Superblue

I'd agree but it wouldn't be the first time somebody has really kicked on in their mid 20's. Hopefully there's a couple more gears to come, because that is ultimately what we'll need here. I think his success last season being under the new manager gives me more confidence in him replicating that form, regardless of it being in the Championship, but we'll see.

I've got no problem with a bit of creativity in the away and third kits (I like the badge on that third kit above), but the home kit should be largely untouched. Subtle changes now and again (change the trim between white/black/gold for example) but nothing silly. Our home kits under Nike have been quite frankly pathetic. If they feel the need to make bigger changes each season to justify releasing a new one every year then switch every 2 seasons between the current Chelsea blue and the 70's blue. Just keep the shirts authentic to our club, rather than mocked up by somebody on a week long acid trip.

I'm kind of in the camp where it seems a reasonable deal price wise, but unsure just how good he might be. It comes down to him being able to translate last season's form into the Prem. He certainly seems like he has the right mindset and mentality to do everything he can to achieve that. The one thing I would say about him is his profile is different to the other central midfielders we have in the squad (deceptively nimble and quick dribbler, willing runner beyond the striker, goal threat), so I wouldn't look at whether it's an upgrade, but instead I think it offers a different type of player in the squad which in theory should be a positive.

We were already into the summer when he was appointed. If reports are true, meetings and agreements took place in Spain where I assume he's spending the summer. I assume he's at Cobham this week putting plans in place ready for when players start returning over the coming days, and in this time he'll do media duties for the club. Would expect to see something end of the week or over the weekend and then the club will start spamming social media next week with players returning and training.

I get the thought process behind Calafiori potentially being overkill but he looks a real player and what looks like a more than reasonable price. Sometimes, when fantastic opportunities arise, you just have to take them and worry about the rest afterwards. He looks at a level already better than all of our centre backs, and despite Cucurella's good recent form, he's an upgrade in that LB transitioning into LCB position too. I wouldn't entertain selling Colwill, I think there's much more to come from him. I like Badiashile but if he was sacrificed for someone like Calafiori then so be it. However, I actually think he'd be earmarked for the left back spot if he's expected to tuck in and make a back 3. And I would think Chilwell could be the fall guy under Maresca. Even if he could stay fit, I just don't see where he fits in. He's not good enough defensively and far too attack minded to play at LB and isn't a good option elsewhere. It should be noted that Maresca let some of Leicester's full backs leave last summer who were more 'traditional' full backs. Ricardo Pereira was technically and tactically good enough to transition his role but I don't think Chilwell is.

Will happily sit on the fence regarding Dewsbury-Hall and hope that it works out. I do think he's better technically than he's maybe being given credit for, and could well bring some balance to the squad being a more attacking threat than we already carry from central midfield. The key is has this last season gone in the Championship developed and matured him into a better player who can translate that form into the Premier League. Struggle with the knock on the Championship though, a lot of good talent comes from that league, and there are plenty unhappy that Omari Hutchinson wasn't given an opportunity after his season in the Championship.

That makes sense. I think people sometimes forget just how big Bayern are. Arguably only second to Madrid in Europe.

Not particularly sold on Dewsbury-Hall and struggling in my head to piece together where we're going to fit all of these players in. However, if we're not planning to play a more orthodox attacking player centrally (like Palmer or Nkunku) then we need one of the midfield three to offer a reasonable goal threat. This is where Dewsbury-Hall would make some potential sense within our squad, and even more so having played under the manager last season and understanding that role to run from deep in support of, and at times in behind, our striker. It's difficult to measure his effectiveness last season in the Championship, and how that could be replicated in the Prem, but he does look a more technically proficient player to Gallagher (who is probably the closest currently to him in our squad with regards to a goal threat from midfield) in the attacking third. I did feel at the start of the summer that 2 or 3 quality additions could really kick us on next season, but it's looking more and more likely that it could be another summer of upheaval and high volume.

I know there's a real argument that over a 38 game season, you pretty much deserve to be where you finish. However considering how close it ended up being, it's frustrating that Villa undeservedly took points off us in both games as a result of very debatable VAR decisions.

I think Petrovic would benefit from a loan if he's no longer going to be first choice. He's still very young to really make decisions on him yet, and going out playing regularly for a couple of seasons would hopefully allow us to then make a decision on him at a later date. Perhaps if we're after this keeper from Las Palmas, we could offer them Petrovic on loan in the deal? Sanchez is pretty decent as a backup keeper, he's just not first choice quality. Anything we can do to move Kepa on will be deemed a 'win'.

Like the news coming out today that the club have rejected a number of players being called up to their Olympic squads. Feel a bit for the French boys being a home games, but this coming season is so important to get right after 2 years outside of the top 4. Being reported as a decision heavily influenced by Maresca as he's identified how important pre season will be to implement his ideas, and wants everyone available to partake in it. Very good, strong call.

