Fernando Torres for £50m – Yes or No?
Fernando Torres for £50m. The player wants to leave. The selling club wants to let go. The buying club is keen. The only thing that’s between a red and a blue shirt for Fernando Torres is that price tag. It is said that sometime during last season, when Torres was made some promises, they also agreed on a release clause of £50m.
Chelsea are supposedly in a period of financial austerity. In the last few seasons, clubs like Sunderland, Spurs etc had spent more than us. From nowhere, looks like we’ve coughed up . . well . . £50m. This is quite a surprise. We have been staying away from pricey stars for some seasons now. The last time we bought one was the £30m striker who scored against Liverpool on his debut.
This whole Torres saga is dividing the Blues fans. You have fans who are excited and you have fans who totally want to stay away from him, for this price. The ones that support quote what a great striker he is, that he’s a proven premier league star, that he can consistently score about 25 goals every season and that we have an aging pair of forwards. The ones that oppose this move make a reference to his injury proneness and that £50 is too much for what we’ve seen of him.
I don’t know if £50m is too much. There are two ways to look at a player’s value. One is based on the player and his potential and abilities. The other is based on how much the club can benefit by the player. Some new players have saved their clubs from relegation and when they do it, their valuation by the club will be immense. Similarly, we do have the team that can win the champions league. And Torres would just fit in just for that purpose.
Also, we don’t quite know what’s too expensive any more. Darren Bent went for £24m. And this deal was between Sunderland and Aston Villa. Atletico have rejected a £38m offer from Tottenham for Sergio Aguero. Now here, we’re talking about Fernando Torres, Chelsea and Liverpool. It can’t be less than £40m for sure. Also, it appears we could send some player(s) the other way as part of the deal. That’s rumoured to be Anelka and also that he’s not too keen to move. I don’t want Anelka to move. I’ve grown to love him despite all his shortcomings but then if Torres is here, Anelka will be relegated to the bench and I don’t know if he’s okay with that.
I personally would love to have Torres here for two reasons. One is, he is a fantastic striker. Two is, this will mean Carletto would change his formation from a 4-3-3 to 4-4-2. It is very clear that we don’t have the players for 4-3-3 and we’re not looking to buy players to fit in to this system either. See we’ve bought Ramires and Benayoun, we’re now looking to buy Torres. All this points towards a 4-4-2, which I’m very happy about.
A deal will have to be struck by 11pm UK time. The agreement will have to be reached much earlier so the paperwork that needs to happen before 11pm can go ahead. The deal, if any, should be completed to give enough time for Liverpool to speed-spend that money in the market in few hours’ time. It’s going to be a manic deadline day.
The best finish to this saga is Torres joining Chelsea. If you browse the net, you’d know that Liverpool fans have given up on him and all the hate messages have started flooding. This is what happened to Wayne Rooney and then he kissed and patched up. I don’t think it works that way in Liverpool. Torres is not Gerrard. If Torres were to issue a tearful apology and join the squad back, he’s not going to be embraced by the fans.
Wayne Rooney said that he wanted promises on who they’re going to buy and what their ambitions are. Fernando Torres reportedly says that he can develop further as a player at a different club. Do you see the difference? Wayne had a new contract in his mind and hence was asking questions of his club. Torres has moving to Chelsea in his mind hence his question doesn’t involve what Liverpool can offer.
I’ll be glued to the internet to follow this story. Let’s see what happens. Hoping he becomes a Blue by tonight. Here’s the inevitable poll. Let’s look at the reported deal. Would you want Chelsea FC to buy Fernando Torres at a package price of £50m. When I say package price, I mean that could be cash only or cash plus player(s). Don’t think about which players could leave. Just simply say if you’d want us to buy him for £50m.
You know my vote. In support of this move, I’ve even changed my twitter profile image. Check it out. Okay then, here you go. Make you move. Before that, watch this vid:
Everton 1-1 Chelsea | The ‘bad moment’ was almost back!
