Jype

Isn't that exactly what got Juve in big problems over the last year or two? 😂 Hasn't it already been reported we'd have taken the €35+5M which was Inter's last offer? I feel it all comes down to money: Inter would have paid Lukaku just €7.5M/y net and Juve's offer is much more. I think that reported €11M/y net is even more than his Chelsea contract earned him after taxes.

If Lukaku pisses off Inter enough for them to back out on the deal, and Juve can't sell Vlahovic in the next couple of weeks then Lukaku might not have a choice but to accept the Saudi offer. At this point I really don't care where he goes, as long as he does.

Sarr is on £100K/wk isn't he? The fact he's even employed by the club is a tragedy in itself.

No real rush with that lot though as none of them are part of the pre-season squad. They could leave on deadline day for all I care, the only thing that changes is having to pay them a salary for every extra week they stay contracted to the club. In any case, I'm quite hopeful Lukaku will be gone by next week. CHO is said to be in talks with Fulham and Auba is still considering the Saudi offer. The only ones I haven't seen linked anywhere are Ampadu and Sarr. However Ziyech seems to be in some kind of limbo after rejecting the revised Saudi offer so not sure what happens with him..

But why? They'd surely demand a loan fee in the region of 20M€ for the season and after clearing out some high earners from the team I'm pretty sure his wages would be higher than anyone else in the squad bar Sterling. Do you honestly think he's worth that? It's quite telling Atletico are openly whoring him out by making it known he's training with the reserves and has no place to return to their own squad and still there's been no bites yet. If he was anywhere near as good as the finances around the deal would dictate, he'd have been snapped up by someone immediately after Poch decided against keeping him.

That's one way to look at it. But considering we only have the domestic competitions to play for, it might not be such a bad idea to go into the season with a smaller squad and have a fixed starting XI and only deviate from that when absolutely necessary. Having many high profile players means they'll all want to play as often as possible and the manager will be forced to rotate the team at the expense of building some consistency and team chemistry with some clear starters. For years Klopp worked wonders with a Liverpool squad that had a steep drop off in quality after the first XI so it can work. The same could be said about Arsenal last season, for most positions their squad depth was pretty bad but they were able to field almost the same starting eleven week-in week-out which definitely helped their league form. Of course it's a bit risky and a bad injury can really hurt if the backup players are significantly worse and/or inexperienced than the starters but that's a risk I'd perhaps be willing to take for a season that will only have 40-45 games overall and playing just one game a week. Assuming our starting midfielders were Enzo and Caicedo their injury records are almost spotless. So far Enzo doesn't have any injuries on record at the age of 22 and Caicedo's only missed 7 games to injury in 2020 when he was still playing in Ecuador but nothing since moving to Brighton.

Guess we'll see what happens. Arsenal, United and City clearly had other priorities with Rice/Mount/Kovacic and were never after Caicedo for this summer in the first place. And with Liverpool having been priced out we've had a seemingly free run at Caicedo so it was probably very easy for him to make up his mind about a potential Chelsea move early, but if Liverpool all of a sudden get the cash needed and enter the race after all who's to say he won't be tempted to change his mind? Just one more reason for the club to try and clinch a deal for Caicedo ASAP, the main reason obviously being to have him in for the pre-season tour.

Apparently Henderson could be on his way to Saudi as well. If he goes, they get +10M for him too. Need to be careful not to let the fucking dippers slither their way into any deal for Caicedo now. They've stayed away so far because they've been priced out but if the Saudis are about to hand them an unexpected 50M+ for their over-the-hill midfield duo and free up a good chunk of salaries too they might think differently about Caicedo too.

Is it really though? Brighton are in an excellent place at the moment and he'd definitely be a guaranteed starter there if he was their player on a permanent deal. Brighton are a great stepping stone club and I think it's quite likely he'd end up at City/Liverpool/United within a couple of years anyway if he performed well there. I can understand why he'd be happy to go there if given the chance. That said, I really don't get why Colwill wouldn't be excited about his chances with us too. Koulibaly is gone, Silva is 39 and Chalobah could potentially be on his way out as well so there's literally never been a better time for a young CB to come in than now. Even more so now that we have a new manager who's got a great record with young players. So I hope Colwill keeping all his options open is a case of him just using all leverage he has to stake his claim for a key role at Chelsea. If I were in his shoes I probably wouldn't commit to a long term deal either before even kicking a ball for the club because what's the rush? I see no real benefit to the player himself to sign a new long term deal now as opposed to waiting to see how pre-season and the August PL matches go for him. If he feels he's not valued and/or getting the playing time he deserves he could still push for a move before the transfer deadline, but if he already committed to a new contract before pre-season then that option is basically taken off the table.

Hasn't Poch been mainly a 4-2-3-1 man? So maybe something like that if the likes of Caicedo and Cherki were signed? Could easily put Badiashile at LCB, Silva at RCB, Mudryk at LW as starters without affecting the lineup quality too much. Maatsen as Chilly's backup if Cucurella can be flogged off (unlikely) and Slonina as 2nd choice keeper if a new goalie isn't signed. As for who the other options for the two midfield positions will be I have no idea, I'm sure Poch will want to have a look at the youngsters we already have before making any decisions. If Caicedo can't be signed it gets a bit trickier.

Plus option for another year if he plays a certain amount of PL games, thought to be around 15 matches. So essentially his deal is till 2026 if he's being integrated as a permanent first team member.

