2015 january transfer window

Jermain Defoe ‏@IAmJermainDefoe 7m
Just touched down in the UK from south of France,was training with my fitness guy feeling stronger than ever! #Ready

I have no idea what spurs need

squad's too big to be proactive there really

presumably poch would drown at least seven youth team prospects if he could still get schneiderlin (he cannot alas)

bobby and ade are obv finished for sure so idk strikers i guess but your likely suspects like ings and gignac are more summer value. doumbia? all depends how aroused levy is by being within 3 points of the cl

do lfc rly have any chance at getting shaqiri cos if so they will probably never again have a better chance to stay big dog relevant post suarez n stevie

Conference South side Ebbsfleet United have signed Gillingham striker Danny Kedwell on an 18-month deal.

wow

apparently paying him 2k a week (to drop three divisions from l1 to conf south)

Kedwell said: "It was just not playing and things like that.

"It was a hard decision because of how much I support the club. I love the club so much, so it was really hard for me.

"I could have just sat there and picked up my money but I’m not that sort of person".

Can non-league clubs still do a "Fleetwood" without ffp sanctions these days?

I am usually against the patronising of lower-league clubs and their adorable transfer shenanigans but I may make an exception for the inner Kent lot

tony watt's career going well then

that's the spirit

Manchester City are in advanced discussions to sign Wilfried Bony from Swansea City in a deal worth around £25m, with Manuel Pellegrini seeking to strengthen his goalscoring options.

Bony is due to join up with the Ivory Coast for the Africa Cup of Nations, meaning he may be unavailable until the middle of next month, but Pellegrini has moved due to having only three front-line strikers in Sergio Agüero, Edin Dzeko and Stevan Jovetic.

that must be one of the more dispiriting hoarding transfers given that their best formation contains aguero as lone striker and bony and dzeko are fairly close in most aspects

not to mention that jovetic's time at fiorentina shows that has the potential to be better than either of those two if he was given enough time to evolve into a technical #9 in the manner of rvp, and there is no prospect of a team like city giving him that time with the others on their books

and i think they're averaging 2+ goals a game with none of the 3 front-line strikers playing

remy to chelsea is another one like that, seems to be a third choice striker even though he has mostly played alright when he has played, 28 yr old france international who doesn't even get on the bench sometimes but earns about 80k or 90k a week

blocks spurs from getting him in, repeat each 6 months as necessary

yeah it definitively prevents the 2015/16 dual assault on manchester city's epl/champions league aspirations everyone was anticipating

why wait til we're an inevitable is obv the thinking

Yeah but we all know Remy is a venal cunt and at this point in his career is too injury prone for any moderately successful team to rely on as their main man. Bony is younger, more consistent and more stable with the potential to be the main goalscorer for a whole range of clubs between Swansea and City in size. Liverpool for one, but there's something depressing about any club cashing in on their most important player in January.

the lowest number of league games remy has played in a season since he became a first team regular seven years ago is 22, during the season when he went to qpr in january

bony is a better player, not that much better, but they would both rather transfer to an elite team and end up like illarramendi or alex song than be an assured starter in a team at their level, which is probably newcastle for remy and tottenham for bony

there's a possibility that city will go back to a 442 but they are playing better this season with as 4231 with aguero (or.....milner) as forward than they did with aguero and negredo when they formed a good partnership last season (negredo being another player at the same level as bony or dzeko)

Stoke's ambitious bid to sign Xherdan Shaqiri could meet an abrupt end as the Switzerland international is poised to tell Bayern Munich he wishes to join Inter Milan.

Bayern had hoped Liverpool would come to the table but that has not materialised and Inter have offered a £2m loan fee with £10m to follow over the next three years.

They're both 11th in their respective divisions, in fairness.

An impressive 22 red cards across the top 4 division of Italy yesterday.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B61UvF1IQAETglc.jpg

nbd tho i'm sure lfc will kill it w/ milner & delph

are we rly selling Lennon wtf

suso off for free to milan as well

Lionel Messi is only at Barcelona because he promised Tito Vilanova on his deathbed that he would stay, says Henk ten Cate

Giovinco to Spurs appears to be gathering some pace here, thus bolstering our imposing forward line.

awww that'd be nice

"Everyone is available in every shape and form and there's no difference about that," said Pulis, who insisted he did not want to sell Berahino.

Sissoko told French TV show Telefoot: “The transfer market is open, so things can happen any day, but I am focused on Newcastle.

“If anything should happen, it will. I hope I’ll leave for a bigger club one day. England is my priority. If Arsene Wenger calls, I’ll have a man-to-man ­discussion with him and then we’ll see."

Ravel Morrison to Lazio would be interesting.

jozy altidore for jermain defoe trade lololol

Giovinco to Toronto?????

http://screamer.deadspin.com/mls-is-putting-the-fix-in-for-toronto-fc-right-before-1680428108

Not that this is any real secret, but it deserves to be said as often as possible: MLS is rigged. The league jointly owns each individual team, centrally controls all major decisions, and has a rule book as regularly erased and written over as a chalk board. With yesterday's reported news that Juventus forward Sebastian Giovinco will sign a contract with the league to join Toronto FC, we have even further evidence of MLS's shameless central planning.

all leagues are rigged
it's still a difficult league to excel in as a team. take the top 8 yoy and it's more various than most
tfc will still find a way to fuck this up

I want to agree on your third point but I figure they will hit on one of their insane buying/staffing schemes eventually.

Naughton out, Konoplyanka in would be suspiciously good news.

Monk described Naughton as a 'great person and good player'

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/jan/22/the-view-from-the-epl-how-shaun-maloney-would-benefit-chicago-fire-and-mls

guardedly optimistic about this signing, even though other teams are getting giovinco and ...gerrard?

They see a lot in me and how dedicated I am and how I want to push on. They're delighted to keep someone like me here.

not the best oracle

gabriel has a bit of the keown about his skullform although hes not particularly feral as a defender, more of a koscielny type now the real one has chronic tendinitis

the real keown is getting more and more vacant looking
soon he will be in a catatonic state broken by hourly epiphanies into relative lucidity when he looks up from the floor and tracks the progress of insects across a windowsill

beetled eyebrows

the "scouting reports" i've read on gabriel all seem to differ from one another so i've just decided he'll be a disappointingly meek bozo who over his five year career who will garner muted flurries of hype in between regular dinner dates with his london club compatriots

i liked villareal presenting him with a valedictory plastic submarine, maybe he can have a battle with cazorla's at bathtime

hes relatively quick and technically competent, idk if his distribution is any good because musacchio does most of villarreal or whether he will be reprising stephane m'bia's traumatized affront at discovering the existence of andy carroll

mbia may be returning to either palace or everton they say

after being persistently linked with those redoubtable warriors osvaldo and m'vila in his alleged efforts to haul us of the mire thus far i can hardly see redknapp resisting a newly out of contract cassano

i have fairly arbitrarily decided that franck tabanou is brilliant, or brill indeed

He's p good actually, although St Etienne are a p defensive team since Aubameyang and Payet left so he doesn't get much chance to shine.

think i vaguely recalled him as a good winger from old ffw lists i perused when qpr and newcastle were in the french market. does he play left back too?

recent twitter mentions suggest he has an occasional propensity for violence

nice to see u round here again lately btw pandz, i have often this season thought of your sage counsel that lfc should have bought calhanoglu

this latent lfc connection had in fact led me to wilfully mentally mispronounce his name like ian callaghan-ogloo, even though the actual challanoloo already kinda meets the scouse reference requirements via dave challinor

i'm really bored today

nice to see u round here again lately btw pandz

quite

sightings of localgarda too, as if everyone is realizing that at least once this season sterling will play behind sturridge and balotelli and they will briefly look amazing again

http://i.imgur.com/Nztfo0I.jpg

Eltham?

sightings of localgarda too, as if everyone is realizing that at least once this season sterling will play behind sturridge and balotelli and they will briefly look amazing again

just getting into the groove for next season's real push for the title.

xp def

v a la mode rn, lucas digne has one that says sidcup

sidcup would be a great first name for a frenchman come to think of it

now that garda's back on the scene i feel it's okay to wonder aloud of the whereabouts of flanno lad i miss him :(

he was sitting beside gerrard during a game recently. maybe bolton at the weekend.

would have him back if it meant johnson fucked off for good.

that clichy-sous-bois neck tattoo wasn't good optics for the city game

xxxp

Thanks r|t|c and Nakh. Also great to see Garda back, reckon it was the nostalgia brought forth by seeing Heskey and Spearing at Anfield again that summoned him back ;)

Read somewhere that Johnson would be offered a new deal in order to play right-sided CB in a back 3!!?? Thought our 3 at the back was a no Sturridge stopgap tbh. Although should probably plan for 1/3 of each season being a no-Sturridge zone. Tottenham away still the highlight performance of the season so far although 2nd half vs Chelsea wasn't bad.

how is can doing

i'd say good with ball at his feet, not great positionally. probably cos he's a midfielder not a defender.

he looked extremely fat at the start, like neil ruddock fat - but i think he's gaining fitness too. prob needs to just play in midfield.

id rather he played higher up the pitch in midfield although he played well against chelsea last week despite getting sonned by hazard for the penalty.