That’s what I thought. Like how the near golden boot winner ‘Own goal’ helped Man Utd all along last season, this ‘Bad Moment’ has been chasing us to drive us out of the season. The first half was nothing much to brag about, in a way it was a bit like the second half. Everton had most of the ball, they looked to sharper and quicker. We were being our recent selves – pondering and pondering.
Anelka got couple of chances where he had clear sight of the goal only to realise he had better sight of Tim Howard. On the other end, we were shaky at the back. This was another display by Ivanovic to show why he is not a natural centre back. Lovely player but has a long way to go before becoming an established centre back.
Second best, once again!
I don’t want to be proved right about Essien. He was bad. Let’s admit it. In this match, he wasn’t even playing in an offensive role. He was in defensive midfield playing a classic holding role. He was only meant to break up attacks, provide cover at the back and make simple distributions. For a player like Essien, this must have pretty natural and easy. He did a decent job but not what you’d expect of Essien. He ended up creating attacks, for Everton. He can be many things but disaster is not one. He had my heart in my mouth a few times. Very unEssien.
Ramires is best improved player this season for us. If he continues like this for a couple more months, he is my Chelsea player of the season. I’m just loving his runs through the centre. In premier league, it’s not often possible to make his kind of runs right through the centre of the pitch. He does it quite easily. And that 86th minute screamer was stunning!! He’s developing to be a fine player and he could probably be our best post-Mourinho signing.
Having Ramires and Lampard in the centre midfield should give us a lot variety in our how we build our attacks. We saw some Ramires-inspired moves and some delightful balls from Lampard which only tells me that all we need to do is to use these fine gentlemen in building our attacks. As we play 4-3-3 with a holding midfielder, most of our attacks happen through the flanks and this reduces the possible involvement of Ramires and Lampard. With ‘Rampard’ (there you go, another word coined), we’re well within our strengths to play 4-4-2 diamond kind of formation so we can get the best from them.
Our attacks down the wings are totally predictable. We don’t have magicians on either wings to spring surprises. Watch us play down the wings – we do the same things over and over. If Everton had watches the recording of our last few matches, they know too well what to do and especially where to do. Malouda not being at his best has had an impact on Ashley Cole as well. They work in tandem and if the winger isn’t doing well, the wing back won’t be able to do any better. Our right side is perennially under-strength. Bosingwa and Anelka – I don’t even know if they understand each other well – leave alone a chemistry. They just don’t make a pair. More often that not, Bosingwa is left alone with no support. While our left side is adequate but currently effective, the right side is terribly inadequate. Hence I think that we should look to attack through the middle to get the best out of ‘Rampard’ and also avoid the ineffective wing attacks.
Hot to handle!
Louis Saha is one striker that I fear. He is an extremely talented player whose career was ruined by injuries. If not for the injuries, he’d have become a great premier league player. In the Mourinho days, we had the best defensive set ups in England, if not in Europe. It was never easy to beat us. Scoring against was a realy prize and a moment of pride for anyone. At Old Trafford, Saha scored this beauty against us that left Carvalho, Terry and Cech wondering what hit them. It required something very special to score a goal like that against the Chelsea of 05-06 and he was! He has always troubled Chelsea and yesterday was no different. John Terry just couldn’t contain him in a dead ball situation. He scored and Mr. Bad Moment was lurking around the corner.
We didn’t go after them with power, force, revenge and aggression. We continued to do what we were doing since the kick off. Luckily for us, Everton didn’t sit back to defend their lead. They wanted to build on their lead. We got the ball moving in a counterattack and Kalou surprised all, including probably himself, with a beautiful finish that even the best striker in the world would be proud of. He was being blocked by three defenders, there was some distance, he was in an angle, had the goalkeeper make his full stretch and still managed to score with a sweet shot. Delightful!
This was an evenly contested match but Everton was slightly better and were more likely to win the match. A score draw is something I’d take happily given that we could’ve gone out of the cup. The way we played made Everton think that they could win this match – all 90 minutes. They were not afraid of Chelsea at all. They weren’t worried about the damage that we could inflict on them. They played like they were equals. We gave them the belief. But I’m happy that we’re still in the cup. We might have congested our February which was already very busy. Anyway, at least, we showed the door to Mr. Bad Moment but I think he’s just waiting outside the door.
