Chelsea Transfers

[Superblue 6,344]

5 hours ago, OhForAGreavsie said:

I'm with you most of the way on this but I'd say that we don't lack investment capital. What we lack is football capital. Established top players, with dreams of the mega clubs, and realistic hopes of achieving those dreams, don't fancy playing for Chelsea. I think that Timo is an example of this. If I remember correctly there was an authoritative report that we paid £47m for him. At that price, or even substantially above it, Liverpool could have afforded him if they wanted to. I believed from the start that their claim to be unable to afford Timo was just a more acceptable thing to say than that they didn't rate him at anything like this amount. At a lower cost they might have been willing to place a 'bet', but at £47m they were out, so we were able to get him.

Our lack of football capital can be fixed but it will take time and a lot of astute recruitment of the kind you are talking about.

We have always found much more success with buying players and them developing into world class and rated talents here than trying to buy the ready-made product. Even going back to Roman's early days the likes of Cech, Carvalho, Drogba proved significantly safer and more successful than the likes of Crespo and Veron. 

We experienced the same with Hazard, Kante, Courtois, etc - buying players on an upward trajectory. When we've tried to short cut things it's gone horribly wrong. Leave the likes of Madrid, Barca, United to buy those sorts of players. I'm happy to plug gaps from time to time with smart, experienced signings (Thiago Silva for example) but the key at the club has to be to identify those players who with the right coaching and platform, could well become world class here at the club. 

[Vesper 27,651]

Report: AC Milan now want to sign three first-team players from Chelsea, could open talks tomorrow

https://www.thechelseachronicle.com/transfer-news/report-ac-milan-now-want-to-sign-three-first-team-players-from-Chelsea-could-open-talks-tomorrow/

Reports from Italy have claimed that AC Milan are looking to sign three first team players from Chelsea in future transfer windows.

According to Calcio Mercato, the Italian champions are interested in bringing in Christian Pulisic, Trevoh Chalobah and Callum Hudson-Odoi next year, as they look to refresh their squad with players on the fringes at Stamford Bridge.

Pulisic in particular was keen to leave over the summer, either on a permanent or temporary basis.

 

Todd Boehly to meet with AC Milan chiefs over £79m Chelsea signing; two stars could go other way

https://www.teamtalk.com/Chelsea/rafael-leao-transfer-news-meet-milan-chiefs-signing-christian-pulisic-trevoh-chalobah-other-way

[guddy69 171]

2 hours ago, Vesper said:

Report: AC Milan now want to sign three first-team players from Chelsea, could open talks tomorrow

https://www.thechelseachronicle.com/transfer-news/report-ac-milan-now-want-to-sign-three-first-team-players-from-Chelsea-could-open-talks-tomorrow/

Reports from Italy have claimed that AC Milan are looking to sign three first team players from Chelsea in future transfer windows.

According to Calcio Mercato, the Italian champions are interested in bringing in Christian Pulisic, Trevoh Chalobah and Callum Hudson-Odoi next year, as they look to refresh their squad with players on the fringes at Stamford Bridge.

Pulisic in particular was keen to leave over the summer, either on a permanent or temporary basis.

 

Todd Boehly to meet with AC Milan chiefs over £79m Chelsea signing; two stars could go other way

https://www.teamtalk.com/Chelsea/rafael-leao-transfer-news-meet-milan-chiefs-signing-christian-pulisic-trevoh-chalobah-other-way

Good... I hope they go.

[Blues Forever 1,232]

 

[Reddish-Blue 2,252]

11 hours ago, Superblue_1986 said:

We have always found much more success with buying players and them developing into world class and rated talents here than trying to buy the ready-made product. Even going back to Roman's early days the likes of Cech, Carvalho, Drogba proved significantly safer and more successful than the likes of Crespo and Veron. 

We experienced the same with Hazard, Kante, Courtois, etc - buying players on an upward trajectory. When we've tried to short cut things it's gone horribly wrong. Leave the likes of Madrid, Barca, United to buy those sorts of players. I'm happy to plug gaps from time to time with smart, experienced signings (Thiago Silva for example) but the key at the club has to be to identify those players who with the right coaching and platform, could well become world class here at the club. 

You could even add players like Ivanovic, Alex, Zouma as smart signings where we didn't have to pay overs in the transfer market and we managed to get some good performances from all of them during their time with Chelsea. 

Now we're spending 50+ million on decent players like Cucurella when in reality, we all know thats 20 million wasted (even City stopped the negotiations after Brighton asked for a minimum fee of 35 million). 

[LAM09 6,610]

28 minutes ago, Reddish-Blue said:

You could even add players like Ivanovic, Alex, Zouma as smart signings where we didn't have to pay overs in the transfer market and we managed to get some good performances from all of them during their time with Chelsea. 

