Rekin

I would honestly prefer Malcom to Fekir. Both would be great additions, and Fekir is certainly more established (also his physique reminds me of Hazard), but I feel like Malcom has the higher ceiling and already at 20 has some qualities that makes him special. I also think its high time we get a RW that is left-footed.

I agree. He lacks the cutting edge which will get him goals and assists right now. He has excellent technique, but isn't experienced enough yet to make the most of it. I also think his range of passing isnt that great. Furthermore he is really weak physically and lost almost every shoulder to shoulder challenge. I really liked the guy and hope he gets some opportunities to develop his weaknesses though.

In my opinion Bakayoko is the player who has impressed the most out of the purchases. He is everything I was hoping he would be. I feel like he is intercepting and recovering the ball almost as much as Kante, does very well in the air and offers far more going forward than Matic. The only game where he has been a bit subdued was against Spurs, but that was understandable under the circumstances. Real monster of a player, and if he can kleep himself injury free I'm certain that he will establish himself as one of the best CM's in the PL.

When you see a 17-year old it isnt just about ability. Ampadu was certainly not bad, but it was his mentality that I really liked the most. He was constantly asking for the ball, orchestrating the rest of the team, going in for a crunching tackle straight away and more than once trying to go for those pin-point long-balls. It showed character and courage, a determination to not just be a cameo but to play on the same merit as the others. I really hope we get to see him maybe not start games, but get a solid 3-400 minutes this season. One to follow for sure.

Worth remembering that he had no pre-season and came back from an injury, recently turned 23 and is playing his first season in PL. Despite of all the above he has already showed himself to be a very valuable asset. He might just turn out to be a massive bargain.

I think that he has been great, other than some difficulties with Kane he has been very reliable.. With Luiz and Rudiger we have some excellent distribution from the back.

He made a great run for Fabregas's excellent pass early on. It looked like a bad miss, but its actually not easy to control the ball when it comes sharply at you from behind your shoulder. He could have scored a goal when Morgan made an excellent block. He scored when the game was still 0-0. He should have won us a penalty when the handball happened. There were other good things he did as well, but the above four were imo his biggest contributions, and they show that he had a strong impact in the game. Pedro and Fabregas struggled to support him further up the pitch, so I think he did well all things considered.

I think Bakayoko will be a huge player for us. He was a bit shaky the first 30 or so for us today, but really grew into the game. Except for some poor passing decisions he was very dominant several times, and created some opportunities all by himself. Give him time to get used to the league and he will form an amazing partnership with Kante.

Hi. I assume youre being sarcastic? I was just comparing G+A per min played, seeing as Morata vs Lukaku was such a big debate this summer. Anyway, not his best game tonight but another goal and if he was a bit more lucky it could have been more. Overall nice link up play a couple of times, but went down too easily as well.

Di Marzio/Romano said he was one of the better RWB's in Italy, so it seems unlikely that we are buying Papy 2.0.

I dont think it was a bad window in the end, but it was still performed in a embarassing fashion. Personally, these were the big issues we needed to adress going into summer: We did adress most of them. Zappacosta is apparently a good crosser, and he does provide depth as a WB. The problem is that now we have Azpilicueta, Moses, Zappacosta and Rudiger who can all somewhat play a role as RWB, but only Alonso as LWB. Poor balance in other words. Bakayoko is more dynamic than Matic, and together with Drinkwater we have some good depth. Morata gives us a different striker profile, and while Llorente would have been good to have at least we are not strictly worse off in the striker position. We also enter the new season with one more senior player than before in the squad. So again, not a terrible transfer window. Having said that, it was still an absolute embarassment. The clubs haggling had us lose out on Danilo, Llorente, Lukaku and we were also rejected after having a bid accepted by Barkley and Oxlade-Chamberlain. Furthermore, we sold a key player to Man Utd, a rival that may now challenge us for the league. This should never, ever happen to a club on our level. It makes us look like absolute amateurs. I mean fuck, going into the FA Cup final the summer looked so good. We already had a very strong team, and just needed a top up. Instead we went on a selling and loan spree, while haggling for every single million with every team out there. Do we come out stronger? Only slightly. Something must be behind this. Is it that we had to buy out the Adidas deal? Is it the new stadium? Other clubs spent far more than us having sold a fraction of the players. It doesnt add up. Perhaps we need to adjust our expectations on the transfer seasons from now on.