So, no more David Luiz. Well then, we know how to move on, don’t we? In comes Fernando Torres. Lovely drama as Liverpool rejecting our bid and news trickling out that Torres has handed a transfer request to leave in this very window that ends tomorrow. Nice one Fernando! The talks are still on. The valuation is mind boggling. I wouldn’t pay anything more than 30m pounds for him considering how injury prone he is, at such young age. And I don’t want to part with any Chelsea player in this deal, ok Paulo Ferreira may be. We’re playing Liverpool next weekend; will he be ours by then? And yes, if we have learnt anything from Chelsea FC, don’t place too many hopes on signing Torres tomorrow.
We’re playing Sunderland away on Tuesday night. I guess we owe them something. Let’s make it a night to remember. Cheers and have a nice weekend!
Quit playing games with my heart . . .
It’s been fairly typical this transfer window. We’ve let young players go on loan. We’re looking desparately land some players but they are holding us to ransom. We say that there won’t be any big purchases because Roman has tightened the purse but still get linked to some big money names. It’s typical.
On the topic of David Luiz, I’ve gone through a cycle of emotion, like it happened to me with many players – Robinho, Aguero, Carlos Tevez, Dani Alves, David Silva, Alex Pato, Neymar, Kaka and the list goes on. Some of them are players that we really pursued and some of them were pursued by the Press on our behalf. Being a gullible football civilian, I fall for the trick, every single time. I keep telling myself that I shouldn’t fall for the tabloid bait but then heart takes over head, hope takes over logic. May be I’m easily excited when it comes to possible Chelsea transfers. I start following the players’ progress and try to interpret every damn thing that happens around them. I let the excitement build up only to find that we didn’t manage to sign them or we were never in it.
With David Luiz, I thought we wouldn’t go for such an expensive defensive option especially because we will get Alex back. We have Bruma and Patrick as well. Once I realised we are chasing David, I was into the civilian cycle – checking his youtube videos, checking the Benfica website, checking our website every hour, searching in twitter, downloading his best pictures, reading every profile of his in the website – I’ve fallen for it, once again.
It’s not over yet, though. Benfica has officially announced that negotiations are going on with Chelsea. Chelsea have managed to obtain a work permit for David Luiz already. I hope what’s delaying the signing is the modern day complexities of joint ownership of the player, image rights, agents and such stuff. At this stage, I was preparing for a welcome post for David Luiz. And then, this continued for a day only to find a rumour that Man City is in. What the heck? Why oh why? I can’t take another heart break. It’s not that I’m desparate for a David Luiz or desparate for even a defender, it’s just that I’m so taken into the belief that David Luiz is a Chelsea player and now I don’t want that to change.
There is also this rumour about Arshavin being tracked by Chelsea. How I’d love that! I like Arshavin and I think he is a fantastic player who doesn’t have the motivation to play for Arsenal anymore. Of late, he’s been poor but I think he is a high-impact player that perfectly fits into Chelsea.
And then, I hear about Chelsea having bid for Torres, again! I don’t quite understand why. With Torres, we would have to play 4-4-2 only. That means we may not need wingers. I’m happy with us playing a 4-4-2 diamond. Carlo knows that formation like the back of his hand. He’s had a lot of success with that. But Torres once again? I’d love have Torres here but the key thing is, are you telling me we have another 40m to spend over and above the 25-30m we are spending on David Luiz. And this is January. And Roman is supposed to have stopped spending big money. Anyway, the Chelsea bid for Torres is official, coming from a Liverpool spokesman.
With 4-4-2, Arshavin can play in the hole. Look at the prospect of Drogba and Torres, supported by Arshavin. Anelka might have to sit out and Malouda would also be impacted as we could play Essien in holding midfield and the central midfield would be Lampard and Ramires. In the hole is Arshavin. It can’t be more perfect than this! We need to start crossing better with Fernando Torres in the box. Do we have good crossers? Oh wait, here I go again!
