OhForAGreavsie

I've only seen him twice and, so far, he looks to me like a tricks and flicks player. A type of player that I really don't like.

So did Denis Zakaria. I desperately want it to work for Denis here but yesterday was another setback for those of us with hopes for him.

One of us is. 🙂 🙂 In any case, read the material you linked. When all is said and done, even it does not support the headline being used to push it. Instead, we find phrases like, "They made the decision not to pursue the player." THEY. Even if Marina communicated the final decision, she was either channelling Roman, or giving cover for a different factor which was the true reason.

🙂 You should know by now that I do not, and will not, believe these reports. They are undoubtedly nonsense. I ask again for people to interrogate the following scenario: - Thomas Tuchel wanted the player, Petr Cech wanted the player, Roman Abramovich wanted the player, but he wasn't pursued because Marina was worried about his level? Do me a favour! It is simply not possible to believe such bollocks. Even for those of you with an agenda against our former director.

In any case Marina didn't say that Tchou was not ready 2 years ago.

I don't agree with all of your examples but I definitely agree with your point.

I would have, and I would have been right. Correct assessment of the available facts would have led to the correct answer. As for hindsight, @Vespersaid it at the time and said it first. I echoed her then and since. I also repeated it in summer '22. This approach is not radical, it is established football lore; let your players' legs go when they are playing for someone else. It's just a question of getting the timing right. The information was there to be seen that would have led to the right decision. All that was necessary was to see through the gleam of the Champions League trophy. Vesper did, others here did, and the club should have.

P.S. I don't know yet if it is a boy or a girl. They sent me a picture but didn't say. I've told them to just enjoy their moment and not to bother with any answering questions. Mum and dad look overjoyed.

Thank you. I bought the Chelsea branded bibs at the megastore after the Champions League game last Thursday. They're gonna look great. 🙂

Thank you. It's absolutely incredible. 🙂 🙂 🙂

I can't of course rule out that you are right, but I believe very strongly that you are wrong.

I have not listened to the podcast, and won't do so immediately but will respond when I have. Meanwhile, none of the above offer any evidence, or even imply, that Marina made the football decisions. They only show she was responsible for enacting them once they had been made, and this we already knew because it was public knowledge. There is always an executive with responsibility for signing the cheques, and negotiating the deals. Marina was that person in the latter part of Roma's era. Settling the business of a transfer is a long way from actually deciding who to target or who to sell. Matt Law has his work cut out to persuade me that Marina decided to buy player A because she, not the manager, not Roman, and not any of his advisors, thought that player was a better footballer than player B. Are people really asking me to believe that Roman, the Manager, and Petr liked Tchomeni, (SP?) but that Marina didn't buy him because she decided he wasn't good enough? Surely such a notion sounds just as ridiculous to everybody else, as it sounds to me. Marina enacted football decisions, she didn't make them.

Thank you for answering my question and with a reasonable response. I do not believe Matt Law however. I don't recall reading what he had to say on the subject but, if I had, I'm sure that I would have found him to be using careful language. Just as careful as the language Romario used in the last few days when he 'announced' that the N'kunku deal had been completed. Everyone will have noticed how he skilfully danced around saying when this had happened. I took that dance as a further indicator that N'kunku's deal was completed months ago. Meanwhile, I might believe Marina made the football decisions, i.e. deciding that player A was a better footballer than player B, when I hear Roman confirm it. In truth however, probably not even then. The notion that Roman would allow someone with no particular football knowledge to make a decision that he could otherwise have made himself, sounds as ludicrous to me as the idea that Chelsea would have carried out a medical on a player because they hoped to sign him 12 months later. Such a pointless, useless, waste of time and money, medical simply never made any sense. Nor does Matt Law's story about Marina playing Football manager with Roman's money. I won't accuse him of deliberately misleading people, but he may have been misled himself.

My younger daughter has just given birth to her first child. I just got back from spending Christmas with them but I'll now be heading back down. This means that I can't use my ticket for this match. Would anyone here like to buy it? West Lower, Block 3, £56 (Face value). Let me know. Edit: I'm now planning to be back in London in time to get to the game so the ticket is no longer available.

You were absolutely right about this at the time. NG should have been sold in summer '21.

Why do you persist in believing Marina made decisions on football grounds? If she made any 'football' pronouncement it can only have been channelling Roman. It's probable that she had opinions of course. After all, she watched far more live football than many of us and we all have opinions. Having, or even offering, an opinion is one thing, making decisions is another.

Tonight's final match in the group stage will determine whether Chelsea or PSG top Group A. Kick off is at 8pm, UK time (GMT/UTC), Tickets are available, https://www.chelseafc.com/en/tickets/womens-tickets, and the game can be watched live on DAZN's YouTube channel.

I'm not a chant starter, it's just not my personality, but I'm going to try to get Vialli, Vialli, Vialli going at The Bridge tonight. If you're there help me out if you can. If you're not there why not? 🙂 https://www.chelseafc.com/en/tickets/womens-tickets

And the highest energy prices on the planet. Oh the joys of Brexit. To be fair, the energy prices are more to do with the incompetence of the government than directly with Brexit but nobody reads the small print.

The whole truth.

Rom never delivered for Chelsea, did not deliver to a satisfactory standard for ManU, and would not have delivered for us if we had been unfortunate enough to re-sign him from Everton. He has never shown anything to contradict my autumn 2011 prediction that he would never be good enough for Chelsea. I made that prediction based on my assessment of his technical level and my conviction that a player's output will, ultimately, be tethered to his technical level. Form fluctuates, but it fluctuates around a footballer's basic level. This conviction also allowed me to correctly predict that, sooner or later, Torres would fail at Liverpool and, of course, that he would fail at Chelsea. As I argued since before he joined Liverpool, Nando was an ordinary footballer whose purple patch must ultimately collapse to its true level as set by his talent, or lack of it. You are 100% correct to caution against overestimating DDF, a player few of us know anything about. The one thing I feel able to assess is that his technical level is higher than Rom's and so he at least has a chance, which I maintain Rom never did. I do want us to sign DDF if it's for the fee reported. That's the kind of money which should be paid for a player who is no more than a prospect. If we get him one of his biggest challenges will be in his head. Moving to a stronger league he will obviously find it harder to produce but, where he is now, he knows where he stands in the pecking order. Once in England however, he will find himself lower down and that will affect his confidence. Confidence plays a big part in what a player tries to do, never mind what he actually can do. If he arrives we'll see how he copes with that knock.

Don't see we have any choice but to hope that the injury won't be terminal, as you fear. The real problem of course is that we should never have paid anything even remotely close to £80m for him.

Would have been fine if he was up to it as a footballer. It wasn't his talk that was the problem. 🙂 DDF is streets ahead of Rom technically so he already looks to me like someone who should be able to walk his talk better than Rom ever could. I like DDF, and will be delighted if we bring him in. Adding the Russian lad would make it a pleasing, and very encouraging, window. Encouraging in that we'd be getting the right level of prospect, at the right end of the market. The end of the market where some instances of failure must be expected, but where failures are not financially ruinous, and where success is automatically a jackpot.

Many other clubs can compete for Leao, if they want to. If they don't want to then there is a reason for that. By all means take the risk of buying him if we think our recruitment team have got their assessment of Leao right, while all the non-competing teams have underestimated him. Just be sure to pay a risk price. Time and again we have allowed ourselves to bid over the odds when there didn't seam to be anybody competing for the player's signature. Most recently with Cucu for example.

I wonder which choice Kounde would have made had Chelsea wanted to play him at centre-back, and Barcelona at wing-back? I know what I think, and I bet I'm not alone in thinking as I do. 🙂