Superblue

It's something we've sorely missed since Hazard left. That, and the vision and eye for a pass that Ziyech should bring in the final third are two big traits we've been lacking this season and should help us breaking down the teams we've struggled with at the Bridge this season.

The summer window will determine this I guess. I think in Liverpool's case where they don't have owners willing to put their own money in, and the club must generate their own money for transfers there is a very valid point though given the rumoured income effects on teams, especially in the Premier League. I think though even if Liverpool do have some money that can be used for transfers, I do think the current situation forced them to be conservative and wait to see how the market "pans out". I think they believed that the market would suppress to a position whereby they could negotiate down from the release clause. With us being prepared to pay the release clause it prevented Liverpool from doing that. It has to be considered that even though football is returning there is still so much uncertainty for the future. How long will empty stadiums continue for example? This could have a significant impact on teams revenue streams for longer than just this season. The likes of Liverpool, Spurs and Arsenal who don't have an owner prepared to help during this time I think will feel the pinch.

It's less the social media accounts and more to do with the arrogance of the ex players and those running the club to be honest.

They like to banter in a light heart manner, but they're always very classy and professional when they need to be. Besides one of course!

I've found all the German teams are like this with the exception of Bayern.

I understand that the deal is more complicated without a release clause but the idea is the same. Leipzig don't have to sell for the release clause, they could sell Werner if they chose for say £40m. The release clause just places a maximum that Leipzig can request. Liverpool wouldn't go that high, and we would, then it was up to us to sell the move to him. If we're prepared to pay what Leverkusen want and other teams aren't prepared to pay as much then it's up to us to sell the club to him. I wouldn't be initially deterred from trying to attract a player to our club if they're preference is somewhere else. If after discussions it's clear his mind is set then fair enough, but we should be walking away at least knowing we've done what we could to make it happen. If he wants to end up at Real Madrid eventually, I've no problem with that. Just like Hazard, I'd rather 5 or 6 years of him in our team than not at all because he will only end up at Real Madrid if he's proven good enough here. I think there is an argument he's a luxury when other areas of the team/squad need to be strengthened but I think sometimes those decisions have to be made because there is very real potential there that he could be the best attacking midfielder of this coming generation. You could argue PSG did the same buying Mbappe when they had just signed Neymar and already had Cavani, Di Maria, amongst others. They had other areas of their squad that probably could have been strengthened first. I think when those sort of opportunities present they should be seriously considered because it could be a far better long term decision to make to have a player of that potential calibre at your club over the short term of strengthening a couple of other areas of the squad which instead may need rectifying in the next summer window.

If we had taken that approach with Werner we wouldn't have found ourselves in this position on the verge of signing him. The current climate puts us in potentially a strong position in the transfer market, so why not aim as high as possible?

Agreed. It's lovely when you're three or four goals up and a couple of bits of skills or flicks are enjoyable to see, but ultimately as you said it's far more important that they can translate those skills into creating chances for themselves or the team. Hazard could do all the same sort of "street football" skills but (1) knew the right time and position on the pitch to utilise this, and (2) had an end product to go with it.

What Juventus have to appreciate here is that we paid big money for Jorginho 2 years ago and since then he's become more prominent within the Italian national squad and he's been first choice here at Chelsea. It's not a situation where he's joined and struggled to adapt or been injured and suffered from a lack of game time. He's become vice captain within a year and has played just as much of an important role under Lampard as he did under Sarri. Even in the current situation why shouldn't we be valuing him at minimum what we brought him for 2 years ago. Juventus can place a 'Covid' valuation on him all they like but they're the buying team that want him, whilst we're the selling team that from what it looks aren't actively trying to shop him. If we went to them trying to offer a player swap for one of their first choice, influential players and were offering our backups in exchange I know exactly what they would do. If Juventus want him that badly then they'll either have to stump up big money, or they offer a big name player. Like Bayern have found in recent times, they may be able to throw their weight around in their own country, but they won't be bullying us.

