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The next time he regains his form, the top 4, especially Arsenal, will come sniffing about again and there's nothing to suggest that he'll remain loyal and/or ignore their interest. He was captain of a club man!! And yet let the whole team down because he couldn't complete his £15m move to Arsenal.

Some of Arsenal's player contracts are probably leftovers from when they went undefeated and thus, players like Ljungberg, Campbell, Henry, Pires and all would have been earning quite a lot. The new generation also look like they're going to be demanding a high wage or they'll be fucking off soon enough (such as Fabregas for one).

He's not man. He's just simply stating an obvious fact. The team that went undefeated had players like Vieira, Lauren, Bergkamp etc. experienced heads who stayed cool under pressure. The current team filled with youngsters still has some way to go but they're only going to get better anyway, especially when a few more experienced players arrive this summer.

The joy of seeing a double-negative used incorrectly

this i also think if anyone can get the best out of barton, its big sam You wouldn't trust Wenger, Mourinho or Fergie then?

Possible replacement for him as well? You know, when he starts his 'I'd love to play in Spain one day' 'I think Madrid are a great team' 'I think Barca are a great team' thing. Maybe these two players are just a precaution in case Ronaldo gets his head turned by his agent/Madrid/Barca again.

And their fans will tell you Chelsea try and buy the league... We should do the same

ABola says both transfers are agreed. But it wouldnt really make sense for a club llike united to gamble big money on two foreign, untried youngsters. Hello, Cristiano Ronaldo anyone?

Holy shit. Now that's splashing some dough!

He has a FUCK LOAD of money but whether he's willing to actually splash around remains to be seen. He's a shady character and his reign as PM ended with allegations of corruption, cronyism etc. the usual Thai politics stuff. Saying, you can't tell how he's going to run a football club from his experience of running a freaking country. Tell you what though, he is innovative and will bring new, and different, ideas to running a football club. He did change the economy (for the better imo) and did serve as PM during what was probably our best economic years in quite a while. Anyhow, I actually hope the deal goes through because that'll rule him out of a return to politics for the foreseeable future

Given would make a shit captain, cant even marshal his defense properly nevermind a whole team. But you can't make a decent case for anyone else at the club for the captaincy, Nonsense tbh, mate! I'd have Nobby and Butt ahead of Given in the pecking order. Solano's not even guaranteed to start every game next season tbh. His form fluctuates and he's the technical type of player who'll drift in and out of the game (especially when he's playing in midfield). We shouldn't make him 'undroppable', as Parker sadly was. With Butt, even though he's forgiven for the Cardiff incident, it certainly isn't forgotten. His started off brilliantly (against Boro away I think), but then faded and ended his season on that horrible note which was Cardiff. Then he disappeared on loan for a season. Even though he's arguably our player of the season, that fact is tainted by the more important fact that this was our worst season for fucking ages man!! And who's to say he'll be able to continue to perform like he has? I don't see him as captain material, as well. We don't have any players in the team who are natural leaders, which is why I'm saying Given because I don't want to see another case of a player losing form but yet the manager is afraid to drop him because he's the captain. Given's consistent, has actually saved us on numerous occasions, shown his loyalty to the club, practically undroppable just by himself and not injury-prone. That's why Given's case trumps everybody else's.

Given would make a shit captain, cant even marshal his defense properly nevermind a whole team. That's a myth. And tbh, it's not like he has the best defense in front of him eh? It's not even his job ffs. The only time we've had a decent central defender in our team (Woodgate btw, in case you were wondering), our defence looked and was good (enough). If we had decent defenders, they wouldn't need to be 'marshalled'. Do you see Petr Cech marshalling John Terry? How about Buffon marshalling Cannavaro (when Fab was at Juve)? How about Reina marshalling Carragher? No. Was Shearer the type to shout at his teammates and lift them onto a higher place? No. Did he need to be? Again, no. There is a case against Shay being given the captaincy, that I'll admit. But you can't make a decent case for anyone else at the club for the captaincy, which is why Shay deserves it. No i cant. Erm.. that was what I said..

