Mata was our best player and Luiz was......popular. Abramovich has allowed Mourinho to sell them both.

As much as I didn't want Mata to leave I'm glad to see we're finally giving a manager an opportunity to shape his own squad. I have faith in Mourinho to spend the Luiz money wisely.

Read that Ba has been told he'll be staying with us next season and given more playing time. Dunno what to make of that regarding Lukaku and Torres.

To be fair, I think Luiz was a bit more than just "popular". I can remember him playing some great games, unfortunately he was also guilty of making some awful errors of judgement.
I've no problem with Mourinho shaping his own squad. There is probably more justification for taking the money for Luiz than there was for Mata.
But (as Dixon has said) a yearly so ago, players like Mata, Hazard, Oscar, Luiz, Lukaku and Courtois were probably most people's idea of the future of the club. Now two of those have gone, and there rumours about others.
I'm not quite sure I share your faith, but of course, I sincerely hope Jose gets it right.

Before Jose returned I think most of us had also lost any hope that the club was actually going anywhere.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still not convinced we couldn't have used Mata, and any sale of Hazard would be inexcusable, but we're in a much better place now than we were during Rafa's soul-destroying reign. £40-50m for a player who showed this season that no one can tame him will go a long way to filling the gaps in our squad that Jose - unlike everyone else responsible for transfers in recent years - can clearly see.

Unlike Mata, Eden seems fine with Jose's criticisms and we don't need to sell, so that's a rumour I wouldn't get too worked up over. Lukaku, I'm not so sure, especially after Ba's comments.

Well, that ends a miserable day watching football on tv for me. QPR win promotion and Real Madrid win The Champions League. Both decent games, but not the results I wanted.

I need some help.

wasn't luiz considered to be a future Chelsea captain few seasons ago now we're selling him, I don't get it

^ He can't really be considered as captain material if he struggles to hold down a place in the team.

I was never really sure about him as a captain to be honest. I'm sure he was well liked, good company, and generally great to have around. But his game wasn't consistent enough to lead by example, in my opinion.
I think people expected him to change and become more responsible, but he's remained a kind of loveable and unpredictable wild child.

One think we must remember about us and FFP is we have had money for 10 years now and due to the many mistakes made by owner (mainly due to chasing "style" over everything else") we are not really that much further along then the newer clubs with cash.

PSG have access to money that make us look poor and are one of their countries most popular teams (we have more competition in that respect) and City have a massive ground and can use ground redevelopment and money spent on training facilities and youth development, all money we have already spent.

We cannot spend anything on the current ground and a new ground is impossible at the moment (and until the club start being more open and honest with the fans and the C.P.O rightly so) and we have one of the best training facilities around.

All we have to bring money in is players. I think the Luiz sale will bite us in the arse and we will be seeing his name in teams of the years etc but we had and have some high value players who are either not immediately part of the first team or we are able to replace without a loss to our goals. We have a team that can challenge for the title and a manager that knows how to win titles, yes we need to fine tune certain aspects of it but with us being linked to players like Costa is a sign that we at least looking in the right direction.

I don't quite get that to be honest. I did try to look up the FFP rules and guidelines, but quickly got bored and confused.
I believe the transfer fee is spread over the years of the players contract for example, with the players "book value" reducing year on year ?
Aside from this, don't clubs have to justify spending according to "genuine" revenue from football. So I find it hard to believe that PSG would generate more world wide revenue than we do.
In comparison with Man City, we do suffer in terms of gate receipts. But that's a fraction of a clubs's revenue these days, and again I would have thought we were ahead of them in terms of world wide marketing.
I'm a bit confused about the whole thing. Does it mean that we have now become a club that needs to "sell to buy" ? If so, that's a whole new ball game for us and it makes you wonder about some of our purchases over the last couple of years.

I don't think we need to "buy to sell" but I think we need to do some small tidying up and selling 4 players for near enough 100m is a major part of that. We have not sold anyone who is vital for us (yet I agree). We have 10 years of mismanagement (in certain places) to put right. Some of our purchases over the last few years have been questionable and we all know this.

PSG can afford to ignore FFP more then we can as they have very deep deep deep pockets. City have a massive fan base (always have had) and can use that better then we can. Our ability to attract younger fans has never been the best (fan groups have been campaigning for a "youth season ticket" for years) and in a City where there are 5 or so Premiership teams its not easy

We still have a lot to learn about marketing our club. I was speaking to someone awhile ago about a big deal that us and City went after, The first thoughts of the company was to sign the deal with Chelsea but then it came to the pitches and ours according to those there was very poor and lost us the deal.

Was never a massive fan of Peter Kenyoun but the guy had worked for Man Utd who are the kings of marketing in football and we need people like him in charge not idiots like Gouley, He found working for Roman and his band of merry men impossible and that is/was worrying.

