Jype

I'll translate it for you: "Lavia's agents have let it be known to just about everyone that Chelsea have made an offer but since the deal isn't yet done on the player side, the club have so far refused to comment. Chelsea want both Lavia and Caicedo." As for the reason why Lavia's agents have been so happy to talk about the offer, it's probably because they're trying to bait Liverpool into outbidding us. It could even be the player would prefer the dippers because if we get Caicedo and also have Enzo, I really don't think Lavia would even be a starter with us but he certainly would be at Liverpool (this is assuming they fail with Caicedo and go after Lavia instead). Liverpool don't want to get back in the race for Lavia before they know for certain what happens with Caicedo.

No chance Liverpool's bid includes £100M+ paid in one installment, they've been just as obsessed with scattered payments in the past as Clearlake are.

The shit from Scouse, they bought his flight, But Caicedo he saw the light, He got the call from Todd Boehly, And off he went to Stamford Bridge. He hates Liverpool, he hates Liverpool, He hates Liverpool and he hates Liverpool.

Exactly. Even the best strikers in the world will struggle if the team fail to control the game and struggle to create good goalscoring chances on a regular basis to feed them. No point splurging out big money on a world class striker before the rest of the team is in order. So fix the midfield ASAP and then see what Jackson, Nkunku, Mudryk, Madueke etc. can do in attack. If the team start playing well but it looks like we might still need another striker we can circle back to it either in the January window or the next summer. And if Jackson looks like he might be the real deal, go all-in on his development and just make sure he has enough support.

Humphreys is currently under contract till 2024 but just yesterday it was reported by Kinsella that the club are in talks with him over a new deal and then he'd be heading on loan for the season: https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/Chelsea-fc-latest-news-transfers-humphreys-2023-b1098920.html I'm pretty sure I remember reading earlier in the summer that the club have an option to extend his current deal to 2025 so even if he doesn't sign the extension that doesn't necessarily change much. But I'm sure the player himself would fancy earning a lot more money so it's likely that he signs anyway.

Why are we talking about potential new CBs? Colwill, Badiashile, Silva, Disasi (+ Fofana) is more than fine for the season. Anything less would leave us seriously understaffed at CB considering Fofana's long term injury, but anything more will make it bloated. So yeah, Chalobah out and nobody else in. Fofana can basically be considered out for the season, if he ends up playing some games towards the end of the season then great but we shouldn't be counting on that. Next year Silva will surely be gone (which is what I've been saying since 2020 but it has to happen eventually) so we'll have to see what happens with Fofana's knees before deciding if something needs to happen or if Wes can just take Silva's place and we continue with Colwill, BB, Fofana, Disasi as our CBs. Maybe if there's some worries over Fofana we could see where Humphreys is at with his development and maybe keep him around for the 24/25 season.

Could the 'Ecuadorian Fabrizio Romano' be right after all? 😂

Paredes would only make sense as a backup option to Enzo, not as an alternative to Caicedo. They're literally nothing alike as player types.

I'd actually prefer a loan with a buy option say 35M€ to a permanent sale for 25M€ now, even if there were no guarantees the option would be triggered. It's very likely with all the sales already completed we've brought in more than enough money to cover any immediate FFP concerns and with Trev under contract till 2028 and the club also holding an option for another year, what's the rush? Chalobah has zero amortisation value so just having Inter paying his full salary for the season would basically clear him off the books for the current financial year but still give us better control over his future. If he were to go on to have a Tomori-like breakthrough season in the Serie A we could easily get more money for him next year than we would now, whether from Inter or some other club.

At roughly a 70M€ fee Højlund will no dobut be on much larger wages than Jackson too. If Jackson can continue his pre-season and late 22/23 season Villarreal performances going into the new PL season we may just have discovered a real gem at a very reasonable price. Right now it's still too early to say if he can keep it up but so far the signs are looking very promising.

Can only loan 3 players to them and hasn't it basically been decided already that the new winger Angelo will be one of them?

Am I really the only one who just doesn't see all the hype with Lavia? I mean for an 18-19yo player he's been very decent but based on what I saw from him at Southampton he's miles off from being the finished article and comes with some glaring weaknesses too. I for one wouldn't be comfortable us getting Lavia as our key midfield signing, just as I wouldn't be comfortable with this new French guy either. As squad options sure, but as key players no. Sending the Frenchie to Strasbourg for the season to play under his idol Patrick Vieira should be a good move. Let's see how he develops.

I wouldn't mind Gallagher staying. Even if he's not starting quality I do think he'd be a good squad option to keep around. He's not on big wages, doesn't seem to have a big ego and demand a starting role, is an academy graduate to fill HG roles etc. But at the same time I won't shed any tears if he does go, as long as the money is good. For Pochettino's 4-2-3-1 there's a bit of a probelm with Gallagher's position. Even though he can play both roles to some extent, he's not that well suited to playing in the pivot nor is he quite technical enough for the number 10 role compared to what someone like Nkunku offers. As long as we use the Gallagher sale money on getting some tactically better suited players it might make sense to cash in but we shouldn't sell him just for the sake of selling if there's no clear plan to get a better alternative in.

