Mhsc

Wonder if we can afford Florian Wirtz?

I imagine the Mount + Lewis Hall money is both counted in that time period, which is like £90m of pure profit? I think we'll be fine. That is a lot.

First of all, Nicolas Jackson is outscoring Lukaku in the league over the last couple of seasons, and is already 10x the footballer with the ball at his feet. And he's like 10 years younger. He makes better runs and plays more intelligently. This would be a horrendous downgrade, of the worst kind, and the exact kind of signing that old-Chelsea was famous for. All of this is irrelevant given that he is toxic and would break the dressing room, and make interviews speaking out against the club, the manager, his fellow players, and whoever else he feels like. All while pining for a return to Inter, or a move to Juventus, or perhaps he will announce that actually he has unfinished business at Manchester United. I cannot imagine a worse signing for the summer transfer window than Romelu Lukaku, and by the same thought process the fact that he currently is on our books makes no difference: the priority remains to get rid of him, and he is only still HERE because no one wants him ffs.

For me his main weakness is concentration. I can't comprehend the talk about his passing. He is not Enzo but he is certainly very capable, to put it lightly, although he did play it a bit too safe for a while when he was at rock bottom for confidence. With experience and good coaching he will assert himself as one of the world's top midfielders again. Shouldn't have paid £100m for him but we shouldn't have paid that for Enzo either frankly.

They hate us though, maybe more than any other team as they are a nothing club and their interactions with us are the most interesting thing to happen to them in their collective history. They will probably come with max intensity.

Absolutely not, I cannot believe you have posted this. Lukaku can never play for Chelsea again. He is a disgrace, a toxic disgrace who will try his hardest to ruin everything we've got going on. I wouldn't even let him train with the other players, or be in the same building as them, if it can be at all avoided.

Just seen the final goal. Where's that guy that keeps banging on about Caicedo's passing?

Had to miss most of the game to go pick up the misses from the airport. Sounds like I missed a miniature heart attack game.

Europa League if City win FA Cup. Well worth giving it our best shot. Being back in at least Europa was surely the minimum level set for Poch to keep his job, can't believe they're going to keep him if we don't weasel our way in.

Try searching twitter for Chelsea stream links, has been my preferred method for a while - high quality, sometimes they drop but thousands more appear and you can just switch to another

He was only 2 metres onside, surprised VAR didn't check it

De Zerbi means doing business with Brighton again which is a hard no from me

That does not mean we are a top 4 team. We have picked up results recently vs teams that got something against us earlier in the season, when they played with more passion and had something to play for. It is easier to get results later in the season vs teams with nothing left to play for. We have no evidence that this side can put in a top 4 run over a whole season until we actually see it. My feeling though is with less injuries this squad could probably get a top 4 finish with proper management without making any signings at all. Poch should be able to do it next season if we are not absolutely cursed with injuries, or the directors make some signings to replace constantly injured players.

I think it is obvious Poch is not a top manager anymore, if he ever was. He's not terrible either. Tactically he has not moved with the times until recently, where finally he's deployed the kind of 3-2-5 attacking setup that most of the top teams of the last few years have been using. Graham Potter in all honestly probably would have done a better job this year. But, at this point I can see the merit in keeping him on. Let the players have continuity under him for one more season. Another year to develop and assess this squad we've built. Start to fix our reputation for sacking managers too soon and not giving them a fair shot. Then bring in a top manager and go after a couple of players to hopefully finish off the puzzle of a side that can compete for titles under one of the world's elite managers, who inherits a squad of players who are close to entering their prime instead of being a little undercooked.

I am not sure "experience" matters so much as calmness and leadership qualities. Cole Palmer good example of that. I do feel like we are very weak on leadership on the field without Thiago. Experience matters there mostly in so much as de facto someone like Thiago commands respect because of the CV he had behind him.

I think we will basically always try for players if they are being rated as potential generational talents if they are somewhat affordable, even if we had City's XI we still would, some % of them will turn out to actually be that good and if it turned out you got 25% of them right it would still work out at pretty amazing business given the wages + transfer fee you'd then have one of the best players in the world on. Just don't get opportunities like that without getting them young. I doubt any signing like this is intended for our lineup for this or even next season, question really is can we even develop this many players simultaneously? Doesn't the loan limits make it hard these days? They will almost definitely not turn into generational talents if their future is getting a few chances a season to do 3 minute cameos like David Washington.

Man has something like 4 goals and 2 assists over 2 years. £55m and £300k a week Man Utd are you having a laugh lmao

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.