King Kante

Yeah, I realised I missed him off when I posted. Personally, I would have him on the bench but I reckon he will start. As for the CB pairing. I wouldn't be so sure, Everton's lack of goals was due to some poor finishing, Zouma in particular was all over the shop in that game.

Kepa James. Ruidger. AC. Alonso Gilmour Kova. Mount Willian. Tammy. Pulisic Subs: Willy, Zouma, Tomori, Emerson, Kante (reckon he is behind if not he starts), Barkley, RLC, Pedro, CHO, Giroud, Batsh*t (I read there will be 11 subs on the bench?).

I am personally not convinced he would play as a No.9/No.10/No.11 here. When he first broke into the team he was playing as a No.6/8 and got moved forward as he is such a good player. However, even from playing the RWF position if you look at his heat maps he is pretty much still in the same position as you would expect a No.8. In my opinion, if he comes in he will play in the middle three. Something like: Jorgi/Gilmour Harvetz/Kova Mount/RLC However, that probably requires Barkley and Kante to be sold. Further, it is pretty harsh on Kova who has been good. However, if you look at the make-up of such a midfield with Harvetz in it, you have a lot more goals and you have more size. However, it will take a brave manager to replace Kante.

What does everyone else think about Cavani? Personally, if we could get him on a free for 1-2 years I think we should do it.

Isn't the Werner hold up to do with RB qualifying for the CL next year? I swear I read somewhere that depending on whether they qualify or not will impact how much his exact buyout will be.

Cannot say I have seen him play however, I am not sure we need him. Firstly, what exactly is his level? He has been playing Champo football but people are talking about a £30m+ fee. What reason is there to justify that? Second is that he will be competing with Ziyech, CHO, Puli and Werner for a position (while people such as Mount and RLC can also play out wide if needed). So, do we actually need a 5th AM? If so, why not just take Boga who is £12m'ish to buy back?

Cesc is probably a good example however there are slight differences. Personally I do not think he has Cesc's range of passing from deep to deliver through balls as consistently, however he has more pace and athleticism than Cesc and will also get stuck in. For me he may end up like a Cesc/Wise hybrid.

Dubravka for me is possibly the most underrated GK in Europe. That boy has pretty much single handedly kept Newcastle in the league for the past two seasons. However, because he isn't flashy with his feet or does spectacular Hollywood saves he gets forgotten about. When TC went on strike he was the GK I wanted.

The thing is those jorno's have been shown to also be very unreliable so I cannot actually believe what they say. In fact, I would say that the term 'a broken clock is right twice a day' is quite an apt expression to describe their reliability. Further, to make this clear, I am not having a pop at you or anything but rather trying to say that you should try not to get worked up about such stuff as it is just here'say. When you discuss signing/transfer that have been made and/or we get direct quotes from players to support certain positions, I have a lot of sympathy for your view points as we know they have happened. However, when it comes to proposed transfers where we only have the press to relie on we also know that 99% of stuff is BS so for that reason everything that is written should be taken with a moutain of salt.

There is no need to quote all of those articles again. I am well aware of them, however I give them very little credence. My problem with reading any transfer story on us is that it has been proven time and again that the club give the jorno's very little to go on. An example of this is Werner, where up until the day the deal was agreed between the club and player, everyone was saying he was off to the Dippers. No one had a clue until it was done. Therefore, when I read articles on us signing/selling x, y, z I tend not to believe them unless their is something 100% concrete. As for this particular story I do believe that there was interest, however I am unsure Barca actually went as high as £65m as none of the articles are from reliable papers and the sources highlighted have been proven to either have little knowledge of what is going on, or no idea of what is going on (including Law who I think gets classed as very little.) This is also why I am slightly relaxed about all the Chilwell noise as the way I see it, whilst the press is saying he is our no.1 target it is just as likely we are working on a deal for someone else.

Not ever been 100% convinced that we did get a £65m bid. That said, any offer of over £40m for him should have been accepted as like you say he is too inefficient in the final third and considering he takes a lot of our set pieces it is quite frankly shocking. That said, the recruitment betwenn 2016-18 was hardly stellar. So, if we did sell him we may have been lumbered with a Sanchez or something which would've been even worse.

90% aerial duels won sounds slightly unbelievable to me. The kid is like 5'6".

I think when people say De Ligt has regressed need to take a few things into consideration as I think the choice of joining Juve was perhaps not the greatest move for him. The first reason I say this is due to his strengths. De Ligt is an absolute beast of a player who uses his strength to dominate his opponents. This is what he was doing at Ajax. However, in Italy you cannot get away with it unless you're super canny (think Riccy C/S.Ramos/the rest of the Juve defence), which he is not. For that reason he is giving a lot of fouls away which can make him look like an Alonso in decision making, but it is rather (imo) that he is too strong for the league and in Northern European countries (England, Germany, France) he wouldn't be getting criticised for this but rather celebrated as he wouldn't be having so many fouls given. Second reason is that at Ajax he was leading/structuring the defence and now he has to follow the system. This to me is a little like when JT wasn't allowed to play his own game and told to play to a system (best examples AVB and Solari seasons). When he had to do this his form seriously dropped off as you were nullifying on of his biggest strength (reading of the game/organising) then asking him to rely on his pace (weakest area of his game) which just resulted in him looking like half the player. For me De Ligt is sort of in a similar position to Christensen (I actually rate AC pretty high) here in that the league he is playing in doesn't match the strengths of their game. For me, if switch De Ligt to a Northern European league he will almost straight away be considered a Category A/A* player, whilst with AC he would go from a B- to a B+/A in Italy or Spain.

Yeah, this is my understanding too. A poacher to me is a Pipo Inzaghi/Van Nistelrooy.

