Jype

That €2.4M figure for every goal contribution (G+A) is sensationalist, and would only be true if he left on a free transfer now which obviously won't be the case. But assuming the loan won't be made permanent (no buy option) I really fear a few million a goal is what we're going to be paying for Felix. Total cost of the loan is around €18M including loan fee and wages so he'd have to score or assist ten goals or more to even take it under €2M per goal contribution. Considering the amount of games remaining the more likely return would be a maximum of five goals and a couple of assists which would amount to somewhere between €2M and €3M per goal involvement. That's how fucking bonkers the loan is. The only way this deal can make any sense financially is if he somehow lightens up the whole team and we make the UCL qualification (which we won't) or we somehow fluke our way to another UCL title (which we won't). If either of those happens the deal will have been an unprecedented masterstroke but realistically the chances are very slim.

I have here in Finland when I was about 15 years old. 😂 Went to court and was forced to pay a few thousand euros to the copyright holders. Let's just say my folks weren't too happy about that.

Closer to what? He already signed for the Saudi team last week.

Doesn't Ziyech have two and a half years left? Signed in 2020 on a five year deal. These journalists have no clue really. Even the article about Spanish clubs being interested in Aubameyang was dodgy, as @Vesperpointed FIFA rules prevent him from playing competitively for a third club this season. He can certainly fuck off in the summer but seems we're stuck with him till then.

He can, but he's not great at it. And there in lies the problem. Multiple players who can play multiple positions but none of them can play the role they're best at, Mount and Havertz especially.

I wouldn't say Rodriguez or Coutinho were average because both were incredibly talented. It's more like football overall has just changed a lot in the last 10 years or so, and as a result players like them have no place in the game today. Talent alone is not enough if their best position/role doesn't even exist in the modern game. A traditional number 10 with a free role is very rarely used by the top teams these days. I'm sure players like Rodriguez and Coutinho would have been classified as much better players had they begun their careers in the 90s or even the early 2000s but they're not suited to teams that require high pressing from all players which seems to be the way most top sides play now. Players like that could still thrive if the rest of the team is built to hide their weaknesses and maximize their strengths but why would anyone want to do that when there are easier ways to success? Felix and Havertz are both similarly problematic players to fit in.

If anything Simeone leaving would probably make him more likely to stay at Atletico, right? It's public knowledge Felix and Simeone had a falling out and that's why Felix wants to leave. With a new manager coming in and no buy option included in the loan deal, the next coach could just say he rates Felix and wants him to stay. Yeah, we're lucky if he even matches Higuain's record for the club. During the half season loan Higuain scored 5 in the PL and considering Felix' goal record throughout his career for Benfica, Atletico and Portugal national team I doubt he'll score more than that with the 20 or so games left in our season. He would need to totally hit the ground running and find his Benfica mojo back which I think is very unlikely to happen given our team's recent struggles and Felix' own stagnation over the last few years. More than happy to be proven wrong but not convinced by this deal at all. Even if he's a big success we're unlikely to have him next season.

Yeah that's what I thought too. Both are said to be at their best in a 'second striker' role so what works for one might work for the other too. If Potter can find a successful formula to use Felix in this second half of the season we might not even need to buy him on a permanent deal with Nkunku slotting right in for next season in the same position. But even so, to pay £15M for a short term loan like that is outrageous and by having no buy option we have given Atletico exactly what they wanted. If Simeone goes after the season like is being suggested by the Spanish media, they'll just have gotten rid of a problematic player for half a season (while recouping a hefty amount of money doing so) and at the same time hoping we help Felix regain his confidence just in time for him to go back and play under the next manager. Nkunku is already back in training and will only miss a couple more games so might as well have paid Leipzig a bit of extra and try to get him in straight away if the plan for Felix is to pave the way for Nkunku to come in..

Yeah, that's probably it. Flashy player for the Youtube/TikTok compilations but in reality does very little and lacks consistency. Just because Atletico got scammed into paying almost 130M€ for him doesn't make him that great. The Italian bloke would be Casadei, right? Completely different type of midfielders though, so not a great comparison.

