Pizy

That’s a shit load of money for a player who won’t even start for them and also doesn’t score many goals. But I do think he’ll do really well at Bayern like pretty much every attacking wide player they sign does.

Ideally, all 4 of those players are sold this summer lol

As I’ve seen others say on Twitter, it is a bit amusing/confusing/worrying that two managers who play very different styles are apparently our two top choices. From all the tactical breakdowns I’ve seen Iraola is very much in the Klopp mould of super high pressing, “heavy metal” football with lots of sprinting whilst Xabi Alonso is more from the Pep school of control and possessional dominance like we wanted with Maresca. As much as I’d like us to play like a Klopp side, we would need quite a bit of change for that to be possible. I think the transition with Alonso would be smoother.

As we’re speaking right now the Chelsea job is probably at its lowest ever point in terms of attractiveness to any TOP manager. But I actually think that ironically if we miss out on Europe altogether it becomes VERY attractive. You almost get to ease into the job at a super high pressure club with much more training time to get your ideas across to your new squad and you can fully focus strictly on the PL. If the new man can get 3-4 of his handpicked signings I think theres every chance we pull a Man United and go from abysmal to a UCL place in the span of a season. As horrendous as we’ve been this season the “bones” are still something we have. Any prospective manager looking at the Chelsea job will be excited seeing that the likes of Caicedo, James, Palmer, João Pedro, Estevão, etc are here already and have the ability to perform at a world class level if coached properly.

One of the things I do when we’re heavily linked with a new manager is look at some of the key players that could potentially be targeted who were instrumental at their previous club. With Xabi Alonso, Liverpool obviously already 2 of the 3 main drivers of his success at Leverkusen in Wirtz & Frimpong. So that leaves Xhaka as the 3rd main main. Ngl, I did indeed look at his wiki page to check his age. The club have repeatedly said they are intent on signing highly experienced, PL proven players this summer so if Alonso is their man I wonder if they’d be crazy enough to try to sell Chelsea fans on us going for a 33 year old, highly experienced, PL proven, former Arse bastard like him 🤣🤣🤣

Liverpool fans are raging all over social media that they might see Alonso come here whilst they keep Slot who they dislike. I’m firmly in the cautiously optimistic camp if he’s our guy. If the structure improves at the club which is a HUGE question mark I think he could be a great appointment. But if he’s just yet another “head coach” who is told “you’ll take what we give you” in the transfer market and the directors sign more players based solely on data then it’ll blow up just like every manager has under BlueCo. Of all the names linked he is probably the most sensible. Iraola would require too much of a squad overhaul.

Agreed. The keeper situation is kind of tough this summer. Sanchez isn’t good enough to be the Chelsea #1 because he’s too mistake prone but he is probably also a bit too solid to want to stay and be parked on our bench as the permanent #2. He would start for a bunch of decently sized clubs. But then on the other hand it’s a big risk to throw a super young keeper like Penders into the fire behind a defense that may have several changes. Unless they’re confident that he’s a Courtois level talent which is what we were told when we signed him. What I can’t see is these directors throwing huge money at a top keeper. They haggled and refused to go to like £20m for Maignan. So in my eyes it’s 100% down to either Sanchez or Penders. Whoever the new manager fancies.

I think it’s 100% a given that Sanchez will remain as our #1. He probably showed just enough quality over this season for the club to tell whomever the new manager is that he must stay for 1 more season until Penders is fully ready in their minds. Unless they give the manager full autonomy of player decisions and the new guy is adamant that Sanchez isn’t suitable for their style.

Marco Silva seems like he'd be the absolute last resort appointment if everyone we would truly want rejects us. The owners would spin it as a big positive thing because he has been fairly successful in the PL already for many years. One of the briefings they have put out there numerous times now is that they know “they can’t mess up again this time” with this next appointment. They’ll really want someone to appease the supporters who are rightly super angry at them. If they go out and appoint Marco Silva there will be a huge negative reaction. And if we were to then have a poor start to next season with him in charge there will be a toxic atmosphere once again just like there is now.

If we get embarrassed by both Iraola and Alonso I feel like we’d try to save face by going all out for Cesc despite him not really wanting to leave Como yet. Probably make him an offer he couldn’t really refuse.

