Mhsc

If we didn't have such exciting / dangerous wingers waiting in the wings I could understand it, but I don't really see what Poch sees in him. Is he being very effective in the press or something?

Concerned that Poch keeps playing Sterling. I know he wants players with experience but damn man… guy is washed.

Curious whether Poch will play something akin to his Liverpool lineup or whether this is still purely about fitness and seeing individuals more than the combination of individuals...

Call me sentimental but I don’t think Timo was a shit buy, just not the big time goal scorer we thought we were getting. We fell off the day he left.

I don't know Tyler Adams that well, mostly concerned about his injury and injury record. Not sure it makes sense as he's just had surgery. Probably agent talk this rumour tbh.

Can't say I know him that well. Did see this though - Leeds results with vs without him:

So the club's work bringing in Enzo, Mudryk, Nicolas Jackson, Nkunku, Malo Gusto, and way more all this year is not enough and we should also already have signed 3-4 more? That is living fantasies. This is the largest squad rebuild in the shortest period of time I have ever seen, and absolutely stunning so far, albeit not complete yet - sorry the club let you down so much there. If you think this squad is way worse than anything we had under Abramovich, I don't know what to say man, we used to have Danny Drinkwater and Bakayako in CM... It is one of the most promising squads we've ever assembled IMO and not even finished yet. It is true it is not at the level of the insane team we built with Terry/Lampard/Drogba, but that was a different era in football where we were THE club with money, now we have a lot of competition and it is going to be a slower journey. Personally I'm super optimistic about how we have been run since January when Todd stepped away. No it isn't finished yet, but it will be, the club have earnt my trust back this year.

United took Mount, who has been shit for the last year, a very good goalkeeper and a young striker that was outscored by a DM last year in the same league. Liverpool have not replaced their entire midfield and are still actively working on it City so far have only signed Kovacic, Gvardiol probably imminent. You're living fantasies and are clearly here to whine and put the club down, when the club has done an absolute tonne of good business, we've simply had way more to do than other clubs, a lot of historical mistakes to fix, and we are trying to not get fleeced for individual players and be calm in the market, which is an approach we've wanted and whined about for years and now it is here and here you are whining the opposite way. Impossible to please everybody. Stay unhappy.

Another option for CDM I guess, can't say I know much about the man but Liverpool have been strongly linked with him.

None of these clubs are even vaguely sorted and they've all had much worse preseasons than us

They've signed someone to replace Colwill haven't they? I think loaning them Andrey Santos or Ugo would be more an immediate need for them if we leave it so late in the window they can't sign a replacement. Humphreys would do really well under De Zerbi though, I just don't think they'd be fussed now and he would probably be backup. A loan to a team with a similar ethos of playing out from the back but have a problem player that can't handle it would be good for Humphreys though, maybe a year in the Championship?

Should be close to a month he could be with us, and if he impresses Poch maybe he stays? I don’t understand why we wouldn’t look at him properly and what kind of message that sends to him.

I assume he is with the squad until close to end of transfer window to give Poch time to review. Also, good for him to spend some time with the players, the manager and wear the Chelsea colours so he feels like part of Chelsea, no?

It is not actually a £30m outlay though, if we sell Lukaku and get no one we are up £30m-£45m depending on where he goes (ignoring the massive loss on the £100m purchase for him, we have £30m+ more in the bank than we do right now). If we buy Vlahovic for a £60m sum we are down £60m, however you look at it. He has to be worth that sort of money for this deal to make sense. I think because the strikers market is totally nuts, at 23 with his background he might be worth something over £50m but it is really pushing it given the risks. Hojlund just went for £75m and has less goals and assists in his breakout year than Vlahovic has had in his awful year, so realistically Juve will want £65m-£75m and he is simply not worth that, which should end the discussion - if we were desperate, it might be different, but we have NJ and we are in a position of strength here.

Controversially, I think he should start at RB vs Liverpool based on what I've seen so far.

The main argument is that none of them are the super creative type, they're all fast tricky dribblers - the Olise/Cherki argument was purely about adding the Eriksen style player to Poch-ball. The Kudus argument is just that he's probably better than either Madueke or Sterling, if we could get him in and get Sterling out that would be a pretty big net improvement in terms of salary and quality of what we get for our money.

That is more like how I feel about it. He ticks a lot of boxes from what I see, his stats are excellent in CM but he's also played at CB, he's got the experience Poch is looking for and is sensibly priced at 40m euros. As things stand I would definitely feel more comfortable having him be a Chelsea player than not, but of course it can change if we sign Caicedo.

Is Edson Alvarez really a "hell no"? His stats are incredible, beating Declan Rice in almost everything. Stats can be deceptive of course but surprised he would be a "hell no"...

Btw, how does FFP work when you buy a player and sell a player between a club? We can sell them Lukaku for 75m and they can sell us Vlahovic for 90m, letting us spread the damage over the length of Vlahovic's contract and avoid the FFP damage of selling Lukaku for a big loss?

10m-15m euros and Big Rom for a player they are desperate to get rid of due to injury problems, form and salary is extremely fair, they wont take it but fuck them walk away immediately if not, otherwise they can live with their problem - we need to stop being the club that bails out Italian teams. We can feasibly sell Lukaku to Saudi but wtf are they going to do with Vlahovic? Shopped around all summer and no one wants him, and he's way too young to think about Saudi, and he does not work at all in Allegri-ball. Maybe their only path forward if not us would be to sack Allegri (which probably they can't afford) and bring in a coach who plays some progressive football and bumps Vlahovic's value back up to the 75m range, IF he can get over injury problems and find confidence which is a big if.

Either sales or further loans. We need to be realistic about the likelihood of the U21 players making it at Chelsea. They will all make it as good professional footballers but the level of Chelsea is the top of that, or it should be. We are buying them as investments and in the UNUSUAL situation they prove to be a Chelsea level player then great.

Just trying their luck to get out of the situation they've landed themselves in. We do not need this guy (it is a luxury signing lets be real) so we should offer something very favourable to us, like £15m tops. I am sure Lukaku will take a Saudi deal over not playing so we do not have any real pressure here. Still have a feeling this is all Juve PR to try to drum up interest in Vlaho who they've been shopping around all summer and failing to find a buyer for.

I'm not that fussed by that tbh, everyone was trying to tap up Colwill and it is not a big deal as long as we leave ourselves in the drivers seat - Colwill's interest was clearly all focused around getting out of his youth contract and onto a proper pro's contract making real money, followed by a desire to play regular minutes, and as long as we are keeping kids around on sensible low value contracts until they've proven themselves it will not be a problem for us to tie them down after a good loan spell as long as they have realistic shot at first team. However we should be loaning our players to our satellite clubs where they can be guaranteed to play almost every game instead of going to Brighton and getting a measly 17 appearances. The only reason to loan to Brighton is if we think PL experience is more important than playing every game in Ligue 1 or the other leagues we'll soon have clubs in.

Can someone tell me why we don't like Edson Álvarez? I've mostly only seen him on Youtube, where he looks solid enough, and he comes out extremely favourably compared to Declan Rice in virtually all stats. And he is supposed to be like 40m Euros.