The Chelsea F.C. Thread IV

The Bleacher Report is utter rot. It's a teeming mass of vacuity, truisms, lazy journalism, and sensationalist nonsense. I can't stand it.

It's very unfortunate that he's on his way out, he's been one of our best CDMs in the past few seasons, and one of the most consistent (certainly more consistent that Ramires and Luiz). But it's as you said, now we have Essien back with Romeu, we have a billion CDMs so we'll have to make some sacrifices. I knew Mikel would be shown the door first, and no doubt others will be interested in Ramires. I'd rather see others go and keep Mikel because he was established in that role, and was one of the most underrated players last season, he carried our midfield.

Very sad to see Mikel go, he will be missed. I would rather have kept him than some of the other CDMs, and 16 million is a good sum but he's definitely worth at least that. I'd suspect there will be interest in Mata over this summer with the number of AMs we have, but he loves the club and he won't leave, which is good news.

Romeu has bags of potential but I wouldn't want Mikel to leave unless we're signing a top replacement (like De Rossi who has been rumoured recently?)

Mikel knows how to play and was our only physical/strong player in midfield...
Lampard is old - not physical
Hazard - agile/balance/fast - not physical
Mata - not physical
Oscar - weakest of them all
Ramires - aggressive but not too strong.
And most of our bench is full of weak/ish players
Our defense on the other hand is beastly though but we need a physical presence in midfield.
And to bring Schurrle to the left wing (most likely) after all of this just makes the midfield even more weak against physical teams.

Excellent news. Mikel has been a very good servant to the club but is a very, very limited footballer and sixteen million pounds is an excellent sum to get for him - precisely what we bought him for, I believe.

It's very unfortunate that he's on his way out, he's been one of our best CDMs in the past few seasons, and one of the most consistent (certainly more consistent that Ramires and Luiz). But it's as you said, now we have Essien back with Romeu, we have a billion CDMs so we'll have to make some sacrifices. I knew Mikel would be shown the door first, and no doubt others will be interested in Ramires. I'd rather see others go and keep Mikel because he was established in that role, and was one of the most underrated players last season, he carried our midfield.

Very sad to see Mikel go, he will be missed. I would rather have kept him than some of the other CDMs, and 16 million is a good sum but he's definitely worth at least that. I'd suspect there will be interest in Mata over this summer with the number of AMs we have, but he loves the club and he won't leave, which is good news.

Hahaha! . I love your eloquent descriptions of things.




I don't know; I like Mikel too but I'd rather have the others stay. Romeu was very good defensively especially considering his age (prior to his unfortunate season-long injury), and with Essien, whilst he's been injured quite a lot he's often been a reliable player and, if you watched him with Real Madrid, he was looking very good in midfield before being pushed back to the fullback positions. This season, I often found that with David Luiz in the CDM position the play wasn't as slow and the forwards had more opportunities. Only issue is Luiz isn't really used to the position yet and isn't all that consistent.

Still hope that we go for Gundogan. Very good as a DLP and is good defensively too. Wish we could make Oscar fit the DLP role but there will be a lot of problems. The 3 amigos have very good chemistry with each other so I'm a reluctant to see them split up (if they do). Although as jam said they could interchange their positions during the game.

Oh and yes, good to hear about Mata. Apparently a lot of agents are always in contact but he prefers to stay. A lot of players say they love the club (apparently Luiz even rejected Barca a few times? Not sure how believable that is but...)

I dont think Mikel leaving is a great move, I dont really rate Romeu, when i'v seen him he's always been incredibly slow and gives away sloppy passes

I'd think the same, tbh. Mikel may be limited, but I don't think any of your other midfielders apart from Essien offers the positional discipline and tenaciousness that he does. Or perhaps Mourinho plans to move ahead with converting Luiz into a full-time DM?

But that's the thing, if we have mikel, essien and romeu one will be struggling for game time. Since Luiz was great in DM and quickens the play more than our other players I would love to see him there or to play in the two positions.

But that's the thing, if we have mikel, essien and romeu one will be struggling for game time. Since Luiz was great in DM and quickens the play more than our other players I would love to see him there or to play in the two positions.

Romeu was an absolute beast under AVB, could spray the ball to the wings quickly very well, too bad he was out of favour under RDM but you could see that benitez took a liking to him, seemed to work well as a DM.

I don't think oscar can yet control a game either, although tbf I watch him next to hazard and mata so it's a bit of an unfair criticism. He sure can do in the future. Bags of technique and bags of potential, if he fulfils it he could be as good as mata. If hazard fulfils his potential, then we're looking at our new version of ronaldo. Damn our team looks good atm it's gonna be hard to see us **** up.

Yeah, luiz has had a lot of offers from barca, I remember they wanted him when ancelotti was sacked but AVB wanted to keep him. He'll stay here for a long time I feel.

x

Basically, you made that evaluation on him due to the united match in the league cup? He's not blessed with pace, but he's an incredibly good reader of the game and under AVB he was our best passer, had like 92% passes completed iirc...
He was absolutely great against city at the bridge 2 seasons ago e.g.

Na, I wanted him to go, no point him being here. He didn't carry the midfield, he was very good at his job, di matteo liked him though and he was going forward more and getting involved in the attack a little bit more, but he just isn't good enough with our new style of play where we need more dynamic DM's who can spray passes around effortlessly while being decent defensively. But well done mikel, he's got a CL medal with us and many more trophies and has been a great servant, can't fault him for that. Similar to seeing kalou go I feel.

I'm afraid I disagree with you on this one. For the last season, him and Ramires were the best partnership in our team, and as I said before massively underrated. Nothing like seeing Kalou leave, I never really rated the guy or follow him much.

Oscar was brilliant one of the stars of the game. Luiz not so much looks very uncomfortable in the back four.

shhhhh..