Ultimately it will be him who decides. If he wants to push to leave it will be hard to keep him. Just like all the others going on now ....

The Luiz transfer story could turn into one of the current transfer sagas we have at the moment with Suarez, Rooney and Bale. If Luiz really wants to go to Barca do we really want to keep a player who doesn't want to be at the club.

Of course Luiz has said nothing currently and Jose has maintained he is part of our first team plans, so if he is happy here then we have no issue as we have no reason to sell him.

It would be nice if he did want to stay as he's constantly getting better and has put in some great performances recently such as at the Confederations Cup. If he continues to perform as he is he could potentially be one of the best Centre Backs around and obviously is held in high regard already as Barcelona want to sign him.

Just me here?

Cech; Ivanovic, Cahill, JT (c), Cole; Ramires, Van Ginkel, Lampard; Oscar, Lukaku, Hazard

Na, I'm here to keep you company.

Great goal from Ramires. And what is up with Ramos' hair?

Brilliant finish from Ramires! Think Cahill could have done better with Marcelo's goal. (watching because I'm a bit of a Madrid fan)

You had me worried

Ramos mid-life crisis hair....

Ivanovic taking out Ronaldo Serves him right for that dive earlier.


edit: OK, not so funny now

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Did Hazard even catch Ramos there??

(seriously, that hair....)

Agreed. One of Cahill's biggest weakness is knowing how to defend against players running towards him with the ball.

Not something you want to see after taking a brief nap. It's too bright for my eyes!

The RM players are total divas! Falling over at every opportunity..

Least the game is like a competitive match... CB still looking dodgy, but van Ginkel is really starting to impress.

Torres / de Bruyne / Moses coming on. I give it 3 minutes before Torres make us cringe.

They have us up at 3:30 and then lose the feed (yes, I'll say that like I'm not up this time anyway)

de Bruyne making a difference so soon after coming on


edit: Wow - they pick a great time to come back. Ronaldo 1-3

No-one was picking up Ronaldo....

lol the guy hugging Ronaldo...shame one of our players couldn't get that close to him.

Ready for Ba to come on now.

It was nice of him to stay on his feet. He's such a gentleman to his fans.

3-1. Could have been more, should have been more. Terrible performance.

van Ginkel continue to impress. Still poor at the back and toothless upfront.

To be fair, the service wasn't all that good. We could hardly keep possession at times.

Is Mata injured or something? Didn't see him today.

Haven't seen anything about Mata...only just noticed he wasn't on the bench.

Not panicking after 1 bad performance, but the problems tonight are ones we (the fans) have been aware of for too long. van Ginkel could be the long term answer to one, Lukaku could be the long term answer to another....no idea about CB.

Still some business to be done.

Lets get it into perspective, we lost to one of the best teams, after a couple of goals by the best player in the world. Its not like we lost to the Malaysian "all stars".

It must be odd to play a game at 100% knowing that if you get injured you are out for the start of the season, and may not get back into a team packed with talent. Its why i absolutely hate the community shield.

Chelsea still have a few problems. Hopefully Lukaku and/ or Rooney can help with the ones up front. At the back, if fit, we need JT + one other to help nurse them.

Cahill can be a fantastic centre back. Luiz can be fantastic too - he was dominant in the confederations cup (thats why barca are coming back with a 40million bid!) - they just need to be a bit more settled.

Forget about the result, and enjoy the absolute mayhem at our rival clubs.

Oh for goodness sake, please don't tell me there is knee jerking going on because we lost to Real Madrid?

We are still breaking in new players, they are top opposition and even though I have yet to see the game, I hear Ronaldo was on fire.

Saw some lovely pics of Jose and Carlo together and JM said he has learnt so much from the pre-season games.

It's all fine.

I wholeheartedly agree

After Chelsea refused the offer from Barca for Luiz, it looks like Barca have moved their attentions to Agger of Liverpool.

According to chelsea legend err "Craig Burley", he thinks luiz will be at Barca next season. It is a good enough quote, apparently, to take the 10am headlines on talkSPORT!

I think it may be another window of very late transfers. It makes choosing fantasy teams very difficult.

Says the person in the Chelsea thread who ends a post by saying.......


No. My purpose in the football community is to support Chelsea, not to hate on other clubs.


Please bare in mind that this is now the 3rd summer in-a-row where I've been accused of knee-jerking (no idea what I've even said wrong this time) after a poor pre-season performance. Once the last 2 seasons got under-way everyone - who hadn't already - jumped in and pointed out the same problems as me. Hardly the definition of knee-jerking.

Wasn't really directed at you personally, I had just been looking at twitter before I came on here and had seen a lot of negative posts from cfc fans panicking. I am not saying there isn't work to be done, but you can't possibly decide how the season is going to be based on that game, we have JM back, its been a long while, we have a lot of youngsters for him to look at, he needs to decide who is going to play where, patience is needed.

Is that idiot still talking about us? Surely nobody actually pays him money to talk about football? Does talkshite give air time to anyone who once kicked a football?

Craig Burley cannot stand us.

And the feeling is reciprocated.