Pizy

I like the signings we’ve made so far 🤷‍♂️ Just like I’m really glad we’ve got Caicedo, Enzo, Lavia, Gusto, Palmer, and the future potential stars like Paez and Estevão. Again, for me Clearlake have been very mixed. Lots of unfortunate duds like the ones you named (plus Koulibaly & Sterling) but plenty to be optimistic about, too. Personally, I’d much rather act the way our club have in the window than what a club like United are doing where they drag their feet for ages and have their fanbase protesting the ownership nonstop. At least we’re trying to “go big” and take some chances even if every one hasn’t worked.

All gone a bit quiet on the first team targets following the KDH transfer. With Calafiori looking Arse bound there isn’t really a concrete name that were after from the top insiders.

I’m actually relatively relaxed about our defense for the time being. Getting Reece back and hopefully fit will help. Cucu seems to have made big progress. Colwill I expect to excel under Maresca. And despite what Fulham fans are saying about him being suspect at times, I think Tosin will also fit the way Maresca wants to play like a glove. Plus, playing with 3 midfielders in the center of the pitch instead of 2 should be a massive help to our defense. Especially since we’ll likely have 2 of the 3 being super mobile and hard working at all times assuming Enzo is always a starter. Having Caicedo and Lavia or Caicedo and KDH in there should be huge. Then we have to hope that our squad takes to this system and play style quickly. If Maresca is able to implement it smoothly we’ll have so much of the ball and our midfielders & attacking players will be hunting the ball so aggressively that our defense won’t be exposed as often. It was a hallmark of his Leicester team. Dominate the play with the ball and press aggressively to win it back when out of possession. This is what we need from our players.

On the striker front, I do wonder if the search for another one now slides down the priority list for the time being and we revisit it later in the window after getting a look at Guiu for a few preseason games. If he looks really comfortable straight away and doesn’t seem out of his depth then I can see us going into the season with Nico and Guiu as our two strikers and Nkunku as the emergency false 9. We are playing against a few really big clubs in preseason, right? So we should get an idea pretty quickly if Guiu is up for it.

The Maresca stuff is super weird indeed. I’ve been saying it for a while. It’s like we appointed him ages ago and then he disappeared into the void. Then there’s the fact that we haven’t revealed our new shirts for the season and for the second year in a row we’re scrambling around trying to find a shirt sponsor. We used to reveal the new kit at the end of the previous season and wear it for the final match. Now it’s once again delayed for months while I assume we’re waiting for that sponsor. Makes the club look really amateurish and clueless. Like we’re a super understaffed operation or something.

I think the Clearlake slander should wait until the window closes personally. If we enter the season without the last 2-3 pieces we need and still have dogshit wage wasters like Lukaku, Kepa etc on our books then by all means slander away. For me they’ve been a mixed bag. I’m in wait and see mode with our new ownership and don’t think they’ve been the unmitigated disaster so many of our supporters cry about. They’ve had some REALLY bad mistakes but also signed us a bunch of really good players who I think will be fantastic in the long run.

PL to PL transfer are always gonna have a massive premium. Not really fair to compare those deals to Calafiori coming from a relatively tiny Italian club who for them £42m is a gigantic sum they can really turn down.

Apparently we’re struggling mightily once again to find a front of shirt sponsor for this coming season just like last summer according to Matt Law. The Infinite Athlete deal was supposedly only for last Seaskn and then they move to just a sleeve sponsorship. This makes us look like such amateurs. I remember saying similar things last year but it fucking INSANE to me that one of the very biggest and most famous club in the world, playing in the best and most watched league in the world can not find a company that will pay to out their logo on our shirt. You would think corporations would literally be fighting each other to partner with a club of our stature. Boehly & co are supposedly these marketing/business genius types and they can’t get Chelsea FC a shirt sponsorship after 2 whole years?!

It definitely is super weird that we haven’t seen or heard anything from him since his appointment. No press conference, no in-house presentation, no pictures of him around Cobham. Nothing. I’d just like to hear from him and have him describe what his ideas are for certain players.

