Mhsc

We haven’t been approaching people for their fourth choice left back though. Reckon we would manage a deal!

I don’t understand this narrative. If he had actually broken into the team then sure, but this guy is 4th choice left back… no club is selling their 4th choice fullback for 70m just because their fans like him! He’s done absolutely nothing to earn a big money move yet. If he had done the loan and succeeded big time he MIGHT have been 70m at the absolute top of his value range.

His stats are pretty impressive, higher npxG + xAG than any Chelsea player but I can't say I know much about the lad.

As I posted earlier today, what the club say and what the club do do not have to match, in fact, probably they shouldn't match. Why should we make ourselves look desperate? Why should we not raise Broja's confidence & value by backing him so publicly? It is the same shit we did with Kepa. Doesn't mean we wont see that Broja has been loaned with obligation to buy for £15m randomly before the window closes and some random senior player bought in.

All this talk about not wanting to interfere with Broja and we think he is an important player, sounds just teh same as Kepa is our no.1 and we have total faith in him - just the right thing to say, but it doesn't mean anyone really thinks it or that they are in the plans.

Is there a surgery that can fix both hamstrings and joints?

I would say there is a decent chance Hall makes it as a premier league player, a low/medium chance that he makes it as a player for a top 10 side and an extremely small chance he makes it as a player at the level of the Chelsea that we want to be: title contenders/winners every year. And, the lad wanted to go. Anyone saying the club has done wrong here... I just can't agree. The ONLY argument might be that we should have given him a PL loan without an obligation and sell him next year or the year after, which the club was obviously considering. But the lad wanted to go, and now we have absolutely no risk and guaranteed cash on the table with a sell on clause.

Jeremy Doku is an interesting option, he did have a massive/random selection of injury problems ala Reece James though

Might be wanting to hold these for next year, either loans with obligation or either showcase them at Chelsea or loan them with view to sell next season. As I said before, I think we will need to make an absolute fuck load of very profitable sales every year from now on to stay in good shape with FFP, similar to what we've done this year. Gallagher for £50m+ would help us out an absolute tonne on next years books.

Interesting thread. Can't say I know much about the man, his stats are so dog shit on fbref, I would never have even noticed him - we'd be betting a lot on the eye test that he has the skill to step up in a proper team. Barcola looks the most interesting option to an extremely amateur scout like me, he out performs his xG which suggests to me in a good team/system he could score a decent number of goals, his assist stats are great, his defensive output is incredible and his videos look great. Interesting they are both right footers.

Some people just have to be negative about the club's decisions and want us to magically have our cake and eat it too, how TF we going to spend £1bn and not make sales we would ideally rather not? Even if FFP didn't exist, a club is a business and you need income to run a business. £28m+£7m in add ons apparently, loan with obligation to buy in order to count this in next year's sales. We will need another £100m of pure profit on top of that in player sales next year as well I think, at minimum.

Man probably has a point. Feel like there might be a little bit of ego in the way Reece is building his body / training. I feel like the club (and Poch) need to take a strong stance with Reece's fitness and put him through a long, slow physio / yoga / whatever routine that keeps him out of intense training and games for however many months is needed, even 6 months if needed. I don't think surgery is the answer - his problems occur all over, what are we going to do repair his whole body under the knife?

I still think a striker who can play out wide but is primarily a goal scorer would be our best bet. We’ve got tonnes of tricky players, tonnes of players who can create but very few who score.

I think he got his contract before we wisened up (the PW+LS era) so it is likely 250k basic and more on top of that for good performance. He got the deal Mason would have got if he hadn't been a little bitch. My brain says that Malo is a wonderful player and he if he has a good season, bearing in mind we need income, if we get lucky and Reece ends the season on a few months of fitness we should sell him if we can get a big offer for him. My heart tells me we can't lose Captain James after losing so many others from the academy, the little bit of real Chels we have left.

Btw, unless the system we used in preseason was purely for preseason, I don't think we need to stress that much about losing James, Poch was building in a 3-2-5 attack system where only one fullback went forward and the other stayed back with the CBs. Having one very attacking / good fullback was critical but not both sides required it. So, if Chilly is fit probably the 3-2-5 has Chilly going forward and Malo sits deep. If Chilly is out, probably Malo becomes the attacking forward and Cucu or Maatsen sit deep with the CBs. The biggest loss is that we've lost our Captain and that bit of leadership on the field. The system can easily cope and thrive without him. This is a big upgrade from Tuchel/Potter era in itself.