Given would make a shit captain, cant even marshal his defense properly nevermind a whole team. That's a myth. And tbh, it's not like he has the best defense in front of him eh? It's not even his job ffs. The only time we've had a decent central defender in our team (Woodgate btw, in case you were wondering), our defence looked and was good (enough). If we had decent defenders, they wouldn't need to be 'marshalled'. Do you see Petr Cech marshalling John Terry? How about Buffon marshalling Cannavaro (when Fab was at Juve)? How about Reina marshalling Carragher? No. Was Shearer the type to shout at his teammates and lift them onto a higher place? No. Did he need to be? Again, no. There is a case against Shay being given the captaincy, that I'll admit. But you can't make a decent case for anyone else at the club for the captaincy, which is why Shay deserves it.

Given for captain ffs. He's the most logical and worthy. Butt can fuck off (not literally, just away from the armband). He's alright and he's redeemed himself after the pathetic performance in Cardiff, but captain material? Fuck off.

Bye Bye Scotty. Thank fuck!

Just realized this. Tal Ben Haim = TBH. Tbh.

Whoa!! Seems like we're going to be signing a load of players. This is all really exciting!! what a week or two it's for the club

class

NE5 knows all eh? not only football, but women as well!

It's like people just open up FM and say 'oooh lookie here, this boy's potential ability is 180+, we should sign him for £12m!!' TBH that's a very immature way of looking at it and is untrue, well for me anyway So how much have you seen of him? Unless you watch the Portuguese league, and in particular, whatever team he plays for, I'm guessing you're just basing all this on the fact that Manyoo and Spurs are interested, much like in the other thread with Ben Haim whom some people assume to be good because Chelsea were apparently interested.

The revenue they're getting from sponsorship deals, merchandising and all puts them in a different league to us. They will become 'self-sufficient' if they can stop spending £30m on one player, which they will because the team is filled with class players. That's the biggest factor going for them. They don't need to blow their budget out of the water anymore. They're covered in every position, and continuing to poach some of the top youngsters in the world. Didn't they poach a kid from Arsenal about a month or two ago?? It's not like the first couple of years of the Roman era where they had to spend £50m+ in the summer to be able to compete next year. If they spend nothing this summer, absolutely fuck all, they're still one of the favourites for the title. With regards to building a new stadium, even if Abramovich doesn't chip in (very unlikely), I'm sure it's possible to finance it through season ticket sales and what-not (or do an Arsenal and get £150m for the naming rights of the stadium for 10 years - fantastic deal btw, one of the smartest deals I've seen in football), just like how SJP was developed. It is possible. I'm also very sure Kenyon will know the fact that a massive stadium would elevate their revenue streams into Manyoo's league, which is why it's going to happen sooner rather than later. Alright, I'm going to throw numbers around willy-nilly and see if we can make some sense. How much did The Emirates Stadium cost? £300m? Assume it'll also take roughly £300m for Chelsea to purchase a nice piece of land and build a 50000+ seater stadium. Do an Arsenal with the naming rights, and that covers half the cost. They can probably finance up to about £100m (just making a guess) through future season-ticket sales. All that's left is £50m, which I'm pretty sure can be found from the other sources of revenue that they have (whether it's their £12m/year shirt sponsorship or whatever). All those numbers are just random guesses, but to me, it seems as if it won't cost that much for Chelsea to push themselves into Real's and Manyoo's league. And all this with the assumption that Abramovich actually does nothing.

It's like people just open up FM and say 'oooh lookie here, this boy's potential ability is 180+, we should sign him for £12m!!'

They'll move out of Stamford Bridge soon enough. And I think Abramovich did actually wipe out all their pre-existing debt, which means that if he does leave, they could always borrow again. That's the good thing about takeovers, even if the new owner eventually leaves, they can borrow again. We have a debt of something like £80m and I think Chelsea had something similar pre-Abramovich. So if Abramovich fucks off, they can actually borrow £80m to stabilize their finances and what-not. It's actually common practice in business to use loans and stuff, as opposed to just hard cash.

The core of the Chelsea team will be there for 3+ years. They're not going anywhere. Terry's still what? 26? Lampard's what? 28? Drogba? 28? Cech? 25? Essien? 25? They're not going anywhere man. This season they had Robben out injured for a while and Joe Cole basically injured for the whole season. Next season you can expect at least one of them to fit longer and play more regularly. And of course like I've mentioned before, Ballack and Shevchenko will get better, maybe not by much, but they'll perform better.

I wish Sam would just shut up and not saying anything about transfers. It'll be like the Roeder situation again 'we are very close to signing someone' and then nothing happens. Every manager should take a look at Bobby Robson who never said anything whilst conducting transfers. He just kept it quiet until it was all done and then said 'here, I've signed this bloke'. That's the way to do things.