Chelsea Transfers

[Special Juan 27,422]

I'd have Zaha here no worries, he's better than Pedro who should be sold without a second thought.

 

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

 

23 minutes ago, Special Juan said:

I'd have Zaha here no worries, he's better than Pedro who should be sold without a second thought.

 

Zaha is smoke screen 

[Jase 43,479]

Just now, NikkiCFC said:

Zaha is smoke screen 

Smokescreen or just you trying to convince yourself it's a smokescreen? 

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

11 minutes ago, Jason said:

Smokescreen or just you trying to convince yourself it's a smokescreen? 

[King Kante 1,474]

13 hours ago, Jason said:

Still doesn't mean spending over 100 million on a 19-year-old with just 18 months of first team football is wise. Also let's face it, spending 50-100 million on a player is essentially the new 30-50 million from a decade ago. The price might be too high and there will be risky businesses (e.g. Morata) but it's the way the market works these days. But spending 100 million+ is a completely different ball game altogether. If you're gonna spend that much on someone, it better be for someone who will provide guarantee for the investment and not for potential which may or may not go wrong. If the club have really done their homework, we could probably sign someone lesser perhaps but could do an effective job, what Lampard wants in the team etc for say 1/3 of the price for Sancho and use the balance to bolster the squad in other areas. We don't have unlimited transfer budget like some other clubs and it's making sure we improve the squad for real this time through wise spending, not splashing stupid money on one player and then forced to buy duds again to fill other gaps!

As long as the smoke screen isn't a Zaha, Grealish or Isco type player then I agree. Again, I would go for Dybala. My point however, has been I see the club pulling off this sort of transfer. I mean they paid £72m with £170-190k/pw wages to a 6'1" goalkeeper with only 54 league games of experience under his belt. That for me is a much crazier idea than buying Sancho for £100m, which is why I see it happening.

 

[Special Juan 27,422]

Ban lifted, we can now buy.

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

We should not buy new players just to buy... If our priority targets are not available then wait till summer. 

[DDA 9,690]

1 minute ago, NikkiCFC said:

We should not buy new players just to buy... If our priority targets are not available then wait till summer. 

They wouldn't have gone to CAS if they didnt feel the need to buy this Jan. I have a bad feeling after finally getting this overturned we will buy Ake and Zaha. Imagine the deflation.

[Jase 43,479]

1 hour ago, King Kante said:

As long as the smoke screen isn't a Zaha, Grealish or Isco type player then I agree. Again, I would go for Dybala. My point however, has been I see the club pulling off this sort of transfer. I mean they paid £72m with £170-190k/pw wages to a 6'1" goalkeeper with only 54 league games of experience under his belt. That for me is a much crazier idea than buying Sancho for £100m, which is why I see it happening.

But spending 70 million is NOT THE SAME as spending 150 million, regardless of the position!  Anyway, agree to disagree.

Regarding Zaha, I'm not a fan of him but I don't think he's a smokescreen when we've been linked with him for some time now, long before Sancho even came about, and the links are still persisting. So, he's definitely on the club's target list but it's a question of whether he's the first choice or backup choice. 

[Jase 43,479]

Chelsea transfer ban lifted – with Chilwell and Zaha in their sights this is what it means for January

https://theathletic.com/1438579/2019/12/06/chelsea-transfer-ban-lifted-with-chilwell-and-zaha-in-their-sights-this-is-what-it-means-for-january/

After a summer largely spent watching the transfer market unfold from the sidelines, Chelsea are officially open for business again. Friday’s judgment on FIFA’s two-window transfer ban by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) may be led on the words “partially upheld”, but make no mistake: this outcome — ban reduced to one window, served last summer, with a fine reduced from £460,000 to £230,000 — will be greeted as an unqualified victory at Stamford Bridge.

Chelsea were always confident that it would come to this. While their expensively-assembled legal team, fronted by the renowned sports lawyer Adam Lewis QC, prepared to present their appeal to CAS in November, the club were talking to agents, tracking potential targets and formulating plans for the January transfer window. Now those plans can be acted upon.

As he has stated publicly, Frank Lampard wants to improve this squad and has been actively involved in recruitment discussions with the director Marina Granovskaia, technical and performance advisor Petr Cech and Scott McLachlan, the club’s head of international scouting.

Left-back is one of the areas that Lampard is motivated to upgrade — The Athletic reported this week that Leicester’s rising star Ben Chilwell is Chelsea’s first-choice target — while there is also a desire for more quality options on the wing and up front. Granovskaia has always backed herself to negotiate good value in the January market, but there is also a recognition that pursuits of some of the top names on their list may have to wait until next summer.

What this judgement does, more than anything else, is give Chelsea flexibility. Olivier Giroud and Pedro are just two players on the fringes of Lampard’s squad who may be minded to leave in the new year, while Ross Barkley’s future at Stamford Bridge is less certain than ever. Now anyone who departs can be immediately replaced.

Chelsea have often been opportunistic operators in January; Granovskaia moved quickly to engineer deals that brought Giroud and Gonzalo Higuain to Stamford Bridge in the final days of the window, while a long-term pursuit of Christian Pulisic was brought forward earlier this year in order to steal a march on potential rivals and guard against a FIFA ban. There are several high-profile names who could be on the move and present similar openings at the start of 2020.

Tensions between Jadon Sancho and Borussia Dortmund have accelerated startlingly in recent weeks. The Athletic has been told that no conversations have yet taken place between Chelsea and his camp, but the pre-existing connections — he was a boyhood fan and has been friends with Tammy Abraham and Callum Hudson-Odoi since childhood — are tantalising. Elsewhere in the Bundesliga, the RB Leipzig striker Timo Werner has been scouted.

The most readily available possibility is Wilfried Zaha, who is just starting to show signs of life at Crystal Palace again after the acrimonious fallout of his failed attempt to force a move away from Selhurst Park in the summer. Chelsea could not be contenders then, but recent days have underlined the 27-year-old’s enduring desire to join a Champions League club as soon as possible.

Zaha would be easier and cheaper to sign than Sancho, with a cash offer of about £80 million believed to be enough to convince Palace to sell. Amid the backdrop of a legal dispute with USM, his long-time representatives, he is in position to pick the intermediary who can secure the move he wants — and, with that in mind, it is interesting that Federico Pastorello, an agent with close ties to Chelsea, publicly advocated for the player in an interview with Sky Sports this week.

“He really deserves a new challenge,” Pastorello said of Zaha. “He deserves a top club because he’s a top player.  He stayed [in the summer] but this season he’s proving he’s focused and concentrated, so I think he’s a player who could be an opportunity for the January market, because he’s a top player who can play in any club in Europe.”

Chelsea are yet to show their hand in terms of the strength of their interest in Zaha, but he is a player they have looked closely at in the past and there is little doubt that if Palace’s valuation is met, a deal could be done relatively swiftly and easily.

“No one here is anxious to sell him, but sometimes bids come in that are very difficult for the clubs to deal with,” Palace manager Roy Hodgson said. “If that happens, we’ll deal with it when the day comes, but I certainly don’t concern myself with it and the speculation doesn’t interest me at all.”

Lampard’s job is about to change. Taking the Chelsea job under a transfer ban brought its challenges but also presented a unique opportunity to put the fruits of the club’s remarkable academy front and centre of his post-Eden Hazard rebuilding project. The biggest question now is whether he can balance the youth movement with the kind of spending that has defined the Roman Abramovich era at Stamford Bridge.

You can be sure it has been discussed at Cobham, with areas for squad improvement tweaked accordingly. The brightest academy prospect at left-back, Ian Maatsen, is still only 17, while the arrival of any new expensive winger is likely to have more definitive implications for Pedro and Willian than it is for Pulisic or Callum Hudson-Odoi.

It is equally hard to see Lampard’s trust in Tammy Abraham wavering, but Chelsea’s performance without him against West Ham only reinforced the notion that Michy Batshuayi and Giroud may not represent the level of alternative firepower required at a club with elite aspirations.