You really can’t deny what a job Iraola is doing at Bournemouth considering the players he lost before the season. And it isn’t just a purple patch or a single massively overachieving season. He has now done extremely well in the best league multiple times. If I were Man United and was being ruthless by leaving sentiment out of the decision with Carrick, he would be the perfect manager for them. In a vacuum he’d probably be a great hire for us but the idea of some of our top players sprinting and running constantly like he demands makes it feel like a risky proposition. And we also know how injury prone so many of our guys are on top of that. I suppose a big factor with whoever we appoint is whether we’re even in Europe or not. If we aren’t and can focus primarily on 1 competition where the new coach gets lots of time on the training pitch then perhaps an Iraola can work.

Feels silly to even think about incoming players until we have a manager.

Yeah, I’d be fine with either of these two. I would feel straight away that were in solid hands but then it comes down to whether the ownership will provide the new manager with the player HE asks for and they don’t continue to just force players upon them like Garnacho because some scout or sporting director is obsessed with him.

I remember being open to Xavi when his name was in the mix before we appointed Maresca. But he’s been out of work for what, 3 years now? He would be a massive risk at this time when we need someone as close to a sure thing as we can get. The new manager will be taking over a club in absolute crisis. Appointing someone like Xavi could be disastrous.

I’m going on the assumption that Enzo and maybe a couple other big sales are happening. We’ll have some decent money to spend in that case.

I feel like at this point they don’t have a choice. The supporters are rightly starting to get toxic towards them in the stadium every week. If they continue on with this same shit and fans stop going to the games altogether things will become untenable for them.

With a proper, experienced, quality manager I don’t think it’s possible to be a relegation area team with the talent we have in the squad. I realize they’ve all given up and have thus been dogshit for a while now, but a squad containing the likes of Caicedo, Palmer, Cucu, Estevão, João Pedro etc is t going to be fighting near the bottom of the league under a real manager. Even a struggling Maresca proved that. But if we pull another Potter or Rosenior we’re in deep, DEEP shit for the foreseeable future.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say this will be the most consequential summer in our history. If there aren’t massive changes to the model and if they don’t knock it out of the park with the manager they hire then we may never see UCL football again. We will transform into a perennial midtable club.

We are incredibly fortunate that we picked up enough points in the first part of the season because otherwise we’d be down where Spuds are fighting relegation. The players have completely given up and have their heads elsewhere, probably on saving their bodies for the World Cup.

Forest rotates a bunch of their best players. I know it’s with an eye on the Europa League but damn. They're still not safe in the league.

As I’ve said before, Cesc seems like a smart, levelheaded guy. I don’t think he’ll jump at the first offer from a huge club like ourselves yet.

I wonder if the Barco move is still on after Rosenior departed. I’m seeing all the quality PL midfielders being heavily linked with our rivals so Barco remains a great and easy option that allows us to avoid having to compete with the likes of City, Liverpool, and United for others. Seems Wharton is wanted by Liverpool, Elliot Anderson is probably City bound, and United want multiple new CM’s with Tonali looking plausible. Don’t think we can even think of competing for these players in our current state.

Would make sense that he announced his departure well before the season was over if he already had the United job lined up.

Despite how extremely underwhelming they’ve been, I actually don’t think it’ll be difficult to find interested clubs in the likes of Delap and Garnacho. The problem will be getting back what we paid for them. Delap being English and having proven on a smaller stage that he can score goals in the PL I think finding him a destination will be easy. I can already imagine that the usual bunch of Italian clubs will be after Garnacho with their typical cheap ass offers of a loan. It’s still crazy that everyone and their mother knew that Gittens and Garnacho were bang average players and yet these jokers running our club went PURELY with the “data” and analytics instead of the eye test. We paid double for each of them than what they were actually worth and now it’ll likely be impossible to not take huge losses on them. I can foresee something similar happening with some of our unwanted players that did with Jackson where the price we will demand is WAY higher than any club in Europe will be willing to pay.

It would surely be utter malpractice for every club not to have some sort of clause in EVERY player’s contract that allows them to void it if they get popped for PED’s. Especially for ones that cost an absolute fortune in order to protect yourselves from just this sort of situation.