He's been fine, decent distributor from the back. Made a mistake in the Chelsea game, well 2 really, but otherwise has been steady albeit against v limited opposition. Find it hard to believe that Rodgers purchased him as a CB though. Not sure he's ever gonna have enough goals in him to be a productive midfielder given that I don't see him in a shielding role. Probably end up being Phil Neville circa his Utd years.

jesus michael i just remembered for the first time in probably two decades that i had a copy of that book which was last seen circa the age of 6 when my mother gave it to the mother of some other child
i hardly remember anything about the kid but i remember his mother (voluble slightly deranged eastenders type) who had hair like alan smith in the late ridsdale era
she was supposed to have picked up dogshit left in her front garden and thrown it at the culprit's owner

admittedly i've only had a good look at can during the awful early season form (and yeah he was quite possibly overweight) but he didnt really strike me as anything other than adequate in cm. as a mobile, technical cb he makes a lot of sense imo - certainly the rarer and more necessary asset there

plus he was playing lb in germany, dunno to what standard but

just in relation to his predecessor phil neville, clearly it's been said enough what a thick resentful cunt he is but i'd just like to transcribe his words imagining what his son would say about rosicky

that guy's got skill he's a baller and all these sayings that the young lads are saying now

You mean his son doesn't want to "two foot him"? Phil's not teaching him right.

can as phil neville does make sense in relation to the general evolution of the epl i was thinking of in relation to pogba/vieira

'new vieira' must be the most commonly iterated hypothetical football player of the last two decades in england, so many tall midfielders of francophone african extraction mislabelled by the tabloids and the lumpen brit managers trying to copy the one part of the wenger playbook they really envied

pogba is probably the most hyped of all, the lost object of desire since he was once 'let go on a free transfer' by ferguson as the mail helpfully put it yesterday

and even though he is even less like vieira than any of those others were, pogba is probably the vieira for 20 years later; more inventive, more technical, not as hard, not as defensively minded, not as tactically discliplined, more of a player for a 5-3 than a 1-0, more of baller and all these sayings that the young lads are saying now

yah pogba is in no way a defensive midfielder, or a destroyer.

I see Joel Campbell is off on loan again, he's never gonna really play for Arsenal is he? Does anyone think Sanogo will either?

pogba the new gerrard more than the new viera, although more elegant than either.

yeah i could see him as a more intelligent version of gerrard in a few years, more in than period when he was playing ahead of mascherano and alonso than when he was doing the bryan robson box to box stuff

nostalgia for the prestige football the 96-04, if it weren't already clear, is probably the only viable trend in fitba right now

luiz ronaldo was the best player of all time, he was at his best when he played for inter

emerson at juventus was a better midfielder than pogba, bayer leverkusen of 2002 were better than today's bayern

paolo montero, youri djorkaeff, psg when they were borderline shit, the parmalat era, sinisa mihajlovic, creatine and bulked/doped up serie a players, jimmy floyd haisselbaink, 'defenders who like defend', john o'shea nutmegging luis figo, valeron at depor, sami kuffour, faith terim and mircea lucescu in serie a, viduka and kewell in the champions league

Really wish I'd seen riquelme play more than a dozen or so full games. Sigh, I'll always have the you tube comps I guess.

98 parma shirt (h&a) is more or less at the top of my attainable want list these days, so cosign i guess

going to save you all the bother of reading one of those awful winsome literate football blogs called JUAN ROMÁN RIQUELME: A QUIXOTIC ENIGMA and post the best bit

After initially rejecting the transfer, the story goes that the deal was finally concluded after Boca told their young enganche that without the €11 million euro fee, the club would find itself in serious financial trouble. The time had come to put the money where his heart was: if he truly loved the club, he would go. Román packed his bags.

It didn’t start well. Upon his arrival in Catalonia, Dutch coach Louis Van Gaal handed Riquelme a child’s replica shirt as a present for his newborn son, along with the words, “he will get to wear his more than you wear yours.”

speaking of 96-04 Redondo is the best player I've ever seen in that of the 4 games of his I can remember seeing he was incredible in all 4. Never saw a big enough sample size to watch him be ordinary.

