Pizy

If only we could sell off our first team deadwood as effectively as we are our highly prized youth prospects.

He also dominated in the CL tbf. I just don’t think there’s any risk at all of him struggling. He just seems like someone who is ultra confident and has a monster mentality. I can’t imagine him pulling a Werner or Torres and having their confidence sapped like that.

I think Haaland is the closest thing to a guaranteed instant success there is. His combo of pace, power, and skill will be highly effective in any league. Lukaku on the other hand has the pace and power but is still pretty average on the ball and struggles against defenses that isolate him. He will still have patches where he’ll frustrate the hell out of you with poor touches or close control. Anyway, it’s so frustrating how things have lined up for us. We’re in the strongest position we’ve been in since winning the league with Conte. Even stronger actually. And yet our options are so extremely limited at the striker position so we’re basically paralyzed. Also the fact that transfer fees are so stratospheric these days we can’t simply bully smaller clubs than us into selling. Every one of these world class strikers (Haaland, Kane, Lukaku) are a minimum of £100m. And then there’s just a massive drop off to the next tier of strikers who aren’t the level we need.

Think Rom would definitely get us 20 PL goals but I’m not sure he dramatically improves our title odds. Can see him doing well against lesser teams but struggling against the top ones.

Negotiating with West Ham for their best player should be fun… 😬

Tchomeni or Traore for example. They’re at small clubs who are traditionally selling clubs. Monaco and Wolves consistently sell their best players every season. Shouldn’t be a massive effort to sign these players. We need a striker, a DM/CM, and a RWB rotation option. If the striker hunt is going to drag all window long I wish we’d at least plug the other holes in the meantime.

Oh, I’d absolutely be pissed off if we signed those rando’s that Arse have signed. But they all improve Arse because their team is pretty shit. They’re starting from a lower place than we are. The reason I’m annoyed is because our team is like 98% complete and 1 or 2 moves away from being perfect and yet we can’t seem to close the deals. Even if we just signed a couple of the less spectacular names we’ve been linked with and saved the final piece (striker) until last that would be enough to calm people down. Like, surely it can’t be that difficult to go and get players like the lad from Monaco.

It’s strange. There isn’t t a lot of transfer movement, but of course what little movement there is is happening at the clubs most likely to battle us for a top 4 spot like United and Leicester and even fucking Arsenal. I’m trying to maintain the belief that the reason everything is silent from us is that we’re working secretly on an elephant sized deal like Haaland. But the problem with putting all our eggs in that basket is that we look like naive morons if that doesn’t work.

The reports say Bate isn’t even going directly into Leeds’ first team but rather their youth team. Slightly strange that he wouldn’t just wait it out here and see what happened next summer. But I guess Bielsa has given him a more clear vision of his path the the first team than we could.

Without a world class striker coming in, seeing Tammy in that disgusting red shirt would be hard to watch. I’m sure our club understand that well. Sending him to Arse and bringing in some random dude like the striker from Stuttgart would cause huge uproar.

We ain’t getting remotely close to the PL title with our current squad. I’d bet my account here on that.

Can’t imagine Kepa staying here and riding the bench for another whole season. Surely he’ll push to go? We may need a 2nd keeper instead of a 3rd.

We’ve got such a good crop of young first team players that it’s difficult for me to care too much about seeing so many youngsters leaving. If we were an older, past it squad I’d be annoyed. But so many of our key players are 25 or younger and won’t be going anywhere any time soon.

Think United would really regret letting Pogba leave. Can see their fans regretting the shit they’ve given him over the years once he’s gone. Camavinga would be a huge downgrade in the short term. So in that regard I’d be happy if they sold Pogba.

Any idea what went down? Was he duped into something or was it more sinister?

Can’t find anything. Now I’m curious who it is.

It’s a mass exodus, ffs 😂😂😂

These youth players of ours (and young players in general) are starting to get more and more impatient when they watch players like Bellingham, Pedri, etc breaking into first teams as teenagers and want to get their senior careers started ASAP. They don’t want to get churned around in the loan system for a couple of years. Was always going to happen to us at some point with some of them. Just have to hope the club inserts first refusal clauses in the sales and avoids selling to rivals.

Ah. I thought you were talking about 2 summers ago when they made zero signings.

Feel like we’ve been over the Liverpool example before. The difference between them waiting it out and ourselves is that they had two attackers who were in world class goal scoring form plus Firmino. They also had world class attacking play from both fullbacks. It’s easy to sit back and wait it out when you’re a title winning caliber side. When you’re miles and miles off the top of the table like we were (and have been for 3-4 years now) I don’t think we can afford to wait. We’ll surely never be in a stronger position than now coming off European glory and with other competitors for targets strapped for cash.

If the likes of Simon Johnson and Liam Twomey are to be beloved we’re now approaching that stage of the window where we’re being linked with bargain targets that nobody has ever heard of or are nowhere near the level required. Similar to a few years ago where we were all panicking at being linked with Andy Carroll and Peter Crouch. We’re apparently looking at some 8 foot tall mutant from Stuttgart whose name I can’t even pronounce.

Giroud and Tammy out, Haaland and Broja in. Sounds good to me.

What else would it be other than money? There’s no chance clubs like PSG are bigger or more prestigious that Chelsea. They offer players double in wages than we do. That’s it. So no, I’m not confident at all that if we fail to sign Haaland this summer we’ll be able to lure him next year. But that’s not because we are a mid tier club or something. It’s because we don’t offer mammoth wages compared to the state funded clubs.

Sorry, not having this “we don’t have the best pulling power” stuff even a little bit. Perhaps for the absolute best of the best like Haaland who will have every top club after him it will be a struggle. But we absolutely have the pulling power to lure world class players. It’s just unfortunate that the ones we want are already at financially stable clubs and will cost mile high fees. We’re as attractive as any club in Europe. We’re in an era where even the West Ham’s and Leicester’s of the world can put their foot down and demand £80m or £100m for their players, ffs. That’s the issue here, not that Chelsea’s pulling power has fallen.

It’s kinda scary to think that our top scorer last season had only 7 goals (all from penalties and from a player who never score from open play) and yet there seems to be zero urgency to rectify our struggles in front of goal. We were like 99% likely to miss out on top 4 and were bailed out Bale (lol). And has the reaction to that by the club to make sure something like this never happens again by quickly and decisively attacking the market for a goal scorer? Nope. Instead we seem to be hoping our coach can turn every struggling player from last season into a beast. I mean, could it work? Sure. I 100% believe Havertz, Werner, and Ziyech will be much better. But not comfortable top 4 better and absolutely not sustained title challenge better.