Samdwich

Iniesta is one of the best dribblers in world football, the only player I can think of with better close control is Messi. I lost count of the number of times Spain looked completely devoid of ideas at the Euros and Iniesta would ghost past a man or two and make something out of nothing. Never thought of comparing him to Hazard but the way they go past players is, indeed, similar. Hazard is a more direct player though and plays higher up the pitch more as a dribbler with great passing, whilst Iniesta is generally more of a passer with excellent dribbling in his arsenal.

I was just thinking "there's bound to be a Yaya Toure thread after yesterday's stories". His agent threatened that he could be bought out of his contract come this summer - that would be ~£25m for a 30 year old player who is quite reliant on pace/power. Plus whatever astronomical wages he's demanding now. Can't see PSG matching that with their 75% tax bracket compared to our new 45p tax bracket (great idea Darling...). Maybe he'll go to Anzhi?

He's not the only player that could help us win trophies though. I'd rather win them with Lukaku up front than Suarez, for example. Having him in front of our attacking midfield would result in ridiculous interplay, but we get enough bad press as it is, I'd rather not give the media another reason to aim their crosshairs at us. We've got Lukaku who looks like he'll be absolutely top drawer in the next few years, so I'm happy to pass on Suarez.

serves me right for not refreshing before posting

It's not KDB + £30m, it just says that Schurrle is rated at £30m. Poor article regardless, and I wouldn't want to make the deal.

I agree that it would have gotten better under Robbie, but think that it's a bit too easy to just shrug off speculative attacking on players being new to the system. Sure, that has an impact, but often it just didn't look like we had pre-trained movements that we worked on in training to break down defences. Players would just pass the ball to where they hoped/thought team-mates would be. All this said to me was that RDM needed some more experience, something he had earned the right to gain at Chelsea imo.

They play the same role - defensive midfielder who wins the ball back (mainly via interceptions) and keeps the ball moving for his side. Carrick's passing is better, Mikel is defensively more sound imo. Though I think Mikel's passing is much better than we see, as we've seen him play sumptuous long balls on occasion. He just doesn't do it often enough for some reason. One of my mates had a similar gripe about Carrick for ages - he has the ability to play great balls (eg. assist for Hernandez vs us last week) yet didn't take them on enough and would opt for a simpler ball. They're Manure fans. ie. they all live in Kent and don't know anything about football.

Petr wouldn't settle for Skips, it's Pom Bears or nowt.

Can we please avoid attacking others for their views? The forums are meant for discussion and people are entitled to have views that differ to yours, no need to ridicule them for it. I'm a little bewildered by the idea that we are playing better football now than we did under RDM, only thing better during the past few games is individual form of some of the important players (Hazard mainly). My main concern with RDM was our attacking movement - it didn't look like we worked on it enough in training. Someone called our attacks speculative at some point and I think that was a good description as often the players didn't look to be on the same wavelength which caused our attacks to break down - especially against teams like West Brom who sat back against us. FSW is known for being "thorough" and this is possibly something he has been working on - it certainly hasn't showed since he was appointed until possibly the past 2-3 games and even then it has only just reached the level we were at under RDM. If that's the case, then I can see where Saaladin is coming from. That said, it has taken FSW all this time to get the team playing at the same level as RDM had them playing at. If he has improved our attacking movement, the argument in his favour is that we will just improve from here - but that's not what is needed from a f**king interim manager.

I know plenty of Manure fans who "don't know what he does"...

It's ok, the first game was reffed by Howard Webb at OT and we somehow got out unscathed

They do, https://twitter.com/ChelseaStats did the counting

People have often made comparisons between Mikel and Carrick, and Carrick divides opinion amongst the manure camp as Mikel does here, but imo Carrick has been their best player behind RVP (who has disappeared for the last couple of months) this season. Interesting to see what they say about him now - and what our fans who dislike Mikel think too, for that matter.

In the 2-2 with Utd I was dreading the moment they'd get the ball into our box and get anything resembling a penalty appeal as I knew he'd give it. We were so dominant in that second half that even he couldn't find a way to save them!

That's come out a bit negative, I don't mean it to be, just an observation.

Funny how the media narrative about Lampard has changed this season, he never used to get the credit he deserved. Now that this contract situation is out in the open he's getting praise heaped on him left right and centre and his flaws are overlooked.

If that happens, I hope we manage the situation as well as Manure did with Ronaldo. Of course it's not ideal as no sum of money can replace a player who wins you matches out of the blue like that but if we're losing the player anyway then we might as well make the best of the situation. That said, I hope that in the next few years Hazard develops alongside Mata/Oscar/Lukaku/KDB/Chalobah etc. and develops a strong enough affinity to them and the club that he wants to stay.

I heard 12 on the radio Give it at least another try next season mate. Hard to get excited with FSW there. I've refused to go to any games since he took over, as badly as I want to go. Considering going to see Brazil v Russia tomorrow just to be in the bridge.

He's not one of our own.

I'm not sure that I see the booing of one of our players for diving as necessarily a bad thing. As long as we're only booing the diving rather than the player generally. Sends a message that it's not something we want to see from our players. I think it had a part to play in Drogba's decision to stop falling over all the time and show us how good he really is. One of the only situations in which I think it may be ok to boo one of our own.

We went from losing the midfield battle completely to pinning them in their own box for long periods, nothing to do with Mikel? Because Mikel is almost always the deepest of our midfielders, when he loses the ball it immediately spells trouble as there is little cover for the defence. If he loses it in that situation, where another player doing so would probably have cover, he gets blamed for a big mistake as it often leads to a chance. If he avoids that situation by keeping it simple and playing short passes, he gets criticised for that. It's a bit of a catch 22 really.

It's strange that he's so error prone in front of goal, when very often he is ridiculously clinical. eg:

What I hope to see for next season: GKs: Cech, Courtois, Turnbull Bed Courtois into the PL, maybe use the two like AVB has used Friedel and Loris - brought Loris in slowly and then alternated for cup games etc. Defence: Azpi, Ivan, JT, Luiz, Cahill, Bertrand, Cole 4 CBs, one who can play RB, one who can play DM - good depth and flexibility imo. Seen rumours of Omuero being brought back for next season as he's been doing very well on loan, which might be a good idea if we expect JT to play as little as he has done this season. If Omuero comes back, then Ake needs to go out on loan. Midfield: Mikel, Ramires, Romeu, Chalobah, McEachran, De Bruyne, Oscar, Hazard, Mata, Moses, Marin, Piazon. I don't think Lamps is going to get a contract extension, unfortunately. There is good enough depth here for us to play 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1. The weakness is obviously DM, but we have a real gem in Chalobah and Romeu is still fairly promising. I don't see the point in buying a DM for a big fee as I think Mikel is an adequate stop-gap. We've got plenty of quality in the other players, and plenty of depth. McEachran may need to be sent out on loan again next season, but I'd like to see the others back here. Reckon Piazon will be ready to be bedded in to the first team next season. Strikers: Ba, Lukaku, Feruz I'd like Lukaku to become first choice over the course of next season. Would like to see him vying for the starting position with Ba, with Feruz getting a few games here and there. Feruz will probably be loaned out though and we won't be able to get rid of Torres.

what like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1jBfnSJVXo That's not an uncommon sight either. Mikel's strength is his ability to hold on to the ball for us, by holding it up in midfield areas with his strength (and pretty good footwork) and playing short passes. It's clear that his style of play is such that he is just there to keep the play ticking over and getting it to the players ahead of him who are more creative. It's abundantly clear, though, that he has the ability to be more of an attacking threat. Fairly regularly I see him play some great long balls, and I wonder whether his reluctance to play more incisive passes which he clearly has the ability to do comes from him, or from the way managers tell him to play. He's obviously got the ability to contribute more in attack, would love to see him do so.

I like AVB and was disappointed when we sacked him. The decision was vindicated in the short term, but has left us in poorer shape in the long term imo. Was the short term success worth the slower long term progress? Probably, it depends on who we get in this summer I suppose. He made mistakes while here, particularly with the way he dealt with Cole/Lamps. As a young manager, we knew he was going to make mistakes, but Roman didn't seem to want to accept that. Before being given the Spurs job, Levy made him admit to having made mistakes which has clearly helped. For example he didn't start with a high line at the start of the season and has gradually implemented it (and it works despite Dawson being slow). He's done a great job at spurs. People say that he inherited a good team, but they lost 2 of their 3 best players in the summer. Add to that Adebayor's seeming decision to give up scoring goals, I'd say AVB has done remarkably well. Yes, Bale's been in excellent form but even he has come out and said that a big part of the reason for him becoming so good is AVB. Also this is an interesting read: http://blogs.thescore.com/counterattack/2013/03/06/horncastle-mind-games-a-comparison-between-the-training-methods-of-mourinho-and-villas-boas/ This is particularly interesting as the media have made him out to be an obsessive tactics geek who doesn't care about managing players, when this makes it sound like he's actually very interested in managing players and was just bad at it when he was here. A bigger mistake was sacking Ancelotti imo. I was looking at McEachran again earlier and thought about how Ancelotti clearly had a plan in terms of his development and was managing him well, something that none of the managers since have been able to do well. After the double winning season we got rid of: Ballack, Deco, Belletti & Cole. We replaced them with Ramires and Benayoun. The players we lost added a lot of depth to our squad and no matter how fantastic Rambo is (though he wasn't in his first season), he doesn't make up for it. As such, I don't think we underachieved in the 10-11 season at all. Ah well. I just want a decent manager* to be given time to work with the squad. *anyone but fsw.