Jype

I don't see what the big deal is about Havertz playing in the EL. It's only going to be 1-4 games depending on Leverkusen's success. The club were happy to confirm Ziyech with almost a third of the season still left (although Eredivisie was later cancelled) and Werner also played the last few Bundesliga games after his move was confirmed. Not to mention Pulisic staying half a season at Dortmund before joining the squad. Of course the Havertz deal is bigger financially than the other three but the risk of a bad injury is still quite small in such a little amount of games so I wouldn't worry too much. Of course there is still a chance, however small, that he might get injured so it would be better if he didn't play but if Leverkusen are strict about him staying there till the end of their EL campaign then so be it. On the upside, assuming he doesn't get injured it probably wouldn't be bad for his fitness levels that he trains the next couple of weeks with Leverkusen and plays a few of matches too instead of just continuing his holiday till the Chelsea squad return to training nearing the end of August. That way he'd be better prepared for next season starting which could make it easier for him to settle in and hit the ground running. But whether he plays EL or not I'd very much like the deal to be done as soon as possible. Right now there's still that tiny little chance the deal might fall through or someone else swoops in so I'd be much more relaxed knowing he's 100% ours. That would also allow Frank, Petr and Marina to focus their efforts on finding solutions for other problems too (GK and defense).

Not even close.

On top of his 16 goals Hazard had 15 assists in the league as well. So his overall goal contribution (G+A) was more than 50% of the team's goals in the league. Now way can the points total be expected to remain the same with a player like that gone. Frank has done well to keep the points total even close to the Sarri season where Hazard carried him on his own.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2020/07/24/needs-champions-league-football-manchester-united-leicester/ Matt Law talking about the impact of CL qualification: "It would also help Chelsea to reject any interest in players they do not wish to sell, such as N’Golo Kante." The club don't want to sell Kante and with CL qualification probably wouldn't have to either, at least not for financial reasons. Also said Havertz signing isn't dependent on CL qualification so it looks like that's happening regardless. And it doesn't seem like the club are anywhere close to being done in the transfer market after potentially signing Havertz so I doubt Kante's situation affects Havertz in any way. Plenty of other players in the squad who are to be sold before Kante. As for the fitness I don't think being out for a couple of weeks suddenly means a player is not fit to play more than 30 minutes when his usual level is closer to 180 minutes a week. So if Kante is fit he will play. He has been training at full intensity for the last couple days so he should at the very least be close to a full return. Of course I'm not Lamps so I don't know his fitness levels well enough to say whether he can be picked to start or not but we could certainly use Kante doing what he does best in such a big game. And while Wolves are not one of the elite European clubs, they're still one of the better teams in the PL and are only four points behind us in the table so not much difference there. Wolves have been in slightly better form than us since the restart too. Underestimating an opponent can be really dangerous and I sure as hell hope Frank and the team won't be doing that when they know what's at stake. For us it's a huge game, a one-off qualifier to the Champions League at the end of the season. Losing this game could have a big effect on the club's future with the financial hit so Frank must play the absolute best team he has at his disposal.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2020/07/24/needs-champions-league-football-manchester-united-leicester/ "Having already signed Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner, Lampard will certainly have to sell players to complete all the business he would like this summer. A move for Kai Havertz is in no way dependent on Champions League qualification, but it would definitely help. Other than freeing up extra cash for transfer fees and wages, the Champions League is a carrot to dangle in front of players who may have several options." Matt Law says Havertz signing is not dependent on CL qualification.

Lack of motivation, really? Kante is a top professional and there's been absolutely nothing solid about him leaving and even if there was he's not the kind of person to let anything affect his performances. He could still end up going if there's a good enough offer from a top club but I can assure you that's not something he thinks about the moment he sets foot onto a football pitch. And it's not like he's been out for ages and lacking match sharpness, his last game was three weeks ago. If he's fit enough to play, he will play.

Is this guy any good? Not watched Milan at all this season so I wouldn't know. Based on some Youtube video he looks like a slightly more defensive version of Kovacic. Good at dribbling and tackling.

