Pizy

I absolutely REFUSE to believe that Tel would be the profile of target that Maresca has said to the board that we need. We’re a squad that’s already filled with young players who are inconsistent. Why add yet another teenager? Especially one like Tel who appears not to have a well defined position. Nkunku hasn’t worked out as well as we all hoped in the PL, but swapping a highly experienced player like him for a totally unproven kid would be another face palm move from our transfer committee.

Yeah, just what we need along our forward line, another kid. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

I just laugh every time I see anyone linking us with Isak. As if Newcastle will allow their best player and the guy who is in dominant form walk halfway through the season when they’re in red hot form and neck and neck with us in the race for top 4. Shit, I highly doubt he himself would even say yes to us right now even if we did come up with a £120m offer. If he carries on like this for the remainder of the season he can sit back and wait for a whole host of top clubs to come for him. He can bide his time and see who is in the UCL places before deciding. The time to get him was last summer when we were heavily linked. We almost surely could’ve gotten him for well under £100m. Now after the season he’s having they’ll rightly demand a new PL record fee. If midfielders like Rice and Caicedo went for about £100m then a match winning, top class striker who can get you 20 PL goals a season will probably cost £120m+.

Don’t know how we can blame the owners here. They didn’t scout and pick out a random Portuguese kid playing in Switzerland for Basel. This really looks like some data driven scout who looked at players who were statistically and stylistically similar to Calafiori who we wanted but lost out on. What we can blame Clearlake for is their complete obsession with the future years and years from now rather than making just a few super key signings that can bridge that gap now. They even have Maresca repeating that stuff with his “in a few years Chelsea could be in position to dominate English football” language. Which may become reality at some point but we need to build a solid foundation NOW in order to eventually get there which means getting UCL football ASAP. But that will require a couple of signings that they’re so far refusing to go and get.

If Reece finally manages to stay fit Maresca would probably just use Gusto out of position on the left if needed. 🤦‍♂️

This all just reflects so poorly on whoever was in charge of recruitment this past summer. Our good form up until Christmas time was sort of masking just how poor that window was and now that we have been poor it’s being brought into more focus. -KDH has been a disaster of a buy. -Veiga looked promising but clearly doesnt’ have Maresca’s confidence so barely plays -did that utterly absurd deal with Villa where we bought some kid that never had a prayer of ever wearing a Chelsea shirt -spent a very good chunk of change on Felix (who I still love as a player) and Maresca has barely played him -refused to buy the striker that everyone in all of world football knew we badly needed and thought it was wise to gamble our entire season on Jackson suddenly becoming super clinical I think both Neto and Sancho have been solid and Tosin is a decent enough squad player. But other than that, what a shit show. We need to go for some experienced, finished article players of proven quality over these next windows. Enough trying to be the smartest guy in the room and searching for the next gem that’s cheap and then explodes into a star. We are a couple of key pieces away from being a serious team. World class finisher, top CB. Stop messing about with bang average guys who you can see from a million miles away aren’t Chelsea quality.

Why can’t we sign some ready made players that can make an immediate impact in actual positions of need? Getting sick and tired of being linked with players who may or may not even be a Chelsea player in a few years. Go out and splash the cash we clearly have on a dominant CB and a lethal striker. We’ve already got so many top teenage talents that we won’t have a path the first team for many of them. And on the Veiga situation, unless it’s him pushing hard to go then it seems really silly to let him go. I do feel like he has been under utilized but didn’t think he’d be someone we’d be thing about letting go. There’s clearly a very good talent there and we were all saying how much of a bargain he looked not long ago. To give up on him so quickly would be strange.

Not sure I believe the Veiga thing at all. I feel like he is good enough to keep around and continue to develop.

Hasn’t he been super injury prone?

Yeah, City going all in on not one but two super young CB’s this month when that’s one of the areas of their squad that’s actually pretty strong is weird. Unless there are some long term injuries to some of them. I don’t pay any attention to City so I’m not sure. I wonder if they’re stocking up on a load of players now while they can before a transfer ban comes down on their heads.

We’re now being linked with Kvara. I love him as a player but why are we interested in another attacking midfielder, ffs?! Even if we can all assume Mudryk is done here we still are well stocked. And have Estevão coming in in the summer. He’ll almost surely go to PSG or elsewhere but man. Use this kind of money on areas of actual need!

