Next season

[yogic]

I can only look forward to next season now.

I congratulate Grant on taking the team this far; he took it to the wire in the PL and to penalties in the CL. Many will argue that he could have done better with his substitutions and starting team, i agree; however, its over now.

I hope we hang on the key players like Essien and Lampard. I hope we buy the 'right' players and build a terrifying squad. Let those who don't want to stay leave, bring the ambitious ones in and most importantly, bring in an experienced winning manager.

...

[Jayhawk]

[Sheva]

No more Come back Jose chants he's gone live with it, Grant tooks us to the CL final enough said, just come home from tonights final and im gutted for JT, did not deserve it.

I myself is looking forward to a brand new season and we are defaintly going to have a new chelsea squad and a new manager and i can't wait!

Cmon the CHELSEA!

Let's come back better.

[JT26CFC]

seems as if many clubs will be re-inventing themselves next season. Can't wait to see what striker we buy and PRAAAY that lampard stays.

Bye Drogba!

[Paul Seery]

There is only one manager who can repeat what Jose Mourinho has done. His name: Roberto Mancini. The reason why I believe he should be the manager is that he is a born winner, has managed a big club and big name players.

[g3.7]

There is only one manager who can repeat what Jose Mourinho has done. His name: Roberto Mancini. The reason why I believe he should be the manager is that he is a born winner, has managed a big club and big name players.

refuses steadfastly to play a attacking players down the middle, was handed serie a in a time with no competition. inter are an ugly side.

[Paul Seery]

There is only one manager who can repeat what Jose Mourinho has done. His name: Roberto Mancini. The reason why I believe he should be the manager is that he is a born winner, has managed a big club and big name players.

refuses steadfastly to play a attacking players down the middle, was handed serie a in a time with no competition. inter are an ugly side.

They may be an ugly side, but so was Mourinho's Chelsea when he was the manager. If not Mancini then who should be in charge?

[g3.7]

they're an ugly side winning serie a by default. there are plenty of candidates, plenty. I'd prefer to keep grant than have mancini.

[abramovich]

There is only one manager who can repeat what Jose Mourinho has done. His name: Roberto Mancini. The reason why I believe he should be the manager is that he is a born winner, has managed a big club and big name players.

refuses steadfastly to play a attacking players down the middle, was handed serie a in a time with no competition. inter are an ugly side.

They may be an ugly side, but so was Mourinho's Chelsea when he was the manager. If not Mancini then who should be in charge?

I'm sorry Paul but i don't see how Mancini can improve our team. Inter have spent loads of money bought loads of top quality players and only won the scudetto after Juve got relegated and AC Milan got docked 15 points. His European pedigree makes Avram look like a coaching genius and his team plays a dull style of football.

No, thank you.

[Paul Seery]

they're an ugly side winning serie a by default. there are plenty of candidates, plenty. I'd prefer to keep grant than have mancini.

Any names that you would like to put forward for the mangerial role at Chelsea?

[g3.7]

if you say grant will go, here are some names:

hiddink, lippi (my choice), sparky, ruud.

if you want a coach who is young and has fresh ideas however, for me there is only one choice- spalletti at roma, who has built a side that plays beautiful football without spending anything, having to sell important players and replace them with no-one. I know people won't be able to look past the 7-1 loss to man united, but the guy is inventive and with a blank chequebook could build something amazing.

p.s. to the laudrup fans, please forget the player. getafe finished 5 points ahead of the relegation zone. the previous season, under schuster, they finished with nearly three times that amount of points clear of the bottom 3.

[Paul Seery]

Hiddink

Possibly the front runner if Grant gets sacked. He is out of contract after the European Championship in Austria and Switzerland.

Lippi

Not to sure if he would be cut out to be a Premiership manager.

sparky

Would be my preferred choice of the four. He has done very well at Blackburn Rovers. However he is most likely to be Sir Alex Ferguson's sucessor at Old Trafford.

Ruud.

No.

[mad_mac]

Ruud is already living it up in LA as coach of the Galaxy

[PraetorianGuard]

They are doing poorly in my opinion.

[quizgod]

For next season quite a few things need to be done.

