Mhsc

I agree, especially with a whole transfer window to go to sort out a squad that if it had been managed properly may well have got top 4 this season. If we are not top 4 next season then everyone from the owners and directors should take a serious look at walking away and admitting they don't know how to run a football club. One thing I 100% think is a realistic target and demand everyone should be making is to stop the losses. The 11 losses in PL we had this year need to be more like 5. No point in bringing in a possession based manager to control games if we will lose more than that.

I am not reading anything into this - Leicester do not have the squad to really play the style effectively, and they were worried that they would not be able to survive in the Premier League playing that style of football against a better quality of footballer. They want someone pragmatic that will play on the counter, or sit deep and park the bus, if it is a way to steal a result against a top 10 club. I understand their point and agree. Clearly you need money and time to make the style work and dominate. We have both and they have neither.

It depends if you assume Fofana's career is simply over or not, in which case he is perhaps worst signing in premier league history. If he can recover finally and still have a serious career, I'm not sure we need to sign anybody at all. Certainly in the old days when we were winning with 4 ATB we would never have stacked so many CBs as far as I recall. But what we did always have was one senior experienced pro who was the leader in the backline, which we don't have right now, so you could argue we need 1 CB in his prime who is 25+ and I would buy that. Could certainly argue suddenly signing VVD transformed and kicked off Liverpool's turnaround and era of success and that we are missing such a player. But for me it should be 1 CB max unless we're clearing house, which I don't really want us to do (as I mentioned, we've done so much chopping and changing I see real value in holding the group together as much as possible) Also, I think our CBs will look transformed under Enzo. Poch-ball left them exposed a LOT more than Enzo will.

Hahah there was some geezer posting that it was all a PR conspiracy by Chelsea, spoke with great authority, it was all done under NDA and De Zerbi was signed 100%, and we all had to open our eyes just to see. Every news link was just to psychologically make us happy when De Zerbi is announced. Then he dropped some random replies to Tweets saying he was a physio and people found them and decided this was some random ITK physio at Chelsea. Turned out just to be a hard working, intelligent internet troll. I appreciate a fine bit of trolling so I'm pretty impressed by the lad tbh The guy signed off with this too which is hilarious cause he is obviously talking about himself

Also, if you know you know

Definitely, until a club comes in to buy him. Surely he's never playing for Chelsea now unless he becomes literally world class, given what we've spent in CM.

If we're going to insult the man (which I don't think he's done anything to deserve - we should aim our hatred at the Directors) then I would call him a bald Brendan Rogers not a Discount Pep.

I agree, definite similarities with Tuchel in terms of the slow build up play and patience, but Tuchel played with a different formation / setup which is slightly old school now. The thing I loved about Tuchel was his prep for individual games and his ability to change the game while it was going on, if Enzo can do that with his modern positional approach he will be world class. If not, maybe he will be another Brendan Rodgers. Time will tell.

Random thought: this is surely the end of Conor Gallagher.

£12.5m for Petrovic, £25m for Sanchez, neither of these guys is a serious long term signing, they're stop gaps.

What do we even need aside from a Gusto-esque find for LB and a ball playing GK if you (bravely) ignore injury records of our players? I don't really see much need anywhere. Squad is pretty built out. Would be nice to not go crazy and just make 1-2 signings for the XI, keep the group together and go into next year with a group of players we can continue to bond with and see as Chelsea lads. All of the chopping and changing at the club has left me feeling quite disconnected with it compared to the old days.

Imagine a ball playing GK just went high up the priority list.

Also this really makes me wonder about the Poch appointment. Now we ONLY want positional play managers but a year ago we went for Mr Run Around A Lot Lads. What the fuck. What kind of long term strategy / plan is there supposed to be here?

I have mixed feelings, I think De Zerbi would have been more exciting to watch honestly but I could totally see Enzo working out. I assume they've picked him because they think he will play a 4-3-3 with Caicedo, Lavia and Enzo in the middle (the chosen three the directors spent £££ on as the heartbeat of the team). It honestly might work. I don't know a lot about the man though. If he can handle in game well and make adjustments to beat the opposition (as De Zerbi has been great at as shown by 2nd half results under him) then he may well work out. You'd hope that whatever he's pulled off at Leicester the boys here will pull off at least twice as well.

Also we can't have two Enzos ffs

Club seem obsessed with idea of finding gems where others do not, both in terms of players and managers. But its not like this guy is available for cheap - £10m to get him is what it would cost us to get pretty much anyone. I don't get it. But I guess Joe Shields knows this guy personally, and he's the only senior figure in the club I do not feel let down by yet. So if this is him pushing for his guy, I'm down. Either way whoever we hire deserves his fair shot and our backing until they prove they're not worth it, just because the owners / directors keep doing strange things we should not turn on the manager until he deserves it. Keep the hate where it is due imo.

What TF is taking so long with appointing someone. Must be PR games to get us desperate enough that we'll be happy just having any manager at all. Isn't this crucial time to work with the Directors on the squad?

Lets not forget that the progress he made was just the sort of form that we would have probably had all season if he had not almost maliciously abused the squad, playing players in ridiculous positions and doing 0 tactical/strategic training and just asking the lads to play with passion, as well as flogging the shit out of them in training and simultaneously failing to get anybody into any kind of fitness until the end of the season. He was an improvement on Lampard but a downgrade on Potter. What he was good at was being nice to the players, that is clear - they loved him. He was good at hosting BBQs. He was mostly not bad in front of the press, but he failed to establish any relationship with the fans. How low are our standards if we're saying Poch was making real progress, it is sad what we have become.

I want a manager like De Zerbi because we've got a crop of young players who don't know how to play together, most of whom are not very intelligent or experienced footballers. This is the result of the recruitment and it is what it is. It is much cheaper and realistic to get a manager like De Zerbi or Sarri to train them in a system they can follow than rebuild the whole squad. I think it will get us back to top 4 which is all we can hope for in the next few years.

Spent all of last summer pining for Eze and Olise and everyone was saying we need Rayan fucking Cherki instead

https://www.chelseafc.com/en/news/article/conference-league-qualification-for-next-season-confirmed God the club sounds excited ffs

They just won an important trophy against Man City. I'd say they deserve it. In the end despite all the laughter they have had a much better season than us.

Lets be real. We don't deserve Europe. We were basically fluking our way in after an insanely lucky end of season and total collapse of others, and that as it happened there was some chance 6th could get a Europa spot. Also very bad for the long term development of our players, not getting to experience European football for another year. When we finally get in, they will be shell shocked.