Chelsea Transfers

[Jase 43,479]

Waiting for the next signing...

[Vesper 28,768]

Can Chelsea shift the deadwood?

https://theathletic.com/1993603/2020/08/14/chelsea-deadwood-drinkwater-batshuayi-zappacosta-bakayoko-moses-kenedy-rahman/

Chelsea have big plans for this transfer window, the majority of which have been well documented: Frank Lampard wants Kai Havertz to bring more goals and creativity to his team in the final third, Ben Chilwell at left-back, Declan Rice at centre-back and a goalkeeper he regards as more assertive and reliable than club-record signing Kepa Arrizabalaga.

It’s unlikely he will get all of his first-choice targets, in part because the top prices touted for each would take Chelsea’s total outlay — not counting the £85 million already spent on Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner — north of the £300 million mark. UEFA’s decision to relax financial fair play for the remainder of 2020 means Roman Abramovich is limited only by what he is prepared to spend, but there are no indications that he wants to depart from the more self-sustaining philosophy that has governed the club’s transfer strategy for much of the past decade.

That means Chelsea also need to sell, and finding willing partners for the players not in Lampard’s plans is expected to be Marina Granovskaia’s biggest challenge in the coming weeks. “The market at the moment is really difficult,” one agent who represents Premier League players tells The Athletic. “It’s a buyer’s market, that’s for sure.

“For clubs, players and everyone else associated with the industry, fantasy football is over. This is a global economic crisis that has affected football in the same way as every other business in the world, and it wasn’t planned for. Who would have said in February that we’d be looking at no income through gate receipts, commercial sponsorship, hospitality and so on? Clubs are now looking at their playing staff and saying, ‘We can’t afford to carry deadwood’.”

Chelsea have more than a few players who fall into that unflattering bracket: Danny Drinkwater, Davide Zappacosta and Tiemoue Bakayoko, the lingering mistakes of that disastrous summer of 2017; Michy Batshuayi and Victor Moses, solid contributors in Antonio Conte’s time but unwanted by the current regime; Kenedy and Baba Rahman, neither of whom are regarded as viable alternatives to Marcos Alonso or Emerson Palmieri.

Others are less obviously finished at Chelsea, but clearly aren’t key to Lampard’s future plans. Offers for Jorginho and Ross Barkley will be listened to, while there arguably isn’t a senior left-back or centre-back currently on the club’s books who couldn’t be had for the right fee. Then there is Kepa, whose overinflated purchase price in the summer of 2018 and plummeting form this season presents a challenge to Granovskaia all of its own.

Throughout the 2010s, her skill as a negotiator shone through primarily in her ability to extract maximum value for those no longer wanted at Chelsea: Oscar and Ramires, sent to China for a combined £90 million; Diego Costa, returned to Atletico Madrid from self-imposed exile in Brazil at a £25 million profit (bought for £32 million, sold for £57 million); Alvaro Morata, sold to Atletico for the same £58 million fee Chelsea paid Real Madrid to sign him 18 months earlier.

Last summer, Juventus were even persuaded to pay £5 million to hire Maurizio Sarri, a deeply unpopular figure at Stamford Bridge who lasted only one season in Turin. However, the market has changed.

Even more important than selling unwanted players to bolster the transfer budget is shedding their salaries. Chelsea’s wage bill for the year ending June 30, 2019, was £285.6 million, fourth in the Premier League and representing 63.9 per cent of the club’s turnover; with future accounts set to be hit badly by a prolonged stretch of playing matches behind closed doors, bad-value contracts will be more damaging than ever before.

“Ordinarily a club might say, ‘Well, we can afford to keep him and things might turn around, someone might come in for him’,” the agent adds. “That’s all changed, and recruitment departments at clubs are now looking at it in terms of smaller, more effective squads. The problem with that, though, is that the contracts in football are very different from standard employment contracts. You can’t just make a footballer redundant.”

If we estimate that the average wage of a Chelsea first-team player is around £80,000 a week (and we can only estimate, since player contracts are confidential), it becomes easy to see how the salary costs of the above list of surplus players begin to add up. Drinkwater and Batshuayi are both known to earn around £100,000 a week; taken with Zappacosta, Bakayoko, Moses, Kenedy and Baba Rahman, the annual financial commitment could be more than £30 million if other clubs are not found to shoulder the burden.

