deg0ey

I guess it's that you don't buy Subotic or Hummels with the intention of having them on the bench. We're set at CB for now with Terry, Luiz and Ivanovic - all we need is depth. As for the future, Bruma and Kalas are lighting it up at their respective loan clubs and I would expect at least one of them to be a regular fixture in our lineup in the 2013/14 season. Chalobah's not ready to be playing Premier League football yet, but having just turned 17, he's got plenty of time and I have high hopes for him. But yes, as you say, we've got a lot of good CBs on our roster already; no need to go and spend big on someone like Hummels when all we really want is for someone to warm the bench for a couple of years

I'd like to see AVB get at least 3 more years. I have complete faith that he knows what he's doing and is the man we've been looking for since José left. We're in transition. At this point, we're probably the 4th (arguably 5th) best team in the league and we're exactly where we ought to be in terms of league position. Luckily for us, most of our problems are fixable and it won't take much for us to be back in the title race next season. A couple of signings in January will get us back in the CL places, and a full year of learning AVBs system will have us back where we want to be.

I'm thinking a new winger in January would help us out; a 4-2-3-1 would be ideal. ----------------------Cech-------------------------- Bran--------Luiz------------Terry--------Cole--- ---------------Ramires----Romeu---------------- --Studge-------------Mata--------------Winger- -----------------------Torres------------------------ That's what I'd like to see us playing, at least during the ACoN. Really think we need a new winger, though, as the best we have at the moment is Malouda and I'm not sure he's up to it anymore.

Well that's the trade-off; you can either buy English players or you can buy good players. Sometimes you get lucky and they overlap (Rooney, Lampard, Terry) but for the most part you have to settle for second best if you care about adding an English player. Given that he would be replacing a foreigner (Alex) then I don't see nationality as an important factor in a replacement. Fact is, Cahill won't see much playing time here. If he can't accept that then we don't have much choice but to find someone else.

My guess is that the difficulty in agreeing personal terms is that Cahill is after more playing time than we're likely to offer him (he will be our 4th best CB after all, assuming we find a buyer for Alex). Either he'll come to the conclusion that he might actually get some silverware at Chelsea and it doesn't really matter whether he gets to play, or he won't and we'll find someone else. He's not exactly anything special; shouldn't be too difficult to find an alternative.

Sounds like when you convince a small child that having 2 pennies is better than a £1 coin because there are more of them...

Surely 'supply and demand' should take care of the ticket prices, though. There's no need to have a planned protest. If £40 is an unreasonable price then nobody will go anyway. If it's not unreasonable then people will. Even if this protest means that half of the tickets remain unsold, having doubled the ticket prices will mean they've still made as much as last year. I support people's right to protest, but I really don't see how this is going to make any difference.

I wonder how likely he is to re-injure his knee. He's been out for a few games now and might be a little rusty; would rather he play against Sunderland (at least for a little while) to shake off the rust before we expect him to play against United.

Whilst people will find many examples of right-footed players that have comparable or better 'creativity' than their left-footed counterparts, where this really gets interesting is when you consider that left-handed (or footed) people make up about 10% of the population. It certainly appears that they account for significantly more footballers than pure probability would suggest. I was also thinking recently that we have a surprisingly high number of lefties at the moment; we could theoretically have a lineup with Cole, McEachran, Mata, Lukaku, Sturridge, Malouda and Cech. On a different note, I don't really see why people are suggesting that we play Meireles as a lone DM. Sure, Mikel might not be the greatest at that position, but Meireles's tackling (and defending in general) is shaky at best. Would certainly feel safer having Mikel play there rather than Raul. Not only that, but it negates his abilities going forwards. I would put playing Meireles in that position in the same category as playing Lampard there; pretty stupid given the other options we have at the position (Mikel and Romeu)

Agreed with pretty much everything you said until you got to Torres at the bottom; Think he has been one of our better players so far this season (although no goals yet) and the addition of Mata is only going to improve matters. Got to say things are looking up for the boys in blue. United have started off in great form, but as we know from last year that doesn't really mean very much. Come the end of the season, I think we've got as good a chance as anybody else to be sitting at the top of the table. There's also the chance that we don't need to do a huge amount more in the transfer market over the next few seasons if some of our kids live up to the potential they've shown so far - the obvious Sturridge and McEachran are looking like cracking the first team pretty soon and guys like Kakuta, Bertrand/PVA, Romeu, Hutchinson, Mellis, Piazon, Lukaku, Chalobah, Clifford, Kaby etc might not be too far behind. If even half of these guys turn out as good as they should we'll be in a pretty good place.

If I was Lukaku, I'd be f**king delighted that I'd been bought by a team as good as Chelsea. Just Sayin'...

I find your comparisons interesting; I would say that Robben was the same type of player to Malouda, but better at it. Really we were spoilt having him and Duff at the same time; can't believe we haven't been able to sign a top class winger since.

He has indeed. I haven't seen much of Courtois, but there's always the chance he wins Cech's place from him. If he's good enough, there's no reason that he couldn't be the first choice keeper by 2015; maybe someone that has seen more of him could shed some light on how likely that is.

I've never really taken to Malouda, so maybe I'm being overly harsh, but imo he has always lacked consistency. He can be very very good at times and downright awful at others. I never know what to expect from him and it's very frustrating because we all know how good he's able to be. I don't think it's the right time to get rid of him, but I'd like to see us buy his replacement this summer and use them in a rotation for the next season or two until Florent hangs up his boots or moves to pastures new.

I'm assuming it's the skin, but it's all white and gray. Too bright; I don't like it. The sooner we can have the nice blue skin back the better.

Stop being silly.

And what makes me even happier is that he seems to have taken to playing out on the right - makes it much easier to give him games when his competition is Anelka and Kalou than if it's Drogba and Torres. Having seen Torres dropping deep and running wide today, I'd be interested to see him start out on the left with Droggles in the middle and Sturridge on the right. Not entirely convinced it'll work, but it might be worth giving it a try.

And it's one more reason to leave him out in favour of Yossi against Stoke.

I didn't think he was even on the bench; if I'm right, it's hardly surprising that he hasn't come on.

Limping off the pitch - hopefully he'll be back on though, not been subbed yet.

Is it just my imagination, or is Torres playing a false 9 role today? He seems to be coming quite deep to get the ball and playing through Kalou and Sturridge EDIT: Mikel looks to have gone down with some kind of injury - hopefully nothing too serious, we're not exactly deep in midfield. EDIT 2: Josh on for Mikel

Fantastic run by Torres, passes to Kalou who hits it first time from the edge of the area but good save by the keeper. Taken a while to settle into the game, but we're looking good here.

Nice goal from Danny there - mazy run after a cock up from the fullback. 2-1.

True, but I don't think anyone but Kalou could've missed from there :P

Good tap in from Sturridge - Torres and Ramires did all the work though. Aside from the goal, Danny hasn't done much today - his passing has been a bit sh*t.