Now, I don’t want to fall into this trap, I’m not. You can’t take me for a ride. I won’t waste time when it’s just a rumour. I’II will wait for the official announcement on the transfers. Until then, I’ll live on youtube, twitter, official websites of Arsenal, Liverpool, Benfica, official pages of Arshavin, Torres, David Luiz, optastats of these players, career stats of these players from soccernet, archives on these players on BBC football, make changes my Chelsea team in my winning eleven . . . . .
Enough talk! Vote for the kids you think should play.
There’s been a lot of talk about giving Chelsea’s youngsters a chance to play.
It’s understandable. The senior players have gone through a very bad spell. And it’s human nature to think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
No matter which side of the fence you’re on.
In American gridiron football, the most popular man on the team is often the backup quarterback, a man who spends his life on the bench.
That’s because fans often endow the untested player with all their hopes and dreams. Then the guy actually plays and the dreamers abruptly wake up to unpleasant reality.
Typically, it turns out the coach knows what he’s doing and the youngster is on the sideline for a good reason.
Admittedly, it’s not unusual for a coach to prefer the sense of security he gets from fielding his old reliables instead of taking a chance on unproven younger players. At AC Milan Carlo Ancelotti had a very old squad. So it’s understandable if fans think that he’s somewhat biased against youth.
But I’m a little suspicious of Chelsea fans demanding that the kids get to play ahead of the veterans.
Why? Because very few of these youngsters have had any playing time. They’ve done next to nothing to prove that they can hold their own, let alone prosper better than their senior teammates, at the highest level of the game, the Premier League. Without knowing how good these guys are, how can supporters reasonably clamor for their inclusion?
That’s why I’m going to try a poll. Cast your vote for the two (2) young players you’d most like to see start on Tuesday at Sunderland in an important Premier League match. (Not the FA Cup tie at Everton. I’m sure we’ll see youth get playing time there.)
Pretend that players on loan are available. Any and all of them.
I think there are really only two young players that Chelsea fans know much about. One is Josh McEachran. The other stretches the definition of “kid” because, at 21 and with a fair amount of Premier League experience at Manchester City, I’m not sure Daniel Sturridge is in the same boat as a Bruma or a Kakuta. Still, I’m including him because there will be outrage if I don’t!
I predict those two will get the lion’s share of the votes. After that, will anyone else even get a shout? It’s my sense that after Sturridge and McEachran, fans really don’t know much about Chelsea’s youngsters. Certainly not enough to vote for them over a veteran.
Yes, I’m hoping to make a point here. The point is that talk about playing the youngsters is cheap.
But in truth, most of us don’t know enough to second-guess the manager when he decides whom to entrust with Chelsea’s future in the Premier League.
Prove me wrong!
Should Michael Essien be benched?
What happened to Michael Essien? The Engine. The Bison. The Rock. I used to think that Michael Essien would never go out of form. He can have his bad days but I thought he’d never go out of form. Even of the entire team is not playing well, you can count on one player giving his best – it was Michael Essien. Of late, he has been wayward, lacking focus and concentration and he’s been like that consistently and by his high standards, you can declare that he’s out of form.
Generally, when Essien has the ball, you can be dead sure that he’s not going to give it away. Even if there are two or three players on Essien, you can pretty much say this with confidence that there would be only two possibilities – he’d send the ball to safety or he’d win a free kick. You can be absoutely sure that only one of these two things will happen. In the recent days, I’ve seen Essien lose the ball. It’s a very unusual sight. It’s like seeing a Petr Cech howler. He doesn’t do that. It’s rare. He is so good that it’s so rare. Michael Essien is similar. He doesn’t do the wrong thing. He is very intelligent as a player, knows his role very well, understand the game situation and contributes accordingly.
Of late, he’s not been doing well. I wonder why. I don’t want to straightaway put the blame on Essien. It could be that his role is changing slightly in the team. These are probably the things that we won’t know watching it from the stands or on TV. It could be that Carlo is telling him to try some new things, try to change the way he’s playing or try to bring more flair to his game or something like that. It is possible that when someone’s undergoing a change or trying to transform themselves, these things would happen and there’d be such a phase.