Loans are the tools that Chelsea have often used to relieve themselves of unwanted salaries, often sending players to clubs prepared to pay significant loan fees to secure their services and provide a stage on which they can try to shine and increase their value. But in the cases of Batshuayi, Zappacosta, Moses and Kenedy, who are all in the final year of their contracts, this window might be the last realistic chance to get a reasonable fee from any sale.

The equation is complicated for the players too — particularly the ones earning the kind of money that Drinkwater and Batshuayi are on at Chelsea. “Age is going to be a massive factor,” another agent operating in the Premier League tells The Athletic. “If you’re at the end of your career or in your late twenties, the reality is you might never get the money you’re currently earning again. But if you leave on a free, in principle you’re going to be able to secure a bigger contract at your next club.

“If you’ve done enough over your career to ensure there will still be interest after a year spent sitting on the sidelines doing nothing — other than the odd run-out in development football — then there’s an argument to sit on your current deal, see it out and hope there’ll be clubs out there who’ll retain an interest given your reputation once you have been released at the end of the contract. It is a risk, though.

“Clubs will look at you and wonder whether you can still do it. They might question your motivation, too, to just sit on a contract knowing you’ll never play.”

That is Chelsea’s nightmare scenario with Drinkwater, who still has two years left to run on the five-year deal he signed to join from Leicester in 2017. Another possibility is that he is prepared to take a little less to play regularly elsewhere. A creative solution could be found to bridge the gap between his old salary and his new one — provided that there is a club interested enough to sign him following two deeply underwhelming loan spells at Burnley and Aston Villa this season.

“My advice to a player would always be it’s worth taking one step back if you can take three forward later,” one agent says. “It depends on how the player wants to see it, but they should be playing football. There might be a club that comes along and says they can pay 60 per cent of his wages, Chelsea might pay him off a little bit, and the deal gets done. But first, there needs to be a club that says, ‘He’s going to affect us and make a difference’.”

“There might be an argument to accept your next contract elsewhere will be on a lower salary, but might be for a longer period of time, which serves almost to compensate for the loss in wage,” another agent adds. “So, for example, if you’re earning £6 million a year and have 12 months to run on your deal, is there a case for going elsewhere and earning, say, £3.5 million a year on a three-year contract?

“Yes, you have to take a short-term hit compared with what you have been earning, but you’ll be playing and you’ll have more long-term security. Of course, that scenario also depends upon the buying club striking an acceptable fee with your current team. So you have to weigh up those two things: generally speaking, there’s a lot to be said for leaving on a free and earning well at the next place given your new club will not be paying a transfer fee, but if a suitor is willing to pay a fee and the package, overall, works out in the long-term, then that might be a more palatable option.”

Some of Chelsea’s unwanted players will be on the target lists of other domestic and European clubs, but not necessarily at the very top. As a result, a genuine market might not develop for them until the final weeks or even days of the transfer window, right up to the revised deadline day of October 5. Granovskaia has always been prepared to play the long game to secure the best value deal, but waiting to sell won’t help the club in their attempts to establish just how much money they can afford to throw at Lampard’s first-choice targets.

Chelsea have made an excellent start to this transfer window by securing Ziyech and Werner early for reasonable fees. Bringing in Havertz next would supercharge Lampard’s rebuild. But buying the players you want is only one half of success in the transfer market and, with football still reeling from the financial fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, unloading the players not wanted at Stamford Bridge will be a formidable test of Granovskaia’s famed negotiating skills.

 

 

full list of the players who need to go here

 

[Fernando 6,453]

30 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Can Chelsea shift the deadwood?

https://theathletic.com/1993603/2020/08/14/chelsea-deadwood-drinkwater-batshuayi-zappacosta-bakayoko-moses-kenedy-rahman/

Chelsea have big plans for this transfer window, the majority of which have been well documented: Frank Lampard wants Kai Havertz to bring more goals and creativity to his team in the final third, Ben Chilwell at left-back, Declan Rice at centre-back and a goalkeeper he regards as more assertive and reliable than club-record signing Kepa Arrizabalaga.

It’s unlikely he will get all of his first-choice targets, in part because the top prices touted for each would take Chelsea’s total outlay — not counting the £85 million already spent on Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner — north of the £300 million mark. UEFA’s decision to relax financial fair play for the remainder of 2020 means Roman Abramovich is limited only by what he is prepared to spend, but there are no indications that he wants to depart from the more self-sustaining philosophy that has governed the club’s transfer strategy for much of the past decade.

That means Chelsea also need to sell, and finding willing partners for the players not in Lampard’s plans is expected to be Marina Granovskaia’s biggest challenge in the coming weeks. “The market at the moment is really difficult,” one agent who represents Premier League players tells The Athletic. “It’s a buyer’s market, that’s for sure.

“For clubs, players and everyone else associated with the industry, fantasy football is over. This is a global economic crisis that has affected football in the same way as every other business in the world, and it wasn’t planned for. Who would have said in February that we’d be looking at no income through gate receipts, commercial sponsorship, hospitality and so on? Clubs are now looking at their playing staff and saying, ‘We can’t afford to carry deadwood’.”

Chelsea have more than a few players who fall into that unflattering bracket: Danny Drinkwater, Davide Zappacosta and Tiemoue Bakayoko, the lingering mistakes of that disastrous summer of 2017; Michy Batshuayi and Victor Moses, solid contributors in Antonio Conte’s time but unwanted by the current regime; Kenedy and Baba Rahman, neither of whom are regarded as viable alternatives to Marcos Alonso or Emerson Palmieri.

Others are less obviously finished at Chelsea, but clearly aren’t key to Lampard’s future plans. Offers for Jorginho and Ross Barkley will be listened to, while there arguably isn’t a senior left-back or centre-back currently on the club’s books who couldn’t be had for the right fee. Then there is Kepa, whose overinflated purchase price in the summer of 2018 and plummeting form this season presents a challenge to Granovskaia all of its own.

Throughout the 2010s, her skill as a negotiator shone through primarily in her ability to extract maximum value for those no longer wanted at Chelsea: Oscar and Ramires, sent to China for a combined £90 million; Diego Costa, returned to Atletico Madrid from self-imposed exile in Brazil at a £25 million profit (bought for £32 million, sold for £57 million); Alvaro Morata, sold to Atletico for the same £58 million fee Chelsea paid Real Madrid to sign him 18 months earlier.

Last summer, Juventus were even persuaded to pay £5 million to hire Maurizio Sarri, a deeply unpopular figure at Stamford Bridge who lasted only one season in Turin. However, the market has changed.

Even more important than selling unwanted players to bolster the transfer budget is shedding their salaries. Chelsea’s wage bill for the year ending June 30, 2019, was £285.6 million, fourth in the Premier League and representing 63.9 per cent of the club’s turnover; with future accounts set to be hit badly by a prolonged stretch of playing matches behind closed doors, bad-value contracts will be more damaging than ever before.

“Ordinarily a club might say, ‘Well, we can afford to keep him and things might turn around, someone might come in for him’,” the agent adds. “That’s all changed, and recruitment departments at clubs are now looking at it in terms of smaller, more effective squads. The problem with that, though, is that the contracts in football are very different from standard employment contracts. You can’t just make a footballer redundant.”

If we estimate that the average wage of a Chelsea first-team player is around £80,000 a week (and we can only estimate, since player contracts are confidential), it becomes easy to see how the salary costs of the above list of surplus players begin to add up. Drinkwater and Batshuayi are both known to earn around £100,000 a week; taken with Zappacosta, Bakayoko, Moses, Kenedy and Baba Rahman, the annual financial commitment could be more than £30 million if other clubs are not found to shoulder the burden.

Loans are the tools that Chelsea have often used to relieve themselves of unwanted salaries, often sending players to clubs prepared to pay significant loan fees to secure their services and provide a stage on which they can try to shine and increase their value. But in the cases of Batshuayi, Zappacosta, Moses and Kenedy, who are all in the final year of their contracts, this window might be the last realistic chance to get a reasonable fee from any sale.