1. Sit down with Frank and sort out his contract.

2. Get rid of the deadwood( i.e. Sidwell, Ben, Pizza, Sheva, etc)

3. If Drogba wants to go, then get as much money as we can.

4. Buy sensiblely, strengthen the areas we need to, the midfield is prettt well covered.

5. Sort out the management team, maybe move Grant upstairs and make Clarke No.1, if not maybe bring back Vialli.

With all our England players not being at the Euro's, at least they can have a rest now, and hopefully be refreshed for the new season.

[ethicalstrategy]

We need a quality right back that we can depend on.

We need some wide players who are truly world class and have some pace..

We need two top class strikers assuming Drogba and Sheva leave.

On the basis of Lampard and Drogba leaving these are the gaps we need to fill:

-----------Cech

Gap------JT----Carvalho------Cole

------------Mikel

------Essien------Ballack

Gap--------------------Gap

----------Gap

[valim]

hope for aguero and quaresma

we can have Beautiful games and good player who can scores always

you see it last night we dont have like this player on our team

--------------cech-------------

bosingwa --- carhvallo - terry - a.cole

ballack----essien---lampard* / mikel ---- quarsma#

---------aguero#/ Anelka ---- eto#/Amauri# / kalou ------------

* if he dont leave

# if we buy

[Chelsea FC Champions]

Assuming Drogba and Lampard leave!

------------------Cech-----------------

Bosingwa-------JT-----Carvalho------Cole

------Essien-----------------Ballack-------

Cole-------------------------Nasri/Ben Arfa

----------Aguero--------Banzema----------

[Ballack & Blu]

some great posts people,something to get our teeth into over the summer period,expect the rumour mill to Explode with speculation on arrivals /departures,as long as Riccy and the obvious stay ,should be exciting times

[abramovich]

Kenyon speaks on transfers

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/ ... 987941.ece

“We’re bringing in a couple because I think our squad is too big at the moment, so we’ll be looking at the net spend,” Kenyon said. “But it’s quality we’re after, not quantity, and it’s a very thin market we’re operating in. It’s fair to say they won’t be cheap.

“We’re looking at players who are star names or have the potential to be star names and that’s the key. When you look at what we’ve got, you can think about who to replace in what position, but are they better than what we’ve got? And even if he is, is he available and will he settle?

“We’ve proved that we can compete at the highest level by reaching a Champions League final. We take great heart from that and from the way we played and the way we played showed that we’re very close to that next step of winning the Champions League.”

Kenyon also emphasized the importance of retaining the key players that took the club to the Champions League final for the first time. Petr Cech and Michael Ballack need new contracts, while Ricardo Carvalho and Michael Essien will attract plenty of offers this summer, but the priority is agreeing a new deal with Frank Lampard.

“There’s been lots of speculation but we’re pretty confident that the players we want to keep, we’ll keep,” Kenyon said. “That has always been our position. The strategy is clear — home-grown for obvious reasons, the core being English, which is a strength, and having players on long-term contracts so you’re not going through constant change. You always have strong foundations that you can build on and grow. That’s what we’re about.

“With Frank, he is one of the top players in the world and there’s no question that a deal for Frank has always been on the cards and that’s certainly one of the things we’d like to sort out, to get rid of the speculation as soon as possible. I think we’ll talk after the internationals and that’s fair because everyone needs a break, so both things are our priorities.”

[Blue Sun Tzu]

After the understandable disappointments of losing the league and then the Champions league to United it is only natural that we should be debating what we have to do overhaul United next season (let's face it, Wednesday's game showed that they are our only real competition). There will undoubtedly be hair-trigger reaction demanding a full scale clear out and total rebuilding of the the side. However this would be a mistake as despite everything that happened to us in that most tumultuous of seasons we only missed out by the width of a rizla paper (a silver one at that!).

Having been outplayed by United in the first half the way we played for the remainder of the match was nothing short of magnificent. Nobody has denied that we are an incredibly strong side with extraordinary spirit and we showed that in spades however we also showed that given the freedom to do so we can play anyone off the park. I'd love to know who took the half-time team talk becuase suddenly we were a different side (what might have happened has we played like that for the duration of the season?). Lampard and Ballack ran the midfield, dove-tailing superbly and leaving United's midfield chasing shadows. Our defence effectively shut out Man United's oh-so celebrated attacking prowess, Terry and Ricci superb as always, Ashley Cole played his best game in a Chelsea shirt and even Essien managed to pull himself together and nullify the threat of Ronaldo.

