Chelsea Transfers

[killer1257 3,282]

Gotta' say, watching highlights of Nick Pope... he does impress. A very commanding, good shot stopping mountain of a man. Looks like a solid option. I'm not fussed if he cant ping a pass 40 yards to Odois nose either, all that matters is if he saves shots and catches the ball for me, which looks a certain.

Isn't he the second worst goalkeeper stats wise ?

Gesendet von meinem SM-G920F mit Tapatalk

[DDA 9,570]

13 minutes ago, killer1257 said:

Isn't he the second worst goalkeeper stats wise ?

Gesendet von meinem SM-G920F mit Tapatalk
 

Burnley have been awful this season defensive wise. Which for me is extremely satisfying considering the way they play against us. 

[Tomo 21,681]

1 hour ago, DDA said:

Gotta' say, watching highlights of Nick Pope... he does impress. A very commanding, good shot stopping mountain of a man. Looks like a solid option. I'm not fussed if he cant ping a pass 40 yards to Odois nose either, all that matters is if he saves shots and catches the ball for me, which looks a certain.

Im sorry but distribution with keepers is important these days no matter how much people don't like to hear it. Every single top team have ball playing keepers, we won't compete long term without one.

Now I'm not defending Kepa's performances this season (because he's been a let down even on distribution) but in a team like ours a keeper will have to control the ball and pass under pressure 10 times minimum for every one time they have a shot to save, so if I was offered a 7/7 or a 3/9 (distribution:shot stopping ratio) I'd chose the former and I think 99% of managers would aswell.

[YorkshireBlue 2,825]

1 hour ago, Tomo said:

What do you mean by that?

If you mean attracting truly elite players then we were never that club in the first place.

No maybe not but we could attract alot better calibre of players, we would have had more chance of signing a sancho than we do now. Ppl need to start accepting the fact that we are now throw away chelsea. Managers, players, we drop them as often as hookers drop knickers.

[Vesper 27,315]

12 minutes ago, BluesMadLad said:

No maybe not but we could attract alot better calibre of players, we would have had more chance of signing a sancho than we do now. Ppl need to start accepting the fact that we are now throw away chelsea. Managers, players, we drop them as often as hookers drop knickers.

drop players?

we hold onto the dregs like they are the bloody Hope Diamond

[DDA 9,570]

2 hours ago, Tomo said:

Im sorry but distribution with keepers is important these days no matter how much people don't like to hear it. Every single top team have ball playing keepers, we won't compete long term without one.

Now I'm not defending Kepa's performances this season (because he's been a let down even on distribution) but in a team like ours a keeper will have to control the ball and pass under pressure 10 times minimum for every one time they have a shot to save, so if I was offered a 7/7 or a 3/9 (distribution:shot stopping ratio) I'd chose the former and I think 99% of managers would aswell.

This ball playing GK shit is really over hyped Tomo. These days people are more worried about playing from the back than they are actually defending their own goal. It's getting abit silly. I'd rather see a GK who saves 9/10 shots and who can kick a ball to the CB's and FB's rather than a GK who saves 6/10 shots but  can pass to a winger. 

 

[Tomo 21,681]

34 minutes ago, DDA said:

This ball playing GK shit is really over hyped Tomo. These days people are more worried about playing from the back than they are actually defending their own goal. It's getting abit silly. I'd rather see a GK who saves 9/10 shots and who can kick a ball to the CB's and FB's rather than a GK who saves 6/10 shots but  can pass to a winger. 

I disagree it's a major requirement in the modern day. I rewatched a Chelsea match from 2002 a few months ago and a defender passed back to Cudicini who was given all the time in the world to roll the ball forward to almost the half way line before booting it forward, would that ever happen (even at semi pro level) in today's game? Absolutely no chance.

Press is a big killer in today's game, if as much as one player can't cope with it you risk being completely overwhelmed in a game, for example us against ten man PSG.

[Superblue 6,331]

2 hours ago, Tomo said:

I disagree it's a major requirement in the modern day. I rewatched a Chelsea match from 2002 a few months ago and a defender passed back to Cudicini who was given all the time in the world to roll the ball forward to almost the half way line before booting it forward, would that ever happen (even at semi pro level) in today's game? Absolutely no chance.

Press is a big killer in today's game, if as much as one player can't cope with it you risk being completely overwhelmed in a game, for example us against ten man PSG.

It's definitely a requirement for teams now that wish to dominate the ball, but I do still think you need a balance. 

Pep took Bravo to City in his first season for what was a pretty big transfer for a keeper at the time, and although he was someone quite happy on the ball but quickly realised the number of mistakes he was making and his shot stopping ability were going to keep costing City if he wasn't replaced. I feel at the moment Kepa is almost in a similar bracket where he is giving zero confidence to the defence, making far too many mistakes and it feels like he is trying to over-compensate for that with his ball distribution which is also suffering as a result.

I think the biggest question to ask on this thought process is would you rather Kepa or previous keepers we've had like Cech and Courtois who were far better keepers but neither very strong with ball distribution or comfortable on the ball?

[Vesper 27,315]

Tammy Abraham reveals why he wanted Chelsea to sign Edinson Cavani

https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/tammy-abraham-reveals-why-he-wanted-chelsea-to-sign-edinson-cavani-a4351566.html

Tammy Abraham has revealed that he wanted Chelsea to sign Edinson Cavani during the January transfer window in order to learn from a "top-class" striker.

Having scored 15 goals this season, Abraham remains the club's main striker after the Blues' failure to sign another forward last momth.

They had their transfer ban lifted in December but did not make a signing last month despite being linked with Cavani and Timo Werner.

Olivier Giroud failed to make the bench for Saturday's 2-2 draw at Leicester with Michy Batshuayi, Chelsea's other senior striker, an unused substitute.

Regarding Chelsea's January transfer targets, Abraham said: "The players, we were talking about coming like Cavani and other top-class strikers who have been around in the game for many years.

"It would have been nice if he had come. He would have been someone I can learn off and steal his ideas to add to my own.

"It didn't happen though and for me it gives me that extra push and desire to claim my position and be as best as I can."

Of his status as Chelsea's main front man, Abraham said: "Playing for a club like Chelsea there is always going to be pressure.

"For me it is about being in the right place at the right time and believing in myself and my abilities as well. I am sure I will score a few more. I like the pressure and I play under pressure.

"For me I can't complain, it has been a great season so far. I would like to push on. There are still massive games. I just have to be ready for them and take my opportunities."

snip

[Vesper 27,315]

Edinson Cavani agent reveals reason behind Manchester United, Chelsea snub

By Matt Law, European Football Editor | 2h

 

https://www.sportsmole.co.uk/football/man-utd/transfer-talk/news/cavani-agent-reveals-reason-behind-man-united-chelsea-snub_388599.html

 

The agent and brother of Paris Saint-Germain forward Edinson Cavani has revealed that his client was desperate to join Atletico Madrid during the January transfer window.

Cavani handed in a transfer request last month as he attempted to force a move away from the French champions before the winter deadline.

The Uruguay international ultimately remained in Paris, though, despite Manchester United and Chelsea also showing an interest in the experienced striker.

According to Walter Guglielmone, the 32-year-old had the chance to join either of the Premier League giants but was not interested even though they were offering a better financial package than Atletico.

"Cavani was willing to receive less than with PSG," The Sun quotes Guglielmone as saying. "Atletico could not cover the total economic cost of the operation and PSG did not want to lower the amounts he was asking for. Atletico Madrid did not close the agreement.

"Do you think that Edi did not play for almost a month at PSG so that I could drop the operation for a commission and that Edi did not fulfill his dream of going to Atletico Madrid? If it were for money, Edi would have gone to England, Manchester or Chelsea."

Cavani, who is thought to earn in excess of £360,000 a week under the terms of his current deal, is PSG's all-time leading scorer with 198 goals in 294 outings in all competitions.

snip

[Styl1994 188]

3 hours ago, Vesper said:

Edinson Cavani agent reveals reason behind Manchester United, Chelsea snub

By Matt Law, European Football Editor | 2h

 

https://www.sportsmole.co.uk/football/man-utd/transfer-talk/news/cavani-agent-reveals-reason-behind-man-united-chelsea-snub_388599.html

 

The agent and brother of Paris Saint-Germain forward Edinson Cavani has revealed that his client was desperate to join Atletico Madrid during the January transfer window.

Cavani handed in a transfer request last month as he attempted to force a move away from the French champions before the winter deadline.

The Uruguay international ultimately remained in Paris, though, despite Manchester United and Chelsea also showing an interest in the experienced striker.

According to Walter Guglielmone, the 32-year-old had the chance to join either of the Premier League giants but was not interested even though they were offering a better financial package than Atletico.

"Cavani was willing to receive less than with PSG," The Sun quotes Guglielmone as saying. "Atletico could not cover the total economic cost of the operation and PSG did not want to lower the amounts he was asking for. Atletico Madrid did not close the agreement.

"Do you think that Edi did not play for almost a month at PSG so that I could drop the operation for a commission and that Edi did not fulfill his dream of going to Atletico Madrid? If it were for money, Edi would have gone to England, Manchester or Chelsea."

Cavani, who is thought to earn in excess of £360,000 a week under the terms of his current deal, is PSG's all-time leading scorer with 198 goals in 294 outings in all competitions.

snip

So we cannot blame the board on this one. Cavani probably knew he would be a stop gap.

[cosmicway 1,252]

Ivica Surjak the great Croatian midfielder.
Tipped by tabloids for AEK Athens in January 1983.
Did n't happen.
The tabloid's excuse was "drama at the border as Surjak forgets passport".
 

 

[Jase 43,479]

7 hours ago, Styl1994 said:

So we cannot blame the board on this one. Cavani probably knew he would be a stop gap.

I don't think the board can even be blamed for not getting the other options mentioned - Mertens, Dembele, Rondon(!) etc. The one you can maybe question why we did not pursue is Haaland, although he probably wouldn't have come here and we wouldn't want to deal with his pesky agent Mino Raiola. 

[NikkiCFC 7,582]

'Most likely every player would think about it': RB Leipzig star Timo Werner reveals he WOULD consider Liverpool move should Reds come calling

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-7961539/RB-Leipzig-star-Timo-Werner-says-consider-Liverpool-move.html

 

[killer1257 3,282]

'Most likely every player would think about it': RB Leipzig star Timo Werner reveals he WOULD consider Liverpool move should Reds come calling

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-7961539/RB-Leipzig-star-Timo-Werner-says-consider-Liverpool-move.html
 

So basically he will go to a German Coach and the current best Club in England

Gesendet von meinem SM-G920F mit Tapatalk

[Vesper 27,315]

Mertens, Cavani and Rondon: Chelsea stalled striker hunt as club gamble that current squad can secure fourth

https://theathletic.com/1576630/2020/02/02/chelsea-striker-mertens-cavani-transfer/?source=dailyemail

When the substitutes’ board was raised in the 83rd minute at the King Power Stadium to show Ross Barkley coming on for Tammy Abraham, recent Chelsea history suggested Frank Lampard had picked a key moment in a key match against Premier League top-four rivals to send a political message.

It was a day that had summed up the problems that drove Chelsea’s fraught and ultimately failed striker search throughout January. After a litany of missed first-half chances from Abraham, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Mason Mount, only Antonio Rudiger’s first Premier League goals for 15 months prevented Leicester from handing Lampard’s men a ninth loss of the season.

This late substitution wasn’t quite Jose Mourinho deploying Andre Schurrle as a false 9 at Old Trafford in 2013 while publicly pursuing Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney, or Antonio Conte pointedly handing an unfit Barkley his Chelsea debut in a Carabao Cup semi-final against Arsenal in 2018 to highlight his lack of squad options.

But given the Chelsea head coach’s demeanour only 24 hours earlier at Cobham, the cynic’s interpretation was tempting — even if he later explained: “We have spent a lot of time this week on how we press without the ball and I thought Ross has been playing pretty well recently. It was just a case of bringing him on, [getting] he and Willian in those positions to maybe get a bit more ball because at that point it hadn’t really stuck for us much up there. It was just a choice.”

Olivier Giroud did not even travel with the Chelsea squad to Leicester, having trained with his future in the balance on January transfer deadline day. “It was nothing to do with his frame of mind, no,” Lampard insisted. “But he has had a few days where a lot of scrutiny has been on him and around him. I think it was case of travelling without him.

“We will all go away for a week away from each other. It’s probably what’s needed for everyone and we will come back and work hard, and Olivier is here. If he shows himself in training — because that is how I pick the team generally — then he will get his opportunities.”

Lampard had cut an agitated figure at Cobham on Friday as he admitted that, with almost 12 hours of deadline day remaining, the window was “95 per cent shut” for Chelsea. He even spoke faster than normal, his eyes darting quickly from left to right, any smiles vanishing from his face almost as soon as they appeared.

And in his keenness to paint his team as “underdogs” in what remains of the top-four race, his praise of Bruno Fernandes as a “world-class” signing for United and his invocation of “work” as the only solution to Chelsea’s problems, there were ominous echoes of the Conte who became content to use his media engagements to lob verbal grenades on his way to a toxic divorce with the board.

But the message here was slightly muddled, the obvious annoyance a little aimless; for Lampard also admitted that he wouldn’t have been satisfied by Chelsea buckling to pressure — both from the management and an expectant fan base — and talking themselves into a questionable deadline-day deal, as United later did with Odion Ighalo.

“The reality is I have an idea here as well of where I want to get to and I don’t think any knee-jerk reaction from myself or from the club would have been positive,” he insisted. And the reality of the January transfer window for Chelsea, as it was for other clubs, was a choice between doing something underwhelming or doing nothing.

As first reported by the Telegraph, sources have told The Athletic that Chelsea were presented with an opportunity to take Salomon Rondon on loan from Chinese Super League club Dalian Yifang on deadline day. His arrival would have freed up Giroud to leave but would also have meant replacing the man who will likely lead the line for France at Euro 2020 this summer with a striker who scored 35 goals in 140 Premier League appearances for West Brom and Newcastle.

Chelsea opted not to go down the route with Rondon that United did with Ighalo, and the episode provided a fitting end to a January window that, having begun with the optimism born of a successful transfer ban appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), ended with as much frustration inside Cobham as played out on social media.

Agents had been alerted to Chelsea’s desire to do business in January even before the CAS decision was handed down and sources have told The Athletic that Marina Granovskaia met with the representative of Napoli forward Dries Mertens before Christmas to gauge his level of interest in a January move to the Premier League.

Lampard’s interest in Mertens sprang as much from his ability to play in a variety of attacking roles as his elite goalscoring pedigree and there was hope that his expiring contract might present a rare opportunity to acquire a quality forward relatively cheaply. The Napoli chairman Aurelio De Laurentiis quickly shut that possibility down. Mertens is also injured, and three goals shy of passing Marek Hamsik as Napoli’s all-time top goalscorer. It was a non-starter.

Chelsea enquired about Edinson Cavani once he made it clear he was unsettled but were only prepared to take him on loan. Paris Saint-Germain wanted a sale and not even Atletico Madrid, the player’s preferred destination, could match the €20 million asking price. That level of expense made no sense for an increasingly injury-prone 32-year-old who is paid more than N’Golo Kante, the highest earner at Stamford Bridge.

The only other high-profile striker who actually changed clubs late in the January window was Krzysztof Piatek. Representatives acting on his behalf offered him around the Premier League but Chelsea were not interested in spending on a striker who could not even hold down a regular starting place in a struggling AC Milan side.

Chelsea’s long-term targets were not available in January. Jadon Sancho and Borussia Dortmund agreed to revisit his situation in the summer while Timo Werner had no desire to leave RB Leipzig in the midst of a Bundesliga title race and a top-scorer battle with Robert Lewandowski. Wilfried Zaha and Moussa Dembele were both prohibitively expensive, and neither enjoyed unanimous endorsement in the club’s transfer discussions.

In this barren landscape, Chelsea were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the recent past — most notably the disastrous summer of 2017, when pressure from Conte played its part in around £55 million being spent on deadline-day deals for Danny Drinkwater and Davide Zappacosta that the club are still reckoning with.

Nor was it palatable to allow Giroud to leave without securing a replacement, regardless of his desire to safeguard his starting spot for France at Euro 2020. The optics in particular of sending him to Jose Mourinho and Tottenham, then watching both reel in and overtake Chelsea in the final stretch of the Premier League top-four race, would have been virtually impossible to recover from.

So in the end, Chelsea decided to stand put, prioritising the summer over the present. It is a calculated gamble that this squad, managed by Lampard, can get over the line to fourth. If it works, they will be in a perfect position to pursue top-tier names and take the team to the next level.

Lampard is invested in that long-term vision but he also knows that, like every other Chelsea coach in the Roman Abramovich era, he is being judged on his results right now. “We are fortunate that we have a nice group of young players at the minute but we have to keep looking forward and we are,” he told Match of the Day after victory over Hull City in the FA Cup.

“But for this season, short-term [recruitment] needs to be done. For the bigger picture, of course there is a plan, but for now, when you look at it, we want to finish in the top four. At the minute, it is quite clear to me where we can improve so we have to look to that.”

This is the tension that spilled out of Lampard on deadline day and the tension that might have surfaced once more if Chelsea had paid for their missed chances against Leicester. Instead, Rudiger’s equaliser gave him the chance to deescalate the situation heading into the winter break.

“It’s gone,” Lampard said of the transfer market. “I am not interested in the window, I am not interested in talking about it. I am interested in the point we got and what we do going forward.”

After sitting out the January window, Chelsea will remain a flawed team between now and the summer. Lampard’s decision to drop Kepa Arrizabalaga for Willy Caballero at the King Power underlined that, to achieve this season’s targets, he will need to navigate difficult problems at both decisive ends of his team.

But the public attitude of Chelsea’s head coach will be every bit as important in ensuring that he will be the man to oversee the club’s longer-term rebuild.

[ZAPHOD2319 3,873]

I was a bit frustrated in this window as a fan who wants to see us succeed. The window makes much more sense after that article. 

[Vesper 27,315]

look who is magically healed and now scores a 98th minute goal for Napoli

you can go to 6 minutes, 18 seconds

https://yfl.tostreamit.com/player/html/XcwpmYAe8C?popup=yes&autoplay=1