Magic Lamps

Ronaldo is finished at the top level. That much was clear from last season. He might still score in a piss easy league like Bundesliga if he joins Bayern but for our system i can hardly think of a less compatible striker except lukaku

Dembele is still in the balance, we are still odd-on favourites to get him for reasons I can not quite fathom atm Diaby would be interesting, he is crazy fast both acceleration and top speed but really soft Bayern will never sell Gnabry to us. If we were only suitor they would rather let his contract run down.

This club really is going from bad to worse in terms of dealing with transfers

What depresses me about him is that he is barely adequate, will turn 28 during the season and costs 45m ppl are acting if he is an Allrounder. he is just equally bad at lb and dm. If we play him at lb it will be like watching azpi there. Pep said so himself, he can’t overlap. We need our fullbacks to overlap. So fkin stay the hell clear.

I know it’s infuriating but the club is a ship almost without captain atm complete clear out at the director and board level, no continuity rule in place. Obviously Todd has to reestablish all the contacts while also getting a crash course in football dealings. It’s pretty much chaos up there right now so I don’t expect anything to be done quickly and more embarrassments like Ake and Raphinha incoming.

45 fkin million for Nathan useless ake. Such an embarrassment. I mean he probably won’t throw a fuss and be professional abou it. But In Terms of overpaying this is Lukaku, Kepa, drink water levels of stupid.

If Barca in all their financial trouble cough up 70m for raphinha let them have him not even convinced we need to sign 2 wingers this window. Tt still has to play Mount in midfield in a big match. He and Kai already make up 2/3 of our attack. Add Sterling and we are fine gnabry would be fine. Best option out there probably. So expect him to sign on for Bayern tho

https://www.sportbible.com/absolute-Chelsea/transfer-nathan-ake-manchester-city-Chelsea-asking-price-20220630 shit source but apparently city are trying to ward off our ake interest with a 50m price tag hope Its true no way we pay 50m for that bang average player i hated the kounde rumour which luckily has cooled but he at least has outstanding bounce, pace, flair, dribbling and technical ability for a cb. An ill fit but a special player. Ake is just mediocre in every aspect of the game. Even as AC replacement he would not fit the bill. Would be one of the most boring an uninspired signings ever maybe giving TT too much of a say in transfers was indeed a terrible idea after all. I was always wary of his dodgy record but for most of his signings you could at least see the idea behind it.

Sounds good but Apparently Bayern are now interested in dembele as well…

This ake and kounde providing cove for fullback is BS as long as we are playing with wing backs.

Just take dembele and raphinha to spite Barca and then loan raphinha out and sell him next year ^^

Maybe young fabregas the fabregas we got had no legs and was a liability in midfield in a 3atb system

There were a few pens among those, I think 4? I am not talking about this season tho. His overall career output is very similar to Willian’s at this point also having played in minor leagues mostly the quality of raphinhas goals from open play has been excellent in most cases tho. The same was true for Willian however So it could be a bad sign I.e. a scorer of great goals is not a great goal scorer or it could also mean that provided with more possession and service he might score even more I guess we will see very pleased something is finally getting done

Not over the moon, we are obviously overpaying plus he will turn 26 in December already. But he is definitely a baller. Pacey, skilful, hard working is exactly what we need. Just need him to up his goal rate. Otherwise could be another Willian signing. Looking neat and tidy on the ball, speed dribbler with the occasional wonder goal but no consistent threat. But he is left footed unlike Willy which already gives him a bit of an edge

Wtf is this obsession with tiny cbs. First kounde now ake. both are inadequate esp ake who is still the exact same player we rightly gave away for peanuts years ago

Dembele apparently is pissed bc we are offering only marginally more than Barca and only a modest (wild guess about 5m)signing fee Lol he is such a diva. can really live without another toxic character in the dressing room but might still happen

I would not mind Raphinha for Ziyech swap but I think we have excessive expectations on him. He has never been a prolific scorer in his career even in portugal he was pretty goal shy. Assessing him as a LWB options seems more interesting even though i have never really seen him put in a shift defensively. But if we are really looking for LWB competition for chilwell other than Emerson it gives me a bit of hope that not all is lost. We do not know if Chilly comes back the same player he was before his injury and even then we will need a quality backup for the gruelling fixture list. Our season imploded when he got injured, fingers crossed the new board has learned from this.

No thanks In the system we play we need our AMs to be fast and athletic. Eriksen is an anachronistic old school no 10 like from the 90ies. No room for him here

Obviously, distributional justice is hard to understand for an American lol... nah jk. the reason is simpler... It is the PLs business modell splitting the money more evenly, giving the smaller clubs power to make the competition more interesting and thus create the better product overall. As a consequence the PL attracts more viewers from everywhere and the money overall increases for everyone. In spain and germany the leagues only get a fraction of the TV money overall but most of it gets into the pockets of the big clubs, so they can still somewhat compete with the English sides. So, to some exent it is in line with the economic and social models of those countries. In america a select few franchises (or corporations, or ppl) get all the money while the rest not only gets nothing but also gets fucked over by the rich for fun. In Germany and Spain we try to do it the same way but just are not as ruthless with it so a shallow egalitarian veneer is preserved. Britain retains some form of multi-layered aristocracy spiced up with that typcial British habit to shoot oneself in the foot with that bloated calender and subs rule.

exactly, is that not the point? Ziyech's problem is that he is frail, weak and slow. He has great technique and those mean whipped in balls are a real danger, he just can't get them in often enough bc he is so easy to bully off the ball and can't beat players. Ideally we would get rid of Timo, Hakim and get all three Sterling, Raphinha and Dembele. All three are completely different in style but are very fast, great on the ball and have output which is more than can be expected of our current crop.

Neymar is over a year older than Lukaku and has tons of milage in his legs hard pass for me Now a has-been and soon only option for him will be being recycled in granda league

Kicking the can down the road we give him away for peanuts and he returns with his market value slashed in half We should not be looking at saving a few quid on this massive failure. We should wreck his career and have him sit with the reserves for 4 years to make an example of what happens when you talk shit in public

Swing broja and signing that petulant toffee would be such a chels move Next we sell chalobah to fund koulibaly

I feel the same. We bought a soon to be 28 y.o. declining proven failure in the PL for 100m+ A 50m winger who has produced numbers in EPL for years at a shitty liverpool, at an average City side and now at a great City side no matter the manager or system is by no means risky in comparison. I thnk ppl have short memories. When we played that terrible pool side in 2014 we had the best defense in the league by far and he ran rings around us, was basically a one man attack of all the rumoured winger signings like dembele, raphinha, gnabry he is by a huge margin the safest bet.

kounde or not we still passed up on a million of defenders when we need at least 2 anyway. So the point stands. Also if it were TT's preference, why is the deal not sealed already? either way comes down to board incompetence