Now we're spending 50+ million on decent players like Cucurella when in reality, we all know thats 20 million wasted (even City stopped the negotiations after Brighton asked for a minimum fee of 35 million). 

Akanji is someone we should have been all over. Look at what we spent on Fofana and KK compared to him.

[Reddish-Blue 2,252]

2 hours ago, LAM09 said:

Akanji is someone we should have been all over. Look at what we spent on Fofana and KK compared to him.

The Fofana deal was always going to be a nice fat bonus for Leicester as they repeatedly said they wanted to keep him till next summer.   Feel like Fofana will be a solid player in the long term, him & Colwill could form a nice partnership at the back. 

Interested to see how Koulibaly does for the club because he hasn't looked great so far, really thought he'd be starting every game as our big name defensive signing but it's basically 45 year old Thiago Silva holding up our backline at the moment. 

So weird that we can't find value for money signings yet all of our rivals seem to be able to sign players in the 20-30 million range. 

[OneMoSalah 8,661]

6 hours ago, LAM09 said:

Akanji is someone we should have been all over. Look at what we spent on Fofana and KK compared to him.

All well and good saying that now he’s went to City for a decent fee in this market and has looked at home there (albeit again he’s only played due to injuries to Laporte, Stones and Ake more than anything).

But lets be brutally honest, before that the majority on here probably never ever thought of him playing at a top 4 PL club, yet alone would of wanted him to come here specifically. 

I mean he didn’t even have a hugely successful time at Dortmund so I find it ironic now to say he’s someone we should have been all over.

If he had a poor run for City it would of been “lol what were they doing signing him”….

[Vesper 27,651]

On 05/10/2022 at 01:47, LAM09 said:

Akanji is someone we should have been all over. Look at what we spent on Fofana and KK compared to him.

we tried and failed on these 7, nothing we can do about them

Matthijs de Ligt
Marquinhos 
Ronald Araújo    
David Alaba
Aymeric Laporte
Presnel Kimpembe
Niklas Süle

then

Jules Koundé (we pulled out, which is good)

Armel Bella-Kotchap (massive miss, we need to watch him hard, I think he will likely be a beast, I pushed for him)

Nico Schlotterbeck (we passed, I am over, it is what it is)

Bremer (we passed, not bothered really, at least atm)

Mohamed Simakan ( we passed last summer, but we so need to keep monitoring, he also looked great at RB)

then

Antonio Rüdiger (massive cock-up by Marina)

 

the there are the two clear targets, we passed this past summer as we can get better deals in 2023

Josko Gvardiol    
Milan Skriniar (unless he renews he is a free hit)

After them, Bella-Kotchap and Simakan, plus Ndicka for a lefy CB IF somehow we cock up Gvardiol.

Soooooo....
We then have the ones we passed on that I was not TRULY pushing for in front of all others (Ndicka 

bold are ones I did rate

Pau Torres
Jurrien Timber 
José María Giménez (too many injuries)
Robin Le Normand
Evan Ndicka (see above) 
Manuel Akanji (I still think he is a little too soft) 
Pierre Kalulu 
Min-jae Kim  
Merih Demiral 
Gonçalo Inácio  
Piero Hincapié
Castello Lukeba 
David Carmo
Maxence Lacroix
Stefan de Vrij (he probably would have been a better buy that KK, tbh)
Abdou Diallo (no need after we bought CuCu)
Adam Webster 
Morato
Ilya Zabarnyi 
Attila Szalai (was superb v Germany)

 

youth targets

 

El Chadaille Bitshiabu 17yo 1.96m beast

Giorgio Scalvini  
Kaiky 
Isaak Touré  (2.06m 19yo freak)
António Silva  
Justin Che 
Diego Coppola 
Mamadou Mbacke  
Martin Vitik
Joel Ordóñez  
Brahim Traoré 
Cristhian Mosquera
Soumaïla Coulibaly
Wisdom Amey  
Ethan Butera 
Samson Baidoo  
 

Edited October 7, 2022 by Vesper

[LAM09 6,610]

10 hours ago, Reddish-Blue said:

The Fofana deal was always going to be a nice fat bonus for Leicester as they repeatedly said they wanted to keep him till next summer.   Feel like Fofana will be a solid player in the long term, him & Colwill could form a nice partnership at the back. 

Interested to see how Koulibaly does for the club because he hasn't looked great so far, really thought he'd be starting every game as our big name defensive signing but it's basically 45 year old Thiago Silva holding up our backline at the moment. 

So weird that we can't find value for money signings yet all of our rivals seem to be able to sign players in the 20-30 million range. 

This summer was a very unique one & our shambles of a window, for the most part, proved that. Boehly arguably overspent on every first team signing to try to make a statement right away, which certainly isn't looking like good business as things currently stand. We have to hope this move to younger players can bridge the gap between the top & prove to be fruitful.

6 hours ago, OneMoSalah said:

All well and good saying that now he’s went to City for a decent fee in this market and has looked at home there (albeit again he’s only played due to injuries to Laporte, Stones and Ake more than anything).

But lets be brutally honest, before that the majority on here probably never ever thought of him playing at a top 4 PL club, yet alone would of wanted him to come here specifically. 

I mean he didn’t even have a hugely successful time at Dortmund so I find it ironic now to say he’s someone we should have been all over.

If he had a poor run for City it would of been “lol what were they doing signing him”….

He isn't exactly a nobody (Swiss international for quite some time, plenty of European experience, etc). As an option, it should have been a no-brainer, considering what I mentioned & Dortmund's eagerness to sell. We decided to actively go after Kimpembe ahead of him. That in itself is where the problem lies.

2 hours ago, Vesper said:

we tried and failed on these 7, nothing we can do about them

Matthijs de Ligt
Marquinhos 
Ronald Araújo    
David Alaba
Aymeric Laporte
Presnel Kimpembe
Niklas Süle

then

Jules Koundé (we pulled out, which is good)

Armel Bella-Kotchap (massive miss, we need to watch hum hard, I think he will likely be a beast, I pushed for him)

Nico Schlotterbeck (we passed, I am over, it is what it is)

Bremer (we passed, not bothered really, at least atm)

Mohamed Simakan ( we passed last summer, but we so need to keep monitoring)

then

Antonio Rüdiger (massive cock-up by Marina)

A number of those targets were never realistic options, all considered, so I have no idea why we wasted time going after them. It's hard to hate Boehly's approach in his first window for obvious reasons, so if Fofana & KK turn out to be massive flops, it'd better be a lesson learnt. Gvardiol is the one we need to do everything to sign (I didn't realise his clause was that low either) & become astute buyers rather than slaphappy ones going forward.

Edited October 5, 2022 by LAM09

[ZAPHOD2319 4,069]

 

[Fernando 6,395]

I like leao. 

Hope we go for him as well. 

[ulvhedin 480]

Whoever watch Brighton ragularly - is Caicedo more of DM or CM/B2B?

[Blues Forever 1,232]

1 hour ago, ulvhedin said:

Whoever watch Brighton ragularly - is Caicedo more of DM or CM/B2B?

B2B.

[MoroccanBlue 5,251]

20 hours ago, ZAPHOD2319 said:

 

Should stay far away from Alvarez. 

[chelsea_4_eva 1,144]

Before going for Alvarez we should at least give Zakaria a chance.

[Superblue 6,344]

Was far from impressed with Leao last night. Don't get me wrong, he clearly has talent and he's a big lad, someone I don't think that would get bullied physically in the Premier League. But his general attitude, demeanour, work rate off the ball were beyond shambolic. 

There are times you can carry one player somewhat if they are producing the goods, I know this was the case with Hazard previously but Leao isn't Eden Hazard level and Hazard was an extremely humble player who played for the team, would happily carry the burden of the team on his back. Once Reece got stuck into him after half time, Leao wilted and hid away. 

Maybe there's additional levels to his game to come over time, and he'll show up more at the San Siro next week but I just don't think currently the talent justifies the attitude I saw on the pitch last night and whilst they're not necessarily the same profile of player, if you're giving me the option of a new attacking signing next summer out of Nkunku and Leao, it's Nkunku for me even at the same price let alone Leao likely being significantly more expensive.

[ulvhedin 480]

31 minutes ago, Superblue_1986 said:

Was far from impressed with Leao last night. Don't get me wrong, he clearly has talent and he's a big lad, someone I don't think that would get bullied physically in the Premier League. But his general attitude, demeanour, work rate off the ball were beyond shambolic. 

There are times you can carry one player somewhat if they are producing the goods, I know this was the case with Hazard previously but Leao isn't Eden Hazard level and Hazard was an extremely humble player who played for the team, would happily carry the burden of the team on his back. Once Reece got stuck into him after half time, Leao wilted and hid away. 

Maybe there's additional levels to his game to come over time, and he'll show up more at the San Siro next week but I just don't think currently the talent justifies the attitude I saw on the pitch last night and whilst they're not necessarily the same profile of player, if you're giving me the option of a new attacking signing next summer out of Nkunku and Leao, it's Nkunku for me even at the same price let alone Leao likely being significantly more expensive.

Wouldn't judge level of his playing after yesterday game, when he was the only one trying to make things happen. His attitude and off-the ball workrate on the other hand - completely agree with you.