Forget Varane, Laporte, Stones etc. We have our new mega signing, and it's a CB.
Papy Djilobodji is having a medical ahead of a surprise move to Chelsea. The fee ? In the region of £2.7m according to reports. Who is he ?..I have no idea. He's not being signed for potential anyway, he's 27 years old.
Oh well, it's practically loose change for Roman, so no harm done financially. But it's still so depressing.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/...apy-djilobodji

I'm sure Man City are trembling right now.....


Chalobah going on loan to Napoli for the season. Last chance for him to impress before we should look to sell him.

Football management is something you'll be either good at or not good at, and the fact that today's date is 31/8/15 makes zero difference to that! but you think players should wait until they're 25 before they play for Chelsea, so it doesn't surprise me you think a manager needs years of experience before they're good enough for Chelsea.

Today, just as it's always been, It's all about good man management, getting players to run through a brick wall for you and knowing about tactics etc. If Terry or Lamps don't know, or have that now, they never will!

And what was so wrong about wanting Rafa to stay on:confused
Under the most extreme cricumstances, he did a great job steering a struggling team through a fixture pile: up, winning a good trophy and qualifying for the CL.
He did that with a centre forward who couldn't hit a cows backside with a banjo, and no cover behind our wonderful midfield trio.
We signed Mata, Oscar and Hazard, to change the way were going to play for years to come. Rafa, bought into that idea and despite all the problems, they way ahead was very clear!
He goes, Jose comes in and rips it to pieces by getting rid of Mata and ruining Oscar.
We now have a shambles of midfield that is neither one thing or another and a style of play that is just as muddled. If Rafa had made the kind of subs that Jose made on Saturday, bringing on young, defensive players when we needed goals, he would have been crucified!
3 years on, we are going backwards!


We have Everton away, Arsenal at home then Newcastle away. Crucial games that will make or break our season and possibly Jose's time at Chelsea.


One bright note. Only a brief cameo, but i liked the look of Kennedy.

I'm sure he's a nice enough bloke, just can't stand him making us a 10 man team every week.
Seriously, single him out and study what he does for a while. Just watch how much he aimlessly follows the direction of the ball. Along with his almost zero 'end product' there appears to be no thought or purpose to what he's doing 95% of the time.

Amazing isn't it. Win the league and then 4 games in fans want you sacked.

Carlo, was sacked after winning the double and finishing 2nd.
Raniere, was sacked after taking us to our highest league position for 50 years and a CL SF.
Roberto, was sacked after winning us the CL.

This is our worst start to season for 40 years, so if it gets even worse the sack would be no great surprise.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/106355

I will sign this

Don't see what this has to do with Chelsea so have reported it as spam as there is already a topic about this subject

Nothing wrong with wanting Rafa to be manager if you want to be a team that will never win the title

Consider me told.

It's also called harrassing or closing players down. As a fan of the beautiful game you should appreciate it. That was a key part of Barcelona's game, lose possession and it's everybody's responsibility to work like hell to get it back. What players do without the ball can be as important as what they do with it.
But I don't see him as chasing around "aimlessly"..he's usually tracking or closing down a player and generally trying to make life difficult for the opposition. He's very quick with the ball at his feet, has a decent close, neat passing game, and when on form he links up well with Hazard. If only he could hit a barn door from three paces people might actually be singing his praises.

I'm sure Rafa is a nice enough bloke, but he's also another tinkerman. Attention to detail is great, but I always had the impression that Rafa would keep on trying to fix things that weren't really broke. As soon as I see a manager scribbling in a notebook throughout the game it raises my suspicions. It's football not chess, it's a sport not a science.

Reciting statistics without the facts behind them once again

Have you ever considered a career as a journalist for one of the red-tops?

But the tinkerman got us to our highest league place for 50 years and got us to a champions league SF. So he must be a genius of a manager as proven by his amazing career since then.

Never heard of him either but it just screams 'panic buy', doesn't it?

Sounds like Moses is about to sign a new contract then be punted out on loan again, to West Ham this time. Ridiculous! Either give him a chance in the squad this season or just sell him if he's not deemed good enough.

