Chelsea FC Transfer Rumours: Blues Angling For Real Madrid Star?

Very under-rated. Marca is an unreliable source, no doubt, but with Real’s collection of forwards, it wouldn’t be a shock for Mourinho to think he could get by without him. Especially if Neymar is somewhere in the pipe-line.

As for this:

“has probably been the second best player on Jose Mourinho’s squad (when fit) this year”

Behind CR, or behind Ozil?

that the prem is more physical and we have a Olympic gold medalist on our hands.

Complete BS anyways. Mou wouldn’t sell, especially to us.

that could help IF we wanted to pursue the player, and then Di Maria could help IF we wanted to pursue Higuain.

The only possible way this ever happens is if Real are moving him so they can bring in Neymar. Neither Neymar nor Di Maria would be okay not starting so the only way RM gets rid of their 2nd best player who’s just 23 is if they are doing it to bring in Neymar. They don’t need the money, he’s not getting old, there is no real reason to sell him.

However, I don’t think he fits our needs either. This guy can play with his right but is a much, much better player attacking from the right. He’s not a left winger. Mata and Sturridge both favor coming in from the right so I don’t see how adding a 3rd RW helps. Maybe Di Maria would be asked to score less and create more and he can do that at LW, allowing Mata to move inside where he likes to play, but Di Maria is much scarier in a Real Madrid jersey than an Argentina jersey and that’s because at Argentina he often plays on the left. The thing that scares me the most about a Di Maria, Mata, and Sturridge line is that none of them are any good at playing defense. Trusting the back six to account for 100% of the defense seems suicidal. Unless we retain close to 70% possession we’d be run over by charging fullbacks and holding MFs. Sadly, we don’t even have a great defensive winger on the bench to bring on for defensive cover once we go up 2+ goals. Actually, i wouldn’t mind seeing Bertrand, Ferreira or even Luiz sometimes come on for Mata or Sturridge when we’re winning by more than a goal. Who cares if they are offensively lacking, we’re winning, we have more defensive cover and all three are actually very comfortable on the ball and seem likely to be decent at retaining some offensive threat.