's where Matic is different.  He provided the same defensive coverage but with the ability to hold on to the ball under pressure, play his way out of trouble (often through dribbling) and he was able to spray passes as well as work tight triangles with others, things Javi is not good at.
 
Before Benfica were playing a 4-3-3 with Garcia, Witsel and Aimar in the centre.  What we saw last year was that Matic was so good that he effectively did the job of both Witsel and Garcia forming a great partnership with Enzo Perez and allowing Benfica to play 4-4-2 or 4-2-4.
 
Now i'm not advocating a 4-4-2, especially since Mourinho is not a fan, but some truly great midfields have 2 centre mids like Keane-Scholes and Vieira-Petit.
 
I love Ramires workrate and i believe with Matic Chelsea could press really high up the pitch and win the ball back quickly which is what Mourinho wants.  However i can't help but think that Ramires let's the side down sometmes with his passing and with someone more gifted technically alongside Matic the Chelsea midfiled could be immense.
 
If Busquets didn't exist i reckon Barcelona would choose Matic in that position.  That's how highly i rate him.

As a Chelsea supporter but primarily a Benfica fan i've watched him more than most.
 
For those that are not sure about his quality especially given the strength of the portuguese league i understand your doubts.
 
However Matic was player of the year ahead of Joao Moutinho and it often looked like he was a man amongst boys.
 
In Europe he was very good, often dominating games, and there's a vid showing him keeping the ball and handling the Barca pressure well.
 
To give you a little idea of how he is rated, generally Benfica fans consider him to be top 5 in the world in his position and i agree.  I wouldn't swap him for Khedira let's say (although they play slightly different positions) 
 
On top of that Matic would probably rank as the BEST player that has played for Benfica performance wise in the last ten years alongside probaby Di Maria.
 
He performed better than Luiz, better than Ramires, better than Witsel and much better than Javi Garcia.
 
For those saying to play Luiz next to him i reckon it makes Luiz redundant.  Matic is already a good passer and covers the ground.  You want someone with energy who is technical, creative and likes to get forward.  I imagine someone like his current partner Enzo Perez to be a good fit.  Someone like Modric would be perfect.  Maybe in the future Willian or Oscar could do the job.  Van Ginkel could be a good partner
 
I have no doubts in my mind he will be a success and he's exactly what Chelsea have been missing in the centre of the park.  I woudn't be surprised if he started against ManU, afterall Jose played sneijder without even a training session at Inter and i reckon Jose sees him as a very important piece for now and the future.

Fantastic piece of business. Absolutely rapt with this.
 
Yes we let him go as part of the Luiz deal but lets be honest, there is no way he would have turned into the player that he did today kicking around our reserves or getting sent on loan all over Europe.
 
We used him to sweeten a deal to bring in one of the most outrageously talented centre backs around, who went on to give an absolutely immense display in the CL final not to mention countless moments of jaw dropping athleticism, skill and audacity (as well as a fair few heart attacks I guess with the odd defensive lapse). Matic went the other way and turned into one of the worlds leading midfielders and had all of Europe's elite sniffing around, he has now turned into a player with all the attirbutes that we so desperately need in our team, he is coming into the prime age of his career and let's be honest he is a very Jose Mourinho type of player. The potential partnership with Ramires in a 4-2-3-1 should excite all Chelsea fans.
 
I rated him highly when he was in our youth team and stoked to say welcome home Nemanja! As someone said above it's the year of comebacks and if this one works out half as well as the other comeback we are in for a real treat!

First interview with CTV
 
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19q6i2_nemanja-matic-first-interview_sport

Suck it Moyes.
Once upon a time that would have been "I had other offers, but Fergie is Fergie".
 
Apparently Matic is getting the #21 shirt.

"I had other offers, but Mourinho is Mourinho."

Sky Sporfs News ?@SkySporfsNews 7m
BREAKING: Nemanja Mati? has passed his medical with Tottenham. He has arrived at Cobham training ground to sign for Chelsea.
 
 

definitely will not be on the picth on Sunday.
guess the FA cup against Stoke will be his "debut"
cant wait to see the official announcement!

in some of his quotes printed on previous page, Matic talked about his desire to work for best manager in Mourinho...while we always stood a chance of getting him back, having jose in charge must give us such an edge in transfers...supposedly utd were after him...well how would you react if you get a call from Moyes and Mourinho..it's no contest is it...bit like willian with avb or jose...a wannabe or the special one...mmm...tough choice!

We are going to get stick from the cluless... by the way we also sacked the best manager in the world went through various options only to get him back some 7 years on, now that was a mistake.
It's actually great sense from the club to deal with what is in front of them and not get blinded by the fact that he used to play for us and it looks like a loss etc etc... its a sunk cost that's all, Forget about it.
The mandate is to improve were we are week we all know that's in two positions, centre mid and up front. So who's the best value for money right now in terms of the quality we need and meeting our objectives. It would be stupid and Naive to take the past in to consideration. So as I said that the beginning those who think it's dumb based on the fact we are paying out more then we sold him for should never be aloud to run a lemon juice stand let alone think about the decisions being made at a football club.
Something else worth mentioning and I'm not 100% sure about this, I think at the time we had some problems with Matic's permit. He hand't played enough games for us to have it renewed and at the time he didn't have enough caps for serbia. I think we had to send him on loan and with his contract running down it wasn't looking like we would get the permit approved. So it wasn't entirly illogical to P/E him even if we knew then what we know now... and by the way, people forget Luiz is a supperb player and now we have both

I cannot see why this is getting criticism at all personally. We've sold a player in a position where we're oversubscribed and replaced him with a player where we are undersubscribed. The overall squad is improved at very little cost.
To me this is an excellent piece of business.

Because we sold Matic three years ago, that's the long and short of it really, rival fans and media want to twist this around and make it look as though CFC are incompetent for having let Matic leave in the first place when the reality is Matic leaving in part exchange for Luiz was barely a foot note when it happened and no one could have predicted that he would then rapid progress and improve whilst playing in Portugal. 
 
He's rated as one of the better players in Europe in his position and yet we are apparently going to sign him for significantly less than his buy out clause (£37m) and easily a lot less than the going rate for players in his position (see Fellaini, Fabragas, Martinez).
 
We've financed the majority of the deal with a player that is 6th choice for us and are reinforcing the one area we are screaming out for reinforcements. 
 
Regardless of all this many media outlets are still going to twist the narrative and play the old "Chelsea buying success" story that we've seen re-hashed a thousand times a season for the last decade. 
 
What makes me laugh is that only this morning Manchester United are being linked with re-signing Paul Pogba, if that deal went though you can bet there would be no where near the level of criticism levelled at them as to what Chelsea are getting for Matic and the chances are Pogba would cost a further £10m on top of what we're paying for Matic without United supplementing the signing with any player sales. 
 
It's laughable as always but that's life as a Chelsea fan I guess.