Yes, and according to L'Équipe 21, José Mourinho had no idea who Papy Djilobodji was when the club reached a deal for him today. I'm pretty sure that must be a wind-up, but it made me laugh anyway.

Also, if he forms a partnership with Zouma, we will have Happy and Papy as our two CB's..which is kind of fun if nothing else.

JM has just signed a 4 yr contract, just in time?......itl cost Zillions to sack him.!

Cost billions or cost nothing still would be foolish to do so

As I keep saying, lvg, we get and Rodgers will all get the push before jose

Jose came, ripped up that midfield and err won the league. What on earth was he thinking taking us backwards.
Ask Liverpool and Arsenal fans how easy it is to win the league.
Way too much panic at the moment but it's certainly a better time for the doom and gloom merchants.

Amazing isnt it.

Also we have had arguably the best transfer window - pound for pound, of any team.

We have not being playing well, it looks like a hangover from winning the league, having a late world promotional tour and having a small squad of players. They dont look fit.

And yet the game of football is full of very tiny instances that change games. We hit the post, had a shot cleared off the and the palace keeper made two fantastic saves. Then they go down the other end and score. It could so easily have been 2:1 to us and it would have been we were back on track after a blip at city.

The teams around us (bar city) are equally bad, but the luck has been running with them. Two own goal winners for United. Without them, they would be bottom. They are playing awfully, havent signed a defender (even though they were desperate for ramos), have sold RVP and hernandez, rooney is shot to bits and have signed a £36 million player who has only ever scored 13 league goals in their ENTIRE career.

Im happy with Jose, every team would want him as their manager, lets not forget that.

Might be their fav season since we was relegated

Cheer up - we've just signed 23yo Michael Hector as well






edit: And loaned him straight back to Reading. This window really has been a clusterf**k.

The Jose Mourhino debate. His lack of rotation / unwillingness to fully utilise a squad, and accusation that teams work Chelsea out after two seasons.

Both valid arguments. Jose has been a very, very successful manager.. when he has only stayed at a club for 2 or 3 seasons. Not just Porto, but Chelsea, Inter and Real as well. That's FOUR clubs where he has built a machine, and then left when opposition teams have worked out how to beat the machine.

Untested territory for Jose. He HAS to start varying the play and rotating more imo, otherwise qualification for the CL will start to look bleak, and at that point he will get sacked. Roman will not tolerate failure to qualify for the CL and rightly so. Those are the facts, loyalties to one side.

John Stones. Realistically he was worth around £32 million plus add ons, and there's nothing more you can do there. Pogba? Rumours are he was asking the earth and he's untested in the PL.

KDB. More goals and assists than Fabregas AND Hazard. Ok, and what league was that in? Oh, 'ang on, the Bundesliga where Andre Schurrle looked a world beater until he faced the realities of the very physical PL. Imo, KDB is going to struggle, but having said that the balance that city have got is impressive.

Unlike kamikaze Jose at the moment who refuses to drop Ivanovic, and insists on keeping Mikel, even though he knows he can't really trust him as competition for Matic, city are playing with two solid holding midfielders who can also attack, behind Silva, Sterling, KDB AND Aguero. THAT is balance.

Jose on the other hand insists on playing Fabregas alongside Matic game after game, and I'm not even going to mention Ivanovic again, who was starting to look dodgy back when we played Man Utd, and Januzaj (a 'kid') targeted him for their equaliser away.

A great manager makes changes before players become a problem. He anticipates. Even a good manager makes changes when a player has a bad game or two, but not Jose. No he is persevering, as if living in the past. Dangerous, very dangerous. Maybe he has lost the dressing room, we don't know.

Legendary managers. Sir Alex Ferguson, who used to make 6 or 7 changes for games with the CL in mind, and still win games (with 'kids') and Bob Paisley. Bob had the bravery to drop a then England captain in Phil Thompson, for a 'kid', Alan Hansen, knowing that he had a better player coming through. He was right, and it wasn't cruelty towards the local Liverpool player, it was ruthless common sense. Why? Because he wanted to win trophies, including European and first division doubles, which he did.

Jose, take note. These are dangerous times, and imo, Jose is walking on very thin ice.