“I have a squad who are working every week to play,” Lampard said this week when asked about the possibility of the ban being lifted. “I’m very happy and I said that at the start of the season. Of course a club like Chelsea wants to improve. We didn’t have that opportunity in the summer in terms of bringing players in. We need to focus on what’s in front of us.

“If it does change (the length of ban), I’ve had a bit of time to (look at squad) as the season has gone on. If there is maybe somewhere I think we can improve and improve in the way that is going to help the whole idea of how we want to play…(we will). People talk about speed, being relentless, athleticism, working off the ball, that’s the kind of players I want. I have a lot of them here already, but if we get the opportunity, of course we want to move forward.”

But these are good problems for Lampard and for Chelsea, who could be forgiven for looking at the likes of Tammy Abraham, Mason Mount and Reece James and feeling that they haven’t really been punished at all. The transfer ban is over, and now the club can get on with the business of trying to return to England and Europe’s elite unimpeded.

[Jase 43,479]

18 minutes ago, DDA said:

They wouldn't have gone to CAS if they didnt feel the need to buy this Jan. I have a bad feeling after finally getting this overturned we will buy Ake and Zaha. Imagine the deflation.

Think it's more of a case of having the option to buy in January, than the need to buy in January. We all know acquiring top transfer targets is tough during that month but if you can have the option to buy, then why not just have it? At least in our current situation, we can sell some deadwoods and get in replacements. 

[Alabama 1,992]

This Zaha rumours is making me go sick... 

And it won't just go away...

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Jase 43,479]

Lampard on...

https://www.football.london/chelsea-fc/lampard-transfer-ban-chelsea-live-17374525

...CAS decision

Quote

It is what it is. Now we know. The club was working towards us and it’s a positive outcome. We can look forward and it’s good from a footballing point of view.

We haven’t discussed it too much before the decision. Now it’s a discussion we can take up.

...New signings

Quote

I’m not going to go down too many lines on that now. We will see where we are. In terms of the bigger picture it is constantly fluid.

...

I haven’t had that conversation. The fact that people have given us credit, that has to go to the group. I want more and to be higher up the table. If there is a chance to strengthen it, then we will look at it.

...Transfer market being a challenge

Quote

A challenge, yeah. The one thing I felt that when you come into a club sometimes players you bring in is key to that. Going forward it is something that I will bring to the club. It won’t just be myself. I have a very open discussion with Marina. It will be a challenge and hopefully we will get it right.

...

When Abramovich came in the landscape changed and it made me stand up and want to be better than those coming in. We want a competitive squad. I see the squad as 20+ and if players come in or leave it is a vision of where we want to go

...Signing players in January

Quote

It depends on the player. We have to keep the balance of the squad and it has to feel right. It doesn’t matter if it’s January, July or not.

[Blues Forever 1,232]

According to Nizaar: we are after Sancho, Chilwell, Berge, Havertz, Ake, Werner, and Zaha

[Vesper 28,768]

10 minutes ago, Blues Forever said:

According to Nizaar: we are after Sancho, Chilwell, Berge, Havertz, Ake, Werner, and Zaha

to buy those all, even if not at  inflated January prices would cost around £445m to £485m or so

Sancho  £100-120m

Chilwell £70-80m <<<< by far (along with Werner) my number one want off this list, due to super high release clause raised on Gaya and then Grimaldo staying at 60m, Chilwell and the Vesper-loved, rest-of-board-disliked Alex Telles are it for quality LB who are remotely available atm 

Berge £40m (Dipperpool wants him BADLY)

Havertz £100m

Ake £40m

Werner £25m (release clause or he would be at least £75-80m)

Zaha £70-80m (shoot me now, and I may be wrong on him in terms of quality, but I also think this IS a good possibility if we miss out on Sancho)

 

Zero chance we drop that level of cash, plus every one of those except Ake (who we have a 40m quid buyback clause on) is in crazy demand from all or most of the giant clubs

[King Kante 1,474]

23 minutes ago, Vesper said:

to buy those all, even if not at  inflated January prices would cost around £445m to £485m or so

Sancho  £100-120m

Chilwell £70-80m <<<< by far (along with Werner) my number one want off this list, due to super high release clause raised on Gaya and then Grimaldo staying at 60m, Chilwell and the Vesper-loved, rest-of-board-disliked Alex Telles are it for quality LB who are remotely available atm 

Berge £40m (Dipperpool wants him BADLY)

Havertz £100m

Ake £40m

Werner £25m (release clause or he would be at least £75-80m)

Zaha £70-80m (shoot me now, and I may be wrong on him in terms of quality, but I also think this IS a good possibility if we miss out on Sancho)

 

Zero chance we drop that level of cash, plus every one of those except Ake (who we have a 40m quid buyback clause on) is in crazy demand from all or most of the giant clubs

I also like Telles and think he makes a lot of sense. We can get him in now, switch out one of Emerson or Alonso and it probably does not cost us boat loads. Further, Chilwell is still a possibility for later on, unless Telles goes through the roof, as we can later on shift the remaining current LB and have him come in alongside Telles. For me, Telles should be seen as realistic. 

Ake, I am not sold on. I have been saying since the start of the season we have 3x CB2's and only 1 x CB1 who can organise the defense. Ake for me falls into the category of CB2 (covering CB.) We do not need him as we need to shift one of Zouma or AC as it is to make way for another CB1. His links are primarily due to his buy back. 

Werner is a absolute no brainer as he would replace both Giroud and Pedro by himself. Jan may be a difficult time to take him and he will be in demand. However, the club should make him priority target No.1. 

Zaha. I seriously hope this is not true. He is like a taller, stronger, less skillful Willian. Avoid. 

Harvetz is not going to happen. Too wanted and costly. 

Sancho. See it happening. Questions abound about the risk he represents. For me, he strikes me as the type of player the board would want to sign.

Berge. More realistic than Harvetz, but very hard to get as multiple clubs sniffing around him. Questions over his ability to adapt to a top 4 league. 

For me a succesful January would be; Telles, Werner +1 CM. The rest of the squad can be sorted later on in Summer. The right quality CB's and Chilwell are not going to happen in Jan.

[Vesper 28,768]

13 minutes ago, King Kante said:

I also like Telles and think he makes a lot of sense. We can get him in now, switch out one of Emerson or Alonso and it probably does not cost us boat loads. Further, Chilwell is still a possibility for later on, unless Telles goes through the roof, as we can later on shift the remaining current LB and have him come in alongside Telles. For me, Telles should be seen as realistic. 

Ake, I am not sold on. I have been saying since the start of the season we have 3x CB2's and only 1 x CB1 who can organise the defense. Ake for me falls into the category of CB2 (covering CB.) We do not need him as we need to shift one of Zouma or AC as it is to make way for another CB1. His links are primarily due to his buy back. 

Werner is a absolute no brainer as he would replace both Giroud and Pedro by himself. Jan may be a difficult time to take him and he will be in demand. However, the club should make him priority target No.1. 

Zaha. I seriously hope this is not true. He is like a taller, stronger, less skillful Willian. Avoid. 

Harvetz is not going to happen. Too wanted and costly. 

Sancho. See it happening. Questions abound about the risk he represents. For me, he strikes me as the type of player the board would want to sign.

Berge. More realistic than Harvetz, but very hard to get as multiple clubs sniffing around him. Questions over his ability to adapt to a top 4 league. 

For me a succesful January would be; Telles, Werner +1 CM. The rest of the squad can be sorted later on in Summer. The right quality CB's and Chilwell are not going to happen in Jan.

Berge is a DMF too, not the AMF Havertz is

I still cannot believe we are not looking at Camavinga, I think he is the perfect long term Kante replacement on so many levels

also, Thomas Partey only has a £42m release clause

Sandro Tonali is still out there too