Reddish-Blue

So far there hasn't really been any jacking up of transfer fees between PL clubs. Even Spurs got their attacking mid from Leicester for a reasonable fee. Looks like we might be the ones suffering for not putting in a Caicedo bid earlier. Brighton know full well that we are desperate and they're going to ask for 90+ million for Caicedo. If we are serious about this transfer window, we should just put in a final bid for Caicedo in the 80 million range and if Brighton reject it, we move on.

I don't get why we haven't put in a bid for Lavia yet. What is there to lose from putting in a 40+ million bid for Lavia? Seems like we're putting all our eggs in one basket for Caicedo and Brighton will just milk us for an extra 20 million.

Is there a player that Barcelona don't want? Maybe they shouldn't have spent that excess amount of money on Raphinha & Ferran Torres and they could have afforded to buy the likes of Zubimendi for their midfield. They want Bernardo Silva as well but they can't afford to pay City a transfer fee...just hoping that Pep gives another gift to his former club...

People getting worried about 'empty stats'. With Mount as the "1st" player, we were barely scraping our way to the top 4 and we were miles away from being able to tie the shoelaces of Pep & Klopp's teams. 😁

If he's that good, he should be at one of the top clubs by now. Why is it that Arsenal were offered Zubimendi and they declined and preferred Rice at 100+5 million.

Bernardo has mentioned that he'd be open to move to Benfica/Barcelona, think he was offered a good deal to go to Saudi League as well...

We have a midfield, with like 10 games of experience between them 😅 As it stands: Enzo - Santos - Casadei ...........talk about playing the yoooouth

Because they made a banner for him. Not like every single Chelsea player gets a banner at the Bridge... The fact that he ran away at the first opportunity should show every fan just how much he actually 'cared' for the club. I hope he has a poor season at United, just to see how their fans react 😆

Yeah, let's sell a midfielder who has proven that he can play at a PL level and replace him with a kid who hasn't played in Europe yet. Santos will probably get backup minutes automatically as we have ZERO depth in midfield.

I just don't see Gallagher leaving, feel like he would suit Pochettino's pressing tactics and we could use the depth heading into new season.

I still get the feeling that Hall's future is in midfield with the ability to play LB as required... Best case for Maatsen may be some sort of a sale with buy back option. (Similar to what City had for Lavia, let the kid develop elsewhere and if the opportunity arises in the next 2 years, we can still bring back Maatsen at a reasonable enough price).

Since when do we actually play with a #10? The last time we played with a traditional #10 was probably Mata. If I had to pick an attacking midfielder to go with our current group, it'd be Cherki over Wirtz. Cherki has that dribbling ability that we've missed since the young Hazard days. Not sure if Lyon are keen on selling their prized youngster though...

Yea Newcastle were keen at 15 million but then Southampton would have to pay us around 20% or more of that fee as a sell-on. They'd be better off negotiating straight with us, get a slightly higher fee in the process.

Macallister was a release clause though, bit different to Caicedo Caicedo is arguably their most valuable asset and they already rejected around the 65-70 million mark in January from Arsenal, he also signed a new deal with them (on the condition that he'd be allowed to leave this summer). Think it'll be closer to 90 million including add-ons and they know our alternative option ran to PSG.

Wonder if the club are concerned about HG criteria moving forward (just off the top of my head: Madueke, Sterling, Gallagher, Chilwell, Reece, think Colwill would count as U-21) Losing Mount, RLC hurts the HG rules and Gallagher/Chalobah have been linked to moves

Wonder if Reece's body will allow him to play as a RWB for longer periods of time...considering the hamstring and other injuries he's had on a consistent basis

Wonder if they have any midfielders available (the last one we got from Lyon turned out to be pretty good)...considering we're short in midfield heading into next season.

You can't really say that Vieira ain't that guy when we just had the likes of Potter/Lampard in charge of the club. They're all the same (as in none of them should be managing a top 8 side).

Sturridge at least got to a good level, was selected as part of the PFA team of the year in 13/14 for Liverpool, had a solid strike rate in PL football and even got 20+ caps for England which is pretty good for someone with niggling injury issues. McEachran just didn't have the work ethic to go with his talent.

Absolutely spot on, Mount's a good player and he'll do well with Ten Hag's system but Ashley Cole was top class, there's no comparison between the two. Ended up being one of the best signings as he was arguably one of the best LB's in Europe for almost a decade.

Gilmour wanted to be loaned out though, he wanted the game time to develop rather than sit on the bench at Chelsea. It's just a shame that there wasn't much squad planning going on as Gilmour would have been a handy midfielder to have in the squad heading into next season (with 4 first team midfielders being sold in the last 2 transfer windows).

Remember Carlo Ancelotti blooding in some of the youngsters in that cup game vs Newcastle (think it was Van Aanholt, McEachran, Kakuta and a few others). Never really saw the hype around Stoch or Borini, decent players on their day but if you had to compare academy players, the ones with the most potential in the past few years: CHO, RLC, Solanke, Reece, Mount, Livramento and Colwill (i'm sure there are others that i'm forgetting)

I don't recall many of the top 4 teams in past years having such a young midfield Normally you want your midfielders to be in that 23-26 age profile (as they would have played at least 3-4 seasons of top level football by that point in time), with say 1 youngster and at least 1 older head (28+) Enzo-Caicedo (if it happens) is a nice combo but we need someone in that Kante/Jorginho type of profile to come in and be the level headed one and lead the youngsters through those rough patches.

Wasn't Mount offered 200k (base) per week on a 6+1 contract at Chelsea? He declined that offer but he's happy to go to United for 250k a week on a 6 year contract.... For an academy graduate to be leaving for an extra 50k a week is actually pretty funny. People thought he was the next Lampard but that couldn't be further from the truth.

I get the feeling that it will end up being closer to 90 million.