Michael

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It's Rafael van der Vaart

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Much as I usually want Chelsea to lose, I don't know if I do today. Spurs are breathing down our neck and if they win today and we lose tomorrow, we could suddenly be battling a for CL qualification spot, never mind second place.

Liedson from Sporting Lisbon.

Who do you think will go in the summer and how much do you think we will get for them? My own estimate: Morientes £3m Garcia £3-4m Cisse £5m Kewell £3m Traore£1-2m Not a great deal of money when you factor in that if we sell them without a written transfer request we shall have to pay up their contracts in full.

Now that's truly depressing because when our profile was high after winning last year we got f*ck all in that summer's transfer market.

And your money's in the bookies' till according to others

Before people have a go at Rafa, just remember tonight we were knocked out of the CL as HOLDERS! Crap result, poor performance, useless strikers , whatever, we were knocked out as HOLDERS and that's something we could only dream of before Rafa came. No-one has retained the CL for over a decade and nothing can devalue our result last May. We have the best manager we could possibly have. The strrikers he has may have been all he could afford. I hope the board give him money in the summer, but above all I hope he is here in the summer and for many summers to come.

Bloody hell, half right already

I was thinking the same thing, it makes no sense.

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They do get the weekend off though as he never beats anyone on a Saturday.

All the debates would be about was the tail interfering with play.

The weather forecast for Wednesday is very wet and windy so balls in the air might be a problem. I just haven't worked out yet whether for us or them.

The problem with that is that a World Cup summer is always the worst in which to buy. I know Rafa has already stated that he knows the players he wants and that he is already working on them so he won't be caught out by those who flatter to decieve, but if any of his prospective buys happen to be in any World Cups squads and have even one half decent game the price will shoot through the roof. Conversely, they could have a crap World Cup and we get top class players on the cheap, but then we will have a Summer of posters saying: "We're finished! Why the hell did we buy that donkey?"

The figure of £30million is interesting as it about what we would have got for Gerrard had he left last summer. Maybe Parry didn't really "mess up" with making Gerrard feel unloved. He may have been working to an agenda.

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To be honest the only way I would be worried about losing my manager to Real Madrid would be if I were an Arsenal fan.

Although Sami has many good attributes, he is also our most static defender so his loss against a pacey attack might not be too bad. Traore might actually be the better choice on the night if he takes his cues from Carra and uses his speed to advantage. Besides, I like many people am assuming that Benifica will grab a goal at some stage so we need to concentrate on our attack/attacking midfielders. As long as we have the full complement to choose from the loss of a defender isn't so bad.