I don't think we should be in Utd's league of marketing but we should be at least close and we are not.

The way we have run the club has been the major issue behind our problems and are not going to be easy to put right and because I think we lack to people to do it on a business level we have to do it by selling players.

Interesting. I thought we were doing ok on the marketing side, but don't follow it too closely and have always believed the propaganda. Have Man City got a big following outside of the UK ? I would have thought we were the bigger club world-wide.
Seems we need to up our game on the business side, as you say. Maybe signings like Salah are made with one eye on marketing, he's apparently a huge name in Egypt and other parts of North Africa.

We are doing ok on that side but should be doing much better IMO. We have someone like Lamps and don't use him halfway as much as we should. Lamps is arguably the best English midfielder we have seen (one IMO one of the best ever) and we rarely use him in the right way, Liverpool have done a good job marketing Gerrard (great player but think Lamps is better) and he desperate to get out of Liverpool not so long ago. He is a England international, has a "famous" partner, a intelligent (very rare) and is a market agency's dream

These last 10 years IMV have been wasted in a number of ways and its all come from the board and mainly due to the obsession of our playing style. We needed to build up a whole host of League Titles and then start looking at how we play, Obsession with Europe also has not helped.

I think we are slowly putting things right but it wont be a easy road. I expect us to mount a real challenge for the title for the upcoming season and hopefully that will show us how far we have come.

Off the pitch is where the real work needs to be done and its going to be very very hard, The club have a lot of work to do in rebuilding the bridges burned last season with the fans and also needs to become more professional when dealing with major sponsorship deals.

Chelsea have done exceptionally well especially in Asia. United and Liverpool still dominate there but we are a good third. However, its on the pitch success that will only help it continue.

The other week on Radio 5 Live there was a discussion about Man City's growth abroad and they are still well behind Chelsea, and in what was said to be an already saturated market.
Of course, if we were to fade away and City continue to win the big ones, then things would change.
It's a great shame we didn't get the plot at Batersea. as that would have been a significant step forward for our club. As it is, we are a bit in limbo atm and could be for years to come by the looks of things.

Re-signing Tiago on a free....apparently....

I seem to remember Jose saying that selling Tiago was his biggest regret.

He would be a good short-term signing in my opinion. Reports say he wants one more lucrative deal while he has the chance..understandable at 33, Atletico don't pay the highest wages.
I've always rated him, intelligent player, great positional sense, good passer of the ball etc. He's not going to set the place on fire, but he will strengthen the squad.

There really is no point in me making anymore comments about the players Jose is looking for, so i'll keep quiet on that from now on.

For me, the number one priority for the club should be the stadium!
Falling behind in stadium development was the start of all our troubles all those years ago.
With Spurs building a new ground, Liverpool and City expanding and Utd and Arsenal already sorted, we will soon be way behind all of our main rivals in a few years time.
Imho, getting the stadium sorted asp is far more important than winning any trophy!

Its not going to happen anytime soon.

The club did such a bad job of it last time (and some might say even worse stuff went on) that they really need to sit back and rethink all their plans.

I not sure even if Gouley and Buck present the perfect plan it would even be agreed on. Maybe they need to bring in different people to come up with plans and present them

How can anyone at CFC be held responsible for the failure to win the bid for Battersea?

We put forward the clubs plans to build a football stadium with parking facilities and that is just about all the club could do!
Other people had other plans and one of them was prefered over our plan. It really is as simple as that!

Not blaming them for not getting Earls Court, it's the unhanded tactics in which they tried to force permission to sell Stamford Bridge though.

Not only was the methods morally wrong, I also think other stuff was tried

Yes, they thought the CPO members could be railroaded into selling their shares.
I think they were taken very much by surprise.
They can't buy another stadium area without selling the Bridge.

Plus random people like Roman's driver/body guards buying shares before and after announcement of the offer (as well as members of Bucks family), emails going around senior members of staff about keeping certain fans from kicking up a fuss. As well as some stuff from the C.P.O itself.

There was no dialogue with the fans and there needs to be. I would say most fans would be up for moving BUT certain conditions need to be met first and rightly so.

I thought the board and the fans relationship was bad during the Ken Bates days and would improve with Roman's ownership but it has not, sometimes it's been a lot worse.

There is a big movement nowadays about "fan ownership" and fans having a say in the future of the club and Chelsea fans are lucky enough to have some degree of this and I don't think it should be let go off just on the "you can trust us" line.

I am not against selling and moving far from it but it needs discussion and the club (and Roman) it open up its doors and allow fans to have their say

I thought it showed a lack of trust in Roman.
After all he'd done for the club, did anyone seriously think he was just going sell up and make some dosh?

I know we made a formal offer for the Power Station but did we make one for Earls Court as well? I know there was talk of the club being interested in the site but i never heard about an actual bid for it being rejected.