Mhsc

Aint no way the commentator just said they deserved the lead Man Utd are a shocking team, can't wait to play them.

Think it was right decision not to sack Ten Hag - assuming he's not in charge of transfers. He is not the problem. 0/10 squad building, makes ours look world class.

Man Utd may well win this but there is something seriously wrong with their squad, how anyone is predicting they are top 4 material is beyond me. It will be a miracle if they get top 6.

If the deal isn't right, Osimhen can stay with them. We are not desperate - they are. Ideally they buy Lukaku at full market value (~35m) and then we put in a sensible bid for Osimhen. If they don't do it, we walk away and leave them to deal with the fallout of refusing Osimhen his dream move after the arrangement they have with him & the way they've treated him, and his huge wages which they're on the hook for.

Not super fussed about the Gallagher/Felix deal, slight squad upgrade shipping out a non technical player who isn't suited to positional play to buy one who is, but has never really delivered on his potential. While I am optimistic we should be getting top 4 this year, signing a top striker or CB would really help a lot on this:

There is no bigger myth than Marina & that whole group being good, pretty awful actually and the criminality she oversaw is about to get us seriously punished too. She oversaw us moving away from having perhaps the best squad in Europe to having a pretty mediocre one which could have some brief runs at trophies but never sustain us as a side challenging for PL every year in a serious way. Sold two of the greatest footballers in modern times in Salah and De Bruyne. Spent tonnes of money on utter wank too, but pre a lot of transfer inflation - she'd absolutely be doing the same stuff if she was still here. Also handed out insane salaries to a bunch of terrible footballers that hindered us for years. Total fraud and people remember her and the group that were running Chelsea in that period in a way that is very detached from reality.

Disasi is all we need bro

He is on £65k a week and scored 14 PL goals for us, clearly considered a key player, imo he should totally be rewarded and this model of getting them in low and regularly increasing salaries based on performance makes sense. Spurs also used to do this shit all the time, tie people down to very long contracts on not big money and then regularly give them increases to get more and more years on the contract and keep them just about happy enough to stay despite being paid 50%-75% of what they could get elsewhere. Pinned Harry Kane to them for his entire prime years like that. Obviously it depends what he is moving onto but I doubt it is crazy, probably £100k to £125k pw, given rumour Cole moved to £150k pw (bargain btw). The way we are handling wages is many orders of magnitude better & more intelligent than under the previous regime.

I assume we'll just offer him to anyone for any price if we can't get him bundled into a swap deal as a sweetener (e.g. w/Napoli or whatever)

Bit old for us isn't he? But I'm interested, if the deal is right.

We all want things we can't have! Unlucky for them. Quite a mess they've got themselves into there. €70m + €10m in add ons they paid and they are entirely at fault for the entire situation with no one to blame but themselves. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch!

He had a huge fallout with the club after the way they treated him, with the club posting videos making fun of him publicly after he missed the penalty etc. Its just speculation but my strong feeling is that from that moment he only agreed to even continue to play for them under basis he will be sold in summer, and all preseason they've excluded him from games and said he will be off. I think if we put a sensible bid in for him and they refuse it then he will definitely consider that a betrayal and against the agreement they made.

Felix was a bit unlucky hitting the post a lot as far as I recall, I think his stint with us is basically the only period in his career where he underperformed vs his xG, usually he has outperformed it. When he got unlucky it seemed to get into his head and his form dropped off imo, but his quality was there to be seen in glimpses. I still like the lad though, as a squad player. Chelsea at its best always had amazing depth where backups were players who could easily start at another top club. I'll refrain from judging on whether it is a big net positive until the end of the window when we see what happens with the rest of the squad players who are not close to guaranteed starters. For example if we're offloading Sterling and Gallagher for Neto and Felix I am pretty happy. If we're offloading Madueke then I'm less happy tbh.

I kind of agree but at the right price I'm willing to give Osimhen a shot. He is a poor mans Haaland but City have shown you can make it work with a great finisher who is a terrible footballer. Honestly my bigger gripe is that he's just another very injury prone player.