Sky Sports News are banning fans from deadline day :(

hope they dont skimp on the security then

ugh gross is cuadrado for £24m to sit on the cfc bench really happening

is there a story at sampdoria, i know they sold not-marco gabbiadini but ~20m on luis muriel and joaquin correa is kinda splashy?

Their relatively new owner Massimo Ferrero is looking to make a mark.

So Chelsea buying Salah this time last year was basically just to stop someone else getting him?

liverpool, it seems. not sure why we were in such a frenzy to buy last january and this january when our need is obvious we just sneaked out a rodgers interview on new year's day saying we're not buying anyone until summer.

We bought so many players in the summer, if we then buy players now to be ahead of those then it just confirms how much we fucked up in August. I mean we've bought how many CB's since Rodgers arrived??

most expensive defence in history of english fitba, and second most expensive worldwide after psg

(lol bantz stupid trollstat)

I had completely forgotten about the existence of Scott Sinclair. Is Jack Rodwell doing anything at Sunderland?

most expensive defence in history of english fitba, and second most expensive worldwide after psg

it's a fair point, not even trollstats. i am kinda hoping we've cobbled something together that works - sahko has looked a lot better of late and the return of lucas has helped as a stopgap. still shit from setpieces though. earlier this season i reckon it was the worst defence i've ever seen in professional sport. i don't mean that as hyperbole either.

Ilori still our player officially as well I guess, even though I've never seen him in an LFC shirt iirc. Yeah Sakho has looked okay and haven't seen £20m Lovren for a while (thank God)

danny ings rumoured heavily on twitter. why are we the fucking "buy british" football charity? tho tbh fucking anyone up front would be better than our four-goal collection of butter knives

yeah Ings in August is a head scratcher. That means we'll have Sturridge, Balotelli, Lambert (I think he's on a 2 year not a one), Borini and Origi all under contract come the summer I think.

6 CF's?? Obviously the effectiveness of all but Sturridge (who's often crocked) is questionable (considering Raheem is preferred ahead of all of them) but still seems excessive.

We should be spending big money on a striker in the summer. Balotelli may be good with Sturridge back, but I doubt it and I wouldn't like to rely on it.

I know we bloated our squad up for the demands of European football (LOL) but think we kinda needed the Suarez cash to buy a striker and a central midfielder, and p expensive already CL standard ready ones at that.

yeah - should have signed bony, if we did actually have a chance of that.

sorry everyone - continue with the non-lfc chat.

Is there a more desperately unimaginative, unambitious and uninspiring a transfer than Pards bringing Shola Ameobi to Palace?

there's some sort of ambition involved in giving an epl contract so someone who last played in the turkish second division

'At the moment he does not speak a word of English and that can cost you goals – but we are teaching him the important words...like offside,' said Wenger.

'I try to speak in Spanish with him, but he is more Portuguese-oriented because he didn’t play for a long time in Spain.'

Lennon on loan to hull now

this is fuckin bizarre

New West Brom boss Tony Pulis has given the club's 'fitness department' short shrift.

Pulis arrived the Hawthorns last month and quickly decided the players were not fit for football in the way he demands.

I am told the 'old school' boss quickly side-lined most of the complex fitness sessions and routines and instead had the squad 'running their balls off'.

I also hear that when he was confronted with some statistical data about a player from one of the backroom staff he tossed it away and then asked: 'Yeah but he can ******** head the ball.'

<3 that guy

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B8xzpg7CYAE2Ncm.png

RMDE at Pulis's apparent first move as West Brom manager being to drop their best creative outlet in Sessegnon. Luxury player, won't put a shift in I suppose.

every time i've seen sessegnon on highlights he looks p special, a sad epl waste

this season when wba same to loftus road he was an absolute terror, our young modern technical left back yun suk young was having the proverbial torrid old time until going off with injury

on comes clint hill, humiliation in store for the old warhorse, and the very first thing he does is smash sessegnon to the ground for a 30-70 and then keeps kicking him as he lays prone before striding off without a look back. it's the purest most jawdroppingly violent thing i've seen in football for years but the ref, astonishingly, gives nothing whatsoever and sessegnon while remaining on the pitch for the duration is not seen from again as we come back from two down to win

there was no moral to this story

hills and adebayors are like our gristly experimental psychology version of zidanes and pavons p much

Lennon on loan to hull now

sky are reporting that stoke are making a move for him

Christ its like watching alligators fight over yr leg

p tedious deadline day.

