Jype

Oh my sweet summer child.

Yep, it's no doubt already good deal even if we don't get a replacement in. And if Enzo comes it will be a brilliant piece of business to sell Jorginho. Enzo would probably play as many games as possible and Jorginho would be reduced to a backup and I'd say £15M is a hell of a lot money for a backup midfielder who'd start at most around 5 games and maybe a further 10-15 sub appearances between now and the end of the season before leaving on a free.

Can you blame him? He's seen Chelsea spend like €500M already this season so clearly money doesn't seem to be a problem for the club. Costa rightfully feels he can demand whatever he wants and is going to see if we'll budge. Of course it's still possible that even if our board stay firm and don't change the payment terms on offer then Costa will eventually cave in with a couple hours left in the window because after all it's a shit load of money no matter what the payment terms. Right now it's all a big game of poker to see who's bluffing. One possibility is that nobody's bluffing and if the offer stays the same till the end the move just won't be done.

Is there any conflicting reports? Top sources in Argentina and England (César Luis Merlo and Matt Law) are saying the offer contains one larger payment up front plus five smaller installments for a total of £105M/€120M. Matt Law also says the offer 'has left some room for negotiations' so some small changes are probably still possible but either way the club don't seem to want to pay it in one big installment up front so if that's what Benfica insist on then it probably won't happen.

I doubt this has come out of the blue to Benfica. Ornstein has already said a line of communication between the clubs has been kept open all through January so they must have known there's a good chance we'll go back in for him before the window closes. Romano has been shouting 'Chelsea plan to be very busy near the deadline' for more than a week now so there's obviously been stuff going on behind the scenes. I think UEFA changing their financial regulations has caused the club to act fast as we're fast approaching the last day it's possible to amortise a players fee for longer than 5 years. Maybe the club thought they'd just continue talks for a summer move in advance (like Nkunku move) but with the rule change they felt they needed to react immediately? It's a huge difference whether the amortisation is €16M a year (7,5 year contract) or if it's €24M a year (5 year contract).

That's Romano for you. He has an incredible talent of saying something without actually saying anything.

As long as the deal is done by agreeing a €120M transfer fee and not by triggering the €120M buy-out then it won't affect FFP whatever the actual payment schedules. It's not like Clearlake don't have the money in hand if they wanted to pay it in one go so I doubt it's going to be a huge problem if the club are in fact ready to pay the full €120M and on whatever payment terms Benfica demand. Now if Benfica were to be dicks about it they could still just point to the buy-out clause which cannot be amortised and would count as a €120M one-off FFP hit then it's just not going to be done. I'm sure Enzo himself would be thrilled if Benfica fucked over his move over a technicality that doesn't even benefit them at all because either way they'll still get the €120M.

Let's all laugh at Spurs.

Right now the players we've signed so far amount roughly for a total of £73M a year in amortisation. If we pull off the Enzo signing this window and assume a 7,5 year deal that's another £14M a year in amortisation and in the summer Nkunku should add around £12M to that. Felix loan is not included in the total figure above but if it were made permanent and we'd sign him for say £80M that means an additional £16M a year amortisation costs which would be higher than Enzo's as the new UEFA rules prevent amortisation longer than five years starting from next summer. You wanted to include a £20M goalkeeper so assuming a five year deal that's £4M amortisation. All these added up would mean close to £120M a year in new amortisation costs compared to pre-takeover times, though last summer's departures (most notably Werner, Rüdiger, Alonso, Drinkwater, Barkley, Emerson and the Saul loan) will already have reduced the total increase by a good chunk (£30-35M rough estimate). For Werner and Barkley the club still had to take an FFP hit for this season as these players had some amortisation left that Werner's 20M€ transfer fee and Barkley's free transfer didn't clear but going into next season those should all be totally gone from the books. Getting rid off Jorginho, Ziyech, Pulisic, Auba for fees that minimum cover the players remaining amortisation costs (£30M for the last three) would clear around £32M in yearly amortisation, and fees higher than that would be 'profit' in the eyes of the FFP budget. Binning Lukaku and Koulibaly on a permanent deals is probably not going to happen. Getting an installment paid for Abraham won't affect any FFP calculations, as the money has already been banked in the 21/22 accounts no matter when the actual payment is made. But yeah, HG player sales are going to be key. At the very least Gallagher, CHO and RLC are all players who should attract plenty of interest and like you said the fees for these players would be 'pure profit' with no previous amortisation costs involved. £60-65M for this lot in the summer and combined with the potential Ziyech, Pulisic etc. sales would already take us close to break-even for the season as far as amortisation costs go, though I have to note that it's only for one year and we'd either have to repeat the same trick with player sales every year or increase revenues by a lot to stay in the good graces of the FFP. Now with most new players signed on very long term deals that minimize amortisation (and therefore increase remaining book value) repeating the sales every year is probably not going to be possible because the fees we would need to get to 'profit' in FFP terms would probably be too big for what is realistically achievable and selling off academy products for tens of millions every year is probably not too realistic either because from what I understand the 'golden generation' of Cobham has kind of already passed and right now there probably isn't as much good talent coming through as there was in around 2016-2020. Increasing the revenues would be the safest bet if Boehly and Clearlake can pull that off, and having a successful team on the pitch would probably go a long way into doing that and is probably one of the main reasons they've been willing to spend so big.

