Pizy

I really rate Ben White. Sensible, great signing for the annoying bastards.

This is even weirder, then. Gündo was arguably their best player last season and they’re spending £100m to buy someone to rotate with him? Pep is of course smarter than almost anyone out there but this is so puzzling.

Pep’s attacking players (especially the wide attackers) have always been basically programmed robots. They have very specific instructions to basically stay super wide and be very positional disciplined. So that’s why it’s super strange to me that Pep has such a boner for Grealish who is the ultimate floating wanderer and isn’t really a traditional winger at all. Specifically for City’s team I’d rather have an in form Sterling starting in the left than Grealish from a fit point of view. And speaking of which, I wonder what Sterling thinks of this signing? Just had a great Euro’s and will now be replaced. Yes, he had a subpar season but was brilliant the season before and could easily regain that form.

I stand by my feeling that Grealish doesn’t make much of a difference for City and that £100m is an absolutely ridiculous price to pay for him. He’s going to be good there as almost every attacker is but I don’t think he really makes them any any scarier than they already were.

Probably regrets every single day that he left here.

Since it’s looking less and less likely that we’ll buy a striker ourselves, I think we should prepare ourselves to see Tammy stay. Which is nuts given Tuchel doesn’t fancy him at all.

Can definitely see Ollie Watkins and Tammy combining quite nicely. Probably as good as Villa can get in terms of strikers.

Absolutely not worth 100m. But if we can somehow get that price down to between 60-75 I’d say he’s worth it. PL proven, only 22, homegrown, and a potential captain like personality. He could lock down a spot in our XI for a decade. We’ve got to have a player or multiple players that are of interest to WH as a makeweight.

Rice.

Hard to believe that things were so “hot” with Koundé and it’ll now fall through. We’ll sign him.

We haven’t even been linked with Süle in months by anyone reliable. And he worked under Naglesmann at his old club so I’m sure he will give him a chance.

If Zouma goes somewhere other than Sevilla I can’t imagine us paying the full ask for Koundé. Him being included in the deal was the main reason it was happening, right?

So Koundé isn’t actually as close as portrayed. Just hope he’s in before the season starts.

I just feel like if we’re going to sign any midfielder it should be with an eye on instantly improving our first XI. Hence why the link to Rice makes sense. If we just want depth and someone with future potential to cover for Kante and Jorginho we may as well have kept Billy or keep Gallagher around.

I really don’t think Tchouameni looks all that impressive even in his “best bits” youtube highlights. Just looks like a solid, above average DM. The sort of player clubs like Everton, West Ham or Spuds would take a punt on and see if he develops further. Doesn’t really look to me like Chelsea first XI material.

Away kit looks infinitely better than the home kit.

From a business point of view what they’re doing is extremely dumb. But it is sort of admirable that Dortmund don’t sell players that they don’t want to sell. You can be pissed off at them if they were forcing unhappy players to stay when they are desperate to leave but players like Haaland and Sancho are more than happy to just put their heads down and wait for their moves. We see ourselves how barren the market for quality forwards is so what actual good is 100m + to them if there’s nobody to spend it on? All that being said, we’d be foolish to not even put in a mega bid to test them. At least show to Haaland that we’re all in on him so he keeps us in his thoughts for next summer.

Mourinho and Olé. Two defense first, slow, plodding football coaches. They both basically send out their teams to be solid defensively, counter attack, and hope their star man (Like Bruno or Hazard) produce some magic. Think he would have much more freedom to express his qualities in a more attacking, front foot side who like to dominate the ball.

I would take Pogba at Chelsea in less than a second. He was probably the best player I saw at the Euro’s playing alongside a certain N’golo Kante. He always looks much better for France than for United. He would be incredible under a proper coach with actual ideas and tactics unlike Solskjaer’s turgid setup.

United would be extremely dumb to sell Pogba. So hope that happens.

So our most likely team this season will be: Think that’s a team that will be extremely dominant with the ball as well as extremely athletic and pacey. But we’ll still have to worry about goals. Getting so few from all 3 CM’s will continue to be an issue.

And sadly played out of position at fullback so we didn’t get to judge him properly.

Between Konate, Upamecano, and Koundé I wonder how experts would rank these 3 French CB’s. All pretty much the same age, all about to step up to massive clubs. Upamecano had somewhat of a drop in performances this past season, didn’t he?

So Lukaku strongly and definitively ruled out. Likewise Lewandowski. Kane is impossible for obvious reasons. Griezmann’s wages are apparently so stratospheric that he’s a no-go. Plus he only wants to live in Spain. Ironically, Haaland is the only one that hasn’t been 100%, stone cold locked to stay. It’s always “well, we don’t expect him to leave.” Or “we’re planning with Erling.” As though if a massive enough bid comes in and Haaland indicates he’s willing to go they’ll at least listen. Still, not looking likely for any of the very top crop. Maybe there’s something creative the club have lined up as a contingency. Or perhaps we just try for Rice and wait til next summer for a striker.

Reading the replies to any of Romano’s tweets regarding Koundé today and they’re filled with angry Real Madrid supporters who are annoyed that they aren’t replacing Varane with him. They all want him in their team and they’re the ones watching La Liga every week and know how talented he is. If he’s good enough to be considered for Real Madrid he’s good enough for Chelsea.