But a lone CL win is still just marginal success, isn't it? Sure it's one of the most important trophies in football but aside from that many players in the 2021 CL winning team have fuck all else to show for their careers and haven't proven themselves to be consistent winners so they can't exactly afford to act like they're all of a sudden hot shit and too good for the likes of Potter. Tier 1, the serial winners: Kante, Silva, Sterling, Azpi, Kovacic Tier 2, mediocre levels of success: Aubameyang, Havertz, Ziyech, Pulisic, Mount, Jorginho, Koulibaly, James, Chilwell Tier 3, the nobodies who haven't won anything: Broja, Gallagher, Zakaria, Loftus-Cheek, Cucurella, Fofana, Chalobah, Badiashile and the academy lads If anyone's causing problems in the squad for Potter I would imagine it's from the second group of players, and more specifically the attacking players in that group. They're the ones who were digging the ground up from under Tuchel as well and who know their place in the squad is under threat the most. Anyone in the last group should just be happy to even be at a club of Chelsea's stature in the first place.

I'm sure the same phrase was said about many of our current underperforming attacking players before they signed, only for them to turn out the way they have after the move. Is Felix really all that or is it just a case of 'grass is always greener on the other side'? Felix' goal record so far in his career certainly doesn't suggest he's a great finisher. 58 goals in roughly 200 games for Benfica, Atletico and the Portugal NT. For comparison Havertz has 86 career goals for Leverkusen, Chelsea and Germany NT in just under 300 games so their track records are almost identical and most of us think Havertz is a shit goalscorer. He's also averaging less than 1 successful dribble a game throughout his career so not really sure if him being able to beat a man is true either. Also has the makings of yet another player we can't find the best position for, much like Havertz. Felix is not that great as a lone striker, nor is he all that good as a winger. His best role is something that doesn't exist in our team. Happy to be proven wrong and I do hope he does but just seems like a pointless signing to me, especially if we don't even have a buy option included. Even if he's a big success and bangs in 10 goals in the 20 odd games we have remaining, that still won't get us CL qualification for next season and chances are in the summer he'll just go back to Atletico (with Simeone rumored to be leaving after the season) or use the impressive performances to earn himself a move to another club with CL football on offer. If he's a massive hit we'll still have very little upside to this deal but if he's a failure it's just £16M down the drain.

Oh come on. I understood that sentiment when we were talking about players such as Terry/Lampard/Drogba etc. at their peak of their careers who had won almost everything at this club in particular multiple times but I'm way less understanding when we're talking about the current bunch. The only ones with actually successful careers in the current squad are Silva, Azpi, Kante, Kovacic and Sterling. None of the other 20 or so players have even won a major league title in their career ffs. The first three are in the twilight of their careers so I don't think their opinions should matter all that much, not that I think any of them are causing problems either because all seem to be model professionals. Everyone else has had marginal success at best. The CL win was the pinnacle of their careers for many but that didn't stop some of them from quite clearly turning on Tuchel as well. You know, the man most responsible for said CL win. Whether Potter is staying long term or not the bad apples still need to be binned ASAP no matter who they are.

Injured.

Are the 'Boehly out' crowd actually suggesting he should be gone from the club completely or just that he takes a step back and leaves handling of transfer business to people with better knowledge about how things work in football? There's a big difference. I think Boehly's heart is in the right place and he seems to have some decent ideas on how to develop the club further, as well as him and his backers obviously having deep pockets which is a good thing, but what I don't necessarily like is Boehly putting himself in the center of everything when his knowledge of the whole sport is still limited. The club would be better off having a real sporting director to take care of that aspect and leave Boehly just handling the responsibilities of the chairman role he inherited from Bruce Buck. That way he could still take a part in the decision making around the club but the actual day to day stuff and transfer business would be taken care of by someone more suited to the role.

The rumors of us going after Mudryk started straight after it was reported Rafael Leao is close to extending with Milan. I haven't seen much of Mudryk but from the little I know about him I think him and Leao are both very similar player types, ie. a LW with the ability of dribbling past opponents at high pace. Leao is definitely the better and more proven player of the two though. I don't see us getting either of them. Mudryk wants Arsenal and if Leao extends his contract he won't be going anywhere for a couple of years at least.

https://www.record.pt/futebol/futebol-nacional/liga-bwin/benfica/detalhe/benfica-recusa-90m-mais-jogadores-por-enzo-Chelsea-daria-ziyech-e-outros-dois?ref=Detalhe_Relacionadas Record are now saying the latest offer is 90M€+ Ziyech on a permanent move + Datro Fofana and Andrey Santos on loan. No way that is true. A transfer already as complex as this one doesn't need offering three players going in the other direction and having to negotiate each of their moves separately. 😂

Sure 85M€ is definitely a lot of money but surely everyone knew that was never going to be enough to land Enzo Fernandez in a January transfer window so if the club weren't willing to go past that figure, why even bother in the first place? Now they went in with an offer well below the valuation of Benfica and after fucking around for a couple of weeks with no developments we're once again the laughing stock of the transfer market. I'd certainly not have had any issue if the club never went after Enzo in the first place and cited him as being too expensive but now that they did and were once again embarrassed in the market, this whole fiasco just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

