Chelsea Transfers

[Jase 43,479]

Just now, Ryan Fong said:

Both were unwanted anymore weren’t they? Maybe less of Cech’s case but he was declining and unlikely to get the starting place from the snake.

Think we were happy to keep both but both wanted to leave. Cech felt he could still play week in week out while Luiz, IIRC, was told his starting place wasn't guaranteed anymore and he decided to pack it in.

Mind you, when Luiz left last summer, he had 2 years left on his contract and was on bigger wages than Martinez is right now and yet, we sold him for only 8 million because he wanted to leave.

[Atomiswave 6,117]

If we dont go in for him then another PL club will, he wants first team action and I thought he was superb while Leno was out. Even for 20M its high reward low risk imo. We should be all over it.

[BlueLyon 9,359]

2 hours ago, killer1257 said:

On Arsenal mania, they want all Martinez as a no. 1 because of his size. They think that Leno may be a little bit of a better shot stopper, but Martinez dominance in the box is way better than Leno's.
I rarely read that Leno is better than Martinez

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And he is a massive Arse fan and also caught the ball outside of the penalty area, ref did nothing. 

I dont like the dude very much ok?😄

He is good keeper, but I wonder why didnt he play for Getafe when he went on loan there for example...

 

[Ryan Fong 2,776]

Think we were happy to keep both but both wanted to leave. Cech felt he could still play week in week out while Luiz, IIRC, was told his starting place wasn't guaranteed anymore and he decided to pack it in.

Mind you, when Luiz left last summer, he had 2 years left on his contract and was on bigger wages than Martinez is right now and yet, we sold him for only 8 million because he wanted to leave.

Never mind mate, I’m not disliking this move, if we can actually sign him for less than 20m hell yeah I’m all for it. I’m just not optimistic that we can pull it off for speculated 10m ish.

 

P.s. One more thing, staying at London was one of Cech and Luiz’s major desires when it comes to transfer, I’m not sure it’s the same for Martinez. Arsenal can easily offload him abroad for the same price, logically speaking.

[Vesper 30,169]

Explained: Why Chelsea can afford to spend big this summer

https://theathletic.com/2025309/2020/08/28/chelsea-transfer-accounts-abramovich-chilwell-havertz-silva/

A little more than 17 years since he silently swept into Stamford Bridge and transformed English football forever, Roman Abramovich is dominating the transfer market again. Chelsea committed over £85 million to acquire Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner either side of the coronavirus shutdown, and £50 million more this week to take Ben Chilwell from Leicester City. Thiago Silva will also be a Chelsea player next season and an imminent club-record deal for Bayer Leverkusen sensation Kai Havertz will push the total outlay on transfer fees well north of the £200 million mark, and Frank Lampard still wants a new starting goalkeeper.

Contrary to popular belief, Abramovich’s financial commitment to Chelsea did not waver even as a stand-off with the UK government curtailed his ability to watch his team at Stamford Bridge; the club’s most recent accounts show he contributed £247 million of his personal wealth to help cover costs during the year ending June 30, 2019. But even so, it is startling to watch this latest spending spree while other elite clubs respond to the lingering financial consequences of the pandemic by shelving their grand transfer plans and tightening their belts.

As one agent who has dealt with the club tells The Athletic: “This is Chelsea flexing their muscles, showing they mean business.” But how can they commit to spending on a scale that their rivals won’t even countenance in this climate?

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Chelsea posted a pre-tax loss of £101.8 million in their 2018-19 accounts, the largest recorded by the club since 2005 when Abramovich was bankrolling the transfers that first lifted them to the top of the Premier League. UEFA’s embattled Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations stipulate that clubs are only permitted to lose a total of €30 million (about £25.5 million) over the course of any three-year monitoring period, meaning another significant loss in the 2019-20 accounts might make it very difficult to remain compliant.

But there are a few things to note. Buried deep within the lengthy document, Chelsea stated that a total of £115.4 million from player sales had already been banked for the next financial year — primarily due to the high-profile departures of Eden Hazard to Real Madrid and Alvaro Morata to Atletico Madrid. That income, coupled with the fact that transfer spending in 2019-20 consisted only of £40 million to make Mateo Kovacic’s loan move permanent, should ensure a very healthy profit on player trading in the most recent set of accounts submitted to UEFA.

All new signings made in this transfer window are officially registered no earlier than July 1, meaning the costs associated with signing Werner, Ziyech, Chilwell, Thiago Silva, Havertz and anyone else who might follow will be included in the 2020-21 accounts. There is also the fact that UEFA has already indicated that it is prepared to give clubs some wiggle room with regard to FFP compliance in light of the financial fallout of the pandemic, with extra financial support from club owners to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Abramovich’s net worth has remained relatively stable in 2020 — it stands at £9.5 billion according to the Forbes billionaire tracker, making him the 152nd wealthiest individual in the world — and his presence has given Chelsea a level of financial security that many other elite clubs simply cannot count on from their owners. No staff were furloughed or made redundant at Stamford Bridge or Cobham during the shutdown and while talks were held with the first-team squad about the possibility of wage deferrals or cuts, ultimately neither happened.