I would say the ban worked in our favour back then too in a way because it forced the club to turn to the academy and in doing so, seemingly map out a much longer term blueprint for the club including choice of manager. Especially if we manage to qualify for the Champions League next season too, i would view it as a very successful season all things considered. We've found half a dozen academy players this season who all at worst are good enough to be members of the squad and stop us buying squad fillers like Zappacosta and Drinkwater. Now being able to cherry pick players who can impact the first XI and not just beef up the squad in the current climate presents a massive opportunity that must be taken. Even if it means minimal activity next summer, we should attempt to throw our weight around from the position of strength we suddenly find ourselves in.

Players will need managing better than ever. Clubs will be playing a season and a quarter into a condensed calendar, followed by the Euros next summer, another full season and then I still don't know how they are looking to fit the World Cup 2022 in during the winter. I guess this means the 2022/23 season will need to be started early and/or finished late to compensate this. There will essentially be 2 - 3 full years of football with barely any break and as I mentioned, some of those players have a track record of injuries throughout a season. I think a better squad is more necessary than usual during this time.

Pulisic has had numerous niggly muscular injuries (even before joining Chelsea), CHO has had similar this season following his major injury last season (and hasn't really shown yet that he has fully recovered from it) and we've no idea how long it might take RLC to recover from a year out (and he has an extensive list of prior injuries and back problems). And if that list is what we have come season start, 3 of them will be new players coming into the league and we've no idea yet if they'll need time to adapt (think Pulisic taking time to gain Lampard's trust). I think the number is fine personally. You'll always have players injured/suspended/need resting and I think that will be even more of an issue next season in what is almost certainly going to be a full season condensed into a smaller calendar. Lampard wants his attackers to press aggressively and he'll need the options to rotate and keep players fresh. With 7 subs too (they may even go with 9 subs again next season, if they feel it's beneficial for keeping teams and players fresh) you can likely fit minimum 7 of those options into the match day squad. If they stick with the 9 subs, all of them could fit in.

I do think there will be a market for Barkley still, he's very much part of Southgate's plans in the England squad and I think a lot of mid-table teams will view him as a very good signing. As you said 26 isn't young, but it's not old either, he should be in or around his prime years now. I think the same with Batshuayi. In a lower team playing week in week out, he may have limitations with other areas to his game but he can score goals and teams lower down the table will be attracted to that. There could be an issue this summer with transfer budgets, etc but a lot of deals are structured over instalments anyway. I'm sure teams will still look to do transfer activity but it will be on a smaller scale than normal. Drinkwater and Bakayoko are the difficult two. I cannot see anyone taking Drinkwater except on loan with some of his wages covered by us. Bakayoko would depend on the state of the foreign markets because I can't see an English team taking him. The other consideration is whether we can offload any of these players as part of a package to sign other players we want. That's usually extremely rare and hard to broker, but I think this summer a lot of teams will be looking to do swap deals to help ease the financial burden of their transfer activity.

I don't think the squad would be over-stacked in that way, because I think if players leave it won't be the younger players. If Havertz was signed, I would expect Barkley to be the one to leave. Pedro and Willian also will likely be moving on too, and at times during this season we've looked thin on options with a couple of injuries. Lampard won't want to leave us in that position again. It's also generally different with defenders (once Lampard works out his best defensive combination!) as you look to keep a lot of continuity there. But I think across the midfield and attack, it's much easier for players to get sufficient game time. Especially in the case of a number of the players we have or look to be bringing in attack who are versatile to play a number of different positions and formations.

It's not that there is no market for it, but I think better and cheaper deals can be had in the defensive areas. You only have to look at the reported values of the likes of Telles and Tagliafico compared to Chilwell. If one of the two former are available for £20-25m and half or a third of the Chilwell value, I don't see enough difference between the three to justify the differences in market value. If doing that would help us potentially fund a player who is one of the best young talents in world football, then we should be doing that. I guess it boils down to the sort of argument of which combination would you rather - Tagliafico and Havertz or Chilwell and Boga?

Lampard could be drawing his own career experiences to this. He's openly talked about when Roman came in and brought the likes of Makelele, Veron, Joe Cole, etc that he had to go away and take stock of the situation and realise that if he didn't raise his game and standards he wouldn't last. There are a number of variables to explain the drop in form of some of the younger players as the season progressed but one of them could be the mentality that they now consider themselves first choice and there wasn't enough confidence in the quality of the back up behind them. I think Lampard will want to test those young players in the same way that he was when at Chelsea, and force them to raise their levels otherwise they won't get game time.