Lyon are in massive financial trouble so they might not have another option but to sell if an offer comes in. Just a few weeks ago it was even unclear whether they'd be allowed to continue in Ligue 1 as they waited for the verdict on their sanctions. https://www.getfootballnewsfrance.com/2023/lyons-transfer-activity-and-wage-bill-to-be-monitored-by-dncg/ And it's not like 40M€ is small money for Lyon. In fact it would be their 6th biggest ever sale and only a few mill away from cracking top 3.

Ampadu and Sarr too. Probably a handful of loans for some of the youngsters too.

Isn't it a good thing he stays away? If he's been told to report back and start training and he still refuses to come, the club can dock his wages till a move is settled.

DDF always felt like an opportunistic value signing to me, as in buying him on the cheap just to farm him out on loan for 1-3 years before trying to sell him off for a lot more than we initially paid. Might work out that way, might not. Too early to tell, the lad's only 20 years old after all. But yeah, all these young players being signed with no immediate role in the first team feels a lot like the early 2010s where the club had a very similar tactic, ending up with the infamous loan army. There was a lot of dross and some gems too, but in the end the club fucked it all up by not giving a chance even to those who were clear as day good enough. I don't mind this kind of tactic, as long as it's not to the hindrance of more immediate first team concerns.

They may attract some top players here or there by paying way over the odds in salary but overall no matter who they sign I don't think their league will ever gain a big following outside the Middle East and maybe some parts of Africa and Asia. The football culture and tradition is just rooted too deep for Europeans to start paying close attention to the Saudi League, let alone become fans of those clubs. The league overall isn't a big threat IMO but my guess would be they'll try to build up the 4 state backed clubs (Al Nassr, Al Hilal, Al Ittihad and Al Ahli) over the next few years and if some variation of a breakaway European Super League ever becomes a topic of discussion again they'll somehow try to weasel those clubs into it by putting lots and lots of money on the table for everyone else. That's my main worry with the Saudis at the moment.

Even before the ownership takeover was completed last year it was reported that Clearlake's focus would be on building a young squad capable of being competitive. Last summer they went against their youth ideology with the signings of Sterling, Koulibaly and Aubameyang to please Tuchel but once they saw where that got us they haven't looked back. Since the sporting directors were hired the plan has been quite clear. It's a numbers game to try and save the club some money. Look to buy many youngsters on speculative deals before they make their final breakthrough and then just bet on enough of them making it big and end up having gotten them much cheaper than already ready-made players would have cost. Even the ones who aren't quite good enough for us can still potentially be sold for decent money a few years in to recoup some of the money spent on signing them. It's a bit risky and only time will tell how it goes. I personally haven't rated Poch that highly as a manager but for a project like this he can be a good choice. Even if he doesn't bring in the trophies, just having him develop this young squad for a couple of years could be beneficial for the club in the long run.

One less player to worry about this season. Now just need to find new homes for Lukaku, Aubameyang, Ziyech, CHO, Ampadu and Sarr as soon as possible. Santos, Chukwuemeka, Casadei, Hall etc. can be checked by Poch in the coming weeks before making any decisions on loaning them out for the season or not.

Thing is, if he has a transformational year then he's much more likely to choose to go somewhere else. Lyon are in massive financial trouble so I'm not sure he'd be all that expensive. Maybe around €30-40M?

Colwill's currently under contract till 2025 and there is said to be a clause in his deal with an automatic one year extension if he plays 15 PL games for the club. If he stays then surely that clause will be triggered this season already so even if he doesn't sign a new deal with a big pay increase his deal will still be extended by one more year. Having him tied up till 2026 would mean the club are in a strong negotiation position even next year if a sale were to be a topic of discussion. A good season for us and two years left on the contract we could easily demand £80M+ if someone wanted to snap him up and/or the player himself demanded to go. Under no circumstance should he be sold this year, unless he specifically demands it.

Unless we can pull off a keeper like Diogo Costa or Mike Maignan then I'm fine with Kepa for one more season. He's gotten over the lowest of the lows and while he is by no means great, last season he also wasn't even half as bad as some are making him out to be. We're never going to win the title or anything significant with Kepa between the sticks but that's hardly going to be our level next season anyway and Kepa on last season's form is IMO good enough for a team challenging for the European places.

Yes I knew all along who you actually meant but it sure was fun seeing you finally get there. Glick had fuck all to do with running the sporting side of the club though, he was just some marketing man in a suit. Not sure if I'd blame the owners for the Glick situation either. He arrived to the club with decent credentials to his name but how were the board supposed to know he would turn out to be such a cunt who doesn't care if his former employee is guilty of sexual harrassment or not? In this day and age that kind of thing is not okay and he rightly ended up paying the price and lost his job because of it.

Wrong again. Vivell is still at the club, employed as a Technical Director. I wasn't even trying to defend anything or anyone, just pointing out that maybe you're not in the best position to whinge about how the club is run if you don't even have the slightest of idea who you're talking about.

Tell me you are clueless without directly telling me you are clueless. Christoph Freund never even joined the club in the first place. He was in the running for the position but in the end nothing came of it and the club went on to hire Winstanley, Stewart and Vivell instead.

Yeah I'm with you. And even if he was as bad last season as made out, then again so was everyone else. With a massive squad clear out and a new manager in charge it's a clean slate for the ones who do stay. And it's not like Cucurella will be first choice even if we do keep him. Financially speaking he's a very expensive backup player with around £18M/y amortisation + salary costs so if a decent offer were to come in I'd definitely look to cut the losses because we already have decent alternatives for Chilly's backup with Maatsen and Hall but from a player quality perspective I don't think it's going to be that big of a disaster if he stays, though if he still looks hopeless then next year he should 100% be binned.