Mhsc

Um, I could not disagree more. Chilwell is finished man. His physical qualities are totally gone, and he has no technical skill on the ball. He's an extraordinarily limited player who had his day in the right system (when he was young and had more pace). Basically plays a dead style of football and doesn't even do it well anymore. The good thing about Chilwell is that he's a nice guy that doesn't cause troubles. That is his quality. He has no others.

£50m insane misuse of funds for him, he's not worth any more than Madueke for sure, absolute max is £35m (slightly more than Madueke but ok inflation is real) and wages max 60k In the right conditions of course we could add him to the squad but for 50 fucking million you can buy two very good players with good scouting. Cole Palmer was 40!

If we sign him its to replace Mudryk in the conference league squad, occasional sub appearance in PL for final 10 minutes. I am interested in almost any player at the right price, if we're talking £20m and he's coming in on only a small raise on £50k pw (supposedly his current salary) then why not. If we're talking money that isn't back of the sofa money then it would be mad to sign him.

But no where near as bad as Garnacho! If you dislike Madueke, you will despise Garnacho.

Garnacho is worse in every measurable way, much less of an all round player than Madueke, much more selfish. THAN MADUEKE. Very strange signing if we go after him, only makes any sense if its a mutual backscratch with them buying from the infamous Chelsea bomb squad.

City's business is getting pretty big for a January window - as much as they do need fresh blood, I wonder if this is before a potential transfer ban or something... Get the shopping in while you can.

Dewsbury Hall starting! Got a few players out there that wouldn't look that out of place in a relegation dogfight.

Two main reasons: 1. Have you seen his face? He's got the kind of cunty face that immediately makes people dislike him. 2. He's a low football IQ, extremely technically limited 20 year old, don't we have enough of those already?

Willian won two PLs with us didn't he, only scored 2 goals from 36 PL games in 14/15? I think a team can live with one hard worker who doesn't put out big goal scoring numbers but has basically every other quality you want, indeed it can be good for balance, but the rest of the guys around him need to put out decent numbers. Personally I like him and glad we got him in the squad, one of the best wingers we've had in years and years overall, but he's got to be a piece of a jigsaw and probably not a completely guaranteed starter.

Didn't even realise this guy was still on our books. This club has surely made the highest volume of transfer mistakes (in terms of number of players) over the last 10 years of any club in world football. Man Utd perhaps have spent even worse than us, but not by assembling a 1000 man squad.

Very different situation though, they are facing a situation more like what we faced at the end of the Drogba/Terry/Lampard era, where we had an insane squad that just happened to all be old 'all of a sudden'. We've got a very promising young team that is just supposed to get better. There situation cannot be ignored and it cannot be hoped that it will improve - without intervention, they are guaranteed to continue to seriously deteriorate. I'm sure they knew this was coming but thought they had another season or so. That said I don't disagree that we should be trying to bring in some elite players into the XI asap, just think City's situation was actually far more desperate than ours. January not the best window for that but still, at least 1 - any elite striker or CB we can get ahold of.

Heh, just saw Osimhen is only 4th top scorer in Turkey, 1 goal ahead of Dzeko who is 38 years old. Surely at this point he just sees out his contract with Napoli and then gets a free transfer to somewhere. Unbelievable how bad he + his agent bottled it and ruined his career.

I think there is a lot of recency bias in football, so the fact we didn't score many in the last few games turns focus to that. But the real problem in our team is for sure CB+GK situation. Very good competition for NJ would be the icing on the cake to me.

Mainoo would maybe get a start for our French club. Maybe. Typical over hyped guy because he came through at a big club situation.

Hm, to me it is by far our weakest position - only a couple of teams have scored more goals than us, even AFTER the goal drought from the last few games, but all season we've been conceding more than the other teams at the top of the table. Being a team that is a nightmare to score against would take us to a different level almost immediately imo.

We are still cooked if he is out for 6 weeks Need a CB asap

Wouldn't he? He would surely start at Arsenal over Havertz, probably even a decent chance he'd start for Liverpool? As it happens both teams have been doing very well with pretty poor options for a number 9, because they have goals from the rest of the team. Why do we need to look at xG? Just look at real numbers. 9 goals and 3 assists from 18 starts - not great but basically on par with most of the good strikers in the league, only Isak and Haaland really notably ahead and Isak's form will probably drop off at some point and NJ's will probably pick up, as goal scoring form seems to be pretty cyclical.

He's scoring at the same pace as Didier did in his first two seasons. Actually dread to think how internet forums would have responded to Didier. He only really had 2 excellent seasons for us in PL and had a lot of years where his output was pretty poor, if you consider just goal scoring numbers. Didier could be super frustrating in front of goal, but he used to step up big time for the big games which is imo where NJ is totally lacking so far - no leadership qualities.

You're not wrong... We have been terrible at CB recruitment for a long time. Our last good signings at CB were I guess Thiago Silva on a free, before that Rudiger, and before that Gary Cahill... Not a great record for a LONG time at Chelsea. At our peak, we had insane CB combos like Arsenal currently have. We need to get that back if we want to win PL imo

To me he is the only serious manager we've had since Tuchel. We burnt our bridges with pretty much all of the elite managers so we have to take a punt on someone and he's as good as a punt gets. I am overall very happy with him and unlike with Poch I have the feeling that year after year we're just going to get better and better. Yes it is a long term project (it always was) but at least now the development story has actually started.

We would be probably in 10th or so, with about 5x more injuries, and absolutely crucifying the owners for keeping him. Raheem Sterling and Ben Chilwell would probably have played about 90% of games when fit. And Disasi would be a near guaranteed starter.

My main concern, in terms of coaching, is that the players seem quite unfit over the last month, where PL games have come quickly. That surely has to be a coaching mistake as Maresca had all preseason and the season til now to get it right. It doesn't seem like many of them can handle a busy schedule - and barely fit enough to handle a calm schedule, with a few exceptions.

Isak was basically completely and totally useless for like the first 10 PL games and then great form over the last 10. NJ was in great form during Isak's terrible run. Strikers go in and out of goal scoring form, with very few exceptions. The nice thing about NJ is that he contributes very positively with link up play, pressing and making runs to open space for people. I would like another number 9 for competition but of course what will happen in reality is: Maresca has another striker, plays other striker. Other striker does not score. Everyone complains should have played NJ! Plays NJ. NJ doesn't score. What's this fool doing?! Should have played other striker! Both our strikers are bad! We need another striker! Sometimes following football is quite tedious.

Um, Cole Palmer straight up cost us the points. NJ definitely should have done better, but ignoring what Cole did is nonsensical. He threw the game, plain and simple. Given what a great player he is, we should obviously forgive him and move on but to then instead fully blame another person I just cannot understand.

We have a clear fitness problem.