Mhsc

Hopefully Poch is proactive with a ~double substitution imminently

Honestly hard to take premier league seriously as a competition with the state of refereeing & VAR. Everyone knows it is a broken and corrupt system which is abused flagrantly by a biased group of referees but no one has the power to do anything about it. On our side, imo referees turned against us after the Clattenburg / Mikel incident and have never been fair to us again, completely blatantly and systematically. But it is the double whammy of seeing that and seeing Man Utd, Man City & Arsenal repeatedly get insane decisions in their favour. It is virtually every week one or the other of them gets points they don't deserve from a ref.

Chilwell could have had assist already

Personally think we would have walked away from Caicedo when it became obvious it was only going to be for silly money if we had been in a position of strength already with Ugarte in. Could be wrong but honestly would be REALLY surprised.

Bit Graham Potter-esque some of the personnel decisions Poch is making, aren't they? He's much better than Graham at talking to the media and I think there is a lot of value in playing a consistent system instead of tinkering all the time but boy playing people in weird positions is really hard for us fans to get our heads around isn't it? Like seeing Sterling being asked to play as wingback all over again.

Fair point. I mostly feel bad for Noni here, I didn't see it but he apparently played well midweek and I'm of the mind that you should always give a guy another game immediately after a good performance if you can. Would probably have preferred us to roll the dice on Noni RW and Sterling LW but I think we should remember to be patient with Chilwell as I said above. Lets see how the game goes.

It IS baffling if you play people based only on in-game form, but I guess there are two other considerations: he's our captain, and Poch is seeing him in training not just on match day. Like I said above, 99% of us also wanted Sterling sold or benched but Poch gave him the run of games and now he's found his form in the system. He could have scored in pretty much every game he's played so far I think and been not far off, honestly he might score a couple today and we'll all look dumb complaining about him being out there. Lets at least watch the first half before slamming Poch on this one, imo.

Deivid Washington straight onto the bench along with 2 GKs. Heh. I would have swapped Chilly for Palmer, Mudryk or even Maatsen but otherwise pretty much the lineup you would expect. I guess though to be fair to Poch he stuck by Sterling when most of us didn't want him to and then he hit some form so...

Maatsen refused to leave though. There was a rumour that we were trying last minute to get him to West Ham but didn't have time (perhaps he wants to stay in London or be at a club definitely staying in PL). But it seems likely he simply wants to leave on a free at the end of his contract and pocket the £31.5m via getting very good contract terms in his next gig. I did not realise Maatsen is not actually really an academy player but a Dutch player that grew up at Feyenoord we picked up for free as an 18 year old and put on a cheap contract. I really doubt he feels any loyalty to us and if we want to keep him we would have to offer him serious wages given he knows he can get plenty if he waits as the savings on transfer fee for a new club will go to him in large part via sign on fee and higher wages. IDK what is going on with Washington, feels like a real waste for him that we're keeping him around, feels like we just had 1 too many situations to sort out...

The highlight for me is the sheer number of high wage older players we've replaced with younger versions on lower wages who are better than those they replaced. But there have been loads of highlights tbh, finding Nicolas Jackson for a bargain price for example. We did fumble Ugarte (which probably would have led to us not having to panic buy Caicedo for £115m) and I think we pretty clearly ignored the main thing Poch was asking for (experienced players to mix in with the youth, especially in midfield). We are still in a slightly dubious situation up front if NJ gets injured, and we didn't get rid of all of the players on the deals we wanted but of course that relies on other clubs. Still a solid 8/10 tbh super optimistic about what these directors + Poch will achieve after several years of squad building, finally feels like we might be on a long term path to reach City's level and displace them if they fumble.

