Superblue

Agreed it's easy to say this should have come up in any due diligence but it doesn't always work like that. We've seen in recent times a lot of cases involving sexual harassment, assault, etc don't come out until a good time later. Boehly has clearly acted swiftly and correctly on the situation regardless how much embarrassment it may look to be getting rid of someone within a few weeks. There has been talk that they want to build a new culture within the club and this does show a transparency and willingness from the new ownership that they won't tolerate such behaviour, even if it didn't even occur during their employment at the club. You have to tip your hat to them in this situation that they've done the right thing. I'm surprised this doesn't spotlight City more as this took place under their watch.

Can't really blame the owners for what appeared to be chaos just enquiring about huge numbers of players. A lot of this work is done over months of preparation and discussions outside of the transfer window. Boehly/Clearlake are coming in with none of this and so those levels of enquiries, bids made in discretion, etc are being done very much in the public picture at a time where clubs, agents, etc love to stir the pot and get the rumour mill working to their own benefits. We moved on Koulibaly pretty quickly to be honest, it was only really the Fofana move that took time but then again it was the most expensive transfer and Leicester seem to have climbed down on their initial price (original talk was closer to £100m) so I can understand the time spent negotiating that deal. I think the situation with Fofana is probably a similar one to what we may have had enquiring about Rice, he was a longer-term target considered out of reach currently. As the summer unfolded and Leicester's financial situation became apparent, a window opened slightly and the club then decided to pursue that, rightly in my opinion. We can all debate our own thoughts on Fofana, but if he was one of the club's big long term targets to bring in and we could get him now it was worth pursuing at the cost of walking away from someone like Kounde which seems to be what we did, albeit at a huge price. Those days of picking up a deal like you mentioned are few and far between now. As an example, Zouma was more experienced, despite being not too dissimilar in age when we bought him from Saint Etienne, compared to Saliba and Fofana when they were both sold for 3 times the price. That inflation in the market just in the last 3 - 5 years has been quite insane. Targets that were once snips at £10-20m are now in the £25-40m bracket now. It poses a much bigger issue on the grander scale but ultimately anyone that we're probably picking up now that is under £20-30m and can perform probably needs viewing in the same way we look back at the likes of Azpi and Ivanovic signings from the past.

I'd argue that Carney is better suited to a more advanced role, maybe even that number 10 position Havertz lined up in during the week.

Based on some of those on your lists in the wide and attacking positions I definitely think Sterling enters that same conversation but on the grander scheme you're right. Compare that to 12-15 years ago when we probably had bare minimum 8 - 10 players that would have been bracketed like that. I don't even want to be paying big money for some of those players anyway. Most of our big buys end up complete busts anyway. I'd much rather start seeing more considered and measured signings in the future. I'm not necessarily against any of the players we signed this summer but besides Sterling, we've probably overpaid on the rest. It was a difficult situation this summer and I can understand what we've done and why we've done it but moving forward it's completely unsustainable dropping a couple of hundred million each summer. We've got some good components within the squad but are missing in a couple of key areas that could really transform us from struggling to make top 4 currently, to comfortably making it which should be the first aim before we have aspirations of catching City. I just hope we get things in place as soon as possible to support the new manager moving forward. If he's given time, great but he also needs the right support too and that's not just in transfer budgets.

To be honest I'm fed up with this narrative of having huge sums of money to spend and throw at the team. If the owners are serious about a long term plan then you have to start somewhere and be willing to follow through when times are hard. This isn't new, the club has tried to do this before with the appointments of people like AVB, Sarri and Lampard where we've looked to change the style or culture away from something that has served us well over the years but shown signs of going stale. However as soon as things became difficult the club always pushed the panic button and reverted to type. This ownership need to not only rebuild the whole structure, but then give it time and space to bear fruit. From what is being reported they are willing to do this, and we have no track record to suggest they won't so can only hope. Forget the big name signings, we need to be targeting the next big thing and getting them on board. That period where we scouted and recruited the likes of Azpi, Hazard, Oscar, De Bruyne, Courtois, Lukaku, Salah over a short period was a real golden situation which we completely wasted. I want to see us pluck a couple of signings like that where most of us who aren't named @Vespersay 'who's that?!' but once they're here we can all see how they fit like a glove in our team. I have high hopes over Slonina from what I've seen of him. Hopefully we get a couple more similar to that to start rebuilding back up because there is no quick fix here. I personally think Potter needs at least this season and next to sort this squad, weed out those not good enough to be here, and make a couple of key, intelligent signings in critical positions on the pitch. The links to the likes of Campos and the Salzburg Director of Football for me are positive because they've been used to working from stricter and tighter budgets and still unearthing gems. For me we need that as a fresh approach more than someone armed with hundreds of millions just going immediately to the top aisle to shop.

