OhForAGreavsie

Back in May I posted the opinion that Reece is the brightest prospect we have currently; ahead of Tino, ahead of Mason and ahead even of Callum. I stick to that view.

Personally, I think the ignore button is the resort of a weak mind. I find it interesting that at least some people who take this option feel the need to announce it first. It’s all too school playground. There’s no need to use the ignore button. When there’s something we don’t want to read, then just scroll past it. I confess that this is what I do with at least some of the content in Vesper’s scouting reports. While they seem very knowledgable, I find I am not always interested in keeping up to date with emerging prospects from home and abroad. This does not mean that Vesper should not post the reports, and nor does it mean that anyone but myself is losing out because I don’t read them. I had a very fractious exchange recently during which it appeared to me that another member’s posts made no sense whatsoever. On the other hand he seemed to be willfully misunderstanding the perfectly obvious point I was making. His comments seemed so bizarre to me that I accused him of trolling. He clearly saw the conversation differently but I won’t be ignoring him or anyone else. Denying myself even the possibility of reading new content because I didn’t like a previous comment would be a mistake. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean I have to read it, but the day may come when I do. Until then what have I got to lose by allowing myself to see his posts so I can read them if I want to?

Jay’s proper position is left back. Reece is an outstanding right back but both he and Jay must be benefiting more from their loans than they would from an odd run out in games like last night’s. Tariq Lampty is an interesting RB prospect. He scored my favourite goal last season but he’s even slighter than Jay. If Callum and Ethan can’t get a game, then I doubt Tariq would even be under consideration.

I understand what you mean when you say this but I've always thought that players should be free to decide for themselves what the right or wrong reasons might be. A lot of players, including Claude Makelele, have joined our club for the money. Many Chelsea fans, though not me I admit, regard Maka as one of our greatest ever players. This clearly indicates that moving for cash does mean a footballer can't also perform well enough at his new club to be respected by the fans he plays for. I think there is a similarity between Maka and Oscar. Maka was at Chelsea because none of the clubs he preferred to join wanted him enough to match his demands or Madrid's. I don't believe any top clubs were interested in Oscar. I think clubs had seen enough of him to reassess his ceiling downwards by the time he left Chelsea.

As I said in July, I'm very disappointed that Maurizio wasn't given the opportunity to take a look at Mason during preseason. Someone reacted by saying that it wasn't possible because that would have interfered with the move to Derby but I don't agree. Of course Derby would have wanted Mason to spend preseason with them, but I don't believe for a moment that they'd have walked away if we'd said that we could not give them a decision on the loan until after the Inter Milan game. Yes a preseason with his new team was useful for that lad, but the lack of one would have been overcome. That choice looks even more strange given the way our squad has now shaped up. Our three starting midfielders are all players of the right calibre, but they are not a perfectly balanced trio. None of them wants to play ahead of the ball. N'Golo gets the gig but only because the other two can't. Mason is exactly the type of player who could offer a goal threat and improve the balance of our midfield options. Perhaps Maurizio would have decided that Mason wasn't ready, Italian bosses seem to value experience even more than most, but the manager should have had the chance to decide. As for the pass; it was a happy accident, he didn't mean it. In fact he missed the player he was aiming at so, in terms of execution, it was actually closer to a bad pass than a good one. Sometimes things just work out.

On this occasion I think it has to be. There's just too much money at stake. If we can't trademark our badge then it's even harder for kit manufacturers to protect their products from rip off versions and they won't be offering us anything like as big a wad of cash for the right to sell our gear. I don't know what portion of that £900m kit deal would be lost but even just 5% would be way too much to lose. In reality the reduction would certainly be a lot more than 5%. A lot more. It would be plain stupid to sacrifice that revenue for the sake of returning to a badge which can only be distinguished from the current one if you look closely. (Apart from the colour of the staff.)

Agreed, it is simple clean and smart but, given that the club can't trademark it, I think the current one is a fair compromise. I don't often agree with Uncle Ken, and I didn't like the Bates badge (1986-2005) at all, but I think he was right to decide that the club needed a badge it could trademark. I don't think it would make any sense to risk loss of revenue by returning to the classic crest. (1953-1986)

It would not have been different. He was another overrated player who failed at Real, failed at City and would have failed here. Was delighted when the move broke down and was even more delighted when we went to City shortly afterward and won comfortably despite going behind. Who is to blame for the premature shirt sales? Remember Chelsea don't put the shirts out for sale. We are paid a huge licence fee by a manufacturer. They put the shirts out for sale, and they take the profits from those sales. (When we sell shirts at the megastore, we're only doing so as any other retailer might.) We don't get paid any extra from the licencing agreement unless shirt sales go way, way above expected levels. Even then our share of the extra money is much smaller than the manufacturer's. This means that the club has very little to gain from the shirt going on sale early so their story about it being an outside body that jumped the gun is at least credible. I don't know the absolute truth of this and I doubt anyone else here knows either. Did someone at Chelsea give the go ahead for the shirts to go on sale? Unlikely, but maybe. Did someone outside of Chelsea decide to try to get the shirts out asap, but fail to get the club's all clear first? Maybe. What you believe probably depends on whether or not you are in the CFC executives can do no right club.

Savage is a dreadful pundit for sure. Even on the rare occasion that he has a good idea, he lacks the vocabulary to make his point so plenty of his sentences collapse into, "You know what I mean?" Well, not always Robbie, no. Why Savage is popular enough to keep getting media gigs is beyond me. JT is not right however with his implication that mediocre players cannot have anything to say to players with superior medal collections. Show us your medals gets you in the door for sure but knowing your business is what keeps you there. Too many examples to list but Fergusson, Wenger and Jose are among them.

