Vegetable

Still our league is meme-worthy and reminds me of my pe games in high school more, than CL football. And winning against Chelsea away will be even more meme material. I go see Legia live every so often and with all respect, if Chelsea came anywhere this level of playing football, than fuck me.

Had De Gea ever been Brighton player? There goes the answer. Plus, buying actually decent, developed players didn't fit the club policy, even though it seems like a reasonable move regarding few positions and that I can somewhat understand, repeating Thiago Silva case any time soon seem mathematically unlikely.

That's quite shocking, especially given crazy inflation of outfield players. But worry not, I guess next window we will barge in with 50+ million for another super exciting talented prospect to be found nowhere near this list now.

Perhaps, but it's not happening, unless Chelsea eats up substantial loss on a player whose move should be wiped off after basic risk vs gain analysis. You can't really move 80 million player to sunday league, even if he actually belongs there, so my only faint hope is Turkey. Just not a smart move from the beginning, if they wanted some sweet PR points (that they couldn't even milk properly tbh), I'd take Pulisic over him any day.

So, sounds like he rates Marseille over Chelsea but can as well stay here as he is not ready for a big move, lol. We've come a long way. I think the problem isn't club's openness but rather existence of a club that would like to take him off our hands without us literally paying them to do so.

Colwill might just be taking piss as well or just trying to support the teammate. What they see in training may be a fact he is athwart the pitch against the plastic cones. Don't think the presence of basic footballing IQ and vision or lack of thereof is something dependent on whether your tummy hurts because you are stressed to play in front of fans. In eastern leagues running fast will do just fine, in seriously pro football, not so much.

Not going to go into the forced sale thing itself, but wasn't one of the points of agreeing to pick Clearlake & co that they declared club can't be sold in next 10 years? Any of the partners selling their stake literally changes who is the owner of the club.

Interesting to see how brutal revolving door business model Clearlake adopted here. If you think about how absurdly long likes Kenedy or Baba Rahman were here, wow, night and day.

Came here to say that this reasoning must finally stop. Core of this team, apart all the time in the world in the pre-season, had at least like 15+ top-flight games together + all the training. National teams are often bunch of fellas who see each other thrice a year and have like max 4 training units to integrate 3-5 new players. And they somehow manage to do it. Meanwhile we will be repeating that the players need to learn to play together until they will all get grey hair I guess. Experience of playing together gives the 10% extra edge, but the 90% foundation is executing the tactic and basic football knowledge. This is season 3 (?) of fresh start, folks will always come and go as they do in most of football teams. I'm getting more and more convinced that godlike ballon d'or saviors Enzo and Caicedo are about as much use as Werner (credit due, he at least put the shift in) and Havertz were, only way more expensive.

Last week I've seen Saudis are moving their playground towards airplanes and wondered who and in what sport they will sponsor. Good for us, Fly Emirates have really strong presence in football, hopefully all those new entities will as well. On the other hand, I fell like those shirt sponsorships are pennies, compared to average cost of player transfer while the exposure is quite significant. And about that Athletic thing - I think they need to chill. I personally detest the aesthetics catered to Gen Z with every bit of my taste, but somehow managed to live with the concept that Clearlake brought. Do I like it? Not really, but one can't deny this is consequently executed concept and you hardly see any concept in football kits lately, mainly shuffling the elements in endless circle, making them terrible and bit better next season, often on ready-made templates. Zero thought, zero care, while we have something fresh. Not for me, but I respect it.

Yeah, all those financial limitations are just a race of who has the best lawyers and accountants anyway, but this Washington thing was perhaps the most cartoonish thing this club has done in previous five years; If all the red flags has raised the moment this move was announced it's not like they will forget and go to sleep the moment it was called off (for now). And as it is always with multi-million creative reporting, we will get cooked on something of Kakuta calibre in the end I guess. Actually, I'm relieved our owners hadn't got the idea to adapt the techbro startup strategy of buying some club, outsourcing all the debt there and bankrupting it to benefit rest of their entities, surely no one would ever notice it.

