Superblue

Welcome back Willian

I'd personally love Chelsea to take the lead in any potential negotiations and make an offer for Coutinho that included Willian in the deal.

I like him, I think his game has come on a lot since moving to West Ham and being played centrally, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him take his game to another level playing in a better team around better players. But I don't think he's worth the type of money that West Ham will want and it would be a massive risk. Ultimately I think he's the type of player if we wanted him, we should have taken the risk on him when he left Stoke. But I don't think he was as good then as he is now, and was utilised differently.

It shouldn't really be factored in but the price of buying a player will have a significant impact on some of these decisions I believe. You mentioned Mendy at City in a previous post, but City paid about £50m for him. He was brought to be first choice and even coming back from injury was still deemed as the first choice player for them. Also Guardiola brought him and by the time he came back from injury Guardiola was still at City. Zouma was purchased for a much lower fee and played his way into the first team as opposed to being brought as first choice. He'd also not been playing for that long as first choice so he was hardly established in that position. Add to that we changed manager during that time who would have his own ideas and philosophy (and bearing in mind Conte's change to 3 at the back was a huge tactical shift away from Mourinho), it was always likely to be in Zouma's best interests to go out on loan and play his way back to full fitness under much less pressure. I think it was right to take Christensen out of the firing line at the end of last season and to be fair Cahill came in and actually played pretty well. Christensen is still very much part of the squad, he's hardly been frozen out but he's currently third choice and I would say for now rightfully so because he's not currently as good as Rudiger and Luiz. If he has the right character and mentality he'll see that Luiz won't be here forever (maybe not even beyond the season) and if he works hard and applies himself there could be an opening that he can take advantage of, like he did last season when Luiz fell out of favour with Conte.

He looks like he would offer a bit more offensively than Jorginho just watching some of the videos. He looks a very firm striker of the ball. I haven't really seen him play before so for those that have a better idea of him than I do: 1. Is he only really capable of playing the Jorginho role, or would he be capable of also being able to play either of the midfield positions ahead? 2. What is his defensive ability in that deeper role? What is his mobility and athleticism in comparison to Jorginho? 3. What were the reasons behind him leaving Roma for Zenit? I know players will make such moves but it does seem a backwards step certainly for a younger player and I vaguely remember him being highly rated and linked with some good clubs during his time at Roma.

Plenty of players we've missed out on before to so called lesser clubs and we too have won the race to sign players over the likes of Barcelona in the past. There could be many factors. Perhaps he'll prefer to play in England, we may offer better wages, sell him a better project, etc.

I would always be apprehensive spending big money on a player after their first big season after what happened with Bakayoko.

Class stuff from the club and speaks volumes of the character and personality he likely was off the pitch. Players that show the respect our great club deserves and a desire to fight for the badge will always be shown great admiration and affection from the club and us fans. Take notes Thibaut.

I would expect a heavy proportion of those incentives and clauses are based on Monaco avoiding relegation.

He'll make a huge difference for Monaco.

Yeah, I can understand that argument. I just think a lot of these stats are just filler and can be deceptive and just find it rather ironic that the same sort of stats that people churn out to try and argue when Hazard has been poor, Willian is similarly excelling in and being slagged to death, and for the most part it's probably justified because he has been poor this season in my opinion. I'm also with you on set pieces, I think his corners in particular have been mostly poor this season. But if a lot of his key passes come from set pieces either (1) god knows how bad the rest of the league's set piece takers must be, and (2) without him it could be argued that we would miss those set piece 'key passes' (despite on the face of things being overall poor)

Apparently Willian has made 49 key passes this season in the Premier League. Only Hazard (57) and Fraser (50) have made more. I just thought I'd put this out there as I find it quite an interesting stat. I agree with the general consensus that Willian has played poorly this season, but stats like this would suggest that he still offers a very creative output. After all, these are the sort of stats people churn out for Hazard when he has had seemingly poor games or poor runs of form, to argue or justify otherwise.