I really hope we see a bit of Zakaria soon. If he's another Saul fair enough, but his profile is different, I don't expect to see him struggling with the pace and certainly not the physicality in the league. He feels like a natural fit with the current players we have to slot in when Kante isn't playing so we still have a solid midfielder in the centre to help break things up.

For me he has to work on the intensity we play at when we have the ball. We've got caught into a cycle where we dominate possession game after game without doing nearly enough with the ball. It goes back and sideways far too often and recycled to the other side of the pitch and back again. Too many players take one or two too many touches on the ball for us to be penetrable and far too many times players have the opportunity to cut a player or two out and just pass direct to a team mate in space to get the ball up the pitch quicker and choose not to. I genuinely think it's a confidence thing more than anything. Whilst we were never an expansive team under Tuchel, up to December/January last year we did play with more intensity and more 'zip' in our game. Since then it's just become far too safe and slow. Too many players seem content to play within themselves and not enough are willing to take responsibility. I hate to admit it too but when you have Kovacic struggling for full fitness and Kante never seemingly fit, you lose so much drive through the middle of the pitch. For me that has to be the priority moving forward, to find players to rebuild that midfield. I'd happily take our possession stats dropping a couple of percent if it meant us trying to force the ball up the pitch in a more direct manner at times, or someone being willing to take on a shot in and around the box. I genuinely think Potter will get a tune in time out of the squad, and it might take just a gradual build up of steady results to rebuild what seems a really fragile confidence amongst the group but at present he does have a tall order on his hands.

Definitely set up and operated in a back 3 with Cucurella on the left, and James and Sterling on the flanks. Sterling operated essentially as a winger instead of a wing back much in the same way he used to utilise Trossard at Brighton. He even discussed the formation after the game and confirmed the plan to play as a 3. I think he went with experience of Azpi and Silva and with Cucurella it was using someone he already knew and could trust. Moving forward if we continue in a back 3, Fofana for me is a must in the RCB role to be playing regularly but for tonight's game I can fully understand the defenders he picked. Tuchel did similar in his first game against Wolves, going with experience and remember that game wasn't great either. I think we need a win or two just to build up a bit of confidence. Not really sure if the international break comes at the right time for us and Potter to step back and plan things out a bit with some time to do so, or if he could have done with a few games in quick succession to try and build some consistency and confidence within the camp.

Surprised people can see a lot of positives in the attacking play tonight. I thought we were overall pretty poor again tonight, it's just so slow and ponderous far too often, I find myself literally screaming at them for some urgency. I thought once we scored the goal there might be a reaction but it's back to a lax approach again and ultimately as usual we're punished by their one real chance. But really we should be doing far more to get a second goal and kill the game off. I point absolutely no fingers at Potter, he's been here literally days but tonight should highlight to him just what a job he has on his hands where expectations are high but the mentality running throughout the squad is abysmal.

Guess our players can't be bothered with a new manager bounce then.

I think you have to take our situation with a bit of context this summer. In that interview he actually mentioned it was quite the learning curve for him this summer dealing with agents, language barriers, currencies, and essentially what is a completely unregulated market. I think he's done the best he could possibly do this summer in a situation which was always going to be incredibly difficult to navigate. Whatever people's thoughts are on the decision to sack Tuchel, he's made that big decision to bring in his own man and I expect in the coming weeks and months he's going to also bring in others to fulfil roles inside the club. This sporting director role won't be his in the long term, but I actually think it's an incredible learning curve that he's had to take on this summer which will actually benefit him and his understanding of things moving forward. The mention of the All Star game is obviously going to be very subjective but it was on the back of him discussing the MLB All Star game this year that grossed in circa $200m. He used that as a comparison to suggest why couldn't the Premier League create something similar to help with supporting the footballing pyramid in this country. For me personally, I'd sack the Community Shield off which has easily run its course in recent times and trial something like this in that week before the season opener as a way to start the season still in pre season. Or if traditionalists want to keep the Community Shield going, why don't they have a weekend whereby there is this game on the one day and the Shield the next day or day before. To make something like this a much fairer situation, you could create 2 squads of 22 players each from 10 clubs (or 9 if the Community Shield is played) and you must pick at least 2 from each club and no more than 3 players so no one team is having to over represent with their players. I'm not saying it's full proof and a guaranteed success but is it really that much of a stupid idea to warrant such a response from the British media. Funnily enough this afternoon the likes of Sky Sports and others have tweeted out brainstorming what players would make up a North and South team in mock lineups. That enough suggests there's some intrigue attached to the idea. Similarly with the comment regarding relegation, I'm not necessarily for it but it would be a huge watch if you had the bottom 4 teams play off at the end of the season and the winner stays up. Is it any different to the play offs in the Championship to get promoted where you regularly see a team hit form late on and sneak 6th position and come up over a team that is consistently in the top 3 all year? A number of other leagues in Europe have some sort of play off fixture for relegation purposes too so the idea of him coming over and trying to create an American revolution like assault on the Premier League seems quite frankly nothing more than xenophobic from the media today.