The equation is complicated for the players too — particularly the ones earning the kind of money that Drinkwater and Batshuayi are on at Chelsea. “Age is going to be a massive factor,” another agent operating in the Premier League tells The Athletic. “If you’re at the end of your career or in your late twenties, the reality is you might never get the money you’re currently earning again. But if you leave on a free, in principle you’re going to be able to secure a bigger contract at your next club.

“If you’ve done enough over your career to ensure there will still be interest after a year spent sitting on the sidelines doing nothing — other than the odd run-out in development football — then there’s an argument to sit on your current deal, see it out and hope there’ll be clubs out there who’ll retain an interest given your reputation once you have been released at the end of the contract. It is a risk, though.

“Clubs will look at you and wonder whether you can still do it. They might question your motivation, too, to just sit on a contract knowing you’ll never play.”

That is Chelsea’s nightmare scenario with Drinkwater, who still has two years left to run on the five-year deal he signed to join from Leicester in 2017. Another possibility is that he is prepared to take a little less to play regularly elsewhere. A creative solution could be found to bridge the gap between his old salary and his new one — provided that there is a club interested enough to sign him following two deeply underwhelming loan spells at Burnley and Aston Villa this season.

“My advice to a player would always be it’s worth taking one step back if you can take three forward later,” one agent says. “It depends on how the player wants to see it, but they should be playing football. There might be a club that comes along and says they can pay 60 per cent of his wages, Chelsea might pay him off a little bit, and the deal gets done. But first, there needs to be a club that says, ‘He’s going to affect us and make a difference’.”

“There might be an argument to accept your next contract elsewhere will be on a lower salary, but might be for a longer period of time, which serves almost to compensate for the loss in wage,” another agent adds. “So, for example, if you’re earning £6 million a year and have 12 months to run on your deal, is there a case for going elsewhere and earning, say, £3.5 million a year on a three-year contract?

“Yes, you have to take a short-term hit compared with what you have been earning, but you’ll be playing and you’ll have more long-term security. Of course, that scenario also depends upon the buying club striking an acceptable fee with your current team. So you have to weigh up those two things: generally speaking, there’s a lot to be said for leaving on a free and earning well at the next place given your new club will not be paying a transfer fee, but if a suitor is willing to pay a fee and the package, overall, works out in the long-term, then that might be a more palatable option.”

Some of Chelsea’s unwanted players will be on the target lists of other domestic and European clubs, but not necessarily at the very top. As a result, a genuine market might not develop for them until the final weeks or even days of the transfer window, right up to the revised deadline day of October 5. Granovskaia has always been prepared to play the long game to secure the best value deal, but waiting to sell won’t help the club in their attempts to establish just how much money they can afford to throw at Lampard’s first-choice targets.

Chelsea have made an excellent start to this transfer window by securing Ziyech and Werner early for reasonable fees. Bringing in Havertz next would supercharge Lampard’s rebuild. But buying the players you want is only one half of success in the transfer market and, with football still reeling from the financial fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, unloading the players not wanted at Stamford Bridge will be a formidable test of Granovskaia’s famed negotiating skills.

 

 

full list of the players who need to go here

 

We need to sell at a discount, 

Drink and bats would cost 10 to 15 mill. 

If we sell a lot of player for 10 to 15 mill, we raise some cash. 

But we just need to get rid of a lot of deadwoods that are sucking a lot of wages. 

[Iggy Doonican 4,186]

1 hour ago, Pizy said:

Nah, I'll agree with you on players 100% but there is absolutely racism when it comes to black managers. If there were 10-15 of them sprinkled around here and there I wouldn't say anything. But there are basically ZERO. For me that's not a coincidence.

 

 

That's not strictly true. I'm going to rack my brains and here's the list of British black managers as I can recall. Barnes and Ince both disasters Barnes especially three managers jobs he's had been sacked after a few months in all of them. Barnes cites racism in football but don't forget he supported Suarez in the Evra incident and to be honest his credibility was fucked after that. Ince did ok in the lower leagues got the Blackburn job and was completely out of his depth and again was sacked after a few months. His last job at Blackpool he was actually banned for threatening the ref in the tunnel. Sol Campbell who is such a twat who at one time wanted to be a Tory MP I just can't take him seriously.