little old heartwarming family club charmers bournemouth whacking down £5m for demarai gray from brum, not fucking about are they

bold of brum to reject

the schurrle money is completely bonkers, do abramovich's goons run people over in volkswagens or something

meanwhile hamburg sign marcelo diaz from basle for 2m euro

how much did schurrle go for? £20m+? Find it astonishing they would get more than they paid for him since he's probably a lesser player now than when he arrived at Chelsea. Then again I was surprised how much they got for another player they didn't want, De Bruyne, who turned out to be worth every single Euro Wolfsburg paid for him.

hamburg are so strange, think they signed old man olic this january as well.

Really don't get why Wolfsburg don't play a bit more hardball with Chelsea considering there seems to beno other suitors and Chelsea seem p desperate to get Cuadrado in?

might be bollocks but

According to Bild, the basic transfer fee for the player is €32 million (a club record fee for Wolfsburg), amd all the amounts they will need to pay as add-ons total up to €66 million. This includes a salary of €6 million per year to be paid up to 2019, €5 million in bonuses and €2 million to be paid to Schurrle’s consultant.

Bizarre especially considering that I'm not sure Wolfsburg even need him. Better not take game time away from Max Arnold.

pandz have u seen much of tin jedvaj this season? was p surprised roma let him go on a permanent deal given his rep, tho they do seem to have countless other irons in the fire

Wolfsburg coach Dieter Hecking is confident the club will be able to hold on to star player Kevin De Bruyne for the foreseeable future. De Bruyne has a contract with Wolfsburg until June 2019.

"I do not have any fear that De Bruyne will leave the club," Hecking told Doppelpass. "There are only eight teams in Europe that are a step up from Wolfsburg."

Leverkusen? Still with the teenage acne? If he's the one I'm thinking of he's an attacking full back. Yeah, liked what I've seen, out of maybe half a dozen full games I've caught he's had one nightmare (although he also scored strangely enough iirc) and a couple of stormers. New Lev boss all about the high press and that suits him as he's p dynamic. Not the greatest passer but comfortable enough on the ball and happy enough to seek give and goes on the edge of the oppo box.

xp

zaha back to palace permanently... for £3m

what did fergie pay? £12m? £15m?

Just looked up Jedvaj on whoscored, didn't realise he's played some CB this season, never seen him play in the middle.

milan sign antonelli to go with cerci, destro, suso and mr saddest-hair-of-all-time gabriel paletta

i like it. actually kind of a shame they're not way better and less shambolic, would be cool if they were like the scavenger rebuke to modern football excess

Juventus sign Matri on loan from AC Milan

lol italy, never change

wasn't matri a Juve player like 2 seasons ago?

ya

Mina Rzouki @Minarzouki · 17m
Pirlo is a huge fan of Matri who he labels as a hypochondriac. Player didn't work out for Milan. Back at Juve, he balances team's psychology

Mina Rzouki @Minarzouki · 19m
Pirlo on Matri: "If I was President, a guy like him would be right at the top of my wish list. He comes with a billion dollar guarantee"

spurs gazumping for dele alli, 5m

brentford signing the v highly rated jack o'connell because qpr don't look like dicks enough already and being surpassed by the bees is what needs to happen in life apparently

can see osvaldo rocking up at loftus road now after this matri thing

There are sensational reports that Samuel Eto’o could be set to tear up his Sampdoria contract, just six days after signing.

The former Everton striker is believed to have walked out of training today, refusing to take part in a double training session.

lol

Swansea City manager Garry Monk has likened the January transfer window to a cattle market.

"Everyone's selling all their cows, overpricing their cows. Some of them are bad."

i don't see what he's getting at there. metaphor too complicated.

he does have the face of an unscrupulous abattoir technician tbf

There's a face he has on him after a particularly galling Swansea defeat where you can just see him standing there, staring furiously into the distance, covered in blood.

I have decided to stay With Swansea. I wanted to share this With you before the end of the transferts Windows. It's the best choice for me.

— Bafétimbi Gomis (@BafGomis) February 2, 2015

Even if i was sad before Because i didn't play a lot. Now everything is différent.I believe in this team and his project.

— Bafétimbi Gomis (@BafGomis) February 2, 2015

I have spoken With the coach and I have his confident and he have mine. I am lucky to play and live to Swansea.

