Reddish-Blue

Bellingham won't come to us if the likes of Real Madrid and City are going after him and De Jong won't leave Barcelona till he gets his deferred wages. That leaves Declan Rice, let's see how much the new owners are willing to spend...

I highly doubt the club will let both midfielders just walk away on free transfers. I'd be shocked if a deal wasn't offered to Jorginho (whether he accepts it or decides to cash in on a nice deal + signing on fee from an Italian club remains to be seen).

Just when we start hitting a bit of form under the new boss, bam, our best wingback goes down! Will be interesting to see how Potter adjusts his tactics without Reece, he was becoming a bit of a cheat code down that flank.

This game has draw written all over it, would love to see us turn up and get the 3 points but I don't see it happening against a side that is hard to break down.

I wonder what the club does with Kante's contract situation....don't see how you can offer a player with niggling injuries and the amount of miles he's accumulated over the years on his body more than a 1+1 year deal I wouldn't be shocked if this is his final season with Chelsea as those injuries will only get worse as he ages.

H2H is decisive because Barcelona cannot match Bayern Munich's current total of 12 points, even if they win their remaining 2 games. As per the Champions League tie breaker criteria: 1.Points in head-to-head matches among the tied teams; 2.Goal difference in head-to-head matches among the tied teams; 3.Goals scored in head-to-head matches among the tied teams; If Inter beat Plzen, they are through as they have more points than Barcelona in H2H matches this season, it only gets interesting if they somehow drop points against Plzen...

It works for clubs like Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, PSG, Manchester City who are basically guaranteed UCL spots every other season.... Barcelona on the other hand... It's a real shame Inter Milan couldn't kill them off today, that would have been AMAZING to watch!

He would have picked him in the squad anyway, same with Kante & the French National Coach.

For all the criticism that Werner has to cop every other week, he did get the goal & assist for their win today. Not saying he had a great game but he got them the 3 points.

Think it was Fulham or another newly promoted side a few seasons ago that did the same thing in terms of buying a whole new XI and there was zero chemistry all season and they got relegated.

I don't think it was a strange signing, in the sense that the club & Tuchel knew about Kante's injury worries and Kovacic is only just returning from a nasty injury himself. Zakaria fits the bill of dynamic box to box midfielder (that's what I've seen him do in the Bundesliga as well as for his national team), it's surprising that he hasn't featured yet but there will be plenty of time to change that with the amount of games we are about to play.

The issue was, no-one really knew what a fair price for Tomori was going to be. At the time when he left the club, it was raw potential, don't think anyone expected him to go to Milan and become a staple of their first team defense so quickly. Fair play to AC Milan, they took the chance on him and they got a very good CB for a cut price fee. Hopefully for us, Colwill develops properly and he lives up to the hype as he would slot in nicely to our defensive scheme in the near future!

City look like they are in cruise control, basically just strolling around and then attacking the opposition as required. Pep's got a cheat code in midfield in De Bruyne, a cheat code up front in the Alien and even a cheat code on the wing in Cancelo.

Tomori should be added to your list. He sort of fits the 3rd dot point but I feel there was enough raw potential there for us to keep him. If only the club had a crystal ball about the Christensen contract situation, we could have saved ourselves 30-40 million by keeping Tomori/Guehi at the club.

Don't forget that Bayern have always held a strong interest in a certain young German attacker playing for Chelsea at the moment... It wouldn't surprise me at all if they begin to step up their interest in the coming seasons.

@Vesper if we were to get Gvardiol for a reasonable price, do you think a back 3 of Gvardiol, Fofana, Colwill is solid enough for future seasons?

We still don't have our Rudiger replacement. Fofana is a work in progress (massive talent but long way to go) and Koulibaly has looked below average so far. It's a pretty big concern that our defense is still heavily dependent upon 50 year old Thiago Silva being fit for the whole season.

I hope we continue the winning trend but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if we unnecessarily dropped 2 more points this season!

That dribble at the end of the first half where he just went through like 3-4 players and put the chance on a plate for that Milan player was like watching Hazard back in the day, lucky for us, that Milan player skied it over! I feel like the signing of Nkunku is a higher priority than Leao for our attacking structure. Both would be amazing but don't see that happening.

The Fofana deal was always going to be a nice fat bonus for Leicester as they repeatedly said they wanted to keep him till next summer. Feel like Fofana will be a solid player in the long term, him & Colwill could form a nice partnership at the back. Interested to see how Koulibaly does for the club because he hasn't looked great so far, really thought he'd be starting every game as our big name defensive signing but it's basically 45 year old Thiago Silva holding up our backline at the moment. So weird that we can't find value for money signings yet all of our rivals seem to be able to sign players in the 20-30 million range.

That's what we get for not being able to win at least 1 of the opening 2 games. Now we have to somehow keep AC Milan and their attack at bay over 2 games (4 points) to have any hope of reaching the knockout stages. Not the best time for a new manager to come in and take over as the players are still getting used to his tactics and we have key players carrying injury concerns (Kovacic still doesn't look 100%, Kante is only back in training, Jorginho looked like a 40 year old on the pitch vs Palace). Hopefully we can sneak a win

You could even add players like Ivanovic, Alex, Zouma as smart signings where we didn't have to pay overs in the transfer market and we managed to get some good performances from all of them during their time with Chelsea. Now we're spending 50+ million on decent players like Cucurella when in reality, we all know thats 20 million wasted (even City stopped the negotiations after Brighton asked for a minimum fee of 35 million).

That also comes from the setup at the club and who the coach is. When we had Mourinho in charge, there wasn't that much of an issue 'attracting' top tier players. We had that spine that kept us in the UCL hunt for many years. Feel like of recent times we had lost our way in the transfer market under Roman/Marina and the board. Even when Lampard was at the helm, he basically said I don't really know where to use Havertz....and that was a significant concern considering the amount we had paid for one of Germany's elite young talents. If you read between the lines, it seems like Lampard didn't want Havertz as he saw him & Mount playing a similar tactical role in the side. Hopefully we can get the DoF in place soon as that should help with getting those class players into the club.

Until we get a Director of Football in place, we will continue to look like amateurs in the transfer market.

From memory, his release clause only comes into effect in June 2023. There is zero chance of us getting him in January....surely the focus in January would be improving the midfield considering Jorginho & Kante's contract situations