₦airaland Forum

odizeey:
that was how your neighbors were shouting till their home turn dancefloor and their fan calling a player gorilla

hope u know that u r playing PSG before facing us.. :]

BlueAngel444:
is it just me or is City getting another season of free pass in their run in cups. getting easy opponents

they can actually win everything.. (a quadruple)

Unlimited22:
So we get Manyoo in the 5th round.

its at Stamford bridge

united downfall is here

Chelsea vs united fa cup 5th round

Chelsea vs united

macjireh:
Giroud is still useful but how to use him is d coach's problem.... its either he is played as a winger or a support striker.....d idea of having a "striker" is misconstrued...we don't necessarily have to have a striker on d bench as a sub...giroud can play in games involving hazard a higuain...d coach should just know how to tweak his formation to get d best out of giroud...

good analysis

19:54
'I don't know' - Hudson-Odoi on Chelsea future
Chelsea 3-0 Sheff Wed
Chelsea midfielder Callum Hudson-Odoi to BBC Sport: "I thought we did very well. It was a great team performance. We did very well in training and worked really hard.
"That's one of my highlights. It was nice to top it off with a goal."
He's asked if that could be his final game for Chelsea...
"I don't know, I can't say. I'll keep working hard and you never know what will happen


I think this guy is a bit hyped

higuain was a bit decent today..
making good runs in the penalty area

The next time Chelsea manager Maurizio Sarri is asked about Eden Hazard he should avoid saying anything negative, whatever he actually thinks.
It is very, very risky to criticise your players in public like Sarri did this week - even if you know you are right.
Sometimes as a manager you really want to be open about what you are thinking, good or bad, and for the right reasons. You are hoping your players respond in the right way.
But if that openness is misinterpreted by them, then you have more problems.
What you really don't want is a situation that plays out in the media like the one we have just seen at Chelsea. The only people who benefit when that happens are the newspapers.
Sarri spoke about Hazard, calling him an individual and not a leader, and then Hazard responded by basically saying he does not care what his manager thinks, he is still going to do his thing - so shut up!
That is already a sign of what can go wrong when you call your players out.
I have never really felt like Sarri's job was at risk through all this but, if they keep talking about each other then, as a manager, he is in trouble.
That has nothing to do with the power of the player involved, either.
Yes, Hazard is Chelsea's best player, and they rely on him too much, but it is the whole dressing room that Sarri has to handle here and keep happy, not just an individual.
'Sarri should talk to his players, not about them'

congrats DJ cups
one of the most successful DJ's

PSG to beat Chelsea to €40m deal for Zenit midfielder Paredes (Telegraph)

13 hours ago   /  Will_Lee_15

Paris Saint-Germain are set to beat Chelsea to the signing of midfielder Leandro Paredes for around 40million euros (£34.9million).

The 24-year-old Argentinean – who has nine caps for his country - was in Paris on Wednesday ahead of securing the move with sources confident that it will go through.

It is understood that Chelsea had agreed a deal in principle earlier this month to sign Paredes from Zenit St Petersburg as Cesc Fabregas's replacement after he secured his move to Monaco.

However Chelsea – who have also considered Nicolo Barella from Cagliari - did not proceed quickly enough and PSG have now made their move. Both players are well-known to Chelsea head coach Maurizio Sarri with Paredes having played for Roma and also gone on loan to Empoli the season after Sarri left the club for Napoli

Paredes will, however, be a vital addition to PSG's midfield which is the one area of the team coach Thomas Tuchel was desperate to strengthen ahead of the Champions League last-16 tie against Manchester United




looks like we would be missing out on paredes ;(

Gonzalo Higuain: Why Maurizio Sarri has faith in maligned striker
By James Horncastle
European football writer
23 Jan
Higuain has had a disappointing time in Milan, where he has failed to match his previous goalscoring record in Italy
"To be abandoned like that was awful," Maurizio Sarri recalled. The news that his star striker was leaving for Juventus hurt like hell.
Gonzalo Higuain had just made history, breaking a Serie A goalscoring record many considered to be unbreakable with 36 league goals in a single season (putting him one ahead of Gunnar Nordahl's 1949-50 tally at AC Milan). He did so over the course of a campaign in which Napoli mounted their most serious title challenge since they last won the league in 1990.
The team had excelled in the 2015-16 season but they ultimately fell short, beaten to the title by Massimiliano Allegri's Juve.
"I could have accepted it if he had gone to the Premier League," then Napoli boss Sarri said. "But not Juventus. Going there made his goodbye all the harder."
Within a few months, though, Sarri had mellowed. He forgave and forgot a transgression many Napoli fans still view as a betrayal.
"It's a bit like when one of your sons makes you angry," he explained. "You can rip into them for a few days, but at the end of the day he's still your son."
Gone but not forgotten
In October 2016, Higuain and Sarri hugged moments before they faced each other for the first time. When the game kicked off, though, there was no room for sentiment. The Argentine scored Juventus' winner and struck 32 times over the course of a year that very nearly ended in a treble.
Last year, the goals did not flow as easily - Higuain racked up 23 in all competitions - but he still came up big and shattered Napoli's title dreams. His was the only goal at the San Paolo when the two sides met at the beginning of December in 2017.
Had Napoli won that game they would have gone seven points clear of Juventus. Instead the gap was cut to one.
Then in April, a week after Juventus lost to Napoli at the Allianz Stadium and looked on the brink of relinquishing their six-year hold on the Scudetto, he completed a last-gasp comeback with an 89th-minute winner against Inter at the San Siro.
Sarri maintains that had Napoli gone to bed earlier that night instead of staying up to watch the Juventus game, maybe his team would have ended a 28-year wait for the league.
Higuain's goal killed his players' belief and settled the closest title race since 2010, maybe even 2002. The following day Napoli collapsed in Florence. The Partenopei were beaten before they walked out of the tunnel.
"We lost the title in the hotel," Sarri said. And still some people outside of Italy wonder what Chelsea's manager sees in Higuain? They question his persistence in signing a 31-year-old who is remembered by many as the player who misses chances and penalties in major international finals and doesn't score enough goals in the knock-out stages of the Champions League.
The striker by whom all others are judged
The reception of Higuain in England is reminiscent of the scepticism Zlatan Ibrahimovic had to put up with before he put four past the Three Lions in 2012, including an overhead kick from 30 yards.
In Italy, by contrast, El Pipita is the striker to whom all other's look up to and by whose standards everyone else is judged. No one has scored more goals in his five and a half years in Serie A.
Higuain made history working under Sarri, breaking the single season scoring record with a hat-trick on the final day of the season, which he completed with a stunning bicycle kick from the edge of the penalty area.
That record had stood since 1950 when the goals per game ratio was much higher than it is today. It is a remarkable feat for a variety of reasons - from the games Higuain missed through suspension to the fact hardly anyone scores more than 30 goals in a single Serie A campaign, let alone 36.
Gonzalo Higuain's goalscoring tally
Club Years Games Goals Games per goal
River Plate 2005-2007 31 13 2.38
Real Madrid 2007-2013 264 122 2.16
Napoli 2013-2016 147 92 1.60
Juventus 2016-2018 105 55 1.91
AC Milan 2018-2019 22 8 2.75
If we class the modern era as the beginning of the Champions League at the time of Higuain's record, La Liga has had 10 players hit more than 30 goals. The Premier League has had eight. Serie A has had one - Luca Toni. And when he did it in 2006 he was the first player to do so in 47 years.
Higuain's margin of victory at the top of the scoring charts (Paulo Dybala was Serie A's next highest scorer with 19 goals) was the biggest ever, comfortably beating the 10 goals that separated the legendary Giuseppe Meazza and Rodolfo Volk in 1930.
Within that context you can perhaps understand why Sarri considers Higuain "the best in the world" in his role, and empathise with those pundits in Italy who always have him in the conversation when it comes to naming the top five centre-forwards on the planet.
Higuain merits greater acclaim
The straight-talking Sarri famously once said: "If he doesn't win the Ballon d'Or, he's a d**k head." Winning respect outside of Italy and Spain, where he won things with Real Madrid, has proved harder.
One of the factors behind that is the profile of Serie A not being what it was in the `90s despite Juventus' regular appearances in Champions League finals and the number of managers recruited from Italy who have no problem winning the Premier League.
Another is wider audiences judging him solely on moments in World Cups and the Champions League [incidentally he scored twice in the 2017 semi-final].
Then there's the notion Napoli didn't actually suffer all that much after Higuain left. The football only got better and Sarri reinvented Dries Mertens into one of the best goalscorers around.
The last six months haven't exactly helped either. Higuain was, by his own admission, "kicked out" of Juventus but as the club's sporting director Fabio Paratici explained: "To find a better striker than Higuain we only had two options: either Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi."
Every big club in Europe, apart from Barcelona and PSG, would have moved their existing number nine on if they had the means to sign CR7. Higuain should not take it personally.
The issue (and perception) though is that he did, falling into the exact same trap as Leonardo Bonucci who moved from Juventus to AC Milan 18 months ago, determined to prove his old team wrong.
Emotions got the better of him to the detriment of his form and it was a similar story with Higuain. He scored six goals and set up another - Patrick Cutrone's winner against Roma - in seven games going into October's Milan derby.
Higuain was delivering the goods and matching expectation. The turning point came in his reunion with Juventus when he missed a penalty, Ronaldo scored and, to add insult to injury, he received a red card, sparking the mother of all temper tantrums. It's hard to resist the temptation to argue Higuain never recovered.
The truth, however, is more nuanced.
Chelsea forwards in 2018-19
Player PL games PL goals Games per goal
Eden Hazard 22 10 2.20
Pedro 19 7 2.71
Alvaro Morata 16 5 3.20
Willian 22 3 7.33
Olivier Giroud 18 1 18.00
Callum Hudson-Odoi 3 0 -
Chelsea move could reignite player and club
Milan suffered a devastating injury crisis, which afflicted the creators in midfield. One of the team's most inventive players Hakan Calhanoglu has had a below par season, and while Suso leads the league in assists both Milan's wingers are inverted and tend to come inside onto their stronger foot rather than mix things up and get to the byline for the kind of cut-backs all strikers love to be on the end of.
The arrival of Ivan Gazidis as chief executive and Uefa's FFP decision in December also influenced strategy.
The warmth Higuain felt from the club as a whole when he signed cooled as they balked at the expense of paying his wages - the second highest in Serie A behind Ronaldo's - not to mention the remaining 45m euros it would have taken to conclude a deal on a permanent basis for a guy in his 30s.
Debate rages in Italy about whether Milan are making the right decision in severing ties with Higuain. His replacement Krzysztof Piatek has been the revelation of the Serie A season but may just be a flash in the pan with a ceiling nowhere near as high as his predecessor.
The concern for Chelsea is they are signing a striker who is no less sensitive than Alvaro Morata, and someone closer to the end rather than the beginning of their career. But the terms of the deal mitigate the risk as does the father-son relationship between Higuain and Sarri.
El Pipita could be the spark that brings Sarrismo and Chelsea to life at Stamford Bridge.




I still don't trust this guy

Clinical in and around the penalty area, as well as providing a strong aerial threat, Higuain previously played under Maurizio Sarri at Napoli in 2015/16, when he finished as top scorer in Serie A with 36 goals, breaking a long-standing Italian record.




ok ..

The 31-year-old striker moves to Stamford Bridge from Italian side Juventus. He spent the first half of the campaign on loan at AC Milan where he scored eight goals.

A proven goalscorer throughout his career, and an Argentina international, Higuain arrives with a wealth of experience at the highest level having consistently shown his attacking quality during spells in Argentina, Spain and Italy.



if this guy doesn't score on his debut ehn..

Upon completing his loan move to Chelsea, Higuain, who will wear the number nine shirt, said: ‘When the opportunity to join Chelsea presented itself I had to take it. It’s a team I’ve always liked that has a lot of history, a wonderful stadium and they play in the Premier League, a league I’ve always wanted to play in.

‘I now hope I can give back that trust Chelsea have shown me out on the pitch. I can’t wait to start and I hope to adapt as soon as possible.’

Director Marina Granovskaia added: ‘Gonzalo was our number one target in this transfer window and arrives with a proven record at the highest level. He has previously worked with Maurizio to great effect and is familiar with how the coach likes to play.

‘This was not an easy deal for us to do because of the numerous parties involved, but we are delighted we were able to make it happen and we look forward to seeing the impact Gonzalo will make for us in the second half of the season.’
Related： ChelseaMilanJuventusG. Higuaín




amba2.0

Higuain hopes to fly to London today
The Daily Mail
In fact, the Daily Mail has just reported
Gonzalo Higuain is hoping to fly to London this afternoon to finalise his loan move to Chelsea.
The Juventus striker, who is on loan at AC Milan, is awaiting clearance from Milan chiefs as they close in on a £30.9m deal for Genoa's Krzysztof Piatek to replace him.

Chelsea manager Maurizio Sarri said his players are "extremely difficult to motivate" as he heavily criticised their performance in defeat at Arsenal.
The Blues lost 2-0 in the Premier League at Emirates Stadium on Saturday and only had one shot on target.
Chelsea have only won two of their past five matches and are now just three points clear of the Gunners in fifth and sixth-placed Manchester United.
"I'm really angry about the approach that we adopted today," Sarri said.
"It's an approach we can't really accept."
In a remarkable news conference after the defeat, Sarri said he wanted to speak in his native Italian rather than English "because I want to send a message to my players and I want my message to be very clear".
"I have to say, I'm extremely angry. Very angry indeed," said the 60-year-old, who succeeded compatriot Antonio Conte at Stamford Bridge in the summer.
"This defeat was due to our mentality, more than anything else. This is something I can't accept.
"This group of players are extremely difficult to motivate."
'This is not a team known for its battling qualities'
Sarri's starting line-up against Arsenal included seven players who won the Premier League under Conte in 2017, before going on to finish fifth the season after.
The Italian said: "This is not a team that is going to be well known for its battling qualities but we need to become a team that is capable of adapting, possibly suffering for 10 or 15 minutes then playing our own football.
"You can find yourself in difficulties from time to time, but we need to react to those difficulties a lot better than we did today.

motivation

Chelsea are trying to complete the signing of Argentina striker Gonzalo Higuain, 31, from Juventus in time for him to make his debut against Arsenal on Saturday. (London Evening Standard)

Agbakolly:
is like u guyz don't know how terrible morata has been for us....Pappis Ciise better this niny of a striker.

lol


let's see what he can offer

i don't see higuain as an upgrade from morata though

Chelsea have agreed a deal to sign striker Gonzalo Higuain on loan from Juventus until the end of the season, according to reports in the British media.
The Argentina international joined the Italian champions in 2016 but was loaned to AC Milan at the start of the current season where he has scored eight goals in 22 appearances this term.
Chelsea manager Maurizio Sarri is keen to strengthen his options in attack after dropping misfiring Spain forward Alvaro Morata to the bench and being forced to deploy playmaker Eden Hazard as a 'false nine' in recent games.
Sarri worked with Higuain when he was manager at Napoli and it was under the Italian that the striker scored 36 goals to equal the Serie A record for most goals in a season in 2015-16.
Sky Sports reported https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11863/11609292/chelsea-agree-gonzalo-higuain-loan-deal-with-juventus on Wednesday that the loan deal for Higuain could be extended for another 12 months subject to certain conditions.
Higuain's arrival could see Chelsea sanction a loan move for Morata, who is in talks with boyhood club Atletico Madrid about a return to Spain's La Liga.

BlueAngel444:
Just to remind us, this may be Hazard's last season with us.

I read Chelsea would accept 100m if he wants to move

larride:
Serious headache bro. They might surprise City again tonight.

with the way city have been scoring lately I don't think so

Unlimited22:
Wolves played all top 6 teams and lost exactly 0 games.

Let's see how far they go now the cycle is about to restart.

well they lost to spurs ...

common united





do this for Chelsea




ktbffh

yassinattah:
with this line up,man u has won already

I'm predicting 3:2 in favor of united

Man Utd: De Gea, Young, Lindelof, Jones, Shaw, Ander Herrera, Matic, Lingard, Pogba, Martial, Rashford. Subs: Mata, Lukaku, Andreas Pereira, Fred, Dalot, Romero, McTominay.

city leading 4 nil in the first half
���

BlueAngel444:
honestly, why risk it. having a striker helps but with the options available to us. waiting to get a quality striker might actually be the better option.


our scouts suppose go south America go look for the next tevez or aguero.

Odoi n Hazard were brilliant today even Kante sef shock me.

Jorginho did well but mehn Barkley Barkley is not helping his career sha.

Christensen apart from that horrible miss, looking good.

Barkley was a bit decent though ......he just had some misplaced passes

[quote author=macjireh post=74580254]but wen we beat Liverpool,, there was no second leg o[/quo it is a double legged tie only in the semi final stage

NinjaMetahuman:
yeh


only watched the second half... got home late.


quite enjoyed it.. losing is not even as painful unlike before that will just be passing around without any effort.

we deserved a win.... we just lacked that cutting edge