Is there rules regarding how many players you can loan out to one team? I think in time if you have 2 or 3 clubs across some different leagues it waters down such a notion that it's just a reserve team for us. For me, I understand the concept behind still having an element of control over players development. It also not just creates pathways for players but also coaches and other roles within a football club for people to go and gain experience at a smaller club. The idea really pushes the idea of self sufficiency to be able to promote from within and like you mentioned above, to take potential advantage of scouting and signing up players within an ecosystem where the end target is that person eventually being polished enough to be working at Chelsea. I actually think on paper it makes a huge amount of sense in the grand scheme of growing the football club and Chelsea 'brand' in general but it's not an overnight process, would take potentially years to get to where I think they have it in mind ending up.

Really? I haven't seen any interviews he's given since buying Chelsea. There's been lots of stories to digest and he's obviously been front and centre for pictures with new signings, etc. Is that any different to when the club did the same with Marina and a new signing or manager? He's hardly come out and had multiple interviews with the club or media outlets, if anything I'd have liked by now for him to have had a proper sit down interview for Chelsea fans to understand why he bought the club and his vision, goals, etc. I thought the points he made were pretty good. It's easy to pick things out in isolation and take them completely out of context to make it sound like he's coming into the Premier League to try and change things and revolutionise it but he's merely throwing out suggestions. The funny thing is the furore caused about the North vs South suggestion was on the back of him discussing how important the football pyramid and ecosystem is, particularly in England and was mentioning it as a way to raise money to help with the funding for said pyramid. Easy to criticise an idea or concept but of all the critics, I haven't seen one offer an alternative solution to helping that same football pyramid and ecosystem.

Disagree, everything has to evolve in time, whilst you can still respect and observe traditional aspects. Note that if you thought in that way, we wouldn't have the Premier League right now. I actually think it's quite a novel idea if it's marketed correctly like the Americans do with the Pro Bowl and All Stars games they promote in their sports. There's always been a wider rivalry between north and south and for years people have 'built' mock teams like that and how would they fare against each other. The hardest aspect is actually fitting it into a calendar which is already jam packed. It would probably have to be an opener in pre season rather than a closer at the seasons end. Personally I'd rather see an idea like this than the Community Shield which is nothing more than a glorified friendly anyway.

The problem with Kante is his wages. If he wanted a 3 year contract but his wages were incentivised through his productivity and amount of games he was playing, I'd be inclined to keep him but I assume he wouldn't be entertaining a drop in wages, or at the very least a substantial one. As good as Kante has been and arguably still is, we cannot justify having one of, if not the highest earner playing no more than 50% of the games and probably needing to be managed from here on in during his career when he is fit. Retiring from international duty after the World Cup I think would be a big help to him trying to prolong his career at the top level.

Revolutionised is a very strong word, but in my opinion we certainly needed a fresh approach to how we've been operating in recent times. Without the financial advantages we once had and the team built in Jose's first term slowly breaking up, our standards have certainly slipped and become far more inconsistent for a decade now. The two Champions League wins are phenomenal but ultimately paper over cracks with our inability to challenge for the league year on year which should always have been the minimum aim. That aim in recent seasons has now dropped to top 4. In a 7 year period from 2012 - 2018 we won the league twice but also finished outside the top 4 three times. Since 2019 onwards we've got into the top 4 but been a country mile away from a title challenge. It's easy to argue that we're in a period against Klopp and Pep but the warning signs were apparent before they came into the league. I can't see a situation where the club would have made drastic changes to recruitment and scouting models, ideas to grow the brand and financial model, etc. It would have been very much "same old". I wouldn't be surprised with our start if Tuchel wasn't close to being sacked by the old ownership and we'd have likely ended up with Poch in a rinse and repeat effort. I've championed the club "do better" with their scouting and recruitment and find players before they make that move before they usually are targeted by us. With a longer term plan and strategy in place these players can be bought in and potentially loaned out or sit in behind a more senior player before making the natural progression. For me, being able to identify talents at this stage alongside our academy has to be our advantage over other teams. Particularly as unlike sides like Dortmund, Porto, etc we're in a much stronger position to hold on to these players and get the best years out of them. I feel with this ownership and the moves they are looking to make, the moves they are looking to make are risky to move away from the previous model but necessary and if they prove successful should ensure a more sustained period of success for the club than we've become accustomed to for the last 10+ years.