If the highest offer was 85M€ and Benfica's stance has always been "120M€ or fuck off" from the very start, how is the 85M€ offer not a lowball? Though I have to say I'm not sure if I buy this report from Romano. So far he's the only one on record saying the offer never went past 85M€ and literally everyone else both in Portugal as well as England have been talking about 120M-127M€ all along. The usually reliable ones like Ben Jacobs, Jacob Steinberg etc. have been consistently reporting the club are willing to pay higher than the 120M€ clause to get preferred payment structure, and just earlier today Matt Law returned from his holidays and said in an article the club had offered "more than £100M" for Enzo. If the offer never went higher than 85M€ surely the negotiations would have been cut very short and not continue for a couple of weeks? So maybe it's an official offer made very early into the process to kick start the negotiations after which there was at some point a rough verbal agreement over the 120-127M€ that was just never made into an official transfer bid because of final issues to be resolved first, which in the end proved more difficult than expected.

Sure, I too fully credit Tuchel with Rüdiger becoming as good as he did but the fact still remains he's gone and the squad is much worse off for it. Tuchel only coached the team for a bunch of games this season so the sample size is quite small but even at the start of the season Koulibaly looked just as bad as he does now and nowhere near Rüdiger's level.

The headline may have been a little sensationalist but the content sure wasn't. All credible Chelsea-based journalists have today confirmed we're in for Mudryk if the Arsenal move collapses and the reason they know that is because it was leaked by someone inside the club. Maybe not the best idea to go shouting from the rooftops how you're aiming to make another 80-100M transfer when you're trying to negotiate lower terms for another one.

There was definitely no slacking from Rüdiger, the man always gave maximum effort till the very end. Not entirely convinced Christensen did though. Either way it's very simple, Tuchel still had Rüdiger playing at a high enough level and Potter doesn't.

What's the chance Benfica execs took to Twitter today and saw reports of Boehly willing to 'blow Arsenal out of the water' with Mudryk and then decided to shift the goalposts and demand the full 120M€ up front instead of a structured payment plan?

What are you even talking about? Are you saying 'in his last season' as in this season where Tuchel stayed in charge for what, 5 games? Because last season (2021/22) Tuchel still very much had both of them in the squad. So you recognize the importance of having lost Rüdiger and even go on to say 'there was no coming back from losing him' but then still go all-in with your criticism of Potter for not working miracles with inferior players? Gotcha.

Well of course he fucking is. While his injury means he's still somewhat of an unknown variable when it comes to performing in a Chelsea shirt, not having him means the CB department is with a 100% certainty much worse than what Tuchel consistently had at his disposal, for example. With no more Rüdiger, no more Christensen and Silva finally starting to look like his decline has begun are you seriously saying we haven't missed Fofana being available? If we still had all the CBs from last season I wouldn't be saying he's an important player without him proving it on the pitch first but when he's the key replacement for another important player who has left the club then isn't it pretty much a given that he is too? And yeah, even if we ignore Fofana that still leaves Kante out for the entirety of Potter's managerial reign as well as James & Chilwell out for the last 12 games apart from James' brief appearance against Bournemouth when he got injured again. I'm just saying that when Tuchel had similar injury problems last season our form went out of the window as well and at least he still had Rüdiger to lock up the defense.

Take away James, Chilwell, Kante and Rüdiger from the time Tuchel took over and the ride would have been a lot bumpier early on, wouldn't you say? On top of the key players being consistently fit, at the time Azpi, Silva and Jorginho were also a couple years younger with more mileage left on their legs so how exactly was that squad 'same or worse' than the one we've had available in the last 10 games or so? Maybe despite an injury crisis it would still have been better than what Potter has come up with but it most certainly wouldn't have ended in a CL victory, that's for fucking sure. Even last season when Tuchel lost key players like Kante, James and Chilwell simultaneously to injuries our form went to shit and we fell from top of the league to 1 win in 8 games around December 2021. I'm just calling it as I see it and this revisionism just seems funny to me. Say we sack Potter on the spot after losing to City tomorrow, who would you say has to come in that immediately elevates the squad and makes top 4 this season? Has to be a realistic option from whoever's free. If the answer is no one, isn't it better to relax a little bit and just see out the season and give the man a chance? If the football shows no signs of improvement when key players get back from the sick bay and possible new signings gets settled in, a managerial change can be a topic for discussion after the season is over and there are potentially better candidates available.