I'd think Mata's worth around £40M, about the same as Rooney..

I would be a little worried that Rooney's best days are behind him. Two years ago he would have been worth £50m+ at today's prices. Around £35m would be fair in my opinion, given that right now it's a bit of a gamble with injuries becoming more prevalent.
As a creative midfield player, Mata's career stats are extremely impressive. Games 332, goals 89, assists 111. That's playing in La Liga and The Premiership. Yes, £40m/45m is about right.

Still only 25 years old, we would be crazy to move him on.
Compare that with Willian's mediocre CV, playing in Micky Mouse leagues. I wouldn't have rated Willian any more than £20/25m

I'm not getting this 'Mata isn't a Mourinho player' - Last season Mata was one of the best players in Europe, best Chelsea player by a long way, his work rate was immense, without Mata would we have secured 3rd in the PL or won the Europa Lge? Probably not. He scored and made winning goals for Chelsea last season. So why would any team even consider selling him? He should be every manager's 'type of player' - He's proven in the PL, and in European competition, he's up there with the PL elite, fully fit, his name should be one of the first on the team sheet!

As for Willian - Ah FFS, why? Not proven top level player by a long shot (yet), probably a flash in the pan, and do we really need him? Oh, on the plus side though he does have the 'one word name' (exotic) and he's also Brazilian, so it's all rather 'sexy' i guess!

We have so many top draw attacking midfielders already, why go for Willian? A complete waste of time imo.

^
I totally agree. He had one extremely good game against us, when we were awful. That often influences clubs disproportionately, and could explain why Abramovich was so keen.
Willian does possess all the tricks, I'm sure there will be games when he'll have fans sighing with pleasure. But over the course of a season, I wouldn't be surprised if there are more games where he goes missing.
Mata was awesome last season, 64(!) games, 20 goals and 35 assists...says it all really.

Our signings this summer all point to Jose has no control of transfers at the club.. its all done by board/abramovich...

Schrulle was signed before Jose came(and they still went ahead with it), and Willian has been a loooong term target stretching back to AVB.

Considered it, but surely Mourinho would have played one of them in a deeper role during pre-season if that was his thinking? I'd certainly give Oscar a try there in place of Lampard...he's very good at tracking back and winning the ball, calm in possession with an eye for a great pass.
Schurrle as a striker is another possibility but, again, we haven't used him there.

Willian is possibly the most pointless signing we've ever made.

BIB - Nothing to add.

The thing is, Willian would probably need time to get 'used to' the pace of the PL. We are going for Title this season, i don't think we can allow him the time to adjust, and we don't even need too, that's the most ridiculous thing about this whole debacle. We have plenty of decent, proven attacking midfielders. KDB looked good against Hull too, will he go down in the pecking order? Probably, even more ridiculousness!

Focus on getting a consistent forward, a regular goal scoring forward. If we want to win the League, we will need one i think. And lets face it, Torres will NEVER do it at Chelsea. Lukaku was great in pre-season, and on loan at WB last season, he needs more of a chance at Chelsea, but if we keep buying MF players, where and how can players like Lukaku and Schurrle even 'fit' in the team. If we get Rooney, and keep Torres and Ba, when will Lukaku or Schurrle get a chance? You can't keep rotating the team. You need consistency!

Get rid of Torres (nice guy, but time to go). Get rid of Ba. Buy a decent striker. Do not buy ANOTHER attacking midfielder. And do play the types of Lukaku and Schurrle more!

Two distinctly different rumours going around. One that Mourinho will make a final bid for Rooney after Monday's game.
The other is that we have given up on Rooney. Man Utd have made it clear that they will not sell to us, and with that in mind, we have made a deal for Eto'o.
The Sunday Telegraph are reporting it as virtually a "done deal"...
"The transfer of Eto’o, the 32-year-old former Inter Milan and Barcelona striker, is part of the agreement to sign Brazilian international Willian but Jose Mourinho does not want Eto’o's involvement to become public until after tomorrow night’s Premier League game against Manchester United."