Olise spent seven years at the Chelsea academy so it makes sense for him to be pictured with the gear on, no? Nah it's not fake. Why would they go through all that trouble just to save a few million? All this circus has already caused almost all Inter fans to turn on Lukaku and they don't want him back. The simplest explanation is probably the correct one: Lukaku is a toxic human who has no loyalty and zero self-awareness.

If a guy who's been playing regular first team football (120+ games) for a club in the Brazilian top division between the ages 15-18 doesn't qualify for a work permit then the system is flawed as fuck.

Yep. Whether Greenwood was actually convicted for his crimes or not there should be zero doubt to the fact he's a piece of shit who beats women. The photo and audio evidence was clear as day and I don't think I've ever even seen him try to deny it. The whole thing smelled really bad from the start with even the father of the girl coming out in defense of Greenwood, which probably had more to do with the fact Mason Greenwood is a multi-millionaire rather than him being genuinely concerned about the well-being of his own daughter. The Benjamin Mendy case seems a bit more vague though. The fact there were so many women accusing him would lean me to think there was something in the allegations but having read some media reports of the court case leaves some doubts too. An article on the Guardian quoted one of the accusers texting one of her friends the day after supposedly being raped at one of Mendy's sex parties as 'the best day of her life' and seemed to take pride in having shagged some celebrity footballers. Even if some of the Mendy charges had actual merit, things like that are what probably brought the whole thing down like a house of cards. To convict him the jury would have needed to believe beyond any doubt he had indeed committed the horrible acts and having some bogus allegations in the mix probably provided the reasonable doubt Mendy needed for the not guilty verdict. Whether Benjamin Mendy is a rapist or not is unclear but at the very least he's a repulsive sex addict who in court bragged about sleeping with 10000 women in his life.

MacAllister, Trossard and Colwill all gone. If Caicedo jumps ship too, it will be a tough ask to replace all of them with players even close to the same quality. Groß and Dunk are also both on the wrong side of 30 and were the two players with most minutes played for them last season. Can they keep up the same level of performance or will we start seeing some decline? With all this in mind plus the fact they'll have a lot more match load with UEL football on their calendars I'd be surprised if Brighton have another good league season. Probably somewhere around 8th - 12th would be my guess.

Nice job! Just goes to show how massive the clearout has been this summer, squad costs are down by a huge amount for both salary and amortisation costs compared to last season. Would be interesting to see a similar comparison to the 21/22 squad too. The squad last season was a hot mess with almost 35 players so it's only natural the costs have gone down a lot by simply trimming down the numbers but comparing the current player costs to the 21/22 version of our squad would give a better idea on the long term financial sustainability of what we have now.

It's great. Especially without a sponsor it just looks so clean. Would love to get that shirt for myself before some hideous sponsor comes in.

According to Matt Law the price tag for this piece of land was £80M.

Lukaku will go either to Juve or the Saudis, and for CHO there seems to be sufficient interest to make the move happen some time in the next weeks. Other than that it's a bit worrying things have gotten really quiet for Ziyech after the Saudi move collapsed and even more concerning that there have been zero rumors about Malang Sarr going anywhere. Has Sarr even returned to Cobham for training with the rest of the discarded group or is he injured?

The injury that kept him out for almost a full year at Leicester was a leg break but this is said to be a knee problem. Knee issues were what kept him out last season from October to February too. He did have some prior knee problems at Saint-Etienne (in 2019) before he even moved to Leicester but it was nothing major and at the time only kept him out for around 10 games or so. Didn't have any problems with his knees for a good few years prior to the Chelsea move until getting hurt last October. Leg breaks usually heal quite well and don't cause problems going forward so I'm not too convinced that a 10 game knee injury few years prior to the move should have been seen as a deal breaker about him being injury prone? The likes of Azpi and Rüdiger had ACL ruptures in their past before coming to the club and never had any issues with their knees, and especially Azpi never had any issues with any injuries period. Sometimes you just get unlucky, I guess.

Bettinelli, James, Chilwell, Maatsen, Colwill, Chalobah, Gallagher, Chukwuemeka, Hall, Sterling, Madueke and Broja. That's 12 homegrown players for the PL quotas once the currently U21s have gotten a bit older and need to be registered. 7 of those players would count as club-trained for European football where only four of those are 'needed' alongside 4 other association-trained homegrown players to be able to fill the full 25 man squad. Now even if a few of the players on the list were deemed not good enough and leave the club within the next 1-2 years that would still leave us with plenty enough. And it's not like there aren't others who can make the step up over the next few years too, on top of potentially poaching some HG players from other English clubs as well. Not meeting the HG rules should be among the least of our worries right now.

Looking at some Youtube video about Angelo Gabriel he does show some promise. A pacy winger with good ability to take on his man 1v1, at least as far as playing in the Brazilian league goes. That said, his end product seems non-existent at this stage so I'm curious to see how he develops.