Sidwell to Chelsea

1

I see Sidwell has signed for Chelsea for 25k a week. I haven’t seen that much of him though he’s been touted as a good player for the past 2 seasons anyway. Has he any realistic chance of breaking into the Chelsea team I wonder?

2

Mourinho openly stated they needed to sign at least one, and maybe two, midfield players solely because Essien and Mikel are away at the African Nations Cup for 4-6 weeks next Jan/Feb. Think he might find himself on the bench a lot other than that although he seems to be a good all round midfield player.

3

Hadn’t read that - I suppose that makes sense.

I wonder is there anything to do with the homegrown players rule from UEFA:

http://www.thefreekick.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=50&Itemid=26

4

I heard this rumour a few weeks back, its a very strange transfer in my opinion. Its just not in keeping with Mourinhos pattern of signings.

5

When you think about it all of Mourinho’s signings last season were relatively unsuccessful - not just Sheva and Ballack. Ashley Cole’s been nothing better than mediocre. Bouhlarouz has been total gash at home and in Europe and Kalou’s been largely ineffectual also.

6

Reading through that homegrown players rule again and I suspect that might be some of the thinking behind the Sidwell purchase.

This time last year Chelsea had Duff, Johnson, Huth in or around the first team who were all European squad players. They’re not figuring any more so to make up the 6 players needed Chelsea need a couple of domestic acquisitions.

Still leaves them short for Chelsea academy players though (3 required for UEFA competitons).

7

Can’t really think of any academy players on the verge of coming through. Doesn’t say a lot for the centre backs in their reserve/underage set ups that at one stage when Terry and Carvalho were injured the central defensive partnership was Essien and Ferreira. They ahve a young Israeli striker called Ben Sahar that they’ve brought on a few times and I don’t know if they signed Diarra at a young enough age to qualify as ‘home grown’ but they don’t seem to have much else.