It was widely reported that Rom had to give up his massive wages to get the new contract with the release clause, as well as be allowed to go on loan last year instead of being forced out to Saudi. Cut it from something like £17m per year to £6m (£120k/week). Agree with what you are saying though, something like Lukaku goes out for £30m and Osimhen comes in at £60m feels like the very best deal Napoli should be getting. They are in much worse state than us with Osimhen still on his huge salary and he is clearly never going to play for them again. From a sporting PoV Lukaku staying and sitting in our reserves does not bother us much, for Napoli their season is immediately over if Osimhen stays and refuses to play for them.

No way we agree to that deal with Napoli. Not here to save them from the embarrassing situation they've got themselves in. Either pay the clause or offer us a fair deal to trade Osimhen

Surely permanent. Stick a 20% sale clause on him and flip him again for £10m in a few years probs

Official Chelsea youtube account posted full match in case anyone is interested

Me rn

Felix is a nice lad who played with passion. He took a huge pay cut to play for Barca last year so I imagine we'd be able to agree a sensible number with him. If the transfer fee is also modest then why not? I don't think he'd be a guaranteed starter for us anymore, but only a good thing to have more technical players in the squad and strong competition for the best to rise to the top. If we're buying him for a sensible fee then he will probably have a similar resale value later. I don't think it made sense to keep him for Poch but Maresca is playing a different type of football, and probably will appreciate him in the squad. As fans, we'll no doubt be happy to have him as soon as Nkunku or Cole is injured or suspended for a game. Or when we look at the bench and see a group of fully grown up experienced pros ready to come on and try to change the game, unlike the bench we had last year. Feel like something must be happening with Osimhen and the club had to find a way to nuke the Samu deal.

Toney is 28 with 1 year left on his contract and he makes £20k per week. Would think he will wait til Jan and sign a pre agreement to join in summer with whoever the highest bidder is, probably go after some £10m sign on fee with £250k pw contract for 5 years or something to sort himself out financially for life.

I think the manager (and we!) learnt a fair bit from the games in terms of what could look quite promising and what probably isn't going to work. Also think Maresca has been more flexible with tactics than many told us he would be. We've seen him go with inverted fullbacks on either side, and then sometimes playing with one of the fullbacks bombing forward while the other one stays back. Mostly 3-2-5 in possession but I reckon there was a bit of 3-1-6 today with Caicedo, but would need to rewatch to be sure. Based on purely preseason, I for one saw some positives, but for sure there are some reasonably serious concerns. Positives: Nkunku, Lavia, Malo, Cole Palmer (yes despite only playing half a game, thought it was great to see how Maresca integrated him), Veiga Middle of the road: Madueke (might be harsh - simultaneously looks a menace in the system but also poor end product). Guiu a beautiful pressing machine that any fan would love, but obviously he needs to be more dangerous in front of goal which he will become over time - definitely one to watch for the future, much more excited for him than I was for Broja/Solanke etc, but honestly think he is years away from being a serious player (he's literally 18!). I also thought Enzo/Caicedo looked a bit average when they played. Negatives: Biggest concern is probably CB situation (based on what we've seen, we do not have a single in form CB - I wont say they're all actually bad as I'm not sure they are, but clearly none of them are playing well right now and all look liable to make serious mistakes at least once a game), GKs (we've got one great shot stopper and one great passer, if you can merge them we'd be alright but you can only play one at a time...), Reece James honestly not looked that good all preseason plus already got a small niggle again (not bad either, but doesn't look WC aside from perhaps set piece delivery), Mudryk same old Mudryk (honestly be tempted to loan him to Strasbourg and see if a full season playing every game could do something to the man as a last ditch attempt with him). Chilwell we need to get rid asap.

Everyone definitely entitled to their opinion! Personally, I think Osimhen would be the worst passer of the ball in our squad by some distance and I think there is huge potential a deal for him could turn toxic af and it may set us back for years if we do the wrong deal. €40m-€50m tops with Lukaku going the other way + him reducing his salary imo.

Was just thinking the same thing - looked good in stats, but wanted to see him play before starting to form an opinion. Looks like a great little buy. Got that dawg in him too.