Exactly, our defensive shape is 4-2-3-1 but we are attacking with 3 ATB which is the same thing we did for all of preseason too and the same as lots of top teams play (the 3-2-5 type setup). It is just the personnel in the system that is different to what we were seeing before and we don't look anywhere near as fluid or dangerous without Nkunku and with the introduction of Chilwell in this advanced role, he's good at some things but he's also fundamentally quite a limited player and it stifles us sometimes. Colwill makes sense as a LB in these tactics tbh, as Poch is only asking one fullback (the RB at the mo) to really push forward, and if you want to pick a player who can defend 1v1s in the 4-2-3-1 shape but also help us build out from the back in the 3-2-5 then honestly Colwill is way better than Chilwell for that, as it really isn't a role for bombing down the wing in support like Chilly would excel at. I do not think that Lavia coming back or any players coming back will change the 4-2-3-1 / 3-2-5 setup we have, this is literally Poch's system and he's going to stick by it & his principles and try to bring the players to a good level in it IMO. I actually do not know how he will play Enzo, Caicedo and Lavia together but my guess is that it will be by one of them playing somewhere we consider quite strange, like perhaps Caicedo playing a bit further forward like Kante did and being a pressing machine and winning the ball high up for us (e.g. the right side of the 4-2-3-1)

If you think this was a 6 then how are you rating the past ~10 years of transfer windows? All under 3 I assume?

Don’t really think it is a big deal tbh. Certainly doesn’t undo the otherwise excellent window. Cucu situation is Tuchel mistake we cannot unwind easily, rest is a matter of selling players at the right time for the right money and we didn’t find the opp yet but it will come, there are always more transfer windows. Also can’t force players to go to places they don’t want to at times they don’t want to. Think the club has done really well tbh the situation was just immensely hard and they will over time get it into an amazing state but the directors who started to join from December really inherited a disgraceful state of affairs and they’ll need time to fully unwind that

He probably will and from a financial perspective he definitely should, unless he can nail down a regular XI spot. The salary he can get joining someone as a free agent will be way more than what we will offer atm. He should be able to get 150k pw easily elsewhere given how much they’ll save on a transfer fee with a big ass signing bonus on top. If he gets himself in a situation where he’s in the XI maybe we will offer him the sort of deal it will take to keep him.

Roughly speaking then, how we rating our transfer window overall? I’m gonna say 8/10. Could have done a little better on both outgoings and incomings but overall the best transfer window in a long time. Really feel like the technical and physical quality in the squad is way higher and the ceiling of the team has been raised massively. And we don’t have a cunt left in the squad, whole group seems like people who just really want to be here and play for Chelsea under Poch.

Shades of Lukaku about the situation, he was twerking so hard for us and then for Barca when we weren’t interested, totally fell out with his club to the point they would rather take the massive L on the transfer and loan him out repeatedly. Wonder how many clubs he will end up playing for? Have a feeling Barca will be just another pit stop.

If we do end the day stuck with loads of players, wonder what Poch does? Be ruthless and send them to train separately or deal with bloated group?

I would say the Maatsen stuff is almost entirely about him wanting to find the most profitable path forward for himself, which I mean, is just fair enough isn't it really? Everyone would do the same in his position. Man is on about £10k a week at the mo and if he plays his cards right he can be in for a serious pay day in a years time, or he can take a deal with us that is probably 50k a week now and lose negotiation power for ~7 years. Imagine the contract he can get next year if he's arriving somewhere as a free agent with the bit of rep he's already built for himself and clubs already willing to offer £31m? Most or all of that would be distributed into a mixture of sign on fee and weekly wages. Honestly to keep him we probably have to put him on Carney-esque money (£100k pw) which would be pretty harsh on Gallagher who is on £50k. Should have nailed him down to a long term contract already if we didn't want this situation.

Rollercoaster day

As expected. It all comes back to he's got to sign or agree to be sold. Very sensible stance from the club tbf. Think we as fans were taking it for granted Maatsen was just going to sign and it must be some minor negotiation still going on - guess not based on this.

I think the main and only case is that Maatsen has refused to sign a contract so far?

If it is true that Poch really wants him / rates him (and not part of a bit of clever marketing to increase his value) then we should not unless its "fuck you money" e.g. £60m+

Rumour that Maatsen might refuse the move. Interesting if so after refusing our contract. Doubt it is about wanting to stay and become a Chelsea player sadly..probably he / his agent are thinking how much better a deal he can get as a free agent, especially in terms of a sign on fee?

This day is already crazy and getting crazier

That is really sad honestly, but sadly not too surprising given the FFP situation. I thought he had less than 1 year on his contract, how can we be loaning him with an obligation to buy? Or I misunderstood his contract situation?