I understand. More just a general rant from me because I know a lot of people look at transfers that way and at times it seems our current board do too. I would never want the club to piss money against a wall with no care in the world, but I think every player/deal should be viewed and treated in isolation rather than a blanket treatment. The same goes for one year contracts once a player turns 30. Again, I wouldn't expect the club to start handing out 3 or 4 year contracts to a 31 year old but if a player is important and shown no signs of decline to that point then a two year contract or year with option for an extra year based on appearances should never be dismissed.

I must admit I hate the idea that the ability to re-sell in a few years time is a big reason to go and buy a player. I can understand what you're saying and the thought process that if a player flopped he'd probably be easier to move on and hopefully still get a reasonable fee back. It's an added bonus if it ever happened in the future but a transfer in my opinion should never be viewed in that way. If a club views a player is worth said amount of money regardless of age, ability to re-sell, etc then that should be enough. I can't see Ronaldo going for very much after his Juventus move, if anything at all. But if he helps Juventus win more trophies over the next couple of seasons and in particular plays a big part in them managing to conquer Europe then his purchase will be worth it. Two players in the same situation spring to mind when it comes to Chelsea. Zola joined at the age of 30 for what was a big outlay at the time. I can safely say being at Wembley in 97 to win the FA Cup was worth every penny of his transfer fee. The other is Makelele who was over 30 and signed for big money in what was considered an 'unfancied' position of the pitch and he was key in the initial trophy laden Mourinho era. Again well worth the outlay.

What I would say with Higuain is in my opinion he's a huge upgrade on the shell we have with Morata at the moment and he's a far more clinical and threatening striker than Giroud. He is the sort of player that I think will stand up to be counted, fight for the cause and never shirk his responsibilities leading the line. I think his passion and desire can be infectious for both the fans and the team after watching Morata for the last 18 months and our squad at the moment could always do with another player with a leader like mentality. With the other reasonable options being touted this month, I do think a short term deal for Higuain is our best option presently.

It's plausible if they were as keen on him in the summer as has been reported, because Malcolm hasn't done much for them. If they only need to add a few extra million on top of their outlay of Malcolm in the summer they may look at it as a good deal to get the player that they really preferred last window.

Yeah you would but there could be so many different variables to injuries - coaching, training conditions (including recovery, etc), pitch quality, bad tackles. Chelsea have had seasons where we've had an excellent injury record and then seasons where we seem to be stretched to the brink without huge amounts changing. I know that a lot of players in England will play with knocks and niggling injuries a lot of the time, so not sure if you're stats are based on long term injuries, or include short terms injuries (a player out for a week or two). Not to mention how each individual player is. Lampard played a ridiculous amount of games every season and very rarely got injured. Robben struggled to play 5 games in a row for us and didn't like playing unless he felt fully fit.

The problem in England now is there are six 'big' teams now challenging for the Champions League spots. That's 10 games a season, over a quarter of the league season spent playing against direct rivals for the league; games that could have huge ramifications on league standings at the seasons end. To make matters even worse for Chelsea, based in London we have numerous London derbies which may not seem quite as significant to us, but are huge games for the opposition. So over half our season is made up of matches against title rivals and derbies. The relentless pressure just to get in the top 4 makes it incredibly difficult to rest players even against the lesser sides who all spend pretty big sums of money themselves - Fulham are in the relegation zone and spent the best part of £100m in the summer. I'm not going to argue over whether the Premier League is a more technical league, etc but I don't see another top league in the world played at the intensity and frenetic pace that a lot of games in England are played like.

All of us though can pinpoint 3 or 4 players that could be shipped out and don't really need replacing within the squad (Cahill, Drinkwater, Moses for starters) so I can understand that comment. In an ideal world you'd have 22 players, two for every position. The quality of some of your first team, let alone backups is questionable so again it boils down to Sarri trusting that group of say 21, 22 players that he could put any combination in and still be confident there was sufficient quality to try and get a result. At the moment I don't think that trust is there, but it is improving.

