Faith-in

Bosingwa is sh*t. Depressing.

As the topic said, I noticed that we're one of the slowest team in PL. We enjoyed most of the possession, but we are really slow in moving the ball forward. The best word to describe would be, 'we are playing football in slow motion'. (I am sorry if it sounds harsh) Watched Man City and Spurs game yesterday, it made me sad. Honestly, Chelsea players are really lazy. No one seems to run, make runs(except Torres?), and pass a through ball forward. I don't understand players like Bosingwa, can have so much of time on ball, but yet, can't send the ball forward properly. The players like to receive the ball in a STATIC condition but not when making the runs. This makes our attacking build up extremely easy to mark and predict. What are your thoughts?

What I worry about Torres is his lack of strength. In 433 formation that we played, we need a strong and hardworking forward, e.g: Drogba atm. Most of our attack involve Drogba use of chest and it works pretty well. Drogba uses his chest to hold the ball while counter attack before sending the ball to the flanks. And, I got a new idea yesterday. Looking at Cech poor contribution(his goal kicks were really poor against City), is that one of the reason why Torres can't fire up? If you look at Reina in Liverpool, he always make some great goal kicks that allow Torres to run into channel and even score goals. Torres has the speed, he has it, but.. I would like to see what happen when Cech start taking some great goal kicks. I still believe in Torres.

A centre back should be enough for January. Would like to bring a left wing/central midfield and a right back when the season ends.

Our midfield is f**king useless.

From the recent matches, Ramires doesn't look really good. He scores goals, but he doesn't link up well with teammates during build up. His second half performance against Blackburn was really poor, he's a bit like Malouda, he can scores goals, but not contributing well in 90minutes. We need some good midfielders that can CONTROL the midfield. Lampard + Meireles + Mikel should do the job. Meireles is a typical midfielders that can control the midfield, he might not scoring goals, no assist, but his control in the midfield is awesome. Just look at how he control the midfield against Genk, definitely what we needed. We need some guy to take over the midfield control so that we can send the ball into wide players( Sturridge and Mata). They will do the job to send the ball to Torres or score by themselves. Mata Torres Sturridge Lampard Mikel Meireles Cole Terry Alex Iva Cech Iva over Bosingwa, No doubt at all. Alex or Luiz? Let's see how Luiz will do in training.He seriously need to calm down sometimes.

Oh dear Bosingwa. Oh dear. Lampard in for Ramires and Mata in for Malouda. Sturridge in for Anelka. COME ON MAN.

Weird, ChelseaFC posted this after Everton match: http://www.facebook.com/ChelseaFC/posts/10150370254842259 That means Kalou didn't get it?

I don't like the idea of playing Meireles deep in the defense. Why not we try Ramires in the box-to-box role? Just like Essien in Mourinho's era. Mata Torres Sturridge Lamp.............Meireles Ramires/Mikel Cole Terry Alex Iva Cech I think we need Alex and Iva to deal with set pieces, we have been very poor in set pieces this season. Just like Castiel said, if we cut off RVP suply, he won't do much. He will receives most of his supply from Ramsey and Arteta. So main defensive job is, Close down Ramsey and Arteta. If you give them space, they're going to punish you. They can send the ball to flanks and they have pacey wingers, Gervinho and Walcott gonna run off our HIGH defensive line. If we can cut the supply coming in from the flanks, RVP won't receive as much crosses into the penalty box.

Or I would like to see Meireles Torres combo which that did in Liverpool. Torres Mata Meireles Anelka Ramires Mikel Cole Terry Luiz Bos Cech I would be pissed if AVB plays Meireles as a DM again. I want BOTH Ramires and Mikel in defensive job. Mikel as typical DM anchoring the midfield while Ramires be a box to box player. Both in defense so that our front four will push really really forward without any worries to create goals. Or, Lampard in for Ramires. I really want Mikel and Meireles to start together so that Meireles won't play as a DM.