The club tried to go for Alisson earlier in the summer but when he joined the dippers the plan seemed to be keeping Courtois for the last season of his contract and delay the GK signing till 2019 (which in hindsight would've been really bad because of the transfer ban). After Tibo went on a strike and refused to return to training the club first went after Oblak and was willing to pay his clause (£89M at the time) but he turned it down. Only then the club went and bought Kepa. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-6052121/Jan-Oblak-rejected-Chelsea-club-met-89m-release-clause.html

Looking at the club's transfer records the success rate has mostly been horrendous. 1. Kepa £72M →huge flop 2. Morata £59M → huge flop 3. Pulisic £58M → jury still out, but looks great 4. Jorginho £51M → not bad, not good 5. Torres £50M → huge flop 6. Werner £48M → hasn't played yet 7. Kovacic £41M → looking good 8. Shevchenko £40M → flop 9. Ziyech £36M → hasn't played yet 10. Bakayoko £36M → huge flop 11. Batshuayi £35M → flop So out of 11 highest transfers for the club I would say 6 have been big flops, one has been decent, two have been good and two haven't yet played and could still go either way (I'm confident Werner and Ziyech will come good tho). After the first 11 the list looks a lot better with players like Drogba, Costa, Essien, Kante, Willian, Hazard and Luiz in places 12-20.

Yeah you're right, probably will be a couple weeks break after the dead rubber at Bayern and back to training near the end of August. A potential CS match (need to win the cup first, remember!) would then serve as a pre-season friendly. However, there is still another twist regarding season preparations (incl. a reason for the Community Shield scheduling) and that is the fucking international break from 3rd September to 8th September. So really there is likely to be less than a week of pre-season training before the internationals and the PL starts only four days after the break is over. That is just ridiculous.

And it was a well known fact Hazard was gone as soon as the season ended. Not to mention the transfer ban. For Henrique to have been positive then but negative now is something I for the life of me can't understand.

Sky Sports seem to think the Community Shield will be played on August 30th. So in case of an FA Cup win we could potentially be facing the dippers again in just over a month but this time with Werner and Zieych involved. Don't think Havertz would make it just yet even if his transfer was completed in time, unless he skips the EL with Leverkusen (which seems rather unlikely at this point). Insanely packed schedule that, hardly a couple of weeks break between seasons.

And who better to learn that from than Azpilicueta? A true model professional.

While I agree with your reasoning (Azpi has missed 5 PL games in the last five seasons and started the other 184 which is an insane stat) he will slowly but surely start being phased out. He's 31 and he's been playing a crazy amount of football in the last 8 years he's been at the club. Not many full-backs keep their level well into their 30s so we need to keep James around and he will have to make sure he's ready to take whatever chances come his way. For James' long-term future at the club it will also be important to continue being a part of the squad even if he doesn't yet play every week. That way he will form a better understanding with his team-mates and slot right in the team whenever needed, as opposed to playing his football elsewhere even though regular 90 minute games has it's own perks, that I'll give you. And not to mention, every game the team plays with a back 3 James will be one of the first names on the team sheet and he's miles ahead of Zappacosta in that wing-back position. Also no way to know for sure how the LB signing (whoever it may be) will settle in, so maybe Azpi will still continue to play some games on the left too so are you really saying you'd be confident enough in a post-ACL Zappacosta to play an extended run of games at RB? The aim is to make the team stronger, not worse. If the plan was to ever loan out James again, that time would have been this season. After already becoming a part of the team, there's no way he's going out on loan again just like there's no way Zappacosta is ever coming back and rightly so.

I had Areola on my 'shortlist' as a possible new goalkeeper two years ago before Kepa was bought. Looked a decent option at the time, but not sure now after he's been sitting out a whole season as a backup. Also a Mino Raiola client.

