Kai Havertz

[ulsterchelsea 3,221]

32 minutes ago, Vesper said:

If no COVID and Werner had 3 years, 4 years left on his contract, GOOD LUCK getting him for less than £80m or £90m

the bloke just turned 24 a few months ago, accounted for almost 50 goals in 3500 minutes (including 34 scored on his own)

is a German national team starter, and one of the fastest CF's on the planet

people are acting like he is some sort of consolation prize

SMDH

 

Correct. Delighted with his signing

[ulsterchelsea 3,221]

33 minutes ago, Vesper said:

which dross?

we have dross IN SPADES!!

(I do not know whether to laugh or cry, but I think I chose to sob like a baby)

it is insane how many shit (and many were very expensive) players we have on the books

Lol sorry, should have said. In my household we call Ross Barkley dross Barkley

[ulsterchelsea 3,221]

23 minutes ago, Vesper said:

this is (until recently) a big myth, that I dealt with so many times I have lost count, including MASSIVE posts that dealt with dozens of players

but we are where we are now

mind you, I can go ahead and post another monster post detailing all this yet again, but would really rather not, as it gets me so argy bargy over it all (hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds shit away at the end of the day (not all on her, but a chunk of it for sure) between her refusing sales, bad board/scouts buys, absolute shit contractual management, and bollocksed up buys that spiralled into panic buys to replace the lost sheep that would not come into the Blue pasture)

I'm sorry but whilst I don't doubt your commitment to transfer targets and the likes I can't have people who do not have any actual knowledge of dealing with mega money moves chastising people who do. If, as you think, she (not all on her as you say) shit away hundreds of millions of pounds then I'm fairly certain our multi billionaire owner would have her axed. Instead she had actually rose further up the ranks in his trust. The thing is none of us know the exact way of transfer dealings. We can speculate and choose to believe certain outlets but at the end of the day it's only guess work. This club is good with keeping dealings in-house.

[Vesper 28,767]

1 hour ago, ulsterchelsea said:

Well that was a rumoured fee plus there's the managers preference when it comes to selling him. We don't know the exact ins and outs

smdh

[ulsterchelsea 3,221]

13 minutes ago, Vesper said:

smdh

But you don't!

[Vesper 28,767]

1 minute ago, ulsterchelsea said:

I'm sorry but whilst I don't doubt your commitment to transfer targets and the likes I can't have people who do not have any actual knowledge of dealing with mega money moves chastising people who do. If, as you think, she (not all on her as you say) shit away hundreds of millions of pounds then I'm fairly certain our multi billionaire owner would have her axed. Instead she had actually rose further up the ranks in his trust. The thing is none of us know the exact way of transfer dealings. We can speculate and choose to believe certain outlets but at the end of the day it's only guess work. This club is good with keeping dealings in-house.

I deal with financial transactions that, when taken as a whole, dwarf the scope of this. I am extremely well versed in hyper-complex 'mega money'  transactions. Have you every read a standard derivatives contract involving a synthetic CDO (collateralised debt obligation) that utilises credit default swaps in fully distributed tranches (ie not a single-tranche structure)?  The average one is around 35,000 pages long. I have not (obviously), but I do have a team of quants to break down even that level of complexity into a manageable form in order to estimate the overarching fundamental risk v ROI vectors. The same premiss works for rough estimations of the transfer balance sheets. You do not have to have extreme granular detail to get a general grasp on the amounts, amounts which I NEVER claim to be exact nor definitive.

I do not have access to the actual club ledgers, but it certainly is not that difficult to keep a running tally on transfers in, transfers out and the associated monies (ie fees, salaries, etc) involved. I have no desire to do a truly deep forensic dive into the underlying financials of the club (unless they pay me a shedload of cash) but you do not need an electron microscope to see a boil.

You have no clue what Abramovich's pain tolerance is when it comes to balance sheets for CFC (both those innately germane to FFP strictures and also exogenous profit/loss totals that fall outside of that purview), so tossing out a simplistic 'oh, if she actually was that bad she would have been sacked' positing is pure tosh. I suggest you go learn the history of Roman (if you have not) and how he rose to become a multi-billionaire (and the people involved, especially those colloquially known as the 'SIBNEFT mafia', of which Marina is definitely a long time member as he sold it off back in 2005 well after she started at the petrol firm) before tossing out simplistic and futile rejoinders like that. He has a tremendous sense of loyalty toward his inner core from everything that I have witnessed to date. He obviously chalks off a tremendous amount of financial loss tied to CFC, which I have ZERO interest in as a methodology of operation, as it is his billions not mine. I care only when the losses interface in a negatively impactful way with FFP constraints and preclude many advantageous moves we otherwise could have quite possibly completed.

[Vesper 28,767]

37 minutes ago, ulsterchelsea said:

But you don't!

I have documented this all so many times and with enough collaboration to warrant that posting. Go search the site.I am done with this subject.

[Vesper 28,767]

1 hour ago, ulsterchelsea said:

Lol sorry, should have said. In my household we call Ross Barkley dross Barkley

makes sense

I would certainly be happy with that amount, maybe £35m (extra 5m for the ubiquitous English tax)

[Puliiszola 519]

4 hours ago, Jason said:

Conte and Sarri played Willian initially but went with Pedro later on anyway. 

Lovely...then why do we even having discussions? Why do we even have forums? Let's just pack it in and be passive fans...

This 'reasoning' is such a convenient or lazy one to be thrown around when you happen to agree with a certain scenario. Because when you don't agree with it, this 'reasoning' won't even be mentioned at all. 

My bad on Benitez. 

Conte used willian throughout. Despite their fall out. 

https://www.transfermarkt.com/pedro/leistungsdatendetails/spieler/65278/plus/0?saison=2018&verein=&liga=&wettbewerb=&pos=&trainer_id=

https://www.transfermarkt.com/willian/leistungsdatendetails/spieler/52769/plus/0?saison=2018&verein=&liga=&wettbewerb=&pos=&trainer_id=

Willian had 3533 minutes under sarri compared to Pedro's 3099, so don't think sarri had a change of heart.

 

It's paramount to have discussions. I gave you my reasoning why willian was not sold, and the "trust in the board" was an after thought. Your post was judgemental that the board fucked without thinking about how the sale would affect the balance of the squad, did sarri even want to sell willian, did willian want to leave, did we think that we could replace what he gave us. 

"You're talking about someone who didn't want to sell Willian for 60-70 million..."

It's not like marina was so invested in willian and his afro that she just would not let him go. 

 

[Jase 43,479]

3 hours ago, Puliiszola said:

Conte used willian throughout. Despite their fall out. 

If we want to talk about minutes, then Pedro had played more than Willian across the 2 seasons under Conte. 5,232 to 5,079.

3 hours ago, Puliiszola said:

https://www.transfermarkt.com/pedro/leistungsdatendetails/spieler/65278/plus/0?saison=2018&verein=&liga=&wettbewerb=&pos=&trainer_id=

https://www.transfermarkt.com/willian/leistungsdatendetails/spieler/52769/plus/0?saison=2018&verein=&liga=&wettbewerb=&pos=&trainer_id=

Willian had 3533 minutes under sarri compared to Pedro's 3099, so don't think sarri had a change of heart.

You're not wrong but the major difference in the minutes came in the Premier League and if you look closer at the games towards the end of the season, Pedro did start to play more and he was selected to start the Europa League final ahead of Willian, for example.

3 hours ago, Puliiszola said:

It's paramount to have discussions. I gave you my reasoning why willian was not sold, and the "trust in the board" was an after thought. Your post was judgemental that the board fucked without thinking about how the sale would affect the balance of the squad, did sarri even want to sell willian, did willian want to leave, did we think that we could replace what he gave us. 

If Willian is someone like Hazard, then sure selling him would just be stupid but he isn't. The point is we could have sold him for the big fee that was mentioned, the fee that is way more than he is worth and we could have used that money to reinvest in the squad. Plus with Willian's contract situation, we've basically come to the same point again with him but without getting any fee in return - do we let him go or keep him around because it would affect the balance of the squad? Do we give him the 3-year contract?

[Puliiszola 519]

7 minutes ago, Jason said:

If we want to talk about minutes, then Pedro had played more than Willian across the 2 seasons under Conte. 5,232 to 5,079.

You're not wrong but the major difference in the minutes came in the Premier League and if you look closer at the games towards the end of the season, Pedro did start to play more and he was selected to start the Europa League final ahead of Willian, for example.

If Willian is someone like Hazard, then sure selling him would just be stupid but he isn't. The point is we could have sold him for the big fee that was mentioned, the fee that is way more than he is worth and we could have used that money to reinvest in the squad. Plus with Willian's contract situation, we've basically come to the same point again with him but without getting any fee in return - do we let him go or keep him around because it would affect the balance of the squad? Do we give him the 3-year contract?

Minutes wise I just wanted to show that willian and Pedro were as important as each other. 2500-3000 mins are massive minutes. 

Obviously we could have. Not saying it could not have happened, and I am sure this would have been discussed in length. Not just among the board but also with the manager. I had read that during the whole Courtois situation sarri was asked if he wanted to persist with Courtois or buy someone else. We bought jorgi for him, even bought in higuain. So obviously manager input was paramount.

Add to that the prior knowledge the board must have had about eden (hence we bought Puli) as well as the ban (hence we bought Puli in the winter window itself). They must have felt that going into this season with 3 young and very less PL experience wingers would be hard on the team (puli, cho and whoever we bought to replace willian). I don't think it was as clear cut as "we should have sold him" or "marina screwed up". Also willian barely costs us in the amortization and wages where as replacing him with a 50mil on 100kpw winger would have been a more expensive option for the board to take. Only thing I am saying, it's no where near as clear cut as fans make it out to be. There are massive arguments in the pro willian side too -

1. Known quality, 2. Manager preference, 3. Squad experience and instability with hazard surely leaving. 

Those 60mil would have been a loss if we had sold and replaced him with some Italian league winger that sarri would have wanted (let's be fair all of sarri and conte's transfers were crap) and we would not have got CL 2 years in a row.

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

8 hours ago, ulsterchelsea said:

It's simple to sit on here picking players we should sign and picking players we should sell for this amount or that. But the point he's making is the people placed in charge of it all are there for a reason. They know what they are doing whether we agree or not. 

Exactly. We pick players here without any responsibility. 

This is some of the names some of our fans wanted to sign in the last 3 years based on this forum.

Not criticizing anyone, I also pushed for some of them. This is how we would look:

Pickford, Firpo, Rugani, Gibson, Lazaro, Seri, Golovin, Zaha, Malcom, Neres, Piatek.

Plus Sessegnon, Coutinho, Alexis, Benteke, Jovic, Lozano, Pepe, Bailey, Paredes, Militao, Wilson, Arnautovic, Suso...

This time would be mid table at best.

Pulisic was for almost every fan on here behind Suso, Pepe, Bailey, Lozano, Malcom as a target... And look where is he now and where they are? He is our best player.

So everyone would do mistakes in charge.

We still won 2 titles in the last 5 years. 2017 summer transfer window was horrific of course.

But we did not sign any players (which played games for us) last 18 months. And last two signings were Pulisic and Kovacic (our 2 best players) and now Ziyech, Werner, possibly Havertz... This is all great...

Lets see but I have trust in our board.

 

 

[Jase 43,479]

3 minutes ago, NikkiCFC said:

Exactly. We pick players here without any responsibility. 

This is some of the names some of our fans wanted to sign in the last 3 years based on this forum.

Not criticizing anyone, I also pushed for some of them. This is how we would look:

Pickford, Firpo, Rugani, Gibson, Lazaro, Seri, Golovin, Zaha, Malcom, Neres, Piatek.

Plus Sessegnon, Coutinho, Alexis, Benteke, Jovic, Lozano, Pepe, Bailey, Paredes, Militao, Wilson, Arnautovic, Suso...

This time would be mid table at best.

Pulisic was for almost every fan on here behind Suso, Pepe, Bailey, Lozano, Malcom as a target... And look where is he now and where they are? He is our best player.

So everyone would do mistakes in charge.

We still won 2 titles in the last 5 years. 2017 summer transfer window was horrific of course.

But we did not sign any players (which played games for us) last 18 months. And last two signings were Pulisic and Kovacic (our 2 best players) and now Ziyech, Werner, possibly Havertz... This is all great...

Lets see but I have trust in our board.

It's ironic you praised the board for "ignoring" the fans on those names when this is the same board who spent 70 million Kepa, who looks a totally lost cause now, 50 million+ Jorginho, who is neither here nor there, 50 million+ on Morata - we're lucky that Atletico are "generous" and 30 million+ or whatever on players like Drinkwater - they even gave him a 100k p/w wages! The board should be praised when they have gotten it right but let's not pretend they have not had their fair share of shockers over the years. 

[Jase 43,479]

41 minutes ago, Puliiszola said:

Minutes wise I just wanted to show that willian and Pedro were as important as each other. 2500-3000 mins are massive minutes. 

Obviously we could have. Not saying it could not have happened, and I am sure this would have been discussed in length. Not just among the board but also with the manager. I had read that during the whole Courtois situation sarri was asked if he wanted to persist with Courtois or buy someone else. We bought jorgi for him, even bought in higuain. So obviously manager input was paramount.