Batsh*t is another player - alongside Bakayoko, Kepa and Drinky - who I just do not understand how he was brought. I mean seriously, has anyone seen a player at Chelsea have such little tactical knowledge? The amount of times he is standing offside is a joke. When he eventually does leave, my abiding memory of him will be of how Hazard (whenever they played together) would look up for a pass, see Batsh*t and then either try and do everything himself and/or pass back to someone else as he couldn't pass to Batsh*t as he would always be offside or on the wrong side of the defender.

As far as I am concerned there are only four swap options available to Juve to get Jorgi. I put these in order of my preference: 1) De Ligt > Jorgi+Cash (or Emerson) 2) Demiral > Jorgi (however I am slightly cautious about this one as Demiral picked up a bad knee injury which I am always wary of) 3) Sandro + serious chunk of coin > Jorgi 4) Dybala > Jorgi (not going to happen and not sure we need him, however I really like Dybala as a player) Other than those four options, Juve can jog on.

442 diamond stuffs from a lack of width and teams can sit in a low block and nullify it pretty easily. Further, when it comes to our current AM's v Alonso being given a good chance to score. I would pick Alonso every day as he actually knows how to finish properly.

It will probably be PSG and if not them Madrid. I seriously do not see him going anywhere else.

What position is everyone thinking Harvetz will play if he comes in? When ever I have seen him I thought No.6/No.8/No.10 and the only reason he plays the other attacking positions is due to him being so good and playing for Bayer. However, when I see everyone else talking about him they seem to think if him as a No.11/false No.9. Am I missing something? For me if we signed him we would line up as: Jorgi/Gilmour Harvetz/Kova. Mount/RLC Ziyech. Tammy. Pulisic *yes I do expect Kante to be sold if a decent bid comes in (although it may be Jorgi who goes then Kante stays.)

Kurzawa on a free makes more sense than anything over £35m for Chilwell.

He has actually got worse as his confidence has dipped. There is a analysis of him floating about somewhere that I suggest you/anyone that is interested looks at his stats. Essentially, he is rubbish at everything and does a number of incomprehensible things i.e. swings his arms behind his back before attempting a save and only comes midway out on a 1v1 which means he is always likely to be beaten. Every season since his last at Bilbao he has had has been -xG i.e. conceding more goals a season than he should. The only quality of his that stood out slightly is that in Spain he was really good at cross collecting. However, that has seriously dipped since coming here (although it isn't as bad as I thought it would be.) This one stat may be one explaination of where the crack head that brought him thought he might work.

Kepa is honestly one of the worst PL GK's I have ever seen and definitely the worst Chelsea GK I have ever seen. Only reason people do not bang on about him having to be replaced is due to his cost. Who ever brought this guy/suggested this guy needs sacking as he does not have one redeemable quality that I can distinguish that makes me think, 'yeah, give him a bit of time and he will be ok (note 'ok' and not good/great).

Just out of interest have you actually seen Cakir play? I ask as I see a lot of people list him as someone to buy but I am unsure how much they have actually seen him as he plays in the Turkish league. This doesn't mean he isn't good, but I just want to know whether people can actually verify with their own eyes he is good and not just looked at stats/YouTube (same goes for Rajkovic). As for Onana he is someone that looks decent and I have listed him in previous posts. However, he does come with some issues. First is the ACoN which means every two years you lose your GK for 3-5 weeks in the busiest part of the season. Second is that his distribution is poor. For that reason, I am starting to think there may be better options at £30m+. That said, with GK we have big problems because of Kepa's price/wages, so whilst I think a new GK is even more important than a new CB I am not sure we will get one other than possibly a Foster type older GK. Chilwell for me is overpriced and I actually prefer to continue with Alonso than buy him. I say this because whilst Alonso does have flaws, Chilwell also has serious flaws but just in different areas (although neither are good at defending with back to goal.) However, why Alonso edges it for me is that he is actually great at scoring and assisting which Chilwell is not. So, whilst Alonso can cost you goals, at least you know he will make up for this to an extent down the other end of the pitch. Ake for me is also not an answer. For me he is a category B player like all the defenders we currently have so shipping him in to replace AC/Zouma/Tomori won't really have any benefit. Agree on Werner and Harvetz, great players if we can great them.

Juve can offer their cast offs all they want but they will not be getting Jorgi for them. Further, we aren't going to be accepting players in positions we do not need, so that rules Costa out if Werner actually gets done. Only players from Juve I would actually want are; De Ligt (Probably impossible and would require more than Jorgi alone) Demiral (Slightly worried about his knee), Sandro (for Emerson), Rabiot (still rate him but would not do a straight swap for Jorgi so some money from Juve's end would need to be thrown in) and Dybala (if Werner comes we do not need him but I really like him as a player.)

I have been looking at the Sancho situation and for me, I simply do not understand why Sancho would move this year. The reason I think this is due to: 1) He only has two years on his contract and is on £190k a week. For me, I do not see how him moving this year for £100m is going to result in him getting his wage up by much. If he waits a year (or even two) is fee will go down but his wages/signing fee will go through he roof. 2) He is playing for Dortmund and is a nailed on starter. At 19 is there any real point in moving when you're settled, playing for the second biggest team in Germany and getting CL football? Hardly a desperate situation where he needs to move to improve. 3) This is no longer a Euro's Summer. Hence, transfers in non-tournement years always offer less exposure than ones in tournament years. Further, if he moves and doesn't settle straight away he could end up losing his starting XI place. This point is admittedly less important than the others but is something to consider when the above two points apply. Personally, I just do not see Sancho moving. He is much better off in pretty much all areas in waiting at least one more year.