Yeah, that's true. Right now he has £50M amortisation left and five years on his contract. So even if the club managed to loan him out for the next two seasons he'd still be under contract for a few more seasons so if he regains at least some kind of form it'd then be easier to sell him for a fee. Getting someone to pay even £5M/season loan fee and half his wages would still count as a huge success for the club at this point. That would mean the club could buy a keeper for £25M and pay them £80K/wk on a five year deal and the total net costs on the club's books would remain the same as currently with Kepa. Plenty of keepers who could be available at those figures, for example Onana. Surely there's some club in Spain willing to take a chance on Kepa? From what I've heard he's still quite highly rated back in his homeland despite his struggles. Best case scenario he gets back to his Athletic Bilbao form and they have a good keeper for a somewhat reasonable amount of money on loan. And if not, they can always send him back to us after the initial loan so I'd see it as a relatively low risk gamble for them. Sevilla for example are playing CL football next seasons so they should easily have the money too. Their current keeper Vaclik looks decent though, but his contract is running out next year so is he their long-term choice (31yo)?

Pickford was never that good in the PL to begin with, people just got carried away when he had a decent World Cup in 2018. Nick Pope however has played pretty well for Burnley, not the best of goalkeepers distribution-wise but he's a good shot stopper. Dean Henderson looks quite promising too but it's still early days for him and I don't think getting him from Manchester United is a realistic possibility anyway, at least not for a reasonable amount of money. I could live with taking a punt on someone like Pope. He's not a world class keeper by any means but he would be an improvement over Kepa whose confidence is totally gone. If he was valued reasonably I'd say the club could do a lot worse than Pope.

This has got to be the worst suggestion I've seen on here in a while. No offense.

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/fabinhos-home-burgled-celebrated-triumphant-18652821 Fabinho's house burgled during the game. Scousers doing their best to keep up their reputation.

Either this, or 4-3-3 with Kante at the base of midfield and Mount-Havertz ahead of him. Depending on the opposition and players' fitness leves of course. Could be a really solid team if everything clicks together. Rotation options Giroud, Tammy, CHO, RLC, Kovacic/Mount, Gilmour would also allow for so many different variations and tactical setups. Franks seems like a manager who likes to rotate players (similar to Guardiola in that regard) so I think most of the 'rotation' group would still see a lot of action.

Won the DFB Pokal in his second season as a first team player at Dortmund.

Like mentioned before, that's only going to be a problem in 2022. After that all further versions of AFCON (2023, 2025, 2027) are scheduled for June-July of their respective years. Depending on price, Onana could be a good shout. Not seen enough of him to say whether I rate him or not but he can't be worse than Kepa. If he cost something like 25-30m€ it's not the end of the world if he isn't a huge success because a player of that value can easily be moved on with very little loss of investment if it doesn't work out. Kepa on the other hand seems impossible to move on.

Let's hope Sane is right and it's a done deal. Getting this one over the line asap would allow the club to focus on GK and defense...

This time maybe it was unsaveable, but when TAA shoots there's no way Kepa knows that. Some other time the shot could end up going way closer to the middle of goal and he ends up looking like an even bigger cunt if he doesn't try to save that either. The same way I blame him for that set-piece fuck up in added time even tho it didn't end up a goal this time. One of the biggest sins for a goalkeeper is to not try. Trying to prevent the ball from going in the net is what the club are paying him £8M a year for fucks sake. I somewhat agree with the rest of your reasoning tho. As isolated incidents a lot of the goals Kepa's conceded overall this season can't be blamed directly on him (so not direct errors like DDG vs Mount last weekend) and there's always someone in defense who's done a mistake to even let the opponent shoot but I don't think it's too much to ask him to save even some of them. Plenty of average keepers make world class saves on difficult shots every once in a while but Kepa doesn't really do that, does he?

It really, really does matter. Because when the player shoots the keeper can't know for sure if it's going in the top corner or if it's saveable. Kepa doesn't even try to save it so the shot only needs to be on target to go in. Not just yesterday either, he's been rooted on his line for many conceded goals this season. That Alexander-Arnold free kick was so obvious where he was going to shoot (he always goes for the near corner from that position) so why on earth would the keeper not try to go for that? Kepa with his short hands probably wouldn't have reached it anyway but not even trying makes him look really bad.