Buy now and get later does us no good when we badly need another striker ASAP. With Guehi, I don’t see him being cheap even in the summer with a year remaining because there will be multiple big clubs vying for him which will drive up the price.

Don’t really see the point in Ugo returning from loan. He’s not top PL club level and would only be playing during the other competitions where we already play a fully rotated team. As for Delap & Guehi, I still just find it impossible to think their clubs would sell such key players mid-season. Delap in particular is pretty much their only goal scorer. They’d be toast if they sold him.

Mainoo for £30m and I’d say it’s a stupid buy for us. Mainoo for £70m and there should be protests at the Bridge. That would be malpractice. Andrey Santos is better than Mainoo and won’t cost us anything to bring back. As for City, it seems they’re going to start their rebuild now rather than waiting for the summer. Looks like they’re going to completely refresh their squad in many key areas. All of the players they’re currently negotiating with are ones who would help us too.

Seems City are looking to seriously strengthen this window. And they’re right behind us…

Thing with KDH is we haven’t even got to see how good or poor he actually is. He plays once in the Conference League and then isn’t seen or heard form for ages until the next one. I find it impossible to judge a player unless he’s getting a run of consistent games. It’s kinda hard to show your true levels and build a rhythm when you never play. You don’t don’t go from player of the season and team of the season to complete dogshit in the space of a few months, no matter what league he did it in. Would he be amazing if he played consistently? Doubtful. But he’d probably be a very decent player for us if he played regularly. We’ll never see that now clearly. 🤷‍♂️

Yep, he looks like a solid talent but after a promising few appearances last season he has kind of disappeared. Massively overhyped too early. There were United fans on RedCafe asking if he was a £100m player, ffs! 🤦‍♂️

Newcastle and oursleves have completely swapped fortunes. We were flying and looking fantastic whilst they were poor. Now they’re on fire and we look poor. They're a huge threat to our top 4 chances in the league when it looked just a couple weeks ago like we didn’t have to be concerned about them at all.

Even if Mainoo was available, why the fuck would we even consider him? We’ve got Enzo, Caicedo, Lavia, and Santos. Even accounting for Lavia’s injuries were well stocked in CM. What a silly rumor.

His team clearly putting our names out there to pressure Man United into giving him a higher wage.

For me our problem isn’t so much that we’re leaking goals in huge numbers. We need a top class CB, yes, but it’s not a desperate, dire need immediately. I would hope that they now realize what a mistake it was not to buy one and will do something this month. Jackson is a great striker to have in your squad but is simply not an elite one that should be starting every match.

If they want to put us in the absolute best position to get UCL football this season then we need a proven goal scorer this month. We absolutely cannot afford to go another season without being in the Champions League. If we seriously pin all our hopes on Nico and Palmer as our only sources of goals then it’s going to be an almighty struggle to achieve top 4.

Guehi plays almost exclusively on the left side despite being right footed from what I’ve seen, btw. Something he obviously wouldn’t be doing here if we bought him. I’m sure for a top talent it isn’t a huge deal to play either side, but again for massive money it’s still a risk throwing a guy in at a position that will take some getting used to. Anyway, it’s kind of concerning that we aren’t really hearing any substantial rumors about a forward. For me that’s even more important than a Cab in the immediate term. Yes our defense can look shaky but by repeatedly failing to kill games off by missing chance after chance up front we basically invite massive pressure at the other end. If we had a clinical killer in front of goal during this awful run of games we’d have been out of sight and cruising and our defense is comfortable.

Don’t think Trev is any better than Tosin. In fact, I think Tosin provides more qualities like aerial dominance that are more useful. They’re about the same skill level and comfort on the ball. I’d rather just let Acheampong continue to get minutes and seeing what he can grow into if Maresca doesn’t fully trust Tosin. As for Guehi, idk. He’s a solid CB but I’ve never really bought into the hype he has built up over the last couple of years. I don’t think he elevates our level defensively. If we’re going to go out and spend silly money on a new CB (which Palace would absolutely demand) then we should be doing so on a truly top level one or someone we feel could become a world class defender. Guehi isn’t worth mega money for me.

We desperately need a top striker and for Lavia to get back already. Caicedo has been an absolute machine and was great again today for the first half. But then even someone as tireless as he usually is was clearly running on empty. We need someone in there badly to lessen his work load.