If we’re both offering the same money and they’re actually speaking to the player first then I’m not sure we can win. It’s not like the Roman days where we can blow any competition out of the water with higher wages. Arse probably offer higher wages than us now. Add UCL football, the prospect of winning the PL, and them being much more stable than us and it’s kind of a no brainer to choose them over us at the moment.

We can’t even afford £42m without trying to throw in players these days? Whatever. Let Arse have him. Go for an actual specialist LB instead rather than a CB who can also play LB.

What’s strange is that despite multiple reporters saying for quite a while that we want a versatile left footed defender we haven’t really been linked with anyone other than Calafiori. So I wonder who the alternatives are.

Arse are probably the worst club we could go head to head with for a signing at this moment in time, sadly. Because they can offer a player the same things that would usually give us the edge over other big PL clubs like living in London rather than Manchester or Liverpool. Arse are basically a guaranteed title and UCL contender next season so a player choosing them is only logical right now. Guess the thing you have to hope for if you’re someone who really wants us to get Calafiori is that the lure of playing more and being convinced by an Italian coach are more enticing to him.

Maybe Broja. Or Badiashile so they can directly replace Calafiori like for like.

Only positive is that if he continues to struggle or look mediocre we’ll probably only have to put up with it until January. By then the club hierarchy will have realized how absolutely crucial a top bal playing keeper is to a Maresca system. This is basically the club saying to Sanchez “you have one last chance to prove yourself. If not, we buy someone in January.” At least I hope so.

Chilly is on pretty big wages, right? I wonder if any PL will go near him with his large wages, high transfer fee we’d demand, and constant injuries. And he doesn’t strike me as a Saudi kinda guy as he’s only 27 and surely still in the England picture with their lack of LB’s.

It’s really nice to be getting a lot of our business done well before preseason starts. We won’t be flapping around towards deadline day after striking out on a bunch of players like a lot of other teams will be.

The fact that Arteta wants Calafiori despite having Gabriel as their LCB who had a brilliant season must mean that he views him as more of a LB hybrid, surely? Wonder if Maresca thinks the same. He would compete with Cucu & Chilly rather than Colwill & Badiashile. Though I’m still worried about overcrowding in these areas with another player added, if we do push hard for him I wonder if us now having an Italian manager could give us an advantage over Arse. You would think the chance to compete for the PL and UCL titles at Arse would make it a long shot for us.

Never even heard of him up until a few weeks ago. All I know is that he exploded onto the scene this past season.

And Calafiori has had one breakout season for a small Italian club. Not like he automatically starts over the guys we have. Anyways, if we were to sign him I won’t be mad or anything. Just confused as to how Maresca deploys him.

I think Trev will go but he wasn’t going to be competing on the left side anyways. I feel like by the time we could find a buyer for Badiashile or Chilly, Calafiori will be long gone.

Because we’ve already got 2 left footed CB’s and two natural LB’s. Who is getting perma benched if we sign Calafiori? Badiashile, I assume? How are we going to sell him for any decent fee after he’s been rotting on our bench for 6 months or more? Bench Colwill who looks like the ideal Maresca CB? If we were playing a 3 CB system again I’d be all for having as much quality depth as possible. But in a back 4 when we’ve already got 4 solid options for the LCB/LB roles I think buying yet another one of them is too much. If we suddenly sell Badiashile or Chilly then fair play, bring in Calafiori.

Zirkzee is definitely not the striker we need now that Guiu is here and evidently going straight into the first team. With he and Jackson both being pretty raw and inconsistent we need the finished product if we sign another striker and Zirkzee is not that. Jonathan David still makes the most sense.

So then what happens with Cucu and Chilly? We’d have the same issue of overload as we would at LCB. If Chilly were sold I guess it could make sense but there has been no indication at all that he could go. Literally 2 minutes after I posted 🤣🤣🤣

Weird how Guiu apparently completed his medial like a week ago and we’ve heard nothing since.