Castiel

I have to agree with the realists, Torres is a brilliant player and no doubt a legend, but a Liverpool legend. I think a lot of us need to put the days of buying whoever we want regardless of value for money behind us. Aguero could be our Torresesque player, ironically coming from the same club in all. The prospects of bringing in a very young rising star into the squad, developing and keeping him through the prime of his career is much more enticing than signing Liverpool's used and abused pride and joy. This guy is up there with La Liga's top scorers, he's also outscoring Messi (I know Messi isn't CF) in the world cup qualifiers for Argentina and he's only 21. We'd be wiser to move on him than blow a whole transfer budget on Torres (probably saving Liverpool in the process). There's no telling how far he could go with us once he's got real consistent mid-field support behind him which he isn't getting in Athletico Madrid.

Good luck to the lads today, I'm confident we'll be celebrating around the world by the end of it. I do think some of us need to relax a bit. I know its hard to get your confidence up, but give the team some credit. We're a FAR better side than Wigan, we're one of the best sides in the world. If by some catastrophe we lose or draw today, it'll be our own fault. But personally I predict a prison pounding this afternoon, perhaps another 7-0. The Blues do have a habit of settling scores with extreme prejudice and Wigan did derail our win streak at the beginning of the season. On a side note, is Sky News the only media outlet in the world that doesn't hate us? I was amazed that somebody had something nice to say about Chelsea this morning. "If they do win this afternoon they'll deserve it; they've played the best football and been the most consistent."

Even the Mancs are talking about it now... http://www.redcafe.net/f9/fernando-torres-295052/ I think the ridiculous figures being quotes are a direct result of the recent market inflation which is starting to get out of hand. The only good news is, Roman is happy to fund the occasional "must have" signing if it became available and our remaining domestic rivals (United and Arsenal) just can't compete with these figures where we can. Also, City is taking the reputation of "buying trophies" away from us. Though I'm bringing myself to support Spuds tomorrow because I'd hate to see what madness overcomes City in the summer transfer if they get Champions League football.

I think Liverpool's management of him exasperates his injury problems. Because they have no backup for him, they're forced to rush him back into action after every knock he takes which just makes things even worse. Man United find themselves in the same situation with Rooney this season (Who is a tough kid), and its probably why we're on top going into the final match. We have more depth than both of them and aren't walking around wondering what to do when Drogba isn't with us. For those reasons I don't think its fair to write him off because of his injury history which is largely Liverpool's own fault.

I keep running into rumours of Chelsea, Citeh and Barca being the contenders in a Torres bid at the end of this season. I'm pretty sure that his future at Liverpool is diminishing as he specifically came to the EPL for trophies and picked the wrong club. :( But the question is, would it be worth pitting our money against City and Barca, and probably Real too since they panic and jump on anything Barca looks at these days. To me he's a class act and has been horribly mismanaged and rushed back without recovery time which has hurt his performances - but would he work well in our squad? Are we better off looking elsewhere and most importantly, is he the missing X factor we've been looking for since we discovered we were secretly obscenely rich around the time Roman showed up? :)

All good points but this isn't purely coming from the drama over the weekend, its just becoming more apparant now because we're in real danger of losing the title. There can be no question that both players and management screwed up on Saturday, but commiting the same fundemental formation errors and suffering the consequences over and over? Its really starting to annoy me. Personally I think we should have stormed away with this title by Christmas, given a weakened United, stricken Liverpool and injury hammered Arsenal - the stars almost aligned to give this season to us. But every lead we built was wasted because of the same silly errors. It doesn't really help to rehash it all over and over though, lets just hope for a bounceback performance and not a repeat of the Man City catastrophe period. Whats worse is, we're in danger of making negative league history and giving United their record breaker on our watch. I don't want to think about it any more.

I read this on the clubs official site this morning and it reiterated something I've quietly been thinking for a while now. Why is it that nobody in the management has made this observation yet? Isn't the definition of insanity trying the same thing and expecting a different result? Clearly Drogs and Anelka are different animals and are not effectively directly interchangeable, but the management seems to think they can take take the 4-5-1 winning formula and slap our star striker in there hoping to make it even better. Which turns out being as effective as replacing a pickup trucks engine with a 6 litre 48-valve V12. Granted, its a good idea in theory but once you've seen it backfire horribly in several instances; its time to scrap it and accept that you need different game plans to cater to our two main strikers. I can accept that CA isn't God and this is his first season with us and indeed in English football - but watching the same mistake cost us dearly over and over starts to get tiring. Its starting to seem like he has an idea of how he wants the team to play, which just so happens to suite Anelka, but he wants Drogba to do it - and it just doesn't work. The difference between the 7-1 win and the 3-0 win shows that we're capable of winning either way, but the entire team turned up and made it happen at all costs for the FA cup. Unfortunately, that kind of effort can't be sustained throughout an entire season and the system inevitably suffers when we're having a bad day (Cite Spurs). Some people say its Drogba when it isn't. Yes, we've played our best football this season without him starting, but thats not his fault - its because CA's game plan doesn't suite his style. Thats my take on it anyway and I really hope something happens to address this before its too late. I can see a serious upset at Anfield or worse - one of the home games. (Look what Wigan did to Arsenal and us earlier in the season) This isn't the teams only issue either, but I see it as one of the major flaws in our game. All it takes is a bad day and you can write off 3 points, champions MUST be able to grind the points out of a bad game and we only just managed to do that to Birmingham. Source

Boy when it goes wrong for Chelsea it goes wrong in style doesn't it? Gods and fate conspired against us today starting with the unbelievable United goal, then this catastrophe of a game. But I'm convinced we'll bounce back from this HARD, and fully expect to see the boys put Stoke to the sword next week to make a statement of intentions. This season we've consistently wasted our cushion over our rivals, almost as if we weren't satisfied with running away with the title like we should have considering the set backs they have all faced. But we always come back from the brink. Cite the Inter defeat as a prime example. Today set the season up to end in a bang with United chasing us to the end - but I'm keeping the faith and backing them to the end. If anything, its good to know that THIS many things have to go wrong at once to make us stumble and of course Cech got a chance to prove his critics wrong. Between 9 simultaneous player off days, a United goal from the twilight zone and some payback from the reff justice committee - I think we've suffered enough bad luck to cover the remaining 3 games.