The only other ones I can think of are Chris Hughton who's a safe pair of hands at a championship or lower premier clubs and Keith Curle who's a journeyman manager in the lower leagues and Darren Moore who was briefly the WBA manager. Now that is a very short list I may have missed some out so apologies if I did. The way football management is now it's the same middle aged or in Roy Hodgson's case pensioner getting the same jobs all the time just look at WBA and Palace's recent managers. Then you're left with the elite managers jobs and if you're not an ex player of the club Arteta, Lampard etc or have a good CV like Ancelotti then you're not in with a shout. Pep, Mourinho, Klopp etc will get hired till they retire or in Mourinho's case his next job might not be so high profile.

Some black players either say straight out they don't want to manage like Ian Wright and some just go straight to punditry recent examples Jenas, Micah Richards and our very own Ashley Cole. But one thing there is definitely a lack of is black managers in the lower leagues is it racism possibly but everytime let's say Newport or Bradford have a manager it's always a white middle aged bloke who's probably been sacked several times Micky Adams had twelve managerial jobs between 1996 and 2014. There's obviously loads of black players playing in the English lower leagues and yet they are or don't ever seem to be considered for managerial roles surely someone has to take a chance I don't understand the reluctance and it will stop the likes of Micky Adams getting jobs they don't deserve.

 

 

[Special Juan 27,422]

And that's only 4 players...Drink, Zappa, Kennedy and Batpoo....

There is at least another load to go after them.

[Superblue 6,370]

54 minutes ago, Iggy Doonican said:

That's not strictly true. I'm going to rack my brains and here's the list of British black managers as I can recall. Barnes and Ince both disasters Barnes especially three managers jobs he's had been sacked after a few months in all of them. Barnes cites racism in football but don't forget he supported Suarez in the Evra incident and to be honest his credibility was fucked after that. Ince did ok in the lower leagues got the Blackburn job and was completely out of his depth and again was sacked after a few months. His last job at Blackpool he was actually banned for threatening the ref in the tunnel. Sol Campbell who is such a twat who at one time wanted to be a Tory MP I just can't take him seriously.

The only other ones I can think of are Chris Hughton who's a safe pair of hands at a championship or lower premier clubs and Keith Curle who's a journeyman manager in the lower leagues and Darren Moore who was briefly the WBA manager. Now that is a very short list I may have missed some out so apologies if I did. The way football management is now it's the same middle aged or in Roy Hodgson's case pensioner getting the same jobs all the time just look at WBA and Palace's recent managers. Then you're left with the elite managers jobs and if you're not an ex player of the club Arteta, Lampard etc or have a good CV like Ancelotti then you're not in with a shout. Pep, Mourinho, Klopp etc will get hired till they retire or in Mourinho's case his next job might not be so high profile.

Some black players either say straight out they don't want to manage like Ian Wright and some just go straight to punditry recent examples Jenas, Micah Richards and our very own Ashley Cole. But one thing there is definitely a lack of is black managers in the lower leagues is it racism possibly but everytime let's say Newport or Bradford have a manager it's always a white middle aged bloke who's probably been sacked several times Micky Adams had twelve managerial jobs between 1996 and 2014. There's obviously loads of black players playing in the English lower leagues and yet they are or don't ever seem to be considered for managerial roles surely someone has to take a chance I don't understand the reluctance and it will stop the likes of Micky Adams getting jobs they don't deserve.

 

 

Obviously not British, but the one that should have bucked the trend I would say was actually Ruud Gullit. I could be wrong, but I think he might well have been the first black manager to manage at the highest level in England (somewhat ironic given the negative press we've experienced over the years with regards to racism).

He was excellent in his time here and I would argue was a much greater influence than Hoddle was at setting the building blocks at the club (although no Hoddle, no Gullit). It was always a surprise when he was sacked, and whilst we continued to be successful under Vialli it would be interesting to know how we would have evolved under Gullit. (If it would have been buying a number of the crap players he brought to Newcastle then we dodged a bullet but I have read reports in the past that we were putting a move in place for Stam and were also looking at a young Van Nistelrooy)

Unfortunately he tanked at Newcastle, fell out with Shearer who was an icon there, and never recovered from that. That is maybe where some racism could be possibly argued. In Gullit's case, was his good work at Chelsea not enough for someone else to take a chance on him despite his struggles at Newcastle? David Moyes survived his United nightmare and managed to find future premier league posts on the back of the work he did at Everton and there are other similar examples. 

[Vesper 28,768]

35 minutes ago, Iggy Doonican said:

That's not strictly true. I'm going to rack my brains and here's the list of British black managers as I can recall. Barnes and Ince both disasters Barnes especially three managers jobs he's had been sacked after a few months in all of them. Barnes cites racism in football but don't forget he supported Suarez in the Evra incident and to be honest his credibility was fucked after that. Ince did ok in the lower leagues got the Blackburn job and was completely out of his depth and again was sacked after a few months. His last job at Blackpool he was actually banned for threatening the ref in the tunnel. Sol Campbell who is such a twat who at one time wanted to be a Tory MP I just can't take him seriously.

The only other ones I can think of are Chris Hughton who's a safe pair of hands at a championship or lower premier clubs and Keith Curle who's a journeyman manager in the lower leagues and Darren Moore who was briefly the WBA manager. Now that is a very short list I may have missed some out so apologies if I did. The way football management is now it's the same middle aged or in Roy Hodgson's case pensioner getting the same jobs all the time just look at WBA and Palace's recent managers. Then you're left with the elite managers jobs and if you're not an ex player of the club Arteta, Lampard etc or have a good CV like Ancelotti then you're not in with a shout. Pep, Mourinho, Klopp etc will get hired till they retire or in Mourinho's case his next job might not be so high profile.

Some black players either say straight out they don't want to manage like Ian Wright and some just go straight to punditry recent examples Jenas, Micah Richards and our very own Ashley Cole. But one thing there is definitely a lack of is black managers in the lower leagues is it racism possibly but everytime let's say Newport or Bradford have a manager it's always a white middle aged bloke who's probably been sacked several times Micky Adams had twelve managerial jobs between 1996 and 2014. There's obviously loads of black players playing in the English lower leagues and yet they are or don't ever seem to be considered for managerial roles surely someone has to take a chance I don't understand the reluctance and it will stop the likes of Micky Adams getting jobs they don't deserve.

 

 

not British, but Nuno Espirito Santo is a BAME manager

then there were

Chris Powell

Teams managed
2010    Leicester City (caretaker)
2011–2014    Charlton Athletic
2014–2015    Huddersfield Town
2016    Derby County (caretaker)
2018–2019    Southend United
2019–2020    ADO Den Haag (assistant)

and

Sol Campbell

Teams managed
2018–2019    Macclesfield Town
2019–2020    Southend United

 

Black managers start at the bottom while their white peers start at the top - that's racism

Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard are both in high profile jobs while their former England team-mates Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell have not had similar opportunities

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/black-managers-start-bottom-white-22188816

 

Black football coaches: What holds us back

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-52979173

Raheem Sterling says there are not enough black managers for young football fans to aspire to.

He's got a point. There are currently only six black or non-white head coaches in the top 92 clubs in the English professional leagues.

In 2018, the Football Association announced a plan to increase the 5% of its leadership roles and 13% of England coaching staff that are currently filled by people from a BAME background.

There are around 500 players in the 20 Premier League squads. More than a quarter of those are black or mixed-race, but when they retire few are moving into senior management.

Iuri Baptista is a coach based in West London, who says at grass roots level you tend to see a mixture of BAME coaches but "as you progress towards academy you start to see fewer".

 

 

A brief history of BAME managers in England: from Wharton to Ince

The list of black and ethnic minority managers in English football may be short but their history stretches back to 1895

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jun/10/bame-managers-english-football-history

The list of black and ethnic minority managers in English football may be a short one but their history stretches back even beyond the last century. When Arthur Wharton joined the Lancashire League side Stalybridge Rovers in 1895, the Gold Coast-born goalkeeper who had become the first black professional player a decade earlier took his first steps into coaching while continuing to play.

“They were known as Wharton’s Brigade because he was very much in charge,” says Phil Vasili, author of Colouring Over the White Line: the history of black footballers in Britain. “He even helped them to sign Herbert Chapman before falling out with the owners and moving to Ashton North End.”