The bottomline from the Chelsea point of view is that every player contributes to win. It’s not just enough to have the intent, there should be the effort and subsequently the outcome to make all this worthwhile. Anyone who’s picked to play should contribute their bit for a Chelsea win. At any point of time, when we have a defender or a midfielder being out of form, we absolutely need to action on the situation. See I have very very high regards for Essien. It’s not my love for Josh McEachran that makes me say these things about Essien. Regular folks know how highly I rate Essien. It’s just that I feel that Essien is not in the right frame of mind for some reason – may it’s something that’s happening in his personal life, we don’t know.
Purely based on the output on the pitch, I think Essien should be benched. I’ve been convinced about this for many weeks now but I now thought this is now big enough to write a post about it. Michael Essien has this kind of rigidity about his game which suits very well when you have a tactics built around the individual skills and abilities. Jose Mourinho was a master at this. Just give him any team and some time. He can get the best from the team and the makes the whole more than the sum of its parts. Carlo’s style is different. He doesn’t go by individual abilities. He has a philosophy wrto playing football and the players will need to fit into that. Essien as a defensive midfielder might. Essien as an attacking midfielder may not.
Essien is not in the Lampard mould. You don’t see Essien making defence splitting passes (not any throughpasses), you don’t seem making clever one-twos, you don’t see him slipping a cheeky little chip over the defence, he may not have the pace or skill to beat men and he’s never been a ‘great’ passer of the ball. Those are not part of his game. Hence, in Carlo’s world, he’s more suited for defensive midfield that central or attacking midfield. His strengths are his ability to hold possession, to win free kicks and to negotiate challenges with power and strength.
If you notice, his pass completion ratio has come down. In recent times, most of his unsuccessful passes were long passes or passes of more than, say15 yards. He was never the man for long passes. Yes, he can change directions but not the long forward passes. Suddenly there is an increase in his attempt to pass long. This is where I wonder if his role or the expectations on him are changing. As a defensive midfielder, you only need to push the ball to safety. Many times, when he has the ball, you can see that he is not trying to just push the ball to safety but trying to do something in attack, even though he is under pressure. To keep the ball in attack despite tremendous pressure is not very easy and I suspect that he’s trying to do that, which is different from his ‘keep the ball, pass the ball to 5 yards and make runs when off the ball’.
As you go up the pitch you’re known by your positives. As a striker, how many goals you score than how many you missed. As a forward or an attacking midfielder, how many assists you made or how many chances you created. As get go back in the pitch, you’re known by your negatives. Tell what you didn’t do or what you did badly. Defenders and midfielders are known by their mistakes or gaffes rather than the number of tackles and interceptions they make. One mistake can undo an hour’s good work.
Essien has started making mistakes. At his role, every mistake of his makes the opposition grow in confidence. The sight of Essien being muscled and robbed off the ball is just unbearable. He needs a break – for his own good.
Now’s the time we seem to have some really good youngsters knocking on the doors. Surely, this would create a healthy competition for places. And dropping senior players because of poor form will send out the right kind of messages to the young players. They’d know that selection is based on merit and not just age and experience. They’d know that they have a chance.
He can’t continue with 5/10 and 6/10 performances. What’s worse is there are players in better form sitting in the bench. Without blinking an eye, I’d drop Essien to the bench, allow him to recoup and come back as the bison, engine and rock so we say ‘Now, this is the Essien I know’.
Opinion Poll
Twitter!
Recent Tweets
- Chelsea can turn this around if and only if Napoli plays the same tactic at the Stamford Bridge, which is unlikely. #cfc #fb
(about 12 hours ago) - Every time we have such bad situations at Chelsea, I only look at Arsenal and take confidence. #cfc #fb
(about 12 hours ago) - Chelsea these days can't keep a clean sheet to save their lives. And Napoli just can't stop scoring. Now measure the task ahead. #cfc #fb
(about 12 hours ago) - It's a strange feeling when you think your best performance of late has come in a 3-1 defeat. #cfc #fb
(about 12 hours ago) - RT @chelseafc: AVB: 'We had a conversation with Ash & Frank. With the experience they have, they felt they could help, which is understandable.' #CFC (SL)
(about 13 hours ago)
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