Jase

Worth remembering that the one time Immobile stepped out of Serie A/Italy, he was loaned out after just 1 season and was then subsequently sold. Immobile also has 4 more years on his current contract. So, he won't come cheap either.

https://theathletic.com/news/Chelsea-malang-sarr-porto-champions-league/t9DMOyk7eMy1 Sarr can play against us for Porto.

Calvert-Lewin still has 4 years left on his contract. He won't come cheap at all, even if Everton are interested in selling him. Kane is impossible. Aguero may be possible but he would just be a short term solution. Ings...nah. He's not a game changing striker that we want to lead the line.

cc @King Kante

Tomas Soucek scored a perfect hat-trick for Czech Republic. lol

It's bloody obvious that the club want to sign Haaland but I asked this before, what is the club's backup plan if we don't get Haaland? Do they want Haaland because they feel we need a top striker and Haaland is that OR do they only want Haaland because he's the shiny toy right now?

The thing with Lampard is he supposedly only wanted Chilwell out of the summer signings. Did he really want Werner, Havertz and Ziyech or were they really the club signings? Assuming it's the latter, it's clear that he didn't seem to have a clue how to fit Werner and Havertz in especially, even though he may have bought into those signings. He might have had a plan for the team but had to change to something completely different because he was given players that he perhaps wasn't looking for. Moreover, Lampard's main issue wasn't that he tried to keep everyone happy but rather how he was using them tactically. Ziyech and Pulisic were always seemingly injured at one point or another while Havertz also got COVID-19. So, his decision to select the team wasn't really complicated. Rotation this season is fine. We can get away with it because of the congested schedule. But next season, in a normal season? At some point, I believe we need to settle on a consistent selection and not try to change it every game, every week. Constantly chopping and changing is not going to be helpful at all and it's arguably a reason why our attack has been rather disjointed because it's a different front 3 in almost every game. And as I said before, it's easy to keep everyone happy when the team is doing well. Nobody wants to be that arsehole and try to destabilize the team. The problem usually comes when the results start to go south. The same thing has happened with every manager at this club, for example.

But it's not the culture of the sport he is playing in. He's also THE star of the USMNT. Moreover given the nature of his character, would you expect him to come out and complain right now and potentially destabilize the team? He knows he's got the talent and it's clear that he wants to play week in week out. He's not someone who's going to just be happy be a sub player. Otherwise, we wouldn't have heard/seen reports about him potentially considering his future in the summer if he continues to be a sub player under Tuchel.

Are you saying that he should be happy with a sub role? This isn't NBA.

Have I explicitly said that I am against signing Haaland? Am just stating the problems that could potentially occur when we have so many players that would want to play week in week out. Am I wrong to question that? I don't subscribe to this idea that if there's a chance to sign a big talent like A, B, C, you have to absolutely take it. This isn't Football Manager or FIFA. I want a world class team, just like everyone else, but I also want to see a cohesive team, a team filled with players that can work together and make a team. I don't want to see us just buy all the "shiny toys" out there but have no clue how to fit all the pieces together into an actual, cohesive team, which is what we seem to be doing. I didn't mind the Havertz signing last summer but the reason I questioned it back then was because while people keep on saying he's a generational talent and all that, I don't see him as a player who can bring that X factor to a team, someone who can do something out of nothing - e.g. someone like Hazard. Maybe he might grow into one such player in the future but right now, I don't see it. Plus, I also questioned the signing then because we have a more urgent to sort out the midfield and we still do, IMO. It wouldn't have covered his flaws as a manager but for example, if we had used the Havertz money to buy Rice last summer, would it have been better in making Lampard's plan for the team work? Moreover compared to Havertz, I can totally understand the signing of Haaland because we desperately need a clinical striker upfront and there's also a clarity in Haaland's position in that he's a clear striker, not someone who can play in various positions but always have that potential question mark over his best position like Havertz. But not every team have 2 top players for every position. There's an argument to be made about having consistency in the selection, a clear hierarchy of the players in the squad. This mindset is like what most governments had when first faced with the COVID-19 pandemic... Just because it is not a problem now, it doesn't mean we shouldn't be talking about it because it is a potential problem. And are you really comparing this current Pulisic with the Pulisic that was still in his teen years at Dortmund? Of course he wasn't going to be a regular then. But it's a different case now that he's in his early 20s and developing to a potential world class player.

IIRC, this was mentioned as a possibility by some on here long time ago but Morata has revealed that he came close to having a depression during his time at the club. https://www.espn.com/soccer/juventus/story/4344809/juventus-striker-morata-calls-for-better-mental-health-care-in-football

I'd argue that we have more first starting XI players, players who want to be in the starting XI week in week out more than City. From the 6 that @MoroccanBlue named there, there are 2 already fully-fledged German internationals, 1 goalscoring freak, 1 main star or the face of a NT, 1 budding star(?) from our academy. Ziyech may be the most expendable one of the lot but I suspect he won't be happy if he just sits on the bench. Furthermore, City have made that work because they tend to win most of the time. No one is gonna question much at all if the manager or the team is winning every week. Are we able to do that? You only have to see some of the recent reactions, that even though we are on a good run, people are still asking why isn't this player in the starting XI, why that player isn't playing bla bla bla.

But does Haaland see it that way about us though? Reports say he isn't interested over joining us. The problem with us is that we have always shown the potential, the promise of being great, especially since 2012/13 but we have never really fulfilled that potential. We have always gone from tasting success to failure or failure to success within two seasons but never in the middle, never found a middle ground. It's always been boom or bust with us. We have not been a dominant force domestically (like City, Liverpool in recent years) or in Europe (like we used to be in the late 2000s). If Haaland's reaction after the game at the weekend is anything to go by, I suspect somewhere like City might be more for him. Less volatile, more chances of success, more stability than us. We are building potentially a great squad but we still don't know where exactly we're heading and if Tuchel or whoever can get us there.

Where has that narrative come from? He has only 9 assists in his entire club career so far.

So was Havertz apparently.

The funny thing is, we are already having that problem right now with the current squad. As much as we need a new striker, it feels like we're just buying all the shiny toys out there without having a cohesive plan to fit them all in.

Here's a random name popping up...

According to Bild, Tuchel has been promised a big-name signing by the club.

The rumor was BS as it came from a dodgy source but Bild decided to look into the rumor anyway and has claimed that Tuchel has big plans for Werner, who will play alongside Haaland if we sign him. Bild also claimed that Tuchel has been promised a big-name signing by the club and it will not affect Werner in any way (which is hardly surprising since he's supposedly a club signing and was reportedly one of the reasons why we hired a German manager). https://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/2021/3/23/22346491/Chelsea-not-contemplating-werner-departure-despite-haaland-links-report