Like Tosin, this could be a very sensible signing to fill a need in a cost effective manner. We can't continue to spend money like we have over the last 2 years and if there is a player or two we do want to buy which are going to cost a pretty penny this window then we have to learn to get more creative in other areas. The one slight concern is he's in his mid 20's and only played one season of top flight football so was last season simply a purple patch a la Mendy or is he just now showing progression and development which could easily be the case for a 26 year old goalkeeper. For the likely transfer fee he'd be available for, he could well be worth the risk to find out.

Year left on his contract, how much do you think he'd cost?

I think it will take some time to truly bear fruit, but I am glad that the club made a conscious decision to tap the South American market and in particular, challenge Madrid for what are seen as the top talents coming out from there. It's a model that has served them well and they continue to explore and I think it's with good reason. Hopefully we find it to be the same situation over the next couple of years as our signings we've made start filtering into the first team squad here.

I'm disappointed that the club didn't see the benefits in having some stability this coming season by keeping Poch. I think top 4 is very much there for the taking next season, particularly as we only finished 5 points off it this season despite languishing in mid table for much of it. With the rumours of Pep looking likely to leave next summer, we could have been well positioned to potentially benefit from them possibly needing a transition period, and possibly kicked on towards putting a title challenge in. Now by rolling the dice, if this doesn't work out and it's yet another season or two without Champions League football, it'll make things significantly harder than we've already found it. It's a massive risk. I actually think Maresca has the makings of potentially a very good coach, and it's pointless knocking last season. Whether it was expectation or not, he's still won it with 97 points, second highest goals scored and least goals conceded. The quality of their squad and budgets may have suggested they should bounce straight back up, but so should have Leeds with a more experienced manager at the helm and they couldn't. Question marks over experience, but he has more than people like Arteta and Alonso who have proven to be astute choices. Ultimately the biggest thing he needs is time to imprint on this squad, and because of how the ownership have decided to operate over the last couple of years, time is probably the one thing he can't and won't be afforded. I wish him all the best though, and hopefully the gamble pays off, and he'll be a masterstroke appointment.

All this talk and reports of a mystery manager in the running, for me, has to suggest someone who's season hasn't finished yet. Amorim seems the obvious one on this train of thought, with perhaps Terzic as a wildcard.

I posted last week that letting Poch go would be a huge backwards step. It's pretty clear that the squad was fully behind him and with the momentum that had been built in the last few weeks, some stability I think would have had us very much in the top 4, if not top 3 (depending on Liverpool next season) hunt. Now, it feels once again back to the unknown. The list of candidates is underwhelming but other clubs have taken big chances with inexperienced managers previously to good effect, the most obvious recently being Arteta and Alonso, and more famously Pep and Zidane. The biggest difference being that these had top playing career's, but that's no guarantee of translating into a top managerial career. Personally, I'd love to continue tracking Fabregas over the next year or two in the possibility of him being someone to take a risk on similar to those above, which again is part of the reason I'd have preferred us keeping Poch to maintain some needed stability to the club for now. The position we're currently in feels very precarious as to which trajectory, and it's a monumental risk. You just have to hope that they strike gold with who they choose and that risk proves to be a masterstroke in the future. For McKenna who seems to be the most linked currently, what he has achieved over the last two years is incredible. If he can translate that on to a bigger stage then he could well be something very special. He seems the biggest risk on the list, the potentially highest boom and lowest bust, which makes me think he'll be the one they may ultimately plump for.

It would be foolish for the club to discard Poch now for a number of reasons: 1. He appears to have full backing from the whole squad, which for a team that has struggled at times this season, is rare. 2. Everything seems to be finally coming together now the squad is settling and maturing. Our finish to the season, we're not that far off Villa in 4th now. The top 4 is very much there for the taking next season outside of Arsenal and City. Liverpool will be a bit of an unknown entity with the new manager and could fall back into the pack, and I think Villa will struggle to maintain their top 4 position next season. If we keep on the upward trajectory we seem to be on, I don't see no reason why we can't be improving by another 10-15 points next year. 3. What is out there that anybody can be really confident is going to be a sure fire thing and improve on what we have right now. The manager market, on paper, looks so weak that Liverpool have taken a real punt in my opinion with their choice, and the likes of Barca, Bayern and United have already, or look possibly like going to, attempt to retain what they currently have despite relatively modest seasons (or downright pathetic in United's case). 4. When the top managers do become available on the market, we need to look as attractive as possible to them, if we're looking to approach any. That firstly means continuing to kick on and get back into the Champions League, but more importantly, we need to show a lot more stability than we have so far under the current owners. At least under Roman, managers would still be attracted to the job knowing they'd have a nucleus of a side to compete for trophies with, and a Chelsea stint could very well look good on the CV. But with a young, inexperienced squad still very much developing, the short term approach to managers just won't be an attractive proposition for the best ones. I'm obviously not looking right now, but someone I am interested in following is Cesc. Although he's officially an assistant, I think it's widely assumed this is just a work-around for his coaching badges and he has a lot more influence on things at Como that an assistant usually would have. That Spanish generation behind Pep do seem to be a potential hotbed of the next best managers coming through. He's obviously a bit behind the likes of Arteta and Alonso, but I've always felt he's come across incredibly well, very intelligent and likeable, and has had quite the variety of coaches in his career to have picked things up from. The main thing is if somebody like a Cesc were to come through really strongly over the next 2-3 years and was being touted for a big job, we're not going to look attractive to him if we've eaten up Poch and another manager or more in that period.

There seems to be a general laziness and blanket assumptions that Everton's point deductions are a precursor for us and City. Each situation is completely different. With regards to ours, we've already declared to UEFA and settled with them. It wasn't a ridiculous fee that was paid (pretty sure a lot lower than some clubs have been penalised in the past) which would suggest that there were likely some FFP failures but perhaps nothing too excessive. The Premier League P&S rules are more lenient than UEFA FFP (note Everton made losses of more than £300m but under the Premier League P&S rules this loss was reduced down to around £125m), so there has always been a general assumption that if a club is adhering to UEFA FFP, they should automatically pass the Premier League one too. Therefore depending on how extreme these accounting mistakes may be, it might be found that we're still in compliance with the Premier League P&S, and therefore any punishment would only relate to reported mistakes, and having declared them ourselves, the punishment could and should be significantly lower than what Everton have suffered. If we have failed the Premier League P&S then the Everton punishment now sets a precedent. The recent reports regarding Roman paying certain expenses outside of the club so far are nothing more than reports and rumours. I think the ability to prove anything like this, which would involve potentially digging into finances beyond Chelsea, will be much more difficult and long winded. The Premier League confirmed they are currently investigating us the other day, but I think that purely relates currently to the errors we have self-declared and not this matter.

I'm guessing we'll truly never know. The owners will have final say and if they've determined that players need cashing in before they leave for free, then there isn't much the sporting directors can do about that. Similarly, if a directive has been issued for players under a certain age band, then again, it restricts what they can do. The issue is, a number of the players that we did sell in the summer for all sorts of reasons, you'd have to argue were the right decision. Koulibaly wasn't good enough. Kepa the same. The likes of Kova, Mount, RLC all had contracts expiring, and it didn't look like they would resign and we recouped £100+m across them. Unless we'd bitten the bullet with letting any of them leave for free in the summer. There's always been question marks over the likes of Ziyech, Auba, Lukaku over potential negative influences in the squad. Probably the two most arguable that we could have made more effort to retain to offer that experience within the group were Azpi and Kante. Azpi has been on a steep decline in the last year or two, and Kante has had injury issues for years so I can also understand the reluctance in keeping both on big contracts. I completely agree with you though that someone should have pushed harder to get some more experience through the door in the summer or a conscious mind on who we were letting leave. Would it have really interrupted plans if we'd added a couple of players in the 25-28 age bracket who could have come in and immediately influenced the group. For all the money spent on the midfield for example, take Gallagher out and Enzo, Caicedo, Lavia and Ugochukwu have played between them a very small sample of top level games. Too many of this group are building experience together and it's going to mean things take that much longer to turn for the better.

I think the main reason for such a quick turnover has been to change the wage structure/policy at the club. From what it sounds, the wage bill based on basic salaries has been slashed by millions per annum, and all the new players or those signing new contracts have come in line with a much heavier performance related deal that theoretically should mitigate some of the risks for the club of moments like this where we may miss out on European football. I assume they concluded that making such a transition over a period of 2 or 3 seasons could divide the squad where some are still being paid huge salaries on old contracts and others are on lower, performance related deals. But on the flip side they have to accept that turnover so quickly is not going to click into place over night. Even if you threw the best XI players in the world together, you couldn't expect them to immediately play well and dominate immediately. Football requires relationships to be built, understandings of how teammates play, runs they make, etc. It all takes time.

The new directors can't be blamed for the entirety of this as they weren't here last summer when we effectively wasted about £300m of that mark, and the outgoings and fees received this summer go a reasonable way towards bringing the net spend down on this figure, but it is still a huge chunk of cash they've been armed with. The problem is it's pretty clear that the directive given to them was to buy for the future. I think last summers window was an eye opener to the owners at buying older, established players on big wages who go on to not perform. In my opinion this was a wrong move in itself, and a couple more players in their mid-20's should have been added to the group, or more done to keep a couple of the players moved on. Ultimately, it's not fair to pass judgement on the recruitment over the last 2 windows already, despite the lavish outlay, when bar Disasi and Sanchez, the oldest player I think we've bought is 21/22 years old. What I would say is in isolation, a number of the players we've bought do look promising and that they could have big futures here at the club, but collectively as a squad it isn't working yet and I'm not surprised. We've turned over a whole new squad in 18 months bar about 5 players and have very little experience running through the group. We could be looking back in 2 or 3 years time, having high regards for these last couple of transfer windows. I understand the patience within the fans and media will be non-existent when we've spent so much money, but rightly or wrongly the club has bought potential and that isn't going to be realised in a handful of games.

I think this is where I do have a small amount of sympathy with the scouting and recruitment part of the club. I think there's a dearth of real top strikers at their peak currently and even someone like Osimhen is really gaining traction off the back of just one incredible season. With Jackson, a lot of his game is very good for his age. Pace is electric, has a good size and frame he'll fill into, good attitude to press, willing and intelligent runner behind the defence (just needs to refine that a little so he's not offside as often) which provides a completely different dynamic we haven't had. Some of his points are raw and he needs to mature as a player and a person but he does have the makings of becoming a very good player. Ultimately it comes down to trusting in that talent that it can flourish. In an ideal world, we'd have a Giroud type that can be leant on in times of struggle because we have to accept the inconsistent nature of younger players. That's where Lampard in his first stint benefited enormously half way through the season as the results tailed off, he was able to lean more heavily on players like Giroud, Alonso, Jorginho, Pedro, etc who hadn't featured as prominently before. The lack of foresight at the club, in not ensuring there is some more experience in this group of players is astounding. Poch knows it, he's not an idiot.

Haven't been on here for a few weeks but I do think Poch should be afforded some time. I don't think we're playing particularly poor at the moment, and we really should be a few more points better off if we could actually score a goal or two. I can understand the grievances at some of his decisions in personnel but at the very least at present we're very strong defensively. Only City and Liverpool have conceded less goals than us so far, and that side of our game will keep us in matches or help us grind out results over time. It's easy to think letting the handbrake off will suddenly turn us into this free flowing, goal crazy team when that simply won't happen because the whole squad lacks established goal scorers outside of Nkunku. Opening the team up will however leave us significantly more susceptible defensively. When I watch us, it reminds me at present of an international team. A group of talented individuals who are chucked together and expected to perform in sync with one another immediately. There's flashes and periods of promise, but ultimately a frustrating degree of inconsistency. The problem is we're not playing the equivalent of other international teams, and instead much more experienced and drilled teams. From our starting XI against Villa, only Thiago Silva was playing for the club more earlier than last summer. 2 from 15 with Chilwell if you include the subs that came on. That's quite a ridiculous player turnover that won't be afforded the time and patience it requires because of the money spent on doing so. Having that many new players and a new manager put together isn't going to click this quickly. We could very easily have another season of frustration and mid table mediocrity, but at some point the owners, directors, etc are going to have to clench their teeth and put some faith into the decisions they have made. There's clearly been a long term plan in mind with the investment in players made, so there should also be no surprise that long term plan isn't ripping up trees 5 games and 2 months in. They've already made a huge backtrack so early on by dismissing Potter, if they were going to cut Poch short, then it's going to make things incredibly difficult moving forward with regards to the ability to attract the right people to the club. It's easy to forget how much of a banter club Arsenal were for the first 12-18 months under Arteta, and in fairness to the higher ups there, they held on to their beliefs and are in a much better position now as a result. The biggest issue right now for Poch is the lack of experience within that group of players. It's clear when things aren't going well as they are currently, that the players need that touch of experience to calm situations or make decisions in a clinical nature. If we don't get a goal in the first half hour, it just feels that we're simply not scoring today and as a result naturally the opposition grow in confidence and stature themselves. He's looking to the bench to draw inspiration and again, it's littered with young players being burdened with huge responsibility and pressure to come on and change games. I do believe there will be a time or moment when it just clicks because there is a lot of potential and raw talent in the group of players we have. Present Liverpool or City with those chances we had today and they'd be 2 or 3 goals up on Villa and manage the game to victory. We'll have the odd games where it will happen and everything will go in, but unfortunately at present we'll have inconsistencies too.

The homegrown part is a nice little bonus but with the way homegrown status works, alongside England as a nation having a pretty deep pool of players currently both at senior and youth level, I actually think it relates more to trying to buy players from other premier league clubs, irrespective of English/HG status. When the lower table sides in the league and even some Championship clubs have far bigger budgets and revenues than some pretty historic teams around Europe, it speaks volumes for the money swirling around in this country and as a result some of the 'smaller' clubs can quote hugely inflated prices for their best players.