Maybe it was just a beginning of an brilliant idea of financial oscillator, when player would be sold by left hand and bought back with sell on clauses by right hand of the same person multiple times, infinite FFP. But on serious note, what is here to investigate? Whether this is legit FFP income? Okay. But the deal itself? Heard there is a freedom of doing business in most of western world. If they would want to investigate 20 mil spent on random youngster, they should also investigate 120 mil spent on Enzo Fernandez, both are arbitrary numbers with zero reflection in reality.

I'd personally refrain from telling people to fuck off because they have different opinion on general success of our transfer window, but it doesn't stop me from asking wtf with those pms, do not do this kind of shit, especially over fucking football forum. This would make sense if he stayed one more year playing PL football instead of rotting in queue to our gym equipment and would save Villa from seeking last minute replacement, but do those kind of deals even happen between clubs from same league? Would be sorta toxic one way or another.

This is even more baffling, given we've already been in this exact situation for months if not seasons already - ok up front, but with shaky Kepa and tragic defense, mutually dragging each other down and suddenly looking like whole different club when this issue was fixed. One would think the board would draw conclusions from very glaring issues in recent past.

Transfer ban usually means club can't register new players, not that present players become slaves to the club for period of ban. You think such player would be in the group that stays?

Yup, nothing to cry about. Not really a world beater player expecting twice of what Palmer makes, refuses the move otherwise having zero real option to play high-level football otherwise. And people expect him to care or fight for the badge later? Delusional. Another Sterling material avoided.

150 sounds bad, but 150 + say 30k goal bonus isn't that far from 200. Only problem is you actually have to get up and perform instead of larping Lukaku on Instagram. Not like you need to look around payday loans earning 150k pounds per week anyway. I won't be surprised if crazy player wages will slowly fade away from football in next few years

Not much fail here. He clearly didn't want to come here / wanted to come for cash, we know how it would go later. Quite often people are not who we think they are / want them to be. Life ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I hope some logic to all this randomness will magically reveal itself tomorrow. Meanwhile we still have Sterling and Chillwell on the books.

I guess we need more optimistic economy, but first and foremost stable CL football to even think about it

Take upon consideration that his current wages were accepted with the idea for him to shut up and sign the extension, then ship him out for big money asap, so wages will be somebody else problem, but it didn't quite work out, hence the alleged fury in Napoli's camp. Personally I don't see a problem here, you want boatload of money, go play with Saudis, playing for Chelsea should be an attraction in itself, not only for financial reasons. Madrid nor PSG also do not compete with Saudi wages. I'm actually quite happy the club cut the bs with selling clubs pricing every player we want to buy like prime M'bappe, with according wages. If ture, VO was offered what was reasonable within Chelsea wage structure and clubs valuation of his person, I don't think it was offensive offer whatsoever, given he was perhaps offered performance bonuses on top of it, so it was either rot in Napoli reserves, go to Saudi sandbox or play for big club and if you perform, it means 20 or so per cent cut from unrealisticaly inflated wages. No other club is interested in him, so apparently he isn't quite the most wanted commodity, hence no need for bidding war with ourselves (done it enough times under Clearlake already)

If you think about it for 5 secs, you can generate unlimited amount of such tweets that contain absolutely zero content and still push it as news. !!! Chelsea may buy a striker if the price matches their criteria. Otherwise they will not. Rinse repeat 38783473 times

Well, his options are leaving to us with a 1/2 pay cut or leaving to U21 team, so not really a hot market here. His contract is valid until 2026, so if he was worth his salary there shouldn't be a problem to pay it, win everything and try again next window for big money I guess.

Maybe some folks here just got wiser. Same could be said about Lukaku a while ago. There's probably a reason why Napoli want to bin this guy and replace him with the very Lukaku himself. Any sort of performance in leagues like Italy mean nothing. Nothing. And it's not like he is a injury-resistant player in his best form atm.