It might make sense of the fact that Abramovich was involved, and the reason we brought in Willian ?

I wouldn't have thought there was a link. We might well sign both players but surely Eto'o would be viewed only as a short term fix? It'd be a bit drastic shelling out £30m on Willian in order to secure Eto'o, although I suppose with us anything is possible! For the money it would probably end up costing us to sign both we could have put in a decent bid for Jackson Martinez, a player that would make a lot more sense to sign than both of the Anhzi players.

I agree, it wouldn't make sense to be pushed into signing Willian in order to secure Eto'o. That's why (if true) it's possible that Abramovich might have come to some kind of deal with Kerimov that suits both parties.
Chelsea have been looking at Willian for a long time, so its not as if we weren't interested. Maybe Eto'o will arrive on terms that suit Chelsea ? In other words, Abramovich may have arranged a good package deal ?
I agree. It's certainly not an ideal solution. But with time running out, perhaps it's the best we could achieve.

Yeah, it does seem that way but Mou is no fool; he must have a plan up his sleeve. I'm more annoyed at how much we payed for him tbh. Instead of investing those funds in a CM or ST what do we go and get? Another attacking midfielder -facepalm-

The same "mou" that signed Mateja Kezman, Shaun Wright Phillips, Hernan Crespo, Andriy Shevchenko and Khalid Boularouz for a combined £80M or so. I wouldn't say he's immune from making scattergun signings, especially at Chelsea.

I loved Crespo! Okay he didn't play as much as he could have, but he did what was asked of him on the pitch, scored some great goals for us and he was a total gent!

I wasn't trying to make out Mou is immune from making the wrong signings. No one is perfect. What I meant was that he has a plan in terms of how we want to play. We've ignored two of our biggest weaknesses (CM and ST) in favour of buying another AM. There must be some logic behind that.

You could probably make a case that Roman signed Sheva too...

Forgot about that, to be fair even a Chelsea fan on here got Ranieri and Mourinho signings mixed up before, my point about the others still stands though.

Given the number of players we've signed in the past decade I think we can all be forgiven for getting a few mixed up


LoL @ Man City

Mourinho has given up on Rooney and is after Samuel Eto’o.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/foo...muel-Etoo.html

We should never have let Sturridge go.

I have a horrible feeling with willian coming in we will offer £40 million and mata for Rooney

I hope i'm wrong i hate to see us getting rid of mata

that would value rooney at 80 million

i have been less than impressed with the signing of willian, it is ridiculous to buy another am when we need a dm and striker.

same old chelsea, now we have hazard, schurrle and willian for the left sided position

Hazard can play left/right/centre. Schurrle can also play as a striker and when he's come on for us in the Villa game he did OK on the right. My choice for the left sided position would be KDB

No chance.That would make us a laughing stock.
Rooney is going nowhere. He never was unless United had managed to sign Fabregas.
Moses will go out on loan. The Eto'o rumours look good, he will join us for a season, and was probably part of the whole deal with Willian.

It's a shame if he does end up being loaned out, although i'll admit it's looking likely. He might not be a first choice pick but he has his merits and offers something a bit different to the others. I hope he doesn't go to Liverpool though if we do loan him.

Yes, he had a good pre-season as well. But he's sill only 22, and if Chelsea want to be fair to the player, a loan would be be in his best interests.

Mourinho hasn't even hinted at bringing in a defensive midfield player since interest in Di Rossi cooled. Presumably he's going to make the best of what we've got ? Perhaps he is looking at a different midfield, a diamond with De Bruyne and Oscar playing deeper roles ? Still leaves us short of a true holding player, unless he has more faith in Mikel than us, or believes that Van Ginkel is ready to take that role. But it would make more sense of our abundance of attacking midfielders, perhaps they won't all be used as strictly "attacking" players ?

I've been saying that since we sold him. All this rubbish about him being unprofessional and greedy used to really annoy me. Sturridge is exactly what Chelsea football clubs needs and has needed for some time now, but we choose to ignore him because of Torres, laughable.