Jype

He's not a special player but if given a chance in 2019 after his first loan at Palace they'd have bought him on a permanent deal but back then the asking price was something ridiculous like £40M so they moved on. If he has a good season at Palace now they will most definitely buy him this time seeing as the asking price (or option to buy?) should only be around 15-20M. I'd say anything above 10 league goals would count as excellent performance since it's more than any Palace player has scored in the last couple seasons. That should be doable for a player like Michy who already scored 5 in 9 starts for Palace in 2019 so he knows the manager and many of his team mates already. Crystal Palace are paying his wages and maybe even a loan fee on top so it's 1000% better to extend his deal by a year and try moving him on a permanent deal next year if the other alternative is just loaning him out till his contract expires. Circumstances for a permanent deal were not good this year, mostly because he's not been playing enough football in the past year to gather much interest but also because of covid affecting many clubs' spending power. A season playing regular football would make it so much easier to sell next year, either to Palace or someone else.

Mendy won't be too expensive to shift on like Kepa. Bought for a £20-25M fee he could be sold for 10-15M in a couple years without taking too much of a financial hit on the clubs books unlike Kepa who'd make the club fail FFP immediately if he was sold for £20M now (Kepa has remaining book value of £50M so that would record a £30M loss in a single financial year from one transfer alone). Or if Mendy fails to live up to expectations of first choice keeper he could just be kept as a good backup, no way he's so horribly bad that he can't even be relied on as a 2nd choice. And either way he can't possibly do worse than Kepa last season so any improvement is already worth some investment.

Yep. Got to admit I wanted a new striker signed too, mainly because I didn't believe for a second Werner was a realistic summer signing and someone like Dembele would've improved chances of CL qualification. But in the end things played out perfectly when CL was achieved with Tammy/Giroud anyway and Werner became available after all. Maybe this time the club got a bit lucky because the pandemic meant Liverpool dropping out of the race for Werner which nobody could have foreseen in the winter but generally it's always better to wait for the primary targets than settle for a fallback option. We've seen the problem with the likes of Zappacosta etc. that signing someone just for the sake of it rarely works and I don't think Lampard was ever that keen on Dembele.

Yep, seems like the better idea to wait if Rice isn't available yet. If the club had hurried the striker signing in January we'd have ended up with some second rate option instead of Werner and this is a similar situation. If the primary target is not yet available but could be next year, it's better to not spend the money now and wait instead. Of course if Jorginho can be sold now the club should go all out and try again for Rice but if Jorgi stays I can't see it happening. Kante, Jorginho, Rice and Gilmour would be overkill.

Yep, much easier to sell after a good season out on loan than now with him having sat out pretty much the whole season either on the bench or completely out of the matchday lineup. Recouping the £32M is probably unrealistic even next year unless he somehow scores +20 goals for Palace but to get even £15M would be good enough.

I would assume the club see Mendy as a better alternative to Onana, not a cheaper one. Whether he's actually better or not is a whole other question but that's how Cech, Lollichon etc. see it.

Wasn't Rooney targeted in 2013 when Jose first returned? Back then Costa wasn't even on the radar, he only came into the picture after the monster season at Atletico when they won the title in 2014 and was obviously the club's top target for that window.

As long as it's only a one year extension that's more than okay to me. It would only mean he won't leave for nothing next year and can be loaned out now to postpone a more permanent solution till next summer. Not many clubs out there who have both use for him and can afford to buy him in this current financial state so a one year extension would only ensure the club can sell him for a fee. It doesn't mean they still consider him to have a future at the club. A good year out on loan and potentially a decent Euro2021 would surely mean there is a buyer out there next year who'll pay £15M for him.

Or maybe it's nothing and he was just taken off as a precaution. He probably would've been subbed early in the second half anyway. Looking at Ziyech's injury record it looks quite good. Only missed 21 games through injuries in the last 7 years, averaging around 3 games a season.

Delete. Nobody wants to be reminded of summer window 2017.

So all English reports from the likes of BBC, Matt Law, David Ornstein are now saying the price is £62+8M (or €70+10M in euros). If true, Marina has done one hell of a job. Either the covid-discount is real or she has some good blackmail material on the Leverkusen executives.

Yep, really good.