The only real disappointment for me was the performance of our front three. Malouda was pretty awful, Joe 's confidence looks somewhat drained (he has not been the same player for the past three months) and Drogba was his usual battering ram, a constant threat, winning vital headers and pulling their defence out of shape to create space for the likes of Lamps and Ballack and coming so close to winning the match for us with a magnificent strike however he gave the impression that he was playing for himself and his attitude on the pitch ultimately lead to our downfall.

So given our performance on Wednesday, what do we need to do from here?

Now I have made no secret of the fact that I do not think Avram is the man to lead us next season. The reasons are well documented on this forum so we don't need to reiterate these. However, it is pertinent to suggest that had we started the game on Wednesday the way we started the second half we'd be European Champions. Of course there is the slightest possibility that the change was precipitated by Avram however I feel that that is unlikely at best. So the first priority before we can start talking about players is that we get a proper manager in place first.

So let's imagine that we have a new manager in place (be it Hiddink, Rijkgaard, Sparky, Uncle Tom Cobbly) what would he do? If he knows what it's good for he would intiate an evolution rather than an revolution. The defence and midfield is the heart-beat of our club and should remain in place. Therefore, his first job should be to ensure that there is no break-up of the defence and midfield and use this as a platform to take us on to a new level in much the same way that Wenger used Arsenal's infamous back five as a platform for his dynasty. Given that, his first priority is to make absolutely certain that Lampard and Carvalho sign new contracts tying them to the club for the foreseeable future.

Having secured our foundations, he should then pay most attention to our attack. It is no secret that this is where we have let ourself down over the past couple of seasons. Overly reliant on Drogba, we have been one dimensional in this area. When Drogba is on fire it works however in too many games his head hasn't been right and we have floundered. We need to show more guile and less predictability. He should look to create an attack that can swap positions at the drop of the hat, be given the freedom to take the game to the defenders and look to get behind the opposition (how many times have we done that this season?) to open up the space for our midfield to exploit.

Once he has formulated his plan he needs to pay attention to the players at his disposal and get rid of the deadwood. That's means saying farewell to the likes of SWP, Pizzaro, Ben Haim, Sheva, Sidwell, Malouda and - dare i say it - Drogba (who is more trouble than he is worth now). He needs to take good look at the players bubbling under the first team. He needs to decide whether Sinclair has sufficient quality to be promoted to the first team squad. Likewise, he also needs to look at the likes of Di Santo and Tejera.

Finally having done so, he can now turn his attention to new signings. Having already signed Boswinga he should recognise that we have more than enough quality in defence and central midfield and therefore we require no additions in that area (is there any player good enough to displace Lampard, Ballack, Essien?). So given that, his attention should given to our attack. Assuming that Malouda, Pizzaro, SWP, Sheva and Drogba are no longer required, he is left with a first team attack that consists of only Joe and Kalou (with Di Santo, Sinclair and Tejera knocking at the first team door). Therefore he should ask Roman to break the bank for two of the following: Benzema, Aguero, Ben Arfa, Ribery, Villa, Berbatov.

Now with the players he wants at his disposal he should formulate a style that plays to our strengths of the past few years (i.e. strength, spirit and power) and marry that to a more fluid attacking style. With the 16 men available for each game we should be able to play 4-3-3, 4-4-2, 4-5-1, 4-1-3-2, at the drop of a hat, changing the way we are playing should the circumstances warrant it.

Finally, the new manager should get hold of the players and ensure that their behaviour on the pitch improves. He needs to change our reputation as a nasty niggly team with a seige mentality constantly in the face of referees; whilst this helped instill the mentality of champions at the beginning of Jose's tenure, it now works against us as referees are only human and it is only natural that under such consistent bullying 50/50 decisions will go against us (how many decision went against us against Man united?). As someone else posted quite rightly, only John Terry should be given permission to question a referee's decision.

If the above can be put in place we will finally rid ourselves of the ghost of Jose and I can see us winning the lot next season.

[coco]

^ Nothing new there, all pretty obvious stuff.

[Blue Sun Tzu]

^ Nothing new there, all pretty obvious stuff.

To you and I perhaps, not to many posters on here who are advocating a total re haul of the side, the signing of yet more central midfielders etc. etc.

[Traxxtor]

Chelsea interested for Croatian player Dario Kneževi?!?

http://www.gazzetta.it/Calcio/SerieA/Squadre/Livorno/