What an absolute pile of crap that article is. This forum is not Fox News. Fox News doesn't tell people what happens, it programmes them. A key part of that is telling people what to think about news rather than just what the news is. What did Thibaut say that is wrong? He spoke the truth, accurately describing the way our stadium looks. That's something to hate Thibaut about? I regret that TalkChelsea is echoing this nonsense.

A much better performance than the one featured in the Pulisic video above. Nor was it Willian's only outstanding performance last season.

I assume most people posting in this thread have seen a lot more of Fekir than I have, so bear that in mind when I say that I've never thought as highly of him as many here. From the first time I watched Fekir I likened him to Shaqiri, a player I regard as offering more flashy looking play than actual end product. When Fekir was linked to us during the transfer window before last I posted to say that I much preferred Malcolm, now of Barca. Whether it's because Chelsea did not have enough belief in Fekir, or because they were worried about his injury record, I can't say I'm disappointed by Aulas's revelation that we were never interested.

The women play their first league game of the 2018/19 season at home to Manchester City Sunday September 9th. That's the weekend the men won't be playing because of the international break. If you're going to be missing your football fix that week, why not get over to Kingsmeadow, in Kingston, to support the girls. There's a bus that stops right outside the ground and a train station nearby, plus free car parking at the stadium. If you're driving just slap KT1 3PB into your satnav. Tickets are £6 full price, £3 concessions and can be bought on the day or from the club in advance. Kick off is at 2:00pm. City finished second behind Chelsea in last season's Women's Super League so this is a massive game to kick off the campaign. We attracted a record crowd of over 3,300 when City visited Kingsmeadow in last season's FA Cup. That's more than attended some league two games but there's room for about 1500 more to watch what could turn out to be a pivotal fixture in the title race. See you down there if you can make it.

You must be trolling.

Sticking to the selection of transfer targets. Why do you think it is Graniskova and Tenenbaum who jointly select the targets and what evidence do you have for that belief?

To be clear the admission I spoke of was my own. Let me take a different tack. Tell me clearly, do you think Marina chooses transfer targets?

Well, I can't do that. What you might tell me as a result of that admission is up to you. What I'd like you to tell me is that I'm a logical person who is not prone to believing whatever the hell I want to believe based on nothing but a pile of unsubstantiated guesses.

None of which tells you who chooses the transfer targets, at which point in the process these names are chosen or updated, who determines the maximum spend for individual players, who sets the overall strategy, and who assigns the total budget. Yet, despite not knowing anything, you do know who is to blame. You're not being very convincing.

From the moment we were linked with Marcos I said that I thought he could help us and that I was in favour of signing him. I believe he has been an upgrade on what we had before, but I have also often said that there are better LBs out there who could upgrade us again. We need to make that step forward but, in the meantime, I don't understand all the stick Marcos gets. It's not his fault that he is Chelsea's starting left back. Until the club recruits a better one, we should support the left back we have.

It is certainly true that we have made too many poor transfer decisions, over too long a period. Ultimately someone must be to blame for this but I do not have enough information about the functions and responsibilities of the people involved to pinpoint exactly who that is. Nor do you.

I think this is a sound assessment though I confess to a sneaking feeling that Marcin may have saved the first goal. Sneaking feelings don't add up to much however and we will never know for sure. Let's be patient with Kepa and give him all the support he needs.

An acknowledgement that you had misunderstood my original post would have been nice. No I don't really think the club would have gone with an, in fact currently, 18 year old goalkeeper. I'm just saying what I would have done. As you may not know, I am an avid watcher of our development squads and have seen a great deal of Marcin. Enough to form the opinion I've offered. It is difficult however to contradict the opinion of coaches and officials who have seen more of both players than I have. It is also hard to deny the value of experience. I just hope the choice was not a lazy one, automatically ruling out the youngster simply because of his youth. Brave choices do pay off sometimes and this may have been one of those times. Perhaps we will never know.

You've missed the point that I favoured the radical solution of installing Marcin Bulka as our starting goalkeeper. Hey presto the possibility of £71m to put toward a different player in our starting XI, or at worst £71m in the bank to spend another time. For example, I don't believe that Icardi was ever gettable but, if he was, he would have been more affordable with just an extra £27m to find rather than another £98m. I'm not saying that I think Kepa is a bad keeper. Nor am I saying that he may not be better than Marcin. Time may show that he offers those extra bits of quality which justify the decision to sign him. The fact that we haven't seen this yet is neither here nor there. If he has it, he'll prove it and I hope he does. I am saying however that I believe in Marcin. He's young but he's talented and he has the physical tools. In two months he'll be 19, the same age at which Thibaut became the starting goalkeeper for one of the best teams in the world. I grant you that Thibaut was more experienced at that time than Marcin is now, but I'd have taken that gamble. The one direct comparison I'd make so far is that I think Marcin looks the better shot stopper. This opinion is based on very thin evidence of course, and it certainly isn't enough to suggest that Marcin is the better keeper overall. Not even close to enough, but it also doesn't rule out the possibility. In any case, Marcin does not need to be better to validate the gamble I'd have taken. He just needs to be good enough to deserve his place in the team and to satisfy the following inequality; (Marcin + another £71m worth of footballer) > Kepa.

The real question I suppose is do we now have an extra £71m pounds worth of goalkeeper? If we do we'll be happy.