Chelsea also went to great lengths and considerable expense to ensure they made a meaningful contribution to tackling the public health crisis in England; the Millennium Hotel and Copthorne Hotel outside Stamford Bridge were made available to NHS staff and key workers, while the club’s medical staff were granted permission to bolster frontline health services if they wished to do so. Abramovich also matched the £200,000 raised by the club’s supporters to donate to national domestic abuse charity Refuge, in response to a spike in violent incidents during the lockdown.

These actions are relevant to Chelsea’s subsequent transfer spending because there can be no accusations of moral or ethical inconsistency; Abramovich did not lay off 55 club employees before bankrolling well-remunerated new additions to his first-team squad, as Arsenal have done. There is no need to feel inhibited in the transfer market by the fear of appearing to put his own interests above those who work for him.

“What we’ve seen under COVID is the importance of social capital — how clubs are behaving when people are losing their jobs,” Dr Rob Wilson, football finance expert at Sheffield Hallam University, tells The Athletic. “There was a big backlash against Arsenal laying off 55 people and then going out and signing Willian to a fairly hefty contract, and that narrative is pervading football now. Communities are expecting their clubs to behave in a more responsible way, which I think is playing on the minds of some of the top teams in the Premier League.

“I wouldn’t say for one minute that Chelsea went out and did the community work in order to allow them to spend on transfers, but one of the indirect benefits of behaving in a socially responsible way is that they have the latitude to be a bit more aggressive now. Fans want to see it as well.”

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Chelsea have felt freer than most of their rivals to attack this transfer window — a window they long ago identified as a key opportunity to re-mould and upgrade the team, but one that has only become more favourable to a buyer with deep pockets as clubs throughout Europe attempt to absorb the financial blow of matches played behind closed doors or with heavily-reduced attendances for the foreseeable future.

“They have a window now that they can exploit to freshen things up, and it’s essentially a buyer’s market out there,” the agent adds. “Clubs may not admit it publicly all the time, but so many of them have been really stretched by COVID and lockdown and playing behind closed doors. Most can’t really resist for long if Chelsea come calling with a blank chequebook. They have to be pragmatic in the end.”

Despite their initial insistence that Chilwell should command close to the £80 million that Manchester United paid for Harry Maguire in the summer of 2019, Leicester ultimately felt compelled to settle for a £50 million fee more in line with Chelsea’s valuation of the player. RB Leipzig made it known to Werner that realising the full value of his £54 million release clause in this window was in the club’s best financial interests even once Liverpool made it clear they were out of the race to sign him, further swaying his thoughts towards a move to Stamford Bridge.

Abramovich is spending more in this transfer window partly because he recognises that his money can get him more in this market than it ordinarily would. In normal circumstances, Havertz would have his pick of elite suitors across Europe and Leverkusen could realistically hope to spark a bidding war; instead, the path has rapidly cleared for Chelsea to sign one of Europe’s most coveted young attacking talents — arguably the first time they have been able to do so since acquiring Eden Hazard from Lille in the summer of 2012.

Marina Granovskaia’s bigger challenge will be to find new homes for the players Lampard does not want and some of the loanees who have run their course, and to trim a wage bill that rose to £285.6 million in 2018-19, or 63.9 per cent of the club’s turnover. Even if she succeeds, it is highly unlikely she will be able to bring in the kind of money from sales that Chelsea are committed to spending on their priority targets.

When the transfer deadline passes on October 5, Chelsea’s final net spend is likely to be considerable — but it’s important to remember that net spend is not the way that clubs themselves account for transfer activity.

The transfer fee paid for any new signing is instead written off over the full length of the player’s contract — a standard accounting process known as amortisation — and added to their annual salary to determine their cost on the books. Werner, for example, will not go down as a £54 million expense in the 2020-21 accounts; his transfer fee is spread across the five years of his contract, so the first £10.8 million of it is added to his annual salary of £8.84 million (£170,000 a week, as reported by The Athletic in June), making his total cost £19.64 million for the year.

By accounting for new signings in this way, clubs make it easier for themselves to spend in the transfer market without necessarily incurring losses in their accounts that fall foul of FFP. Player sales are accounted for using a different calculation, meaning outgoings don’t necessarily need to outweigh incomings in order for an overall profit on player trading to be recorded in a club’s annual books.

“It’s the right way to do it, but it’s a neat little accountancy trick to make things much more manageable,” Wilson explains. “Clubs write off the transfer fee over the length of the contract, and you’ll also see them looking to extend those player contracts after two or three years, because it allows them to write the fee off over an even longer period of time. It makes players much more affordable from an accounting point of view.”

“We get blown away by the big number, the transfer fee, but clubs tend to spread those costs over the length of contracts,” the agent adds. “They’re not always as dramatic as they first seem and can be built into longer-term business plans. Other than Thiago Silva, Chelsea are buying players for the long term. They technically have sell-on value. Look at what they did with Hazard: bought for £30 million, sold for three times that amount. They’re shrