Rumoured John Stones

[Thor 2,698]

don't get me wrong, I'm all for splashing the cash. But at £40m that makes him the most expensive member of this entire squad!

I don't see it as a big deal considering he will be here the longest out of anyone if he is just 21. He is English, and will more than likely have a desire to stay at an English club, and we're one of the biggest in football, so there would be little incentive to move anywhere after that.

40 mil for 12 years of great football from your CB is worth it in my opinion. Might just be me though.

Plus he makes us so much more dynamic even this season. Want to play a high line? Him and Zouma or Cahill can take the field. Sure things up at the back? Him and Terry take the field, and possibly have Zouma in the defensive mid position where he has done a great job man marking.

[BlueLyon 9,359]

Exactly! Even if he doesn't hit the ground running, just learning from Terry, and hell even Cahill, would be immense!

Who would you rather the club get? They need a homegrown player to keep a fragment of an identity. Varane is untouchable, Laporte I've never seen but would be just as expensive. All other available cb's are old.

For a starter, I would target CM ahead of CB. Ramires at RW is a no go either.

For CB, we have Terry/Cahill and Zouma. I hardly doubt Zouma and Stones will play at same time this soon, so Zouma would do for now. Main problem is that Cesc and Matic dont give any proper cover to defense. Matic covers for Cesc and we get exposed real quick. Add a good allround midfielder (Vidal would be top, but oh well) and we establish strong midfield that will certainly cover the defense better.

And if we realy realy want homegrown, we should simply go for Sterling or Clyne then. Maybe Barkley/Prowse next summer. As for any CB, there are Laporte and Gimenez who I believe would be expensive, but we could at least try for 30m.

I believe if you have a good defensive system, you dont need absolutely world class CBs, but a good balanced backbone of good players. You dont need to spend 40m on CB. We won CL with fucking Mikel at CB. Im sure there are CBs that would do the job here for less than 40m. If we intend to spend 40m+ on single player, I think it would be better to do it on attacker, RW or even CM. Those make the real difference in key games and we have no game changers, so maybe we should target one first before we go all out on Stones.

I mean it would make sense if our team was already complete, but its far from it. We cant afford 40m CB without solving other things, with fact that Stones wont even make imediate impact anyway. He never even played in CL after all.

Not to mention, everyone is saying like Stones is guaranteed to become world class and stay here for 10 years. What if he doesnt?

[Diceflix 207]

I don't really see the urgency on buying this guy. Unless for fulfilling Homeground Quota and as long-term replacement for JT.

Since we have Baba already, Azpi can switch to RB, then we have JT, Cahill, Zouma, Ivanovic (natural CB) in CB, which will make 40m pricetag on Stones as a fraud at the moment, i mean heck the guy is not even proven on European stage! Clearly Everton are taking advantages in our situation now.

I think we'll be fine with Azpi-Cahill-Zouma-Baba in back 4. hence Stones is not an urgency here IMO. Yet Manager and Board are making him as transfer priority lol.

We have enough fraud with a 23.3m in our midfield!

[LDN Blue 7,903]

If thats the case, I except it to a point. But if we invest all money in Stones without solving other things, I think it would be terrible deal. Even if Stones becomes our best defender as soon as possible, that wont help us without proper CM addition.

As you said, 3-4 players will be quite hard now I guess unless we will overpay or get lower quality. I realy dont know what was Mou thinking this summer, even if we didnt need first 11 upgrades (but quite many would agree CM and RW should be added), we definately needed to improve our bench and replace at least 2 of Mikel/Ramires/Cuad with better players.

Well this aggressive approach of Stones lately does make me think that this was a board issue rather than Mourinho himself. At the end of last season he'd already said he wanted a new midfielder and I think the Board informed Mou that he could only make signings subject to sales. Balancing the books and all that crap.

Now that we've made the start we have, Mou's forced their hand and they've finally responded. But you're definitely right, this late on when all the big movers have already done exactly that, we're either going to overpay or compromise on the quality we should be adding.

[iseah100 5,612]

For a starter, I would target CM ahead of CB. Ramires at RW is a no go either.

For CB, we have Terry/Cahill and Zouma. I hardly doubt Zouma and Stones will play at same time this soon, so Zouma would do for now. Main problem is that Cesc and Matic dont give any proper cover to defense. Matic covers for Cesc and we get exposed real quick. Add a good allround midfielder (Vidal would be top, but oh well) and we establish strong midfield that will certainly cover the defense better.

