oldportblue

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yeah that is true, doing business early is always a great plus for the team but remember, this is his mourinho's first season at united after they've been shit for a while... also i'm not certain a 35yr old zlatan will be THAT amazing for them, i'm kind of glad they got him and not someone like higuain for example. Also, conte imo is a top 3 manager in the world at the moment and i'm sure he is discussing/building our team with the board as we speak, trying to get players in... if we gets the players he wants by the end of summer, i believe that even if we will be a bit late on other teams like utd (in terms of team building), our lack of european football will greatly help conte in terms of having extra time during weekdays to tinker and make the team click (something no other major rival will have except us)... having all week to prep for our premier league/cup games should be a great asset to conte i think Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

have faith! wait until the end of the summer until making predictions like this, we got kante and I'm sure we're not finished yet.... and tbh, at the moment, i have more faith in conte than jose

So i guess you are surprised? (60 million euros = 50.5 million pounds) Costa Chronicles: Chelsea reject €60m bid; warn Atlético over aggressive public pursuit

agreed, their man guy cerezo or whatever his name is, is a disgrace, total buffoon...

costa is worth more than 50M£... we're getting morata quoted at 65M£ and some of you think costa isn't even worth 50? lolll Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

fuck yessss!!!!!! was getting scared this whole thing had died out

yes they are, but that was a week ago and now seemingly the situation may have changed with real wanting him too... telegraph were reporting he wanted to stay in england and preferred chelsea out of all his available options, hopefully this is still true

yes we have, the telegraph a few pages back

If conte is the one pushing for this, that would put my mind at ease... if it's the board doing it against conte's wishes, then that's another story. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

exactly! just to emphasize that costa isn't leaving: Diego Costa '100 per cent' staying at Chelsea to be part of new revolution under Antonio Conte -Telegraph

hopefully: witsel to replace mikel kante to replace ramires

are you sure about that? I'm asking because I haven't seen any telegraph links posted here (can't google it because i'm afraid i'll spoil the result of the france iceland game) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

disagree with you there, guys. He's the type of player who shines most when you watch him play and see all the little useful things he does rather than analyze his stats... I would definitely not call him average but that's just me Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

willian average?

my bad, you're right, I remembered him as slim for some reason like mahrez but he is a bit bulkier, not like hazard but not slim either. Still don't want him lol, i'd rate pedro to be on about the same level as him and we don't need any more pedros imo

not really a fan of this guy, pretty slender body frame and not much power but who knows, if we get him at a good price he might be good off the bench

regarding our striker situation: so we have costa, yet we are heavily rumored for both lukaku and morata... I would love to have all three but being realistic, unless we play with two strikers, there won't be enough minutes for all three. That being said, I think we will end up with 2 out of those 3 and I'm having trouble deciding who would be my preferred two... I would keep Costa for sure but I'm not sure who I'd rather have between Lukaku and Morata. If we are truly in for them, it's a nice problem to have

guys, is he better than rudiger? don't know that much about either of them but I'm getting the sense koulibaly is rated higher Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We are a less attractive option than a number of clubs for cultural and footballing reasons. --> cultural and footballing? we get players like hazard, pedro, fabregas and costa to come, they didn't seem to have any problems with this... some players will be attracted by the culture of our club and some will not, that is life and that is the same for most big clubs Rightly or wrongly we have acquired a reputation for playing dour, unattractive football. This causes some players to prefer other options. --> sometimes yes, sometimes no, it all depends on the manager and players know this (who would say we were dour under carlo, or even last season for that matter) Rightly or wrongly we have acquired a reputation for not promoting younger players. This is unappealing to such players. --> hasn't sopped top young prospects for signing for us (courtois, zouma, kenedy being examples) Rightly or wrongly we have become associated with controversial on pitch incidents. This does not act in our favour. --> neither here nor there, I have never, ever heard any players even remotely suggesting something like this would factor into a decision in terms of which club to join, and for players who are feisty like costa, this might even be favourable Rightly or wrongly we have been associated with racism. This acts against us with players of all ethnicities, not just those of colour. --> i find this point to be laughable but that's just me... if we had a reputation for racism, our sponsors would have dropped the club like a hot potato already because it would damage their own brand... truth is, every club will have some racists, the fact that "our racists" were exposed in that tube incident is not nice but to say we are now associated with racism because .00000001% of our fanbase was involved in a racist incident is just ridiculous... we have always had a steady influx of black players and players from all around the world and I don't see that changing ... of all your points, the only one i could sort of half agree with is that some people view our style of play as being negative, but i would argue that is more supporter talk then something prospective players think about... a prospective player will think about who will be the manager and that will be the main determining factor in terms of style of play (guardiola attracts x type of player whereas mourinho attracts y type and conte z type, no player is silly enough to think "boy chelsea really parked the bus a lot in 2012, i don't want to play for them", they're more likely to think "conte has had some very good tactics in his past juve teams and past players seem to rave about him" ... and about being harder to sell to potential sponsors because of your list of issues, have you been keeping up with our marketing moves these past two years? we are signing huge sponsorships left, right and center. our kit deal with nike is second most lucrative in the PL (even the world IIRC), yokohama deal is huge too, we even have a huge deal for our training kit with i forget whom... that's without mentioning dozens of other huge deals the club have signed. I understand you may think all these "issues" affect our sponsorship deals but when we are signing record deals on par with the top 4-5 clubs in the world and even surpassing them in some, this idea is simply not borne out in reality that's how i see it at least

you're right, we don't know... what we do know is how the board have acted last summer (leaving everything until the end and then fighting for scraps). I don't know for a fact that this will happen again but I am not liking how we are starting out is my point

when arsenal is already more busy in the transfer market then us, and they finished second and us 10th, it's worrying... we seem to have gone for naingolan but it appears to have failed as he himself has said he wants to stay at roma, why not make an offer for kante then? our board is so frustrating...

have we not learned that we should take care of our transfer business early? last season was a shambles in part because of the horrible summer in terms of transfers, the season before, we did everything early and were 100% ready when the season started... I hope the board is well advanced in multiple negotiations but are just keeping quiet because seeing MU getting jose, man city getting pep and now even arsenal signing players is starting to be disconcerting

not good enough

atletico is superior to juve imo but agree with the rest of your post