— Bafétimbi Gomis (@BafGomis) February 2, 2015

Gaffer is standing behind Me with meat Cleaver. please Help

— Bafétimbi Gomis (@BafGomis) February 2, 2015

Swansea City manager Garry Monk has likened the January transfer window to a cattle market.

"Everyone's selling all their cows, overpricing their cows. Some of them are bad."

― r|t|c, Monday, February 2, 2015 4:06 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Posts w/ striking imagery. Love this quote immensely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iPh7X7X6So

http://www.stenhousemuirfc.com/images/uploads/tekkers002.jpg

N'Doye's pretty good but idk if he'll keep Hull up.

Hull aren't great but their recent form is better than that of several other teams, Sunderland and Villa in particular are tanking it right now. Then again Leicester and Burnley are better than quite a few relegation favourites from previous years, and Rangers are, well, Rangers, so who the fuck knows.

sunderland lost two away and one home game vs top six teams by one goal margins then beat burnley

There's an element of wishful thinking there admittedly, I would dearly love Sunderland to go down by this point.

Leicester have the worst form over the last ten games but only picked up two points less than Everton. The form table for the same period has a gap of four points between 11th and 20th.

Hull looked absolutely abysmal vs Newcastle.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B86T_XQCMAE1id3.jpg

the romance of the cup

sooo, Andy Kellett joining Man U on loan from Bolton. That's a strange one isn't it? I'm guessing they realised they were short of u21 players at the last minute or smthg?

this is the best squad hull have ever had, not that that is saying much but fine work by steve bruce nonetheless

N'Doye's pretty good but idk if he'll keep Hull up.

― Rainbow DAESH (ShariVari), Tuesday, 3 February 2015 08:39 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

n'doyency aid

fine work by steve bruce nonetheless

Do you mean for assembling it in the first place or for getting it to underperform on a weekly basis for so long?

the latter, the few good players he has cost plenty of for a team like hull so not like he deserves much credit for that, and they are playing shit anyway

£8m for livermore

Diame – who was also hunted by Crystal Palace – eventually opted for the Tigers and ClaretandHugh claims a Hammers source told it: “With a year left we weren’t going to stand in his way – that wouldn’t have been right.

“With what we were doing in the market, the deal for Diame fitted our situation and my understanding is that he got a hefty increase from Hull of around £10k.”

The players he has are EPL average to just-below-average in almost every position, their upper level is probably roughly where Stoke are now. Probably below that given Stoke have had more talent at their disposal this season.

probably a bit below stoke but enough for 13th/15th sort of level
he's spent a fuck of a lot more money than hughes has though

Hatem Ben Arfa has denied he plans to retire from football at the age of 27 after he was refused international clearance to play for Nice.

Ben Arfa signed an 18-month deal with the French club after Newcastle terminated his contract but was denied clearance having already appeared in competitive games for two teams – Newcastle and Hull – this season.

Nice contested the ruling on the basis that Ben Arfa had only represented Newcastle’s reserve team – but Fifa regulations regard “under-21 professional development league” matches as competitive fixtures.

Chelsea have sold Thorgan Hazard to Borussia Monchengladbach for a staggering mark-up of 1500 per cent on the fee they paid for him two-and-half-years ago, according to reports.

Hazard, the 21-year-old younger brother of Blues star Eden, moved to the Bundesliga side at the start of the season on loan but with his Chelsea deal expiring in the summer, he will now stay until 2020.

Reports suggest Monchengladbach have paid €8m to make his move permanent. That's an incredible 1500 per cent increase on the €500,000 fee they paid in July 2012. The increase is all the more remarkable due to the fact Hazard spent just 37 days at Stamford Bridge, never played for the senior team and played just once for the Under-21s.

Gladbach's sporting director Max Eberl said: "Thorgan has shown what a great talent he is over the past few months. We are delighted we have managed to sign him, and that he has decided to play for Borussia over the next few years."

A Chelsea statement read: "Thorgan Hazard has today signed for Borussia Monchengladbach, with Chelsea having the right to exercise a future buy-back option.

"Chelsea Football Club wishes Thorgan well for the future and will continue to monitor his progress."

thorgan donation is a viable option for russians with liquidity problems

this is obviously abramovich just giving them bags of cash to pay back to Chelsea for kids to dupe ffp rite

schalke exercise option to buy nastasic

city transfers look poor on their own terms (£40m for mangala, £30m for bony) especially given ffp and how much better chelsea are managing that

and even more so given the begiristan strategy of trying to harmonize an ersatz barcelona style and to stop looking so provincial and inept in europe