Thank god we have Malo. Extremely controversial question: would you consider offloading Reece James over his injury problems? He is our Captain and amazing when fit, but are these problems ever going to go away? Is he worth 250k a week when he plays so rarely? Does he have a realistic future playing RB and being fit for even half of a season?

Palace is guaranteed football and if the money is the same? I don’t blame him if he isn’t fussed about winning trophies, it’s his career to enjoy and do what he wants with. Good luck to the lad. Don’t think we will ever see him in a Chelsea shirt now and frankly if winning trophies isn’t top of his agenda we don’t want him here, but no hard feelings at all. I am not sure I’m keen on Felix. He was a selfish player for us but never delivered, just looked slick without end product. I wonder if we can get a forward who can play on the wing, someone more like NJ than Mudryk.

Back to our feeder club Brighton for a bit of Mitoma?

Apparently his people are a nightmare to deal with, might be why we walked away (as so far every single club has)

Given how little we're offering in wages it is possible Palace matched it and gave other conditions he liked that we wouldn't (e.g. maybe he still has a buyout clause but a bigger one) Very good player in lots of ways, was keen on him if you ignored his injury problems, would have been a monster in a side with both Nkunku and Jackson but without Nkunku I really think we need to focus on getting a goal scoring forward.

Also, it is really sad to see people on Twitter already throwing Lavia under a bus and writing him off now that Hall rumours are out. There is no way these two interactions are directly related. We need to sell a lot of academy players for profit because we're going to end up spending probably something close to £1bn by the time the window is done, part of which is of course Lavia but part of which is also Cucu, Sterling... It is more fair to say that we need to sell Hall to cover Sterling than Lavia imo. We have a min of £150m (probably £160m+ in reality?) or so annual ammortization costs to cover which means we need to sell a lot of players for more than their net book value every single year on average. I imagine if we had loaned Hall it was only to try to increase his value for a sale in 2024. Yeah it is sad but this is the reality of spending £1bn to build an incredible first team in the financial fair play era.

Hall is being very highly rated due to his level for his age, rather than his actual current level. He could develop into a quality player, clearly has good technique and physical traits but hasn't developed composure or a tonne of game IQ yet. He will definitely be a premier league level player in the long run but as always the question is will he not just be a premier league level player but a Chelsea level player? IMO that is far from guaranteed. Hall has asked to leave on a permanent deal instead of on loan and wants to play for Newcastle not CFC. Sell him with a huge sell on clause and ideally a buy back clause imo. If in the future he wants to be here and we want him here we will make it happen, if not then it was not meant to be. I honestly think we have no choice but to sell pretty much all of our academy players to pay off the level of spend we're now at - Chalobah, Hall, Gallagher and maybe Maatsen as well. We have spent an insane amount of money and it will take an insane amount of sales not just in this window but in every window going forward to stay on top of this.

Personally wouldn’t surprise me if we sell Chilwell in a year or two, especially if he doesn’t stay injury free. I have the feeling we will regularly sell depreciating assets and replace them with up and coming players as part of the new strategy.

A few conspiracy theories have been going through my head about why we're spending so much money, buying so many young players and tying them down for such a long time: 1. Maybe part of the plan for the acquisition is to join Super League 2.0, whatever that will be (maybe something dreadful involving Saudi teams?), where there will be no FFP. Subsequently, we don't care about FFP. That would be really gross, but the one thing I dislike about Todd is that he would probably cockily think this is genius. 2. Maybe we're anticipating a transfer ban and want to secure ourselves through it. Maybe we're expecting a hard stance after we've had one already and have now self-reported ourselves over breaches under Roman? 3. Maybe we are 99.9% sure any trouble will just be a fine, and we're just saying no problem 4. Maybe we anticipate some kind of ban / points deduction but think the net benefit is worth it to become a top team again quickly

I have a lot of time for Chilwell and in certain systems he is insanely good, BUT to be fair if we cleared out our whole LB roster and went to the market I don't think we'd buy a single one of them under PW/LS. It would be a couple of lads we've barely heard of or not heard of at all and they'd be pacey skillful players who can defend and attack equally well.