Mhsc

For Broja? He's a £15m player all day long until he proves he can come back from his injury and goes on a run in the PL scoring goals. He's 23 in September and living off of hype. The only positive is that he's on £40k a week, which is a much better position than we used to end up in with young players.

Yeah it was just Noni that made me think of it but I agree, Gusto and Jackson have really developed nicely since they arrived. All three contracts in range £45k-£65k. Three great signings for the project.

Depending on where you look there is either reckless optimism or extreme pessimism. It seems like a lot depends on how creative the club are with how they do the accounts and these little clever tactical tricks like selling the hotel from one Chelsea entity to another etc make a huge difference. So after reading about it a bit I concluded that basically only people in the club can know what is feasible because basically the rules are so opaque and open to tricks that it is impossible for anyone to know. Even for the club itself I'm not sure THEY can know for sure because for example how the period we were under sanctions will be treated financially is completely unprecedented situation. Club must just be taking a risk based approach where they are saying the amount we are spending based on all of this is an acceptable risk and if anyone tries to punish us there are so many mitigating circumstances we can appeal and tie them up in 5 years of legal battles that we will have a pretty reasonable chance at winning. My personal guess is we can probably actually get away with spending £200m-£300m if we can actually afford it (irrelevant of FFP tricks, we have already spent a LOT of money in a world in which money is currently quite expensive)

Noni is a good example of what the directors/owners have been aiming for all along I guess, lad has only just turned 22 in March and we picked him up for £30m on £50k a week on a massively long contract. We now hold all the cards on a very promising young lad who a lot of PL clubs will be happy to take off of us if we want to cash in on him one day, in the mean time he is at minimum a very good squad option. If he bangs and becomes a guaranteed starter we can renew his contract on more money and if he is in and out of the team with little runs of form we can keep him on his current contract before selling him when he is 24-25 for more than we paid for him, having kept his wages at a number that is very appetising to literally any PL club. When the results aren't coming in and the players aren't performing, "the plan" is quite frustrating, but when players like Noni start to perform and the results start to come, thinking about how old these guys are and how long we can enjoy them playing for Chelsea and watching their journey is really quite exciting.

I wonder if we can even afford anyone anymore? Last year the spending seemed to have absolutely no cap but surely the fair play rules have to bite this summer. Thiago leaving frees up a bit of wages maybe, and selling Cobham graduates maybe keeps us afloat in terms of the rules, but surely to buy anyone we would need to do a LOT of selling this summer? Anyone seen any good analysis on this?

What about Eze?

Great game. WH were terrible. Luck has changed a bit in our favour too recently - earlier in the season all 3 of those Bowen shots off the posts would have flown in, NJ would have turned out to be 1mm offside etc. Hopefully this is the beginning of a new era. Clear out some of the permanently injured or just shit players and 1 or 2 key signings and we should be in much better shape next season. Nkunku has not really impressed me in a Chelsea shirt so far but obviously he needs time and a run of games without injury to really display what he can do. But his cameos have been...eh.

And still games to go...

NJ's all round game is fantastic these days. Top player.

I think it will only be Europa if City beat Utd in the FA Cup final, but still, it would give us a real shot at it.

Europa League?

Would you mind making a few more wishes? (Maybe you could wish for me to win the lottery)

Uh, that must be a Swedish thing?

Fine margins, we could be 5-0 up or equally it could also easily be 3-2 right now

Btw we HAVE to renew Gallagher and Chalobah

Agreed It is the SAME plan as we used ALL preseason. Then the season started and Poch abandoned it for no reason I can understand. Now he's been forced back to it by injuries and look how good we are again.

Moving back to 3-2-5 may save Poch's career. Shame it took all season and an epic injury crisis that forced him into it for us to end up here, but I'm glad we are, whatever the path was.

Glad Mudryk is getting a run of games - now he can't say he was never given a fair chance, and if it ends up not working out with him we can say we really did give him time and a fair chance to find some form and show some quality, and if it hasn't worked out he'll only have himself to blame.

Wonder if Barca will sell Eric García after loaning him out this year? Would be an interesting option.

Yeah, I can totally see that argument too. The main place we need to make signings and make a serious investment to improve our squad is surely our medical department. At this point I'd probably offload Chilwell and let the recruiters try to grab another Malo-esque signing for LB. Other than that I'd just like some leadership and experience in the squad, at CB and ST.

Ngl think Potter would be doing at least as good as Poch. He had impossible circumstances.

Man Utd and Newcastle still have to play each other. What an end to the season this will be. If we get 6th it will feel like a trophy, which says a lot about how much we have fallen, but nevertheless, if we could do it...

Caicedo and Cucerella seem to have woken up from some sort of coma voodoo witchcraft placed on them upon their transfer from Brighton.

This referee is terrible. He does seem terrible in all directions rather than clearly biased at least.