Mhsc

That's an excellent move, he already looked way too good to me to be stuck here without a good chance at regular minutes. Hope he has a great season and we can look at him next preseason again. Looks like a high potential player to me.

Broja had amazing speed (hopefully still will post injury) and workrate but he didn't really demonstrate anything else that caught the eye, did you see something different? He does not have some history of being an amazing goal scorer as far as I know at any level of football, nor as some kind of assist maker, certainly nothing any more special than Bamford or Solanke had for us. It is very hard to know with young players of course, but over the next couple of years if it turns out that Broja is good enough to get regular playtime at Chelsea it would be quite extraordinary, it is far more likely he will end up at Southampton/Forest/Bournemouth etc and even then competing for a spot not as a guaranteed starter. The reason of course is quite simple: not that he is a bad player, but rather that the level you're supposed to be at to be here and stay here is supposed to be sky high. I think with a fully fit squad the pecking order for the striker role is NJ > Nkunku > Cole Palmer > Broja > Burstow now probably?

Personally I hope we're done for incomings. If we can get several players out today I'll be pretty happy with us going into the season, even if we have to resort to a bunch of loans we'd rather have as sales. Get Poch a clean-slate squad that is well balanced for the games we've got this year.

Man, we are really going big on the loan army. Would be good to see a breakdown of how much we've spent for the first team vs loan army.

Work in progress eh.

That was under old, shit management. I'm expecting he will be on <=£100k pw.

My bad thought the game started at 8! That makes more sense!

Switched to listening to the Chelsea audio https://www.chelseafc.com/en/match/Chelsea-vs-wimbledon-english-league-cup-2023-08-30

oops ignore

Oh Sanchez has punched someone in the face and given away a penalty, here we go

Sky have them but chose to not utilise them, I guess putting up coverage costs money and they didn't think the views would pay it off? I assume they were hoping Chelsea would pay to get the rights to show it on Chelsea TV and we said nah m8. Shrug.

Pep has almost always let very good players leave if they want to go. This will be amazing for their FFP as he's an academy player too, virtually the same player buying / sales model we've been using. City is one club I have no problems buying from personally. They have elite players everywhere and very good players can end up wanting to leave. We've been in the same situation ourselves at our peak, back in time.

Cole Palmer is a Kai-esque half 9. I think he will play there if we lose NJ, until we sign someone else in Jan or next summer. Feels like maybe the last big money signing when the right opportunity comes up.

Yeah I did not see that coming, don’t understand it tbh. Didn’t understand us sending Nkunku out in preseason to play on that god awful pitch that looked like it had grenades thrown on it either.

Yeah we'll see I guess, Sterling was also predominantly LW historically so maybe they'll switch to play inverted, or maybe we want a rightie on the right and a leftie on the left?

GKs Sanchez+Petrovic RBs Reece+Malo RCBs Disasi+Silva LCBs Colwill+Badiashile LBs Chilwell+Maatsen Pivot Enzo+Lavia Pivot Caicedo+Ugochukwu LAM Mudryk+Palmer SS Nkunku+Carney+Gallagher RAM Sterling+Madueke CF Jackson+Broja 23 not including Chalobah who I'm assuming is off, or Fofana who is broken, or the many randomers (Bettinelli) and kids we've got around the place that I'm assuming don't count in the target number based on Poch's previous comments. About what we were aiming for. I'm still concerned we don't have enough goals in the team but a lot will depend on so many players and how they work out. Maybe some people will emerge as big goal scorers.

Yeah it is bonkers but transfer values also are a bit related to salaries, if he is going to accept say 50k pw like Madueke/Gallagher is on then overall the spend annualised over his time here will be pretty cheap tbh.

Well fuck! Blink and you miss it, sometimes we really don't fuck around. Some regulars probably haven't even finished work yet and going to login and be like "who the fuck is Cole Palmer?" Welcome aboard Cole please score against City and do a massive run to Pep to slide on your knees right in front of him celebrating furiously

I do wonder what the long term plan is. Are we going to call it "done" after Cole and just add say ~1 big signing a year that enhances the XI? That seems hard to believe given we've got so many senior people who manage the squad. Our team is so young and stacked with talent that needs time to grow, we could be planning to pretty much stop doing business for a long time, or we might be planning to buy and sell a bunch every year, selling off people that have had their shot and not reached the level we want and replace them with the new U21 prospect we've scouted, or someone from the loan army that's grown a lot. Just hard to visualise what next summer might look like. Could imagine we could be selling Madueke, Gallagher, Ugochukwu, Carney, <insert random list of players - all respect to that list I just gave just wanted to pick some names for sake of argument> and replacing them with Angelo, Santos, etc from the loan army and then buy a new crop to loan out and perhaps the odd big signing to improve the XI?

There's always cameras even if it is not being streamed or shown anywhere live, I've always managed to get a good quality copy of the game to watch after the game but sometimes it is impossible to find it during. We'll see what pops up later. Can't Chelsea stream the game to the website? Or they don't have the right?

Yes, I see him a bit Kai-esque as well, but on a fraction of his wages (currently he's on 25k pw), he is a much better investment than keeping Kai around and hoping for the 'transformation'. Guessing Palmer would go on to 50k like Madueke / Gallagher on a long term contract vs Kai was on £300k pw for us and seemed to be pretty much run out of steam development wise at a level that wasn't cutting it. I think it is a decent potential signing but not one we should get crazy excited about, no more than we are about Carney at least. Useful squad player who will have a real shot at breaking into the lineup, like Carney did. Present moment squad situation may mean he would get his chance almost immediately too.

Honestly I've got no beef with us picking up 'scraps' from City, should have taken Lavia, Gabriel Jesus and Zinchenko too when they were up for sale. Minimum is that the people they let go become very useful squad players wherever they go. They don't let bad players even exist in the first team squad.

He would be a similar purchase to Carney for me. Might work out and might be ready to even play for us now, but its really hard to say until they get a run of games and we just see. If the deal is right, there is a tonne of potential upside, and little downside - probably the lowest expectation for his career would be that he ends up at a midtable PL club. It is definitely a much bigger bet than Kudus so the deal has to be for far less money and far less wages.

My guess is fee would depend on other conditions. To a midtable club who will accept a buy back / huge sell on fee clause maybe they'd let him go for not much, to us (who wont even consider a buyback) they probably want more. I'd be surprised if we're interested unless it is gonna be sub 40m though.