Pizy

—————-Sanchez—————— Gusto——Fofana———Colwill ————Lavia———Cucu_———- ———KDH_————-Enzo———— Madueke——————————Mudryk ——————Guiu_————————

This XI from Maresca looks like a “let me have one last look in preseason at a few of these players” sort of team. Specifically, this is one last chance to impress from Sanchez, Mudryk, Guiu, and Fofana before we start making some decisions about if some of them will be sold/loaned/benched. Some expected him to just go with our strongest possible XI as a proper warm up for next week but he clearly wants another look at some of these guys. So people shouldn’t freak out if we lose again since this absolutely isn’t our best XI.

Watching several Chelsea YouTubers and all over Chelsea Twitter a lot of them seem to feel that Osimhen would come here and put up numbers like RVP when he went to United, Haaland at City, or Suarez & Salah at Liverpool. Like 25-30 PL goals and 40-50 across all comps. But I don’t think he’s anywhere near that level. That’s why I’m glad the club isn’t just going “fuck it” and spending mega money on him. Be nice to have for £50m + Lukaku or on loan with buy obligation for something reasonable like £50-60m.

Yeah, that one spectacular season where he spearheaded Napoli’s title win a couple of years ago has kind of skewed the general PL fan into thinking Osimhen is someone he isn’t in reality. He’s an amazing poacher and can definitely score a lot of “fox in the box” type goals and he’s really good in the air. But as you say, he isn’t a Kane at his best who is not merely finisher but also a playmaker. And he’s also not one of those #9’s that’s going to score loads of unbelievable bangers from crazy angles or from outside the box like an RvP/Luis Suarez/Sergio Aguero. I think if he came to the PL he’d be much like Haaland but not quite as good. Someone who scores all the easy chances when they come to him but he isn’t going to be involved much throughout many matches in terms of general play.

Most of the big teams don’t really have a burning need for a super expensive #1 striker at the moment. City are set there, Bayern are set there, Barca are, Real Madrid don’t even play with a traditional striker, and United have Hojlund + Zirkzee now. That really just leaves PSG and ourselves as well as Arse as a dark horse. I don’t think big teams are staying away because they don’t rate him highly, it’s just bad timing for a marquee striker to be available. Well, that plus his huge wages.

Man, I hope the Osimhen stuff doesn’t drag until the deadline. If the club still wants another striker after Omorodion but are refusing to pay Osimhen’s wages then just move on ASAP to the next target. Ordinarily, you’d think this would be a super simple deal to get done. We have someone Napoli’s manager desperately wants, that player badly wants to go there, and Napoli have something we really want which is an undisputed number 1 striker. I don’t think the transfer fee is much of an issue any longer because Napoli have significantly lowered their asking price by all accounts. So this big holdup has to be our club desperately trying to get Osimhen to lower his wage demands to something they deem reasonable. What we absolutely DON’T want is this dragging all the way to the deadline, having no real fall back option, and then PSG or Arse jump in and snag him.

More and more grateful everyday that we bought Malo Gusto. Reece’s body type is just not meant to hold up in elite sport I think. The thick, stocky, muscular body type seems prone to injuries. Same thing happening with Luke Shaw.

City apparently tried for Pedro Neto at the last moment. I believe it, too. He’d have been a great signing for them just as he would be for any of the big clubs. They were gonna use that Alvarez money.

The Osimhen stuff still hasn’t gone away. The English side of the reporting keeps insisting that we want him on loan and the Italian side keeps insisting that a loan is not possible. I wonder if the club is hoping that Napoli blink first and agree to some sort of swap deal. It’s really risky because if Napoli get tired of waiting for us to lower Lukaku’s price and move on to another target it would REALLY screw us over. Because he seems like the kind of asshole who would be perfectly fine sitting out 6 months if he doesn’t get the move he wants and refusing to go anywhere else other than Napoli.

Matt Law’s hit pice about Chalobah and others being “banished and barred” from the first team is having just the effect I figured it would. Loads of prominent Chelsea content creators and other football journalists calling the club a “disgrace” and other things like this is something that no other club does.

The Kellyman deal from a pure monetary POV never made sense. Never mind whether he’s good or not. When you spend 5 or 10 million on some young talent it’s easy to turn around and flip an easy profit on them if they are merely okay on loan. But when we spend almost TWENTY million like we did on Kellyman he’s going to have to absolutely kill it out on loan for any other club to want to pay more than what we bought him for. He’ll have to perform like Gallagher did at Palace, Omari Hutchinson did last season, or Reece did when he was on loan. Basically the loaning club’s player of the season. Otherwise we’re taking a big loss on him. It’s called buy low, sell high for a reason. You’re taking a huge risk by buying high like we did.