If you dont bring success in a specific season, you need to at the very least work towards setting up success in the following ones. Chelsea have so far (and its almost over) done poorly this window. Morata, Rudiger and Bakayoko will be great players for us, and so will Christensen. Together with Hazard, Kante, Alonso, Courtois, Cesar and Luiz we have a strong, stable starting eleven. The problem is that Morata is replacing an excellent striker in Costa, Baka a capable midfielder in Matic and Rudiger an ok player in Cahill. They are all either direct replacements, or slight upgrades. If we bring in Drinkwater, Llorente and Barkley then it is more of the same, i.e replacements for departing players and width. Width is extremely important, but so is trying to every season acquire one or two big upgrades on some of your players. Alex Sandro, Mendy, Alexis Sanchez, Danny Rose and Bernardo Silva are examples of some that were available but not acquired. Our system operates on having fresh and capable WB's. We saw how we suffered when we missed Moses or Alonso last season. A natural response to this would be to either get upgrades or width on those positions. It is also clear that Chelsea recognized this considering how many WB's we have been linked with throughout the summer by reliable sources. How is it then possible that we have not managed to secure a single WB by deadline day? If we end the window that way then we can kiss any good results this season goodbye. Fuck, we had so much time to sort this out, how is it possible that seemingly every other team managed to get ahead of us on transfers were there was competition.

I think something is happening behind the scenes. Some clubs (PSG, Manchester clubs) have made the decision to recruit the most well-known names no matter the cost. Others, such as us, Spurs and Arsenal have decided to try and maintain a self-sustainable revenue model. I am not saying that I find it the best choice in the current environment, but I find it hard otherwise to explain how we could lose three wing-backs to City, one to Inter, one to Spurs and another to Liverpool. I do think that the players we have recruited will be excellent, and if we had retained Ake, Chalobah and Costa then I would think that this was a great transfer window. However, is has been 100% clear for a while that we needed reinforcements, and the market has been open for several months now. The money is there, no doubt about it whatsoever, so what is keeping us from being more pro-active? This is crazy, I simply refuse to believe that our board is so incompetent. It absolutely must be directions coming from Roman himself, I cannot fathom any other reason for failing so spectacularly. There is still one day left. I know we can get Drinkwater, Barkley and Llorente. I think those would be good signings, but if we end up recruiting not a single WB on either side then heads should roll. It was priority number one, and there is exactly one day left to fix this. Talk about cutting it close.

The only thing I can imagine is that Pool came up and offered him his dream role.

This blows, but at the same time some serious questions need to be raised. How did it take this long to reach this point with Ox? We have been interested for months, and we only learn now that he actually dont want to play as a WB? That is extremely incompetent on our part. The communication should have been clear from the start from both camps. I feel certain that we will get DD and Barkley if we really want them, but Oxlade was the only one that had a good chance to become a starter. If we leave the window with no WB's added, then it is 100% embarassing on the boards side. In difference from other positions there have been many options available during the summer.

Great signing. We already have a strong starting eleven, and now we have added versatility together with competition for Moses. £35m for a 24-year old Brit is a great price. With DD I really think we are only missing a LWB, and maybe a striker (still not sold on Bats at all).

It's not about how good DD is as a starter, but his ability compared to squad status. Kante goes ahead of him, Bakayoko goes ahead of him and in certain games Cesc will be ahead of him. Is DD good enough to be a fourth choice? Yes, he is. When we have games against lower league teams, or if we secure an early progress in the CL, then we will need someone to play those games that we can afford to lose to injury. DD is basically an insurance policy to keep our best CM players fit and fresh, and it is a good signing for that. Bakayoko - Kante is going to be a great midfield pairing, so we need to do everything we can to increase the chance that they can play together when it really matters.

He is still lacking in fitness imo, one of the most stationary offensive players we have, but I really think he is a quality player. He did pretty well on the ball today, and added another G+A to his tally. Even though we have had a tougher schedule than Man Utd and bigger problems with our squad and red cards, Morata has already more points to his name than Lukaku. He has also played less. Morata is currently on 47 min/point, while Lukaku is on 90 min/point.

Really liking what I see. Great stride forward, good passing and dominant overall. Basically better at everything than Cahill other than being English.

Two difficult opponents and one trip to the other side of the world. Great!

You might be right. I just dont know if he should be the solution to that dilemma. There is not exactly a lack of RWB's on the market right now.

Its not really the most important area at all though. We have Hazard, Willian, Pedro, Musonda and Boga right now that can play there. At the same time, we have no cover for Alonso, no effective cover for Bakayoko/Kante and still a RWB that needs an improvement.

One reason why I think going for Drinkwater is ok is that RLC might then get a real chance to play next season. If we bought Roberto or someone at a similar level then we can kiss RLC goodbye.

To me this guy is captain. Sometimes he does the wrong thing, but I dont know if there is anyone on the pitch who wants to win more than him.

I saw a lot of criticism of Morata but come on.. The missed header was really bad sure, but even the best strikers miss sitters. Other than that, what could he really have done? Last season against good opponents we counter-attacked in force, but in this game we barely had any attacks at all. Morata usually had two players on him instantly, and no support. We had no consistent possession of the ball during the whole game, and every attampt at an attack came from a long ball where the defenders were well prepared. He actually helped out a lot with his defensive headers, but going forward he was extremely isolated. Strikers have different profiles. Morata is no Benteke, he is great when you coordinate an attack, where there are options and space, not when your main contribution is supposed to be holding the ball against either midfielders such as Dembele/Wanyama or central defenders in your back. We basically had Willian and Morata up front, and Willian was the link-up player. I find it amazing that we even got the attacks we have. Today was extremely defensive.