If Enzo and Caicedo aren't available might as well just not buy anyone rather than panic buy Onana for 50M or anything like that. Just finalize the Gusto deal, go the rest of the season with what we already have and have another look at the midfield situation in the summer.

Remember they will owe 25% of whatever they get for Enzo to River Plate. If he was sold for €80M they only get €60M of that. While it's still €45M profit for six months I doubt that would be anywhere near enough to get him in the middle of a season so might as well stand their ground and improve their chances of winning the league title and having a decent UCL run with Enzo in the team. They would no doubt get the same €80m for him in the summer if it came to that. Nothing wrong with Benfica's stance.

How can it be top secret when Fabrizio (and seemingly everyone else) knows about it? 😂

Need to be at the club for a minimum of two years before being eligible for B list.

True, but the signings made when Tuchel was still at the club were all done before any of the new recruitment people were even at the club so it was mostly just down to Tuchel himself and Marina (for Lukaku) or Boehly (for the signings made last summer). Would Tuchel's signings have been better too with Vivell etc. in place to help identify the right players? Maybe, maybe not. Also I would say it's still way too early to say anything about the January signings. Most of them look promising, especially Badiashile and Mudryk, but I would wait a little bit longer before making any definite judgement on them. Plenty of other players in the past have looked good early into their careers at the club, only to turn bad with more time.

Yeah it's weird. I remember a time when players were still allowed the time to settle in before making any judgement about them. Sterling's a good player as shown for many years at City but he's also someone who needs the team around him to function as best as they can to get the most ouf of his best qualities (off the ball movement). When the whole team's a mess it's no surprise he's not playing well either. With Cucurella I'm starting to get a little worried though, it's not a great look for a £55-60M player to get displaced by an 18yo playing out of his natural position. But even he can still come good, not every player is the same when it comes to settling in a new environment and sometimes things take time. Also just today Potter said Cucurella's had some family worrries which has affected his time at the club so it's not like we know everything going on behind the scenes. If he's still playing this badly next season it's time to get more worried. As for Wes Fofana the jury is still very much out. His current injury has fuck all to do with the leg break he had before, therefore it's not a recurring injury and it's still too early to claim he's an injury prone player. For now it could just be a case of bad luck and after that's fixed there are no problems for a long time. But here also, if it continues like this next year it's going to get a little worrying.

Say what now? Jorginho with six months left on his contract we'd be lucky to get 10M for, and Ziyech has already been on the market since last year and it was reported the asking price was 20-25M and there were no takers. If we wanted to sell those two right now I very much doubt we'd get more than 15M for the lot.

But is a midfield loan signing necessary either? Even now the problem isn't quantity but quality. I mean, we have all of Jorginho, Kovacic, Gallagher, Chukwuemeka, Loftus-Cheek, Kante and Zakaria in the squad and even Lewis Hall is more of a natural midfielder than a LB so when Chilly is back we could try him in midfield too. Of course Kante and Zakaria are currently out injury and will continue to be for at least a few more weeks but there's still plenty of bodies available for selection. They may not be all that great and/or good tactical fits for how we want to play going forward but would the kind of players available on a loan deal right now be any better than the ones we already have? The grass isn't always greener. Not to mention that even now we can't register all new signings for the UCL squad for the knockouts so I very much doubt the loanee midfielder would make the cut either so are we really banking on getting the kind of midfielder on loan that immediately makes a HUGE impact and gets us closer to the battle for European spots? If not, why even bother loaning in anyone?

Read the last paragraph. This rule only counts for domestic loans between English clubs. If it's true we're looking at the loan market for a midfielder, could it really be anyone other than Kessie or McKennie? Either would be underwhelming.

"Chelsea remain in the market for a new midfielder and have bid for Benfica’s Enzo Fernandez and held talks over a move for Moises Caicedo, who Brighton value at over £65m. There also remains the possibility of Chelsea signing a new back-up right-back before this month’s transfer window closes, despite the fact Reece James is on his way back from injury."

I meant in the summer. Pulisic was signed in January 2019 on a 5,5 year deal for 64M€ so an annual amortisation of 11.6M€ and that's all book value he'll have left in the summer. Ziyech was signed in summer of 2020 on a 5 year deal for 40M€ so an annual amortisation of 8M€ and in the summer he'll have two years left on his contract so remaining book value of 16M€. Overall 27.6M€ left for the two of them so roughly £24M. The €/£ conversion rates may have changed a little from when they were signed but that should be in the right ballpark. I'm pretty sure you counted Ziyech to only have one year left but he has two? But yeah it should be doable to get £25M combined for them. Going by their current Transfermarkt values they're estimated at £33M for Pulisic and £17M for Ziyech. Those are maybe unrealistic but getting at least half value should definitely be within our reach.