Chapman went on to win a combined four league titles with Huddersfield and Arsenal and is regarded as one of the most influential coaches in history, but it wasn’t until June 1959 that a Football League club appointed the first BAME manager. Frank Soo, the son of a Chinese father and English mother, was born in Buxton and brought up in Liverpool, going on to make almost 200 appearances for Stoke and representing England during the second world war.

His managerial career began in Finland and took in spells with St Albans City, Padova and the Norway national team before he was named as the Scunthorpe United manager. He earned praise from the future England manager Alf Ramsey having guided them to 15th place in the Second Division but resigned at the end of the season and returned to Scandinavia.

Two months later Tony Collins – who never met his African father and was brought up by his white mother in London – became the first black manager in Football League history when he succeeded Jack Marshall at Rochdale of the Fourth Division.

“We are aware that some eyebrows will be raised because of his colour but that made no difference and we sincerely hope it will make no difference in his career as a manager,” read the statement from the club chairman Freddie Ratcliffe at the time.

Within two years Collins had led Rochdale to the final of the 1962 League Cup, where they lost against Norwich over two legs. He is still the only black British manager to have reached a major final and lasted for seven years before becoming a celebrated scout for Leeds and Don Revie, among numerous others. But while English football had to wait three more decades for another black manager, there was another coach with Asian heritage who made a significant contribution in the intervening years.

Sammy Chung was a striker who played for Reading, Norwich and Watford before working as an assistant manager to Bill McGarry – one of Ramsey’s successors at Ipswich. Having helped them to promotion in 1968, he also spent time in Scandinavia before returning to McGarry’s side at Wolves and helping guide them to victory in the 1974 League Cup. Chung was appointed manager in 1976, when McGarry was fired after Wolves were relegated, and they returned to the First Division as champions in his first season but was later sacked after a poor start to the 1978-79 campaign.

When Edwin Stein took over from Barry Fry at Barnet in April 1993 – just beating Lincoln’s Keith Alexander – almost 15 years had passed since the previous BAME manager in English football, with the South Africa-born former winger and son of an anti-apartheid activist helping the north London club to achieve promotion to the third tier for the first time in their history.

Stein left to link up with Fry again at Southend the following season and has admitted feeling “uncomfortable” when he attended the end-of-season managers’ meeting at the Savoy because he was the only black representative.

Alexander went on to manage Lincoln, Peterborough and Macclesfield before his death in 2010, two years after Paul Ince, with Blackburn, became the first British-born black man to manage a Premier League club. He is one of nine black managers in the history of the competition.

 

 

[Vesper 28,768]

Callum Hudson-Odoi caught browsing Sergio Reguilon posts

https://www.chelsea-news.co/2020/08/video-callum-hudson-odoi-caught-browsing-sergio-reguilon-posts/

 

[Pizy 18,368]

15 minutes ago, Special Juan said:

And that's only 4 players...Drink, Zappa, Kennedy and Batpoo....

There is at least another load to go after them.

We've made some truly shocking buys in recent years. Bakayoko at least showed loads of promise and potential at Monaco and looked like the perfect player at the time to come in and partner Kante. Zappa was a last minute panic buy. The one that's most mystifying for me is DD. What on earth was our board thinking buying him and for £30+m at that...

Then there was that set of 3 CB's (Hector, Djilobodji, Miazga) that were CLEARLY several levels below Chelsea quality we bought.

My God, have we been shocking since the Cesc/Costa window. This one we're in now is the first great one we could have since 2014.

[Dimitr 488]

[Jase 43,479]

Maybe fake news but...

 

[Puliiszola 519]

Dear god.

[ZAPHOD2319 4,476]

Once they start lighting up twitter, some part of it is real.

[Dimitr 488]

If this is true we will pay 50-60m£ for him ? 😯

[ulsterchelsea 3,221]

I'll be happy with chillwell if that's what Franky wants

[lucio 5,418]

Colossal waste of money, paying 3x more for an inferior player 

[Dimitr 488]

[Vesper 28,768]

1 minute ago, Dimitr said:

it damn well better be for a reasonable price