My lineup. Mata Torres Anelka Josh Mikel Meireles Cole Terry Luiz Bos Cech Josh and Meireles will provide a lot of support for strikers from midfield. Mata and Anelka will provide from the flanks as well. Mikel will be the main man in the midfield, he has been really good this season. Spraying some passes from midfield to fullbacks is the main attacking task for him. I will give Ramires a rest, let's see how do we play without him. His individual skills are brilliant, but I rarely see him linking well with teammates. Might come in for Meireles/Josh at 70th minute. As we're playing high line, Luiz favor this one. Cole and Bosingwa will attack from the flanks as they always did and Mikel will always try to cover them. Mikel will plays a very important role here. Speaking about Lampard, we already made our first move. I do think Josh/Ramires deserve to start more than Lampard.

I am a very young guy, a fresh new die hard chelsea fan. I live in Asia. My family don't watch football. Why do I support Chelsea? Perhaps I was a glory hunter(ah-hem),the first thing I know about football was when Liverpool won the Champions League final on 2005(yeah, I am very young). When I heard about the club, I thought Liverpool wears a blue kit. I don't know why,or maybe I was influenced by the word "pool" in Liverpool. Pool is always blue for me, so I thought they wear blue kit. Then of course as a glory hunter,(ah-hem, I was really innocent at that time)I had a good impression towards a team that wears blue kit. (The 'false' liverpool that I think they wear blue kit) Then Mourinho won the second champion with us on 2005-2006 season. I got the news,then Mourinho home record impressed me. As a glory hunter(holy sh*t, I was really a bar steward that time), I like a team NAMED Chelsea. I never watch Chelsea to play a single game, I never know what's the colour of Chelsea kit. As I grow bigger, I got involved into football automatically. I started to know more about football(but I didn't started to watch football), then finally I noticed that Chelsea wears a blue colour kit. Hell yeah, my impression towards a blue kit team has been good since Liverpool won the champions league.Then I started to support Chelsea. Mourinho leaved us, MU won the champion in 2006,2007 and 2008.Due to my big exams on 2008, I missed out lot of football news.In that time, I was not a Chelsea fan yet. Then I finished my big exam on 2008.2009 was a honeymoon year for me.So I watched football, the first football match I watched was Chelsea. Carlo was with us, I saw Chelsea play a wonderful football.Some link up between Essien and Lampard really impressed me.Of course, we won quite a lot of games in that season. Then as a Chelsea supporter, I feel proud of my team. Then officially, I am a Chelsea fan. That's my story, I feel like it's kinda different from others. It's really cool that I isn't end up being a Liverpool fan. I thank God for giving me a wrong impression of Liverpool that brings me to support Chelsea. I never regret, I am very thankful that God brings me to support a wonderful club, Chelsea. At this moment, I know that I was born to be a Chelsea fan. I would like to hear what do you guys think about my story. :) (I feel a bit shame of myself being a stupid glory hunter when I was young,lol :P)

Have to admit, Modric is better than Meireles, plus he's younger too. BUT, it doesn't mean Meireles is a bad player. Modric is a top class player, so do Meireles is a excellent player. The comparison between them is not the best way to compare two of them. They played a different role in the teams.But what the clearest thing we can compare is, the price tag. Meireles is definitely a bargain. 28m difference between him and Modric. With that money, we can grab another world class winger/midfielder in the future. Great deal Chelsea.

I see lot of you guys didn't include Sturridge in first eleven, why? AVB has been impressed by him so far, I expect Sturridge will be the first XI for AVB. Speaking about Meireles, I think it's gonna be 4231. Torres,Meireles suits this the best. ...........Torres........... Mata....Meireles....Sturridge .......Ramires.....Mikel..... Cole...Terry...Luiz...Iva/Bosingwa Cech Meireles might need to fight the place with Lampard, but I doubt Lampard will keep his place with his current form.

Really delighted to see we signed Meireles for 12m instead of 40m rated Modric. That's 28m difference! A bit sad to see we missed out Pereira though .Could be a good back up for both Mata and Cole. PVA and Kakuta to Wigan and Bolton are awesome. Expecting to see CleverlySturridge-like product. Malouda and Kalou stay in the squad could be a safe backup for Sturridge and Mata.

Ribery in, seriously?