Releasing Jorginho and managing somehow to sell Pulisic and Ziyech for fees that at minimum match their remaining book values would free up much more than £20-25M a year in FFP costs. Jorginho: £10M in amortisation + £6M in salary = £16M a year Pulisic: £10M in amortisation + £8M in salary = £18M a year Ziyech: £7M in amortisation + £5M in salary = £12M a year Successfully bin them all and we're looking at a minimum of £45M a year in FFP cost savings. To do this, we'd need to get at least £25M combined fees for Pulisic and Ziyech to cover their remaining amortisation values and would also need to get their salaries off the wage bill for good so no wage compensations to their new clubs. Probably not going to be easy considering their recent form and clubs knowing we want to get rid of them but also doesn't seem impossible. That right there is just about enough for three new signings at £50-60M each on six year deals with wages of £100-150K a week. It's funny how in the eyes of FFP calculations selling three players for a total £25M allows for spending £150-180M on their replacements without the FFP total costs changing one bit. That's something most rival fans moaning about the club's transfer activity don't even realize. And like you said on top of that we have a few decent assets we could look into selling (for example Gallagher) and because there's no previous amortisation costs involved with club-trained players any fees gained from these kind of sales would go straight into the spending cap and would, at least in the short term, lessen the financial impact of having no CL football next season. Don't think FFP will be a problem but of course all this relies on having some level of success in getting rid of the previous dud signings. If we fail to find new clubs for Auba, Ziyech, Pulisic etc. there is potential for some trouble there, at least as far as making any new signings in the summer goes.

Nah, it really doesn't. Here's two headlines from the BBC for example: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/61742358 "Darwin Nunez: Liverpool complete signing of Uruguay striker from Benfica for initial £64m" https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/64281139 "Mykhailo Mudryk: Chelsea sign Shakhtar Donetsk forward in £89m deal" Going into the full article both do mention the existence of add-ons in the price but the reporting is very different when headline for the other it's initial £64M and for the other it's just £89M deal. edit: Let's add one more: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/62718027 "Antony: Manchester United agree to sign Ajax winger for £81.3m" Antony's deal includes £4.3M more in add-ons but the headline only mentions the initial price.

I'm not worshipping anyone, I'm just saying Havertz has been comfortably worse throughout both of their times at the club. Havertz in 2,5 seasons PL games: average rating 6.75 on WhoScored.com and 3 MotM Mount in 3,5 seasons PL games: average rating 7.10 on WhoScored.com and 15 MotM If we pick the statistics any deeper than G+A I'm pretty sure there won't be many where Havertz comes out on top. And that's just a statistical comparison of the two, but the eye test has always told me the same thing. Again there's no 'worship' going on and especially this season I have been quite critical of Mount as well but let's not pretend for one fucking second Havertz has overall been anywhere near the player Mount has for the club. The optics also matter. One came to the club as a supposed 'generational talent' for fucking £70M and the other is a homegrown lad from the academy. Now if Mount were to sign a high-salary contract extension then of course he will be held to higher standards than he currently does but up until now there's no comparison between the two. Mount currently costs the club £4M a year in salary while Havertz total costs with amortisation and salary is around £20M a year. What's the excuse for the latter being consistently worse?

Yeah with Kepa we are getting closer and closer to the point where we can finally bin him off. Probably not next summer still but maybe in 2024 when he'll have just one year remaining on his contract and £10M amortisation value left. With Potter preferring Kepa over Mendy I wouldn't be surprised if Mendy left in the summer though. His book value will have only £10M left and his salary is just £55K/wk so surely there's some club willing to pay a decent enough fee for him and also afford his wages. He may not be that well suited to a team that requires the keeper to play from the back with his feet but he'd definitely be a great pick for some top half team in one of the big leagues whose play style suits him.

Mount is also predominantly a central midfielder while Havertz is a forward/winger/no10 or whatever the hell he even is so why should their goal contribution numbers even be up for comparison? If anything, the numbers you posted just confirm Mount is a much better player of the two because they have basically the same end product but Mount is also much better at pressing etc. while Havertz does virtually fuck all when he doesn't get the goal contributions. It's also been debunked by lots of sources (ie. Matt Law) that he's demanding a £300K/wk salary for his extension. Will probably still be more than £200K if James' salary is anything to go by but still way less than the reports in the media? Mount also cost the club £0 while Havertz cost £70M. Havertz on £150K/wk and £14M a year in amortisation is way more expensive for the club than Mount would be even if he did get the £300K/wk.