Mhsc

As long as Lukaku is gone I will take it or leave it with VO, sensible offer on salary + bid to Napoli and call it a day if he prefers to go to Saudi I can't blame the man (£30m/year is ridiculous). Don't know much about VO's dreams but if he's spent 15 years dreaming of winning CL and playing in Europe then you'd think many millions playing here and retiring potentially a legend would have a huge appeal, but c'mon £30m/year is going to turn anyone's head - guy could buy a football club to run himself when he retires lmao.

As long as Sancho is off to somewhere they could still take Raheem, he's better than all of their options (rather embarrassingly)

He is definitely better than Rom (who of course we should never have signed), aside from his injury problems. He presses and puts his body on the line, he has demonic power shots and great aerial / heading ability. Puts in a good shift. Very poor passing and ugly dribbling but like with forwards like Costa when we had him its ugly yet effective when in form. He takes tonnes of shots and will miss a lot and frustrate us a lot in the games when he doesn't score. But with the volume of shots he gets in he does score plenty of goals. If he isn't scoring at least 20 league goals a year he will be a downgrade on NJ imo, because NJ also assists and helps massively in build up as demonstrated beautifully vs Wolves. I am not even convinced Osimhen is a 100% guaranteed starter for us, but definitely a great option to have in the squad.

I don't think the club will break their approach on wages now, not for a risky guy like Osimhen - that's the kind of guy that they put in the wages rules to protect us against. I don't know what is a reasonable salary though. Maybe £150k pw base with huge incentives that can make him one of the best paid players in the world if he hits a 25-30 goal season and we are winning competitions? Who knows. Also, one thing that occurred to me is this guy might not even pass a medical. He has serious problems for years, and we rejected Samu Omorodion after medical (who had no obvious problem to the casual observer). On the other hand we did buy Neto who has big injury history, which was waved away as saying it was mostly impact injuries.

Personally have reservations around Osimhen, too many to name, but its always the way with that type of number 9. If the only thing you contribute is goals, you damn sure better score a lot of them, because otherwise we're just playing with 10 men and a passenger. A bad season for such a player has to be 20 league goals but realistically he needs to be putting out 25+. His career history does not suggest this is realistic but hope he can do it if he comes. I'll fully get behind him if he comes and in truth there are not a lot of options out there these days, and we could definitely use another finisher in the squad.

Whole routine looked straight off the training ground. Loved it.

Most of the players that leave us I genuinely wish them well and happy to see them do well later (as long as it is not vs Chelsea), not so with Lukaku. Hope he spends the rest of his career being a lazy fat twat with the touch of a donkey, with a huge fall out with Conte+Napoli that sees him ultimately retire in disgrace.

To be fair the other route would just be send him somewhere he should be able to impress (even if he doesn't improve at all), and maybe in the Bundesliga or in Italy he would bang out a 10+ goal season at the right team, and then flip him for a small/moderate loss in a years time and call it a day.

He could definitely use a loan but also he needs top quality coaching and he needs to compete in a good league, ideally the PL. Got to be a club in the PL with a big need at LW and a coach with a reputation for helping players to improve?

Yes I believe you're right. I think that is also the only reason "transfer requests" have any meaning - it means the player has agreed to forfeit that money to go.

I agree with Vesper about JD, at £20m he WOULD be a bargain but imo this is fake price / fake situation: the guy & his agent have almost definitely simply briefed everyone he is not moving and will be available for discussions in Jan about a pre-agreement, given that he has only 1 year left on his contract he can cash in like crazy if he just waits. Be crazy for him to agree to a deal now unless in the circumstances we put Gallagher or Sterling under. He may not be perfect but his record is his record and in this day and age he's easily a £50m+ player - we will no doubt try to talk to him in Jan if for no other reason than potential to make a killing flipping him for profit...

Don't they still want sales because of PSR?

Righto just watched the replay - missed the game live as I was busy with my partner having our first baby delivered :) Lovely to watch how dangerous we are going forward - Neto and Palmer both look excellent and we know they can do it in PL. Great game from Madueke as well obviously. Coaching will sort out Caicedo's performance(s) in the pivot imo, he's just rushing things a bit when he doesn't need to and other times not rushing it a bit when he does need to, but he'll totally get it. Hope Lavia is back soon though, he is in better form (and had a proper preseason). Earlier in this thread there was some talk around how toxic it is on this forum and in general in the Chelsea fanbase now, and how lots of people are becoming disengaged and lurking instead of posting. I feel this! I also lurk a lot simply because the toxicity is so strong and it feels a bit like going to an opposition's forum sometimes, when you check out the threads they have about your club. Unfortunately this will only go away (a bit) if we go on a sustained winning run, we saw the same from Arsenal and lots of clubs when they were shit and poorly run for ages. Winning is the best tonic.

Is it me or Fofana has a really terrible/dangerous habit of playing people onside? He always drops deep before the other players and plays people on.

That guy is a total nobody just making up BS He's also just posted this nonsense, even though its been known for MONTHS that they are happy not to take the release clause (obviously as they have no choice)

I don't really care what happens with Sterling, the worst case of him rotting in the reserves is a purely theoretical worst case (no way he will actually suicide his career like that at 29, just to prove a point), the realistic worst case is we loan him every year for some loan fee with the other club covering his wages til he is gone, but I'd say the average case outcome is we do a swap deal involving him for someone we don't 100% want/need but wont mind having ala Felix. He's part of our past now and good riddance tbh. I really gave the guy a chance and appreciated him in those moments where he found his form, but he came here because he wanted to play guaranteed football and step up as a leader - he's failed on all fronts there. He's still just an inconsistent squad player with an attitude problem.

Promising signs, I trust Maresca to know what to do to make us play better in the second half. Thought Enzo was poor and I don't think it had anything to do with the position he was playing - simply failed at the basics of football all half. No first touch, no composure.

Definitely. I think we would have Duran now but Conor rejected the move to Villa so the swap never happened

Forgiving the odd misplaced pass during build up I mean. Lots of people on here hating on us trying to play it out and say our CBs can't do it but Sailba drops a howler that should have cost them a goal, just goes to show its part of the game and even the best players do that. Doesn't mean we should forgive them for not being able to win basic 1:1s or sprinting back to cover the goal etc of course.

That's another school boy mistake in defence, instead of conceding they somehow get the ball back, down the field and score themselves

Awful pass from Saliba right in front of his own goal - difference is when we do it we don't get away with it. Need to be more forgiving with our CBs.

Is there a talkchelsea FPL group btw? I am playing for the first time in many years

100%, painful to watch how good they've become but honestly think we have more talented individuals (except CB) and if we give it time we will be better than them.

Never a red card in my book - wouldn't even give them a yellow for that. Might be a yellow for the man that goes down for play acting. What has happened to football.