The Hazard ship has well and truly set sail. Not a hope we'll get him now. It needed to be done before this season. Without Nasri and Cesc and our very obvious reliance on one player (who will most likely leave in the summer) to get results why would someone choose to come to us when any Europes big guns are interested.

The likes of Hazard and Gotze are unfortunately completely beyond our reach now. Kagawa would be attainable and probably a realistic target.

We certainly need at least one forward/wide man to be brought in in January because as long as Walcott and Gervinho are both considered good enough to command starting berths I really can't see us finishing Top 4.

This is the most funny/pathetic thread that we've ever had.

Looks like Lille are whoring him around to get a bigger fee. Can't see us signing him with them shouting about his availability like that.

If he goes to Madrid, perhaps someone gets stuffed. DiMaria, Kaka, etc. We just need to wait around and pick their scraps.

They won't be offloading anyone good.

We can always hope. The twits offloaded vd Vaart, Robben and Sneijder. I'd take any/all of them right now, injuries and all.

Their squad is too short these days and they won't be having a 'revolution' anytime soon unfortunately.

It's a bit hard to see players like Hazard and Nasri going to big clubs to become part of the rotation, when all we want/need is someone better than Walcott to have a guaranteed starting job. It's humbling.

Theo had better stats than Nasri and Hazard last season. True story.

I'm sure he did. I still don't like him.

Not really "humbling" then is it? Theo is a striker and he is efficient; that's what people want.

Theo is good at what he does, but like many of our players Wenger doesn't use him properly.

Theo´s stats say that Wenger is using him quite well. IMO what we are seeing this season is Theo finding hard to accept playing on the wing. Too bad really.

Theo takes up a lot of central positions. He's not a stuck on the outside like a winger in a 4 4 2. Watch him during games. He likes to float centrally. I really do not buy that if we ask him to start centrally he is going to be anymore effective than he is now. He just doesn't have the nose for chances that a true No. 9 like a Wrighty does.

He is too much in the middle after that talk with that racist Terry. He needs to be dropped or start playing like a winger again.

good perseverance on his strike today.

but he would never have seen the easy pullback that gervinho made for van persie's goal. you'd expect either to score on their own anyway, but the pullback turns an 85% chance into a 100% chance with style that humiliates the other team.

i have a feeling theo's form is going to improve.

Think it is fair to say he played like a real winger today. As always he turns up with a good performance in a big game.

Humble Rex, it's not true that he always turns up with a good performance in a big game, but he has looked good in a few games against Chelsea. The two early crosses to Robin and Gervinho were the kind of service I'd like to see more of from him. And his goal was the fruit of him getting back to his feet rather than falling to the ground and complaining to the ref as he usually does. Once he was past the first man, Chelsea stood no chance against his pace.

I think the guy who can benefit most from Theo in this team and help make Theo more productive is Gervinho. If he can keep finding ways to come into the box to meet Theo crosses in the middle or on the far post, then we can have a faster, more dangerous attack than we had in the Fabregas era.