I've watched Havertz a few times in recent weeks, compilation videos, etc. From what I can see he looks really, really special. It's a difficult one because I don't think it's a particular area of the pitch we desperately need to look at right now with the impending arrivals of Ziyech and Werner and the stacked midfield options. We are potentially a left back and centre back away from getting close to Liverpool and City now in my opinion. So could that circa £70m be spent in more pressing areas of the squad to help us be better balanced and hopefully be challenging quicker? Or are we better taking advantage of a situation whereby we could be getting one of the best young talents in world football (and if he continues to progress someone that will probably be top 10 in the world over the next 2-3 years) but may still leave gaps of quality in other areas of the squad (namely defence)? In this situation I would probably look at long term over short term, even if it keeps us from fully progressing for another year and buy him if we can get him. I'm more confident on him than probably any other young player around (including Sancho) that he'll become world class. If he were to arrive, I'm pretty sure it would be Barkley the one to leave as I cannot see the club letting RLC or Mount leave.

A couple of years ago I think it would have been a shrewd move for the club to bring him in for a season, but he'll be 36 in September. I think it would be extremely difficult to expect him to come to the Premier League at that age and hit the ground running.

I liken Werner to a bit of a throwback German player. Before the last few years, I always felt the Germans weren't the best technically (compared to the likes of Spain), but they were always ruthlessly efficient, incredibly intelligent and hard working. I think if you add those traits alongside his frightening pace, he'll be a very good signing for us. If he can hit the heights he is doing this season at Leipzig in terms of goals/assists output we'll have a player on the cusp of world class, but to be honest if he can add an extra 15 - 20 goals a season to our team it will make a huge difference compared to the goal output of Willian and Pedro this season. Especially if he plays predominantly as a wide forward and Tammy can himself still get 15 - 20 goals next season too. I'd far rather have goals shared around a number of players than have a talisman like player scoring 30+ goals a season because it stops the team becoming reliant on one player. We've been far too reliant this season on Tammy and it's shown as the season has progressed. It doesn't seem to be a coincidence that our form seemed to pick up recently where Giroud came to the fore. Ziyech and Werner at the very least should help to take some of that burden off Tammy and the squad as a whole.

Completely agree, at the bottom end of the table teams can accommodate a player that offers little if they score goals. Teams at the top need more from their players, and Batshuayi is just such a limited player. I think it is definitely worth noting that despite hitting a rich vein of goal scoring form at Dortmund, they ended up passing on purchasing him outright.

I wonder if he thought the same when Bayern took Gotze and Lewandowski off Dortmund when they were dominating Bayern for a couple of years?

Anelka used to get a lot of flak on here back in the day but I always appreciated his sacrifices for the greater good of the team because he was originally a striker who adapted his game to play wide when he joined Chelsea. Also it's been mentioned about the few wide players playing at a high level in the league into their 30's but Anelka was doing that. The only chance he really had playing centrally for Chelsea for a prolonged period when Drogba was out, he finished top scorer in the league. I agree, I think Werner can be seen in a similar way to Anelka in that versatility to play either wide or centrally immediately boosts our options. Even players like Hazard struggled when given a central role. We haven't really had this hybrid type of player since Anelka.

Another point of consideration during all of this is we're not as dependent as other rivals on match day revenue.

Not sure why they wouldn't be allowed to use the money for transfers. That's like a business taking one of these bounce back loans and not being able to spend the money buying stock or capital equipment. Some of Spurs creditors that need paying off this summer are likely to be transfer fee instalments for previous buys. In any event, Levy is far too cautious to go out and buy big. With the interest rate at 0.5% he's probably using the money to cover other borrowings this year that are on higher interest rates to save a couple of million. I did however read earlier that United would potentially be entitled to take this loan also. I wouldn't put it past them to try and use that to help fund Sancho!

You read this and listen to Ziyech's interview that he spoke a number of times with Lampard and compare this to recent times when Sarri said he didn't even know the club were buying Pulisic and when Barkley reportedly walked away initially because Conte wasn't prepared to speak with him first to outline his plans for him.