OhForAGreavsie

When asked in today's press conference to comment on Koulibaly and Eduardo, Antonio thought for a moment. You could almost see him composing his reply in Italian and then doing his best to translate it into English before speaking. When he did speak he said, " it is difficult to speak to the press about the arguments I am having with the club.", before correcting himself and saying "conversations". It is, of course, possible that conversations is the word Antonio meant, but that is not the feeling I had while listening to him. It seemed to me that there might be disagreement between the club and the manager about whether these huge fees should be paid. Antonio was asked several more times through the course of the conference to give his thoughts on the strength and readiness of the squad. It's clear from his answers that he is not happy with the group he has. Certainly not with the numbers and, I'm presuming, not with the quality either. He specifically mentioned the shortage of defensive players. It can't be a surprise to any of us that Antonio has doubts about the squad; he has eyes after all. That there might be internal disagreement about how to proceed is news though. If that's true then it's a shame that the disagreement exists and a bigger shame that Antonio let it slip. As I said in my earlier post, I think this was unintended and not a deliberate tactic on Antonio's part. If it's true however, it doesn't matter whether he meant to leak or not. The implications are still significant.

What a load of absolute crap. The idiot that wrote this cares more about clicks than financial understanding. Either he has none or is deliberately misleading people just so that he can publish a story. The raw facts about the drop in the share price might be true but The conclusion he draws from that fact has nothing to do with the realities of the way financial markets work. I wish journalists would spend more time trying to educate we the public rather than trying to exploit any ignorance we might have.

Wow! Potentially huge unintended leak from Antonio in his press conference which is happening as I post this.

^^Those were the days. It was great to see Riccy on Monday night. If he's not working at the moment it would be brilliant to see him around the club a lot more.

It's only agents doing their work. Good luck to 'em, they have a job to do.

How much of your own money would you bet that the people working on these things for Chelsea will not have thought of that? Personally I'd bet fortune of your money, but not a single penny of my own. ? Of course they've thought of it. Unlike you and me; they also probably know whether it's a viable possibility, which if any players might be of interest to Napoli, which if any of those players might be interested in going and which if any of them Chelsea would be willing to part with. We, on the other hand, know absolutely none of these things but that doesn't ever seem to stop us believing that we know far better than the club does about everything.

Every manager we have had during the Roman era as stated, categorically, that there has been no interference in team affairs from Roman or from anyone else. The only near exception to that was when Bobby DiMatteo let it be known that he had been asked not to select Studge in the last couple of months before the striker's move to Liverpool. Something had obviously gone on between Daniel and the club which meant that the relationship had come to an end. Other than that however the managers claim that the record is perfect. I know that, owing to a certain agenda, many people will believe that all of the managers have lied. I don't. It's possible to imagine that they might have signed confidentiality clauses which prevented any disclosure of internal matters but such a clause, if it exists, could only prevent them speaking their mind. It could not force them to say things were good if they really thought they were bad.

There are long, dull stretches but I have to say, your post was worth sticking with right to the end. :-)

The very, very end.

!! Been that way for years.

Yes, I agree with all of this.We do need to be looking for that type of player though.

Two strikers for about 8 minutes plus injury time. We've seen that a zillion times haven't we?

Amen to that.

Not really we need a player who is better than either Fab or Oscar in that role.One who combines the better traits of both.I would argue that this would represent solving the midfield, as i put it.

I don't agree. If and when we are able to do this repeatedly and predictably, it will show that. Until then all it shows is that we did it today.

I agree that he did well but I'd put it differently and say that he did as well as he's able to. I felt tonight encapslated our problem with Oscar. At one and the same time he is not good enough to play that role in our midfiied and yet he remains the best fit we have for that role in our midfield. One slight disagreement; he was still he most advanced of our midfield. When the debate was raging about whether it should be Oscar or Willian occupying the most advanced position of the midfeld three, i argued for Oscar. For me, although Willian always looks better because he carries the ball better, it is Oscar who is more likely to get things done. He lacks the technique to produce the dominnt string-pulling displays but, his tricks and flicks oftn turn out to be the most productive thing we get from people in that role.

You may be right about this but how do you know, how can you know? What does it mean to you when Antonio says, "We are waiting. We have to be patient but we have a plan*."? *Quoted from memory so may not be word perfect but this is the gist of what he said..

I wouldn't say that we ever did. The list of players we wanted but didn't get during the Roman era is very long.

^^ Good analysis @Jason I think. I thought everyone played well and that the only flaws in any performances were caused by the players individual limitations. In the end any footballer can only play as well as they can play. Can't ask any more of anyone than that. We can ask for more quality to be added to the squad however and I think it's fair to say we all spent the summer doing just that! A lot of what is being asked for is that we should fix the back four. While there can be no doubt that work is needed in that area I'm convinced we'll solve more of our problems if we solve the midfield. Keep the ball better, move the ball better means we ease the pressure and retain our shape better. That automatically improves our defending. if the only squad improvements we can achieve for happened to be defenders then so be it but we mustn't neglect other areas of need. Well done to the lads. Well done to the boss.

Unfortunately these are serious people, dealing with serious amounts of money, and they know their business. If Maksimovic to Napoli is an Intragal part of Di Laurentis being prepared to sell Koulibally to us then, we can rest assured that it will be covered in the transfer contract between Chelsea and Napoli.

Or is it our fans who never learn? If our opening bid had been £50 million do you think Napoli would've accepted it? I don't. They'd have rejected it out of hand and people like you would now be talking about just paying up the £80 million and be done with it. In any case, if the story about this bid is true, I wouldn't be surprised if it was rejected. Napoli have nothing to lose and so can afford to play the game till the end if they want to.

Actually, I think I may have misrepresented this a bit. Before last season, there was a lot of competition at centre forward so Tammy tended to play wide right much of the time. Last season after Dom went out on loan, Tammy became first choice CF. It might be the case that he has not so much improved his hold up play, as that he simply had more opportunities to show us what he can do. Either way, he's better at it than I expected he'd be.

No it's not apparently, it's official. Anouncement on TOCWS and everything.

I thought there were mixed messages coming out of the press conference on Friday. On the up side, "We're waiting, we have a plan", is encouraging and to my mind translates as; bids are in,the door has not been closed on them so there's hope but, in case they don't come to fruition, we also have a plan B with perhaps a plan C and more backing that up.That all sounds very organised and sensible, especialy if we are involved in one or more of these transfer chains where our link has already been agreed in principle and we're just waiting for the the other pieces to come together.... On the other hand, Antonio's body language did not suggest any great confidence that anything was actually going to come off. There was no sense that he was trying to conceal any deals he knew were very likely to happen. Quite the opposite if anything.

Not a shred.