OhForAGreavsie

Next month I celebrate my 50th anniverary as a Chelsea fan. I've learned a few things in that time. Do you imagine the club does not want to support this manager, as you put it? Is that what you think? Given that it is not possible for you to think that, do you suppose they are doing anything less than their best to offer that support? They know the constraints, financial and otherwise, and they know the options they have within those. You don't know any of that yet you insist that the club are wrong anyway. All I'm wanting you to accept is that the club knows the problems and wants to fix them. If they choose a particular player that you and I might not, then we'd be dissapointed but no two people, fans or professionals, would always assess players in the same way. I would never in a million, million years have signed Torres but Carlo wanted him. Someone has to decide, it was Carlo's job and so he made his choice. Consider this, if you were in charge at Stamford Bridge, somebody else would be on here moaning about the choices you were making. The world is real, not ideal.

But what is that amount? There is no amount. If you name an amount you just put a limit on what you can get. Clubs in Napoli's position don't ruin their negotiating stance by doing anything so stupid unless they have to because there is a clause or they urgently need to sell the player. Instead, they just sit tight and turn down all bids till the end of the market. I don't know if we have bid €40m for Koulibally or not but if we have it will certainly have been turned down Why don't you get it? Have you just started following football? You sound like you may have.

Do you genuinely believe the stuff you post? How exactly do you imagine the club should have acted in order to sign Koulibally two weeks ago? What should we have bid?

CFC, of course, are not going to forget it come what may and I hope you won't either. Indeed, on the asumption that you are suffering from the same bug as the rest of us, you won't be able to even if you want to. What is it going to take to get some people thinking straight on this? The club wants the same thing we do. If it was a simple matter of bidding for the players we want, blowing every other club out of the water with the deals we offer and bringing in all of our targets we'd do it. Every club in the world would do it if it was that easy but I don't need to tell anybody here that it isn't that easy. If I told you I thought that was how the market works you'd all call me an idiot. The reality is that we are not the biggest beasts in the transfer market. Even if we offer the biggest fees some clubs turn us down, even if we offer the biggest contract some players turn us dowm. Have I said anything that everyone doesn't know already? Of course I haven't so why do I have to read posts like this everyday?

That article is nearly ten years out of date. Of course we aren't dominant. Have they just noticed? In any case we were never truly dominant. We had the biggest budget for a few short years but we were never able to attract the very best players. Right from the start of the Roman era the pattern was established where clubs fleeced us for top prices but never quite sold us the top players. CFC officials have been dealing with the reality of Chelsea's transfer position for a long time. They know the score and so do most of us here.

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Nothing wrong with your English. Mine on the other hand...

You sound very convincing, probably because you are convinced. Edit: I'm going to learn to read one day.

In that case I'm going to have to come clean. I defended Costa when people were poo pooing our rumoured interest in him and would have liked us to sign him but I'm on the other side of the Gomes debate. If he's a great sucess at Barca I'm going to be one of the ones people are laughing at.

Nice that's he's stepped up a level. His Jupiler League performances did not suggest he is a Chelsea player in the making however. Meanwhile, maybe there is something in all of those Granada are the new Vitesse stories.

Dembele was top of my summer transfer wish list. How Dortmund got him for so little is beyond me. There is no way we'd have been asked for anything less than €40m. I don't recall reading how much was bid but I do remember Dembele saying he turned us down last summer.

Do you mean in the sense that you believe Gomes will prove to be a great signing despite the fact that many people here have said they didn't want him, just as many had said they didn't want Douglas Costa?

Life is easier when you you have both the money and the status to be able to buy whoever you want. The only players who turn Barca down are those who have a committment to Madrid and those who think they have no chance to play. Everybody else just says give me a minute to pack.

It has been reported, reliably I think, that there was such a clause in the contract when KDB was sold, and that there is one still in force regarding Romelu. We are reported to have been paid by City when they signed Kevin.

As @Special Juan said, we were privalaged to have all three of them at once. Great days.

It's definitely a debate I agree. One stat in favour of Gallas/JT over Carvalho/JT was that amazing season when we conceded just 1 league goal with WG/JT at centre back. One goal all season!!! OK, it was 'only' 18 matches and there are other factors, not to mention other players contributing, to clean sheets but come on that is an amazing run. I think the fact that we conceded more goals when Riccy was selected instead was a major contributor to Billy's falling out with Jose.

Thank you for this information.

Almost as good as JT & Billy Gallas.

We are reported to have inserted a buyback clause into the contract of sale when Jeffery Bruma moved to PSV. It is also reported that, as a result of this, we were paid €5m when Bruma joined Wolsburg this season. We will be awarded a fee following John Swift's move to Reading. My guess is that this fee, which is to be set by tribunal, will be £2m although it could,and in my opnion should, be more.

€30m would mean that the outgoing moves completed so far this season will have more than covered the cost of Michy Batshuayi and other departures which might follow could be expected to cover N'Golo Kante's transfer fee. Puts us in a nice position to continue upgranding our squad this window.

Yep, good on him. A bit of straightforwardness is very welcome. It may seem that, in making clear that he wants to leave, Juan is reducing CFC's bargaining power but in reality Juve will already know Juan wants to join them so this is only really news to people like us, not to any of the parties involved.

Firstly, we don't know if any of the things you say about The players being targeted, or the fees being offered, are actually true. Secondly, we do know that Michael Emenalo is not responsible for negotiating transfers. We know too that he is not responsible for setting transfer budgets and that,while he does play a part in selecting targets, he is not the final decision maker. Blaming Michael for the things which people believe are going wrong is convenient, but it can't be justified.

Thanks BCS. I think you may be right. If you are, and Juan is here on 1st September, then let's hope he is still here on 1st February because that would mean it had prooved a good decision.

I really hope no one at Stamford Bridge is considering spending money on Lukaku.If, later in the window, Real find they need to relax the price for Morata then that's a deal I'd like to see happen. If, on the other hand, Rom is good enough to earn a place in our side, it will only serve as evidence that we are not as good as we would like to be.