And if we realy realy want homegrown, we should simply go for Sterling or Clyne then. Maybe Barkley/Prowse next summer. As for any CB, there are Laporte and Gimenez who I believe would be expensive, but we could at least try for 30m.

I believe if you have a good defensive system, you dont need absolutely world class CBs, but a good balanced backbone of good players. You dont need to spend 40m on CB. We won CL with fucking Mikel at CB. Im sure there are CBs that would do the job here for less than 40m. If we intend to spend 40m+ on single player, I think it would be better to do it on attacker, RW or even CM. Those make the real difference in key games and we have no game changers, so maybe we should target one first before we go all out on Stones.

I mean it would make sense if our team was already complete, but its far from it. We cant afford 40m CB without solving other things, with fact that Stones wont even make imediate impact anyway. He never even played in CL after all.

Not to mention, everyone is saying like Stones is guaranteed to become world class and stay here for 10 years. What if he doesnt?

You act as if Chelsea can only buy one player. Terry is aging and if Jose wants to change the defensive system he'll need faster defenders. Stones will fix that. A cm would be nice, but the club don't seem to be looking at any. There isn't many available atm either. Stones will be a good buy because it's a reasonable price in today's market for a young cb with world class potential. Gimenez would cost a buttload.

[BlueLyon 9,359]

You act as if Chelsea can only buy one player. Terry is aging and if Jose wants to change the defensive system he'll need faster defenders. Stones will fix that. A cm would be nice, but the club don't seem to be looking at any. There isn't many available atm either. Stones will be a good buy because it's a reasonable price in today's market for a young cb with world class potential. Gimenez would cost a buttload.

I dont act as if chelsea can buy only one player. Chelsea is acting as if they can only buy one player.

All that crap about ffp and stadium and balanced books.

Im sure we have money but Im not sure we are willing to pay. Its quite visible in market. We droped from Sterling chase, we dont even try Pogba etc

For example there was one player in Vidal that we should be all over. But not even a rumour.

Besides I seriously dont know if people are serious or not. We sign Stones and he will massively improve our defense, perform well in CL etc? Im not even sure Mou will pick him for those key games.

Even Gimenez or Laporte who I rate higher and are more experienced would need some time to adopt here.

Anyway I hope you are right about Stones. I think its too much, but we will see...

[herpthederp 122]

The money you pay for one player versus three or four is irrelevant. You have x amount to spend on what you need in the transfer window and if you get that for 30-something million in today's market then that's job done. Whether you think Stones is worth the money on his own is neither here nor there, it's about getting what you need when you need it, much like City did with Sterling.

[empire of emotions 247]

Just realised there's two Funes Mori - Ramiro and Rogelio. They're both brothers. Ramiro is the defender, which is the one Everton have reportedly bought, and Rogelio is the striker.

my bad m8

[Clockwork 1,794]

I would never pay 40m pounds for a defender..... Stones potential is most likely like someone..... Let's see Sergio Ramos I would say.

Maybe I would pay 40m for a 21 year old A.Nesta

[Parks 24]

If were prepared to pay 40m for Stones, is this not a indication that the youth system at Chelsea is a complete waste of time and money?

[xPetrCechx 13,570]

Exactly what i think in our situation....

Kalas still sounds good. I remember his played vs LFC 2 season ago and how he covered Suarez...

But We need somebody to take rotation with Cesc and somebody on RW...

On CB we have JT(still can play in this season) Cahill(decent bu can he jump on next level?), Zouma(future player) from poverty Ivanovic and Kalas on loan

I know we need a cm and a rw...

So buy all 3

[Blue Gino 377]

What seems like an insane price tag to me was what Chelsea paid for Cuadrado! I like Stones and hope Chelsea get him.

[DavidEU 2,023]

Everton fans on Grand Old Team seem to reckon he'll play in the Euros and then he worth 60-70m next summer.

They also all believe he's going nowhere.

[bluephoenix 1,131]

40 mil for him ? is he worth that much ? I thought he was surely worth the initial bid which I believe was 23 million ?

[kellzfresh 7,229]

If they didn't accept 35mil, then we should back off. Crazy crazy prices for English talent..