I'm not going to argue that the football has been a hard watch for a good while now. Could forgive the back end of last season as the feeling and mood around the club was so low, I've never personally experienced it myself where I was literally begging and looking forward to the season finishing and taking a break over the summer from worrying about football. But unfortunately that has continued so far this season. However, there are sometimes things that go beyond the simple win-loss record and attractive football. Last season the situation in Ukraine (wrongly) left us toxic and open to quite frankly some of the most disgraceful reporting I've ever seen of complete bias and jealousy. In my opinion there are managers we have had previously who if they were in charge at the time, would have worsened the situation around us and added fuel to the fire. Tuchel represented and defended my club with such a mixture of dignity, humility and passion. The Champions League win was unforgettable and will quite rightly be the shining light in the Tuchel era. But I will forever remember and appreciate how he represented the club in it's darkest hour. Thank you Super Tommy Tuchel.

He hugely benefitted from Kane's goals to help inflate this opinion they were some free flowing attacking team. I actually find it incredible how hyped up he is within some quarters. He had a really strong team on paper and still won nothing. They had a huge opportunity the year Leicester won the league and all the other top teams struggled, and they shat the bed and finished third.

Something relating to this 4-4-3 story probably did happen but it's the sort of thing that should be completely laughed off, a bit of a joke made of it inside the walls of a private meeting and off you go. It's a silly mistake but I've seen plenty of people on here post their mock line ups for the next game and either leave a player out or put one too many in. If that is something that has truly irked Tuchel and been leaked as a result, then it feels a bit petty to me and probably emphasises a situation where Tuchel and the board just simply weren't getting along.

I think the concept is being taken out of context. The impression I'm getting from this is that they aren't just going to go down the 'easy' route of looking at the tried and trusted coaching options already sat at the top table. I don't think its to say a manager won't be considered because they were sacked from their last job so must have failed in it. But in the case for example of Mourinho in recent times, no matter how great of a coach he has been, would people have considered him after his stints at United and Spurs went horribly wrong? I think its a means of partially explaining why Potter over Poch. Poch has the experience of big club management but he's hardly been a resounding success. His Spurs tenure grew stale and had no trophies to show for it, and he hasn't come out of the PSG job with positive vibes either. Where does that experience rank when comparing a manager seemingly on the ascent to one on the descent. I guess ultimately they're going to see first hand how successful this decision will be. It's a gamble and I can't see it ending up being a middling decision, this is either going to be a masterstroke or a disaster. I do have high hopes though that Potter has a huge amount of potential and hopefully we have things in place for him to realise that.

I said at the time that has to be the minimum now we've shown what we could do - play like that and we'd win most games through the season but Leeds was the acid test to see if we could produce it again and it simply didn't happen. Whether it was the players, Tuchel or a combination of the two, there is definitely a mentality issue within the group because we were capable of raising performances when we needed to and performing in big games, even if on a rotten run of form. Definitely needs to be something for GP to work out.

On the flip side of that I believe during 2022 Brighton have had the 5th highest XG in the league, which includes being above ourselves and United. So it would suggest goal scoring issues have probably been more down to personnel than chances being created. He's going to have a completely different task here, he'll find teams won't be as open against us as they were against Brighton. One of the things I hope he can get back into the side is aggressive pressing when we don't have the ball. We lost it with Lukaku last season and we've been really poor with it with the exception of the Spurs game this season.

I don't know his exact role at Brighton but my understanding is he's been with Potter before Brighton and is being credited with them signing the likes of Cucurella and Caicedo. To be honest, I'm not even sure what the position of a head scout would exactly entail when a director of football sits above them on the totem pole. We haven't had anything like that since Emenalo, so you wonder just how much power and influence was held by McLachlan at Chelsea. If this guy is trusted explicitly by Potter and he seems like he's going to be handed an incredible amount of influence, you have to believe his role is going to be amongst the highest of influences within the recruitment/scouting network the club plans to build.

It would have made more sense for the Premier League to continue this weekend as a mark of celebration for the Queen and postpone next weekend with the state funeral set to take place. I can understand more so next weekend to be honest with policing issues, etc. I think this weekend could have been a good, public means to celebrate her life across the country. The problem is with things like this though it's an incredibly sensitive situation, there will be some that agree and disagree and important figureheads in our country are incapable of making clear cut decisions on things. Liverpool probably put a request in begging for their game to be called off though as that rabble would probably whistle a minute silence and boo the national anthem if it was played.