oldportblue

that's good, we desperately need some creativity in the side, looked sort of toothless without Pedro last game

Is Pedro fit to play?

would be amazing but he reportedly has his heart set on liverpool... I rate him above all our defenders at CB except maybe luiz who is of a similar level imo Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

hazard is injured as we speak, no one will buy him for 150M until he plays again and shows his fitness, that's too big an investment for such a risk.. IMO, he is 100% staying at Chelsea this season. As to the future, if we continue winning titles and are competitive in CL, we have a good chance to keep him long terms as well

No offense taken mate, everyone has the right to their opinion. Whose to say that if we spend 90M on bale we won't be able to make signings in the future? I don't worry about us lacking money at all, we are doing very well and we can afford to buy top players for top money. The idea that we are working with a specific strict, set budget is open to debate. As far as I've known and seen while supporting chelsea for 15 years, we tend to go for huge bids for top players on a consistent basis if we feel that the player in question can elevate the club not just on the pitch but commercially as well, and when those bids are rejected, as has often been the case, we don't necessarily use that money on other players... In some cases, the attitude of the club seemed to be "we'll try hard for world class player X, if we don't get him, oh well" (neymar bid in 2013, torres 2011 etc) and not necessarily "we have 100M to spend, if we bid and the bid for player X is rejected, we will buy 2-3 players instead", that's more how fans think. I think the board looks at signings on their individual merit and when a rare opportunity presents itself to get a truly WC player, they tend to jump on it, even if they have to pay over the odds. The board is also interested in making a big splash in terms of visibility, status etc by signing players who can actually elevate the club's overall prestige and status... from what i've seen, Roman is ready to splash major cash on WC players if they will being excitement and possible success and elevate the club and I'm all for it. That's why I say who cares about what it costs? we've made reported bids of 88M for the likes of higuain recently, why not bale (who would actually recoup a good chunk of his transfer fee via shirts, merchandising and overall added visibility to chelsea, if you are concerned with money) I personally feel it's in the club's best interests to try to get top WC talents when they become available because they are few and far between. It sends a message to rival teams, increases the attractiveness of the club for other players to join, makes the club's brand greater etc... Even if they end up not working 100% perfect on the pitch, like torres for ex., I still feel they provide value to the club overall. I would have loved for us to do what PSG just did with neymar. Would you have said no if you knew the deal would be done if all we had to do is pay the 200M? I certainly would not. Granted bale is considerably less exciting than neymar but the reasoning still stands I think with say 90M instead of 200M. Having said all that, we have been spending very little in net expenditure these past 3 years but it's hard to say if that is by design or also due to missing out on top money targets consistently (which has been the case recently)... IMO, we can afford to spend much, much more than what we have in these past few years, especially on world class talents. anyways, just my 2 cents

people saying their objection is paying a lot of money, clubs are spending 70M, 80M, 90M, 200M left right and center... who cares? it's not your money! If he works we get a great player, if we pay 90M and he doesn't work out, oh well...

agree that they should've won if the ref wasn't so incompetent... but I still don't seem them winning the CL in the coming years for some reason lol

we're also apparently in the picture

not according to the latest reports by Marca

fair enough, mate, we'll see.... Anyhow, I just hope we can get a few quality signings in before the end of the window. I just read on a journo's twitter that in the last 3 years, we have the same net transfer expenditure as crystal palace and that arsenal, that fucking latte mob, have even doubled us. This isn't the end of the world as we've won two prem titles in that time but if we want to make a serious bif for the CL + prem, we better get our act together

If Madrid sells Bale for 90M, they can easily match whatever Barca is offering, the just made 58M off of us too...

he's still scored 54 goals in 100 games for Madrid in his time there so far, while being 2nd/3rd option... Not bad if you ask me. Also, imagine lining up in the CL with Bale and Hazard in the team, that would be something special! Don't think it'll ever happen because of his spurs past though but you never know, stranger things have happened

not sure about that, he's said to be a major Real/Cristiano fan and in that article, Marca claim Monaco and Real are already negotiating (no clue as to how true this is)