Add to that the prior knowledge the board must have had about eden (hence we bought Puli) as well as the ban (hence we bought Puli in the winter window itself). They must have felt that going into this season with 3 young and very less PL experience wingers would be hard on the team (puli, cho and whoever we bought to replace willian). I don't think it was as clear cut as "we should have sold him" or "marina screwed up". Also willian barely costs us in the amortization and wages where as replacing him with a 50mil on 100kpw winger would have been a more expensive option for the board to take. Only thing I am saying, it's no where near as clear cut as fans make it out to be. There are massive arguments in the pro willian side too -

1. Known quality, 2. Manager preference, 3. Squad experience and instability with hazard surely leaving. 

Those 60mil would have been a loss if we had sold and replaced him with some Italian league winger that sarri would have wanted (let's be fair all of sarri and conte's transfers were crap) and we would not have got CL 2 years in a row.

The manager's input has only been important when the board suddenly decide to. They may have gotten Jorginho and Higuain for Sarri but they have also signed players like Drinkwater and Barkley when nobody asked for them or not gotten the defender and midfielder and striker that Mourinho wanted after winning the title in 2015. One can hope this will no longer be the case moving forward but the board have a history of acting on their own.

Otherwise, agree to disagree.

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

16 minutes ago, Jason said:

It's ironic you praised the board for "ignoring" the fans on those names when this is the same board who spent 70 million Kepa, who looks a totally lost cause now, 50 million+ Jorginho, who is neither here nor there, 50 million+ on Morata - we're lucky that Atletico are "generous" and 30 million+ or whatever on players like Drinkwater - they even gave him a 100k p/w wages! The board should be praised when they have gotten it right but let's not pretend they have not had their fair share of shockers over the years. 

I know they had. I am just saying that some people are acting like our board is worst in the world and they would do much better job and that it is easy job but all these names I mentioned are proof it is not.

[Jase 43,479]

3 minutes ago, NikkiCFC said:

I know they had. I am just saying that some people are acting like our board is worst in the world and they would do much better job and and that it is easy job but all these names I mentioned are proof it is not.

Our board can be hopeless at times but if people think they are the worst, they only need to look at Barcelona's. 

[Puliiszola 519]

29 minutes ago, Jason said:

The manager's input has only been important when the board suddenly decide to. They may have gotten Jorginho and Higuain for Sarri but they have also signed players like Drinkwater and Barkley when nobody asked for them or not gotten the defender and midfielder and striker that Mourinho wanted after winning the title in 2015. One can hope this will no longer be the case moving forward but the board have a history of acting on their own.

Otherwise, agree to disagree.

Jose wanted Costa and CESC - he got it. He wanted willian despite having hazard, Oscar, mata, schurrle, kdb and Moses, he got it 

We sold kdb and mata for him. 

Same with Conte - got Morata and lost Costa, got emerson, Alonso, bakayoko. Even bid twice or thrice on Sandro but Juve kept increasing the price.

But there is only so much shit that the board can deal with. But more often than not, it has been what the manager has wanted. 

But yeah, agree to disagree. 

 

 

[OneMoSalah 8,776]

2 minutes ago, Puliiszola said:

Jose wanted Costa and CESC - he got it. He wanted willian despite having hazard, Oscar, mata, schurrle, kdb and Moses, he got it 

We sold kdb and mata for him. 

Same with Conte - got Morata and lost Costa, got emerson, Alonso, bakayoko. Even bid twice or thrice on Sandro but Juve kept increasing the price.

But there is only so much shit that the board can deal with. But more often than not, it has been what the manager has wanted. 

But yeah, agree to disagree. 

 

 

Actually, Jose did want to keep both but they wanted to leave as they werent playing and the Euros was coming up. He stated this during that window and in the next season.
 

Plus if your going to turn around and say that selling those two to fund moves for Matic and Salah wasn't a good move at the time, then it wouldnt be true. We were arguably one of the most effective teams at maintaining the FFP rules in that time (ok its not exactly something to shout about completely but still...) and while they may have gone on to do very well (KDB and Salah as well a season later) you cannot keep players who do not want to stay 9 times out of 10, at any football club. De Bruyne was insistent on being sold and not loaned. Mata wanted to be played more regularly and got his move to United which after 2 seasons of playing regularly and doing well, looked a mistake in terms of how his career has gone IMO.

Yes managers have gotten what they have wanted to an extent here in terms of players but you cannot say that the club havent also made inputs through Emenalo or others or made decisions that have ruffled a few feathers.