The issue comes down to what it has been all season which is trust and faith by the manager. I've mentioned in previous posts why I can understand Sarri trusting in Willian and Pedro over CHO so far, But similar to RLC, it seems that in time he is trusting him a lot more. All being equal, Sarri will be here next season with four wide players to use and choose from regularly and CHO would be one of those. I think he is also starting to realise just how much more intense it is playing in England and the volume of games bunched together compared to Italy and the need to rotate and keep some players fresh is vitally important. We are still talking about an 18 year old. If he did stay at Chelsea, I don't see why by the end of the season he won't have played 15-20 games for Chelsea this season. That's a real solid number and a great starting point to build upon. The club will always be looking to maintain a challenge for everything domestically and playing in Europe. There's a lot of games available and next season I don't see why he can't push on to 25-30 games and keep progressing as such.

Certainly for Chelsea fans, and we'd like to hope our board are thinking the same too, there is added importance with CHO. I don't know how much you're aware but our academy has been dominant for a number of years, breaking numerous records and being a complete step ahead of everybody else - yet we're not getting any players through into our first team to show for this. John Terry was our last real academy graduate that became a fully fledged first choice player for the club. We now have a couple in the squad and on the fringes of the first team in Loftus-Cheek and Christensen but we really need a player that is going to break that wall down because I think a lot of people believe that once one makes it through and is successful, there's a higher chance more will follow. CHO is that player that most people have hung their hat on to get established in the first team over the next season or two. That is why I think you'll find for us it's more than the money. Of course we can find someone to replace him and we've already splashed out on Pulisic to come in next season too. But I think if Chelsea gave up this without a fight and sold him it could have a knock on effect with other top academy prospects if one of the 'stars' is allowed to leave.

I completely understand from your position but from ours £35m isn't huge money and worse still £15m + add ons would struggle to buy top championship players nowadays. If the papers are to be believed we're getting quoted in excess of £50m for calum Wilson and marko arnautovic.

At the very least this looks like Chelsea will do the absolute most they can do before giving in and letting CHO go.

The biggest differences with Sancho is that he moved with very little fanfare and expectation. He had a whole season last year to grow, adapt (very important this especially for a player so young and let's be honest us English are not the greatest race for adapting to new cultures and languages) and develop behind other players. This season Dortmund are reaping the benefit but even at the start of this season he still wasn't expected to be a starter so it's been a pleasant surprise. If CHO takes this move he'll be expected to hit the ground running. I wonder if Sancho would have been as successful if he had been chucked in immediately last season expected to work wonders. And that is at Dortmund which is not the same level as Bayern. Here at Chelsea he'll have far less expected of him by us fans and be given the benefit of the doubt when he does have poor games, makes mistakes, dips in form, etc. I cannot see him getting that if he moves to Bayern for that much money.

I'm not going to get involved in anymore arguing over how Bayern are interpreted but I think you'll find that quite a lot of non Bayern fans have the same viewpoint whether you want to admit it or not. My feeling is that CHO isn't yet good enough to play for Bayern. He has more than enough potential to become a star but I honestly don't understand the lure for him to go to Bayern given the options they already have in the wide areas (even once Robben and Ribery have left) and it's very possible they'll look to replace those two players with a real top winger in the summer. This would leave 3 or 4 players fighting for the other spot. If he's been promised a certain amount of game time by Bayern I think that it's also a silly move for him. He'll be under immense pressure given the price tag and the hype around him rather than being given the chance to develop and learn he'll be expected to perform immediately which I'm not sure if he's yet ready for that level of expectation from a team expected to win everything domestically and challenge deep in Europe. With the greatest respect if this was a team like Leipzig or Leverkusen the next level down I think it would be a good move for him to learn his trade and develop at a slower rate without the number of eyes and expectation on him immediately. But at present I struggle to see Bayern being a better option than Chelsea where he is on the cusp of playing regularly already at the age of 18. We too have two ageing wide players and the other a superstar likely to leave in the summer. The opportunity I believe is here for him if he wants/wanted it.