Marca is claiming Zidane wants to sell Bale in order to make room for acquiring Mbappe, they're also saying MU are the most interested with Chelsea also interested... Very unlikely but I would take him in a heartbeat

great that we bid! the only reason he's being sold is that he had a fallout with previous manager where he publicly dissed him. Apart from that, he's a very good player. I'm fairly sure he won't dare try this type of stuff with Conte... would definitely be an upgrade on moses Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

if by "surprise" you mean reach the level everyone thought he was supposed to be at (as opposed to the shit show of last season) and that his 90M pounds price tag dictates, sure, it could happen...

lol hazard isn't going anywhere this summer

he just had an absolute nightmare against the scousers, maybe that'll make bayern more willing to sell him [emoji28] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Inter sacrifice Candreva for Perisic? -Mediaset Premium (whoever they are) not very inspiring transfer if it does happen but if Conte wants him, that works for me I guess... at least it seems MU won't get Perisic (who bossed us last week in the friendly)

I read somewhere coutinho told liverpool he wants to leave... if that's the case he will probably end being sold to barca

I agree that they've been good if you look back at some of the transfers we've made, especially the belgians, but having said that, they are not beyond reproach. And I'm saying this as someone who doesn't blame the board for the sales of KdB, Lukaku, Mata etc (those were all because of jose). My issue with them is that every summer (the past 3 at least), they jump from target to target, seemingly without a specific plan in mind. I believe the board, and the club as a whole, aren't preparing for the transfer season properly. I think that the deals that happen very quickly are those that have been discussed in advance (throughout the back end of the previous season) so when the club bids, the club receiving the bid are expecting it and have made the proper plans to address the situation going forward. We did this in jose's second season when he returned (costa deal was agreed before season even ended, etc) but we have gone away from that these past three summers. Now it seems, we approach clubs completely out of the blue and bid for their star players. Sure it works sometimes and we land some targets but other times, the club receiving the bid is like "wtf? no, we need and are counting on that player and aren't planning to replace him". having said all that, I've seen no evidence to suggest people distrust the board because of sexism or racism, rather football supporters are very impatient and lose their shit when the club isn't going in the direction they think it should so their reaction is borne out of exasperation and impatience. I think that if the board was all old white guys and if they had achieved the exact same results as this board, just as many people would be moaning about them... just my views

says it all really. unless he has a miraculous upturn of form, we made the right decision to sell him... (still would have much preferred that we sell him abroad, as opposed to helping the annoying mourinho but what can you do) stats from BBC, reposted on reddit

so he's basically leaving because we brought in bakayoko? If so, good riddance, don't need players with such weak fighting spirit... let's bring in a quality CM and we'll be good in midfield

weird how things went down hill so quickly after that first friendly v. arsenal and the signing of Morata. At that point all seemed rosy and it looked like we would get a bunch of other transfers in but instead we signed no one and lost twice while playing like shit... This is worrying but I do think that the board, roman and for sure conte are aware of the dangerous situation the club is in right now and are working overtime behind the scenes to get some players in. I feel like every summer we are in a mad panic to sign players, jumping from one target to the next, to the next, all of which seem to be randomly targeted as we going along, rather than part of a plan put in place months before... Maybe a lot of prem clubs are like this to some extent but it seems our planning for each transfer period is very poor, especially compared to man city for example who it seems decided on their targets a long while ago and where ready to get them as soon as the transfer window opened. Overall I'm obviously a bit down on the current situation but I still think that we will get a few players in before the deadline, hopefully top quality ones (Simon Johnson of the evening standard is reporting that we are close on 2-3 targets, for what it's worth) and also, importantly, if we win against arsenal to avoid the comparisons to start 2015-2016 season, everything will quickly turn around.

better than being stuck with 3 midfielders for sure but not ideal Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk