LondonLiverpoolFan

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/t...sea/7449627.stm Scolari named as Chelsea manager Chelsea have named Portugal boss Luiz Felipe Scolari as their new manager in succession to Avram Grant. Scolari, who is currently in charge of the Portuguese side at Euro 2008, will take over at Stamford Bridge on 1 July. "Felipe has great qualities. He is one of the world's top coaches with a record of success at country and club level," Chelsea said in a statement. Carlo Ancelotti, Mark Hughes and Roberto Mancini had also been linked with the job. Chelsea added: "He gets the best out of a talented squad of players and his ambitions and expectations match ours. He was the outstanding choice. "Out of respect for his current role and to ensure minimum disruption to this work there will be no further comment from Chelsea nor from Felipe about his new role until his employment with us commences." Scolari, who won the World Cup with Brazil in 2002 before leading Portugal to the final of Euro 2004, was believed to be in the running to become England manager in 2006. He was reportedly put off the job because of fears of media intrusion, but, with his contract with the Portuguese FA due to expire on 29 June - the date of the Euro 2008 final, he has taken the opportunity to try his hand at management in the Premier League. The 59-year-old former defender has never managed a European club, but has won the Copa Libertadores - South America's knockout competition - with Brazilian clubs Gremio and Palmeiras. Chelsea parted company with Grant last month, despite the Israeli taking his team to the Champions League final and second spot in the Premier League. And former Blues player Gavin Peacock believes Scolari could be the man to take Chelsea to the next level. "You can't argue with his record," Peacock told BBC Sport. "If you're looking for someone with charisma and presence in the dressing room, then he is your man. "His teams play with flair so it fits in with what Chelsea say they have been looking for, but the everyday involvement, getting into the players minds is going to take time. "I suspected that Scolari might be lined up when Chelsea signed Jose Bosingwa at the start of the summer and there was talk of Deco coming to the club." However, he warned Scolari's lack of English could make things difficult for the Brazilian. "My only question mark would be about his level of English. Does he speak it?" asked Peacock. "Someone like the England manager Fabio Capello didn't speak it but he had time to learn and he has time between each England gathering, but Scolari will need to get his ideas across every day. It will be a challenge. "As another example, (former Chelsea boss) Jose Mourinho, on his first trip away with the team for a pre-season friendly in the United States, sat on the plane with Joe Cole for two hours just getting to know him. "Scolari will not be able to do that sort of thing." Scolari's first competitive game as Chelsea manager will be the first Premier League game of the 2008-09 season on

http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/homepage/d/int/spo...sea/7449627.stm Scolari named as Chelsea manager Chelsea have named Luiz Felipe Scolari as their new manager in succession to Avram Grant. Scolari, who is currently in charge of Portugal at Euro 2008, will take over at Stamford Bridge on 1 July. More to follow.

Ahh balls, same difference Anyway when will we see the first Ronaldo to Chelsea rumours?

According to the commentators on ITV

Kuyt has been very good tonight. He hasn't really been involved in any of the celebrations though has he?

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RIP YNWA

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With your inane ramblings, I'd rather not. However I accept that on this occasion it's not you talking bobbins.

F*ck me. Yes they are a bigger club but the club you play for doesn't define how good a player you are. See Jimmy Carter for details

http://msn.football365.com/john_nicholson/...3612316,00.html John Nicholson - A very Northern mind What Terry`s Tears Said About Us Posted 26/05/08 10:20 There can be few blokes who really are 'a man's man' who would not have felt a degree of nausea, if not outright contempt, at the waterfall of John Terry's tears last Wednesday. But his display served a very good purpose. It illustrated exactly what is wrong at the core of English football. As England's national side comes into focus again this week, there is much Fabio Capello can learn from Terry's emotional breakdown. Let's get this right, if you are weeping so uncontrollably for so long just because you have lost a football match, you are emotionally immature; you are a boy in a man's body. I cried like that when England drew with Poland in 1973 and thus failed to qualify for the 1974 World Cup. I was 12. Few of us go through life without an occasional watery eye - more usually born of joy rather than disappointment - but we reserve the proper out-and-out crying for life and death matters, not for football. If you are crying that much about football, what on earth are you going to do if, God forbid, a real tragedy strikes you? Where is left to go emotionally? It's bitterly ironic that the press are still so intent on painting Terry as a specifically English icon and hard man when the traditional English way is the exact opposite of his behaviour. The traditional English way is the stiff upper lip; emotion is expressed only in private and if shared then only with loved ones. Publicly-expressed emotion is for the weak and the self indulgent. It is certainly not the sort of thing leaders of men indulge in. It is undignified and shows lack of character. And yet we are told he is still 'England's lion'. The same things were said about Tony Adams even when his life was in a mess and he was a raging alcoholic. Why are these type of people so many English fans' heroes? Is dysfunction attractive? Is it now the norm? Let's not kid ourselves, we have a real problem here. Other sports just don't do sobbing losers. There seems to be something about English football culture that suspends the participants' adulthood, trapping some in Peter Pan teenage world. Too many players today behave like petulant children. When you see Rooney, his face looking all pink and bee-stung with rage at some perceived injustice hunting down the ball angrily, you see a teenage boy who has lost control. Ashley Cole's 'I-turn-my-back-on-you' behaviour looked like a parody of a 12-year-old that won't go to his bedroom. This type of behaviour is emotionally dysfunctional and certainly not the sort of thing a man in his mid-twenties should be doing on a football pitch. Where is their self-control? While footballers have always lost their temper, and occasionally have had a whack at each other, the sort of over-wrought emotion expressed by some of today's prima-donnas is not the kind of Francis Lee punching Norman Hunter anger. It's mere childish, self-centred emotionalism. Having everything done for you and earning inconceivably huge amounts of money must all contribute to this fantasy cartoon world at the centre of which is their own glorious self and their own fabulous ego. When something happens to shatter this illusion, is it any wonder they go off the edge? England players are widely regarded as having a psychological problem playing for the national side now, and it isn't too fanciful to tie the character of these mannish-boys into their on-pitch failures. Too many of England's players are not sufficiently emotionally developed to cope with high pressure situations such as the Croatia game and especially penalty shoot-outs. Add to that the selfish need to try and maintain their over-inflated personal legend status and you end up with players charging around trying to be the super hero or simply going missing altogether. Teamwork goes out of the window and individualism takes over. It is significant that during the Portugal game at the last World Cup, Owen Hargreaves was many people's man of the match and of the tournament. He kept his head when everyone else was losing it, kept disciplined in his role and was the only one to score a penalty. He was far more disciplined and in control than those around him. Hargreaves is not a product of English football culture. He is a product of German football. That can't be a total co-incidence. (Interestingly, after a season in the Premier League, he is starting to show signs of indiscipline and petulance - perhaps learning it as the 'right' way to react from the likes of Rooney) In Germany, which is the most successful European nation, there has always been more maturity from most players. They have always seemed less hysterical, more firm minded and have had more good old-fashioned bottle. If we had 11 Hargreaves that day, we would almost certainly have prevailed. But we didn't and once again we saw Terry in full self-pitying, weeping mode. Hargreaves didn't cry but he had given more than anyone. This is instructive. The German team ethic has dominated over the personal desire for glory and that's how it should be. It works, as three Euros and three World Cup wins show. It is only through teamwork that the individuals can shine. That's how Greece won in 2004. It doesn't guarantee victory - Germany lost to an equally tough-minded, resolute Italian side in the 2006 semi-final - but it gives you a much better chance. England's failure in the now distant past has been caused by lack of tactical awareness, by lack of fitness, by lack of basic good skill and by poor management. England's failure in this century has included all of these elements but with this new crippling emotional self-centredness thrown in as well. On top of that there's a whole strand of English popular culture which absolutely worships them for their fame and money. I imagine them to be the sort of people who watch 'Katie & Peter' and who go on reality shows because they 'really, really want this' whatever the 'this' is. They copy David and Victoria's hair cuts and buy Heat and Hello. And on top of that there's the press and TV media which takes good English players and over-indulges their talent and exaggerates their capabilities because it sells well to a section of the public that is far too eager for heroes to worship. If Capello wants England to succeed this all needs to be tackled head on. He has already talked about players' mentality not being right; that they lack self belief despite being at the peak of the domestic game. And yet continental players are also subjected to the same culture when playing in England but often deal with it better. This is just a subjective opinion and it's a bit of a generalisation that I can't back up with hard fact but it's always seemed to me that the overseas players who play in the Premier League are by and large far more intelligent people, far more rounded than many of their English counterparts. Put crudely, we produce Steve McClarens while Italy produces Fabio Capellos. When you hear men like ex-Chelsea defender, Marcel Desailly, or current stars like Fabregas, Torres and Toure they come over as people who are to some degree sophisticated; for a start they're often bi-lingual. Clearly there are examples to contradict this but it does seem to be a generalisation which has substance. Perhaps this is why these men don't end up in the Priory and don't generally behave like Motley Crue let loose at the Playboy Mansion, as desirable as that might be. The game is producing largely uncultured boys without the intelligence, education or incentive to grow up. There's far too much emphasis on that favourite of the phone-in - passion - and not enough on perspective. Capello has to select a team on the basis of strength of character and attitude as well as on ability. We need players who are calmer, more rational and less prone to believing their own hype; players who are not so wrapped up in themselves; players who don't cry when things go wrong. In an era of shallow emotion, celebrity culture and rampant self-indulgence, this seems unlikely but we should all fervently hope that it does because if it doesn't I shall scream and scream until I'm sick.

He can but is not 'allowed' to from his current position just off Torres. When he was playing centre midfield or drifiting in from the right he was able to influence the games far more. Essien doesn't do it from right back either. Only when playing in the centre of midfield. No red tinted glasses here.

Errr you what? In what way is Gerrard's approach to the game different than Essien's? Gerrard's also a top quality player who's pulled us out of the sh*t more often than Essien has for Chelsea.