Yep, exactly my point. Areola then might not have been good enough either but at least he wouldn't have cost a shit ton of money and be impossible to get rid if it didn't work out. Same for Mendy now, if he's signed for say 20-25M he can still be sold at only a little loss if he turns out bad too. Well, just based on the fact many previous managers (Mourinho, Conte, Sarri) complained about not even being a 'manager' but rather a 'head coach' so basically saying they had no power on deciding signings and the board pretty much took care of everything. Sure they probably took opinions from the manager and scouting department but ultimately it was always the board who've decided who to go for. Until 2017 I believe it was Emenalo who mainly decided transfer targets but when he left I think Marina took on a bigger role. That is until Cech was hired as a technical director last year. That's not me saying Marina has done a bad job as a whole and I think she was more than right to deny Conte and Jose some of their targets but the Kepa situation was still a huge fuck up, no matter who's responsible for that.

Yep, I would trust Lollichon's opinion more than any fan who thinks they're an expert. And Cech obviously rates Lollichon's input highly. Two years ago Lollichon recommended the club sign Areola ahead of Kepa. If only Marina had listened to him then.

Yeah I somewhat agree on Hazard, he was openly talking about Madrid even before he left Lille. Zidane being manager was icing on the cake. But I don't think many German players dream of playing for Real Madrid or Barcelona that highly, for them the peak is usually Bayern. But anyway, isn't it kind of too early to have this discussion considering he hasn't even joined yet, let alone kicked a ball? Time to start worrying is only after he's banged them in for three seasons and isn't willing to extend his deal but certainly not now.

Yeah but that's just it. Hazard won two league titles and a few cup trophies at the club, but if the club showed serious ambition it could have been so much better. During Hazard's time at the club the closest we came to CL glory was in 2014 when Mourinho's park-the-bus football got us in the semis. In the meantime Hazard watched his 'dream club' winning the damn thing four times. Either way, in three years there will be a moment where some decisions will have to be made with Havertz. Assuming he signs a 5 year deal he will have two years left in 2023 and at that time he will either extend or be sold, and I would guess the decision will depend on how Havertz himself develops in that time and how the rest of the team have developed.

That probably depends on how the rest of the team grow too. If within 2-3 years the squad is ready to really challenge for PL & CL titles every season and he gets handsomely paid for it, why would he want to leave? There's a reason why not many players from current Manchester City and Liverpool teams get even targeted by the Spanish big two but if a team is only scrapping for top4 and winning the occasional cup trophy, a move elsewhere suddenly seems like a more tempting idea. I'm quite sure Havertz is not joining with the idea of using the club as a stepping stone but if the 'project' that has been sold to him by Lamps & co. fails he might just start looking at better options in a few years. World class players don't usually want to waste their careers playing at teams with no chances of winning anything so it's up to the club to show proper ambition. The signings in this window are a good start to doing that.

What's not to like? Mendy clearly beats Kepa in every statistical metric described on there, and also better stats than Onana, Maignan. I'm not saying he's better because I haven't seen him enough, but statistically he is the clear winner there. And for his size alone he should be a much more dominant keeper in the air than Kepa, which should help in corners. I read a stat that Kepa didn't catch a single ball from corner kicks all season, that's laughable really. No clue on how good Mendy is on the ball but he should be a good shot-stopper at least.

The club care. It's a record signing for the club so they'll want to milk all the attention in social media.

With wages and Mino Raiola's cut of the deal Donnarumma would be a lot more expensive.

I wouldn't exactly call injury prone someone who's played 83 competitive club games in the last two seasons. Unlucky if anything. And it still hasn't been said whether he's injured or out for another reason.

Could be in quarantine too. Or just declined a call-up to better prepare for the new season. If it's U21 internationals vs PL football, most would choose latter. So let's wait till we hear more.

Sure it's a good deal for Leverkusen. If they'd kept Havertz till next year he'd have gone for a much lower fee due to contract length and chances are Bayern München would have been the main candidate to sign him in 2021. I'm sure Leverkusen fans are glad he's moving out of the Bundesliga and not to another German club. But I think it's silly to actually celebrate when their best player leaves. Last year I was satisfied with the fee for Hazard but really sad that he left.

Player mentality and fan expectations are two completely different things though. For sure I want the players to have a mentality where they go to every game with the idea of winning it and be devastated if they don't, but as fans I think we have to be realistic and acknowledge the fact that a 30 points improvement after one transfer window and pretty much no pre-season is not a realistic expectation to have. Obviously a big improvement over last season is still a must but I'd rather the fans be happy to just see progress than throw tantrums and demand everyone sacked/sold if the team is not quite ready to challenge for the title just yet. The rebuild is still very much on and the current top2 are among the best teams the league has ever seen. In 2021/22 season I would fully expect to be among the serious league title and CL contenders though.

Mendy didn't play today for Rennes. He's clear first choice so either he's injured, has covid or there's a transfer in the works.