Mhsc

Great to get to see Nkunku, Cole and NJ together

Huh just looking at the team and Nkunku isn't play? Da fuq

Decided to skip the first half while having a nice walk in the sunshine. What'd I miss?

Osimhen is a great finisher and header of the ball, and makes good runs. We should be realistic about his level though. He is a bad version of Haaland, not a Harry Kane or a Lewa type player who has overall holistic contribution, where you are happy they are in the XI whether they score that day or not (at least when they were in their prime). He is also injury prone and has had exactly 1 very impressive season which he probably wont repeat. If the deal is very good, then we could take a look at him. If he and his agent overplay their hand, he will have to grovel with Napoli that he actually does want to play there after all and stay on that sweet sweet contract he's on. Truth is NJ scored 14 league goals last year in his first season with us, which is pretty much Osimhen's average output at Napoli, even including his peak year. Signing him is unlikely to actually take us to a different level in truth, but it might be worth a look in the right circumstances.

Napoli are finished man. Don't even want to let them have Rom tbh. Let them wallow in the situation they have created for themselves.

Ah man, I was really loving this brief spell of having all of the permanently wrecked people fit. On the plus side, club has done fantastic bringing Malo in and we wont miss James that much, aside from on set pieces. Big improvement from the situation a year ago.

I think they believe the model will work for a few reasons - very debatable how wise it is, of course, but it is hard to imagine how else we could spend large sums without falling foul of FFP, given how small our revenue is outside of player transactions. 1. Transfer fee inflation, with fees continuously inflating massively over time, just by existing he may be worth £20m+ in 3-5 years even if we have just repeatedly loaned him and he's not really kicked on much from his current level, but he's built up Championship+PL experience 2. FFP rules. If we sell him in 3 years, and the amortization window is 5 years, then the book value of him is just ~£8m. So, if we sell him for £8m+ we have generated profit in the books 3. If even one of them bangs, they either make it in the Chelsea first team, saving us a £60m+ purchase, possibly in 3-5 years time with inflation that might be a £70m+ purchase, OR if they bang but we don't need them because we already are stacked there, we sell them for huge profit, which if it takes us to a net neutral in terms of real cash spend would be a huge win in terms of how we stand in FFP (where we'd have huge 'profits' recorded) 4. We put sell on clauses in all contracts at 20%, and just by having a huge number of players come and go, we stand to get pleasant revenues every year just because they briefly played here

Lukaku had to agree to a giant pay cut to get his loan deal last year and get the 37m release clause added to his contract. His wages were supposed to go all the way down to about £6m per year or about £120k pw. Still a rip off but I'm not really fussed about rushing to sell him tbh, there will always be demand for a cunt like Rom, as its so hard to find players for that position and he has that history scoring, there will always be someone who thinks about taking a punt at the kind of money we're asking for.

That's the model my man. Buy for 20 sell for 20+ in 3 years, counts as profit in FFP, stick a sell on clause on as well and we take in another 5m in a few years. Not much more sophistication to our approach than that tbh. If we didn't have loan limit rules I am pretty sure we would have a squad of 100 players.

Will be sensational when he's fit and we'll miss him when he's out, but better to have him than not have him imo Shame we didn't move for him before the US tour so he could spend the time with the boys. Hate it when players get bought after preseason. Seen so many top players talk about the importance of making preseason for your club, how if you miss it you don't really feel like part of the group when you join up and it leaves you months behind the others. Better to get him now than never but I really wish we would move more decisively in the first week of the transfer window, in cases like Neto, Caicedo, Lavia we literally paid full asking price and could have just got them in and been done with it and set them up for success.

Kellyman 100% loaned out, he plays where we are the most stacked, would be surprised if he ever actually plays for us, surely he's the standard loan-loan-sell player.

If Di Marzio wasn't a biased moron just puppeting whatever he's told, he'd write something like: Napoli wants to buy Lukaku but can't afford him without selling Osimhen. They start the season today with no top striker available to play for the club, with Osimhen having missed preseason and agreement with player that he would be sold this summer. No one has been willing to pay the asking price for him and Napoli are getting increasingly desperate. Club is in SERIOUS trouble after finishing 10th last season and already at risk of major fall out with Conte after failing to land his man in time for the season start.

Respectfully, I'll drive him there myself

Is he? He seems very two footed to me, indeed many of his assists from RW came from his right foot, with him rarely cutting in to shoot on his left. I think the club like him because they think he can play either LW or RW well. He also presses well in the high press Maresca wants to play. Personally, I'm just worried about his injuries.

What's your stance on Pedro Neto? He wasn't on the list was he (because of injuries)?

In my recollection, even under Pep, Sterling was kind of frustrating, going on a run of form and then losing it for weeks or months, and then hitting it again... But they had so many good players they could carry it. He has never been and never could be the star man of a team as far as I have seen following him since forever, but he's always been a good guy to have in a squad. Mudryk is one of those guys that, best case, starts to look like a real player at 26/27, after years of good coaching. He's definitely not the kind of buy we should be making if we want to go after young people, we want early bloomers who display an unusual understanding of the game and a calmness in clutch situations, like Cole Palmer, where age just doesn't matter. Honestly I think Mudryk could be a very good PL player later in his career but it will take time, effort, and game time. Definitely one I would press the return button on if we could.

We definitely should keep him and I'd be baffled if we didn't. Also this season could see his value peak because he will be playing in a system that suits him perfectly. Personally I'd take all of Sterling, Mudryk, Madueke and Neto into the season, 2 players for each position, with plenty of inevitable injuries between them. Next season we should clear some out to make space for the young superstars we've got arriving, but not now. We have a LOT of other players to clear out before we look at Noni Madueke.

You'll never be happy about anything my man Neto has more assists last year than Madueke has had in his entire career I think. They play quite differently though and personally I hope & expect we are keeping both.

I guess the clubs theory is if you have 60 extremely injury prone players, at any one time you'll only really have a squad of 25

What the hell I took my dog for a walk, came back and we fucking signed someone out of no where lmao Need a moment to process how I feel about this signing. He plays mostly RW right?

Feels like 70mins+ of the XI for City would probably be in order? Not gonna lie I have absolutely NO IDEA what our best line up is, even when everyone is available and ready to play. Reece will be out due to suspension, and Cole, NJ + Cucu aren't going to be ready until the City game itself Maresca said, which I assume means sub appearances at best vs City. I guess probably this means Colwill LB/LCB and Malo RB/inverting? Probably Lavia, Caicedo and KDH play for their pressing / physicality and Enzo drops to bench? Who knows. Nkunku and Madueke surely both start too. It is refreshing that we will have to put some potentially very good players on the bench soon, unlike last year where we usually had every good player we had on the pitch and then a bench full of filler. I'll go with this but I'm not thrilled about it: Jorg; Malo, Fofana, Tosin, Colwill; Lavia, Caicedo, KDH; Nkunku Guiu Madueke.

If he was staying you'd be posting that its a joke, never good enough, poor ownership, total disgrace, obviously should be buying someone etc etc

Is Disasi our 'veteran' CB now?

Actually Maresca's system is heavily focused on man marking...

Based on what we've seen Chalobah is definitely (at least) competitive vs the other CBs. Feel like he is better defensively than all of them. Shame he wasn't even given a chance.