These sensationalized reports about us “barring” or “banishing” players from the main group is so dumb. It’s like they’re desperate to create anger and unrest amongst the fanbase for clicks. Is it not pretty common for players who will be sold or loaned to be in a separate group? This happens at every club. These reports make it sound like Chalobah is that loser trying to get into the nightclub and the bouncer out front pushed him away and prevented him from entering. In reality, the club probably just told him “we’re looking to get the best move for you so it would be best if you train over here.”

Man, there’s a guy who uploaded footage of Pedro Neto against individual teams from this past season which I just got through watching. He is an absolute bastard to play against. Caused massive headaches and ran all over ourselves, Spuds, and United. He attracts so much attention when he’s on the ball. In the Spuds match in particular he is playing on the LW so you can get a good look at what I hope we can expect from him. Looks perfectly comfortable there. He essentially looks like the exact sort of player we HOPED Mudryk would be when we bought him. A really aggressive, really quick, really tricky winger who is a pain in the ass for the opposition to deal with. He looks like someone who would’ve been a Jürgen Klopp dream signing if he had stayed at Liverpool this summer. All comes down to whether he can stay on the pitch as we’ve all been saying.

Insane money for a pure penalty box only finisher. You can go outside of the PL and get someone with Solanke’s characteristics for a fraction of this price. I’d be incredibly pissed off if we spent this much on him. He’ll probably do pretty well for them but still, crazy money. May not be advisable to start such an attacking team when our defense is currently struggling. I think all 3 of Caicedo, Enzo, and Lavia need to start and we pack the midfield for more security.

With his age and relatively low wages Mudryk will probably be much easier to move than Sterling. If someone is genuine interested in Raheem we need to bite their hand off at the first opportunity. Like Lukaku, his monster wages off our books is all that matters. Don’t care about the fee.

I think Paez & Estevão are such outrageous talents that they will be definite successes for us. To already be playing against grown men and looking great is what gives me that confidence. They have genuine “generational” talent. I think Anselmino’s physical characteristics should translate well to PL/European footy as well. All the other “wonder kids” we’ve hoarded recently I think could go any way. No real expectations that any of them will blow up into superstars.

Yeah, in theory Sterling should really excel in this new system since he played for Pep. If he ever hits some consistent form he’d be a useful squad player. Trouble is he looks like he’s barely ever bothered. He looks like the classic case of a player who has accomplished everything, won everything, got his massive fortune in the bank already, and is now just coasting. Mudryk is just a massive flop, I finally have to admit. I have been one of the last on the “he could still come good” bandwagon but it just appears like he’s destroyed mentally.

Sterling is probably impossible to move with his monster wages. I think our only salvation from that contract is a Saudi club. There would surely be quite a few smaller/traditionally midtable PL clubs that would love someone with his experience if he’d agree to a huge wage cut. But why would he do that?

I agree with everyone who is being cautious. It’s definitely a wait and hope for the best sort of signing before getting too excited. His qualities if he can stay fit are exactly what you want from a PL wide player, though. The most important of which is his aggression and desire to get on the ball and just run at defenders. Much like Madueke but much quicker. Cautiously optimistic. What we should have here that Wolves didn’t is quality depth options to rotate Neto. Perhaps we can protect him from injury risk by not putting massive minutes in his legs.

The brief from all the journalists for weeks now has been that we wanted a striker and a wide player before the end of the window and it turned out to be true. Samu and Neto. But those same journalists ALSO have been saying that even if Samu is brought in that we shouldn’t rule out getting Osimhen as well. If that happens then surely all of the negativity will cease at least for a little while? Anyways, we have to start selling and loaning players urgently. We have like 60 players! It’s time to trim, trim, trim!

Kinda funny that 1) all the talk for like the past month since we missed out on Olise was that we had switched instead to a right footed winger who plays on the left side and 2) that we were able to wrap up this super expensive deal without a whisper until it was basically done. How the hell was this kept 100% secret? Wasn’t even brought up as a possibility by any journalist. Could it be that this came together after the Real Madrid game where Maresca hated what he saw from Mudryk and Sterling? That could explain why nobody knew ahead of time. This could’ve been a urgent request from Enzo so he’d be ready for the City game. But now I’m wondering what the idea is for him as he looks to be strictly a RW who loves cutting inside and shooting with his left foot. But that’s where I figured Cole was a lock and we have Madueke who has been getting better and better.

Surely this signing spells the end of one of our current wide players? Either Sterling or Mudryk have to go or one of them is never seeing the pitch.

Spuds fans are in absolute meltdown, btw. Apparently they had been working on this transfer all summer long and he was their #1 top target.

Jesus. That’s Wes Fofana like.

Very direct, very dangerous wide player. But am I mistaken or hasn’t he been injury prone these last couple of years?