Jase

Maybe those "some Chelsea fans" you're talking about are a little more sane and not want every shiny looking "toys" out there just for the heck of it. 🙄 Think people have mentioned good points as to why we should stay clear of Coutinho etc but you chose to ignore them. Isco, James, Coutinho are all in their late 20s and should be in their prime but they have gone off the rails for years now, they aren't even first team starters for their own club and you should know something is not right when their club are desperate to get rid of a player, like in Coutinho's case. If they were a few years younger, I probably wouldn't mind to see us take a gamble on them - similar to Kovacic - but they aren't and after Shevchenko, Torres, Falcao, Pato etc, the club should do best to stay clear of washed-up esque players. And it says a lot if your best justification to sign Coutinho is that he was in the best XI of a tournament that happened TWO years ago. Also, given the financial hit that we are likely to suffer, it's all the more important that the club make sure they sign the players that we need first and foremost - e.g. ST and LB - before moving to any potential so called luxury signings.

Wonder what our club have decided to do with the non-playing staff etc.

Yup, it is an option that will satisfy none of the important parties involved.

Yeah but it's arguably better than declaring the season null and void (even if that might benefit us in terms of Champions League qualification), with clubs set to lose tens/hundreds of millions if we go down that route.

In the midst of all this fancy transfer talk, we also still need to see how much are we being affected financially from this coronavirus situation. Our transfer budget, for all we know, could be reduced because the club have to cover up for losses etc.

They should do what AVB suggested and change the seasons to a calendar year to tie in with the 2022 World Cup and then go back to August-May after that.

If Coutinho is really as good as you're making him out to be, Bayern would be trying to keep him or Barcelona wouldn't look so desperate to get rid of him. And using Willian and Pedro aren't great barometers for comparison.

What about his wages? Those big Spanish clubs notoriously pay their players BIG wages.

Actually, I was wrong about the Belgian league. Totally forgot that they have the playoff system for the title thing. But the larger point still stands nonetheless.

A more favorable comparison would be Pedro, IMO, if he stays on the right trajectory.

It was a good setup from CHO but it was Pulisic who initiated the move that led to the winner.

How do you just cancel the league and award the title to whoever is in first if it's like Serie A or La Liga, where the top 2 teams are separated by just 1-2 points with 11-12 games to go? Would you be so casual in saying this if we're just 1 point behind Liverpool in 2nd and fighting with them for the title and have 9 games left to play?

If Coutinho doesn't cost much, Bayern may have been tempted but they aren't and Coutinho is seriously overrated. If he was really any good, he would have found a place at Barcelona or at Bayern but neither has happened. He's just a long range shooter merchant and nothing more. And not to mention, our midfield area should be the least of our worries this summer.

LMAO! Think Pulisic has showed more than enough, more than "flashes" to suggest he would be an important player in the team.

Not sure what Mount has done to deserve the disdain that some are showing here...

True. We have been pretty much irrelevant in the Champions League since winning 2012. 1 semi-final run - and 2 Europa League wins but they don't give the same number of points - and that's it.

Or Steve Clarke, although I feel like the team were mostly on auto-pilot that season anyway, with the players taking charge of matters.

But the success rate of those tackles tells a different story no? What's the point if you make more tackles anyone else but you're less successful at it than anyone else? And since we're here being all picky about the numbers, then does a difference of 13 or 16 in aerial duels won really means that Christensen is better than Rudiger and Tomori? It could simply be a case of more crosses heading towards Christensen's path than Rudiger and Tomori. As you can see from some of those numbers, not one of the center backs have better stats overall than the others. Some have better numbers in 'aspect A' while some are better in 'aspect B' compared to the rest. I'm inclined to leave Tomori out of this since this is his first year playing top flight football and hasn't played much after December for whatever reason but the fact that we don't have a standout center back, a world class one like Terry for example, is the reason why Lampard has constantly chopped and changed the defence. Player A and B will look great in one week and the next, they will look like absolute disasters.