Or our board is going to give us some surprise again? Remember when Carlo left us, everyone was focus on Hiddink. Everyone thought he would be our new manager. Out of the sudden, AVB joined us. Another case, when we was trying to buy Neymar, our bid rejected and Santos confirmed Neymar will stays. Suddenly, our focus was totally no where be found. Signing some youngster like Romeu,Courtois to drag away media attention. Out of the blue(again), we signed Mata. We never expect all these right? This might happen AGAIN. We were chasing Modric. But Spurs rejected us and Levy clearly said he want to keep Modric. Then we suddenly move our focus to Meireles(might be a trick to drag media attention away again). Then suddenly in the last 12 hour, official website publishes we signed Moutinho from Porto for 30m. Isn't it interesting?

Get this to page 100 quickly! By the time we hit 100, Modric will come! I would be a bit sad to see us signing Meireles instead of Modric.

Benayoun just tweeted: https://twitter.com/#!/YossiBenayoun15/status/108471306248396800 "×—×–×¨× ×• מהליכה ×•× ×›× ×¡×™× ×œ×סיפה טקטית. בערב ×ימון" Google translate! "Walking back and get a tactical meeting. Training evening" Tactical meeting? What's that?

If we continue chasing, I am sure Spurs will let him go. Obviously we if gave up on him, he won't join us. So I voted YES.

I think AVB better try Mata-Torres-Sturridge combo in this game. We're facing Manchester United at Old Trafford next game.Better get it prepared, or you know you will end up like Arsenal.(Hah, I just exaggerated it a bit) Mata will collect the ball from the middle and run through the flanks and send in the crosses for Torres. Sturridge on the another side will do cut-in and tries to score goals. I love comparing our front three with AVB's Porto. Varela-Mata Falcao-Torres Hulk-Sturridge If you compare Varela,Hulk with Mata and Sturridge, these two players are exactly the same type of players. Mata is tons better than Varela though. Varela often collects the ball and always tries to cross in, same as Mata does. Hulk, he's pretty well-known with his cut-inside ability. Sturridge can surely do this and might even do better than Hulk. As for midfield, we definitely need an engine. Sunderland plays pressing game, if we can't keep any possession, we hardly can control the game.So Ramires must start. If we manage to sign Modric, I would like him to start but who to drop? Lampard? I am worry without Lampard, we don't have any good penalty taker. AVB need to sort this out quickly. Perhaps Mata can take penalties but I think it's still too early for him to do this job because he just joined the club. His confidence needs to grow more then only he can take penalties.

-ops sorry,double post-

We are exactly lacking of quality in wide areas if we compare with United's squad. Nani Valencia Young Park. Ours? Kalou Malouda. but luckily we got Mata now. I think our central midfield is on par or even better than United's one. Josh Ramires Lampard Mikel Cleverly Anderson ... who else? We're better in this part, just lacking of the creativity. United's creativity isn't exactly comes from central midfield, it comes from the combination between the strikers and the wings. And forwards. United's Chicharito Rooney Berba Welbeck These four look superb. Comparing to ours. Anelka Drogba Torres Sturridge and? a new young boy Lukaku. Only Torres and Sturridge are on their peak age. Drogba and Anelka are aging. Lukaku still too early to step in first eleven. I don't think we should have any doubts on our defense. We got the best defenders in the world. Terry, Luiz,Iva,Alex,Cole,Bosingwa. They're all better than United's Vidic, Ferdinand,Jones,Evans,Evra,Smalling,Rafael. We're just lacking in number, but the quality is there.I would say if we sign one more central midfielder(Modric),and a winger, we're better than United. *edited:we just signed Ulises Davila*

WOWW. SO EXCITED. AVB is absolutely genius, explained what he wants, what we need. Wondering what role will Mata plays, this 'The plan is that I can play on either flank or even in the middle playing in between the lines of midfield and attack. I like to keep the ball and use it well, I am an attacking player and above all I like to set up goals and score them also.'-Mata I can see a switching wing play between him and Sturridge. Just as what I said in previous pages, Mata might drop to midfield and form a diamond. Hope he can starts against Norwich and Sunderland to get ready for MU match! It's gonna be Young vs Mata, see who got the gem :D

Kranjcar was really poor against MU. Too many sideways passing for him. Aye,Modric can run really fast with the ball, and he is extremely solid with the ball. Great composure.This is what he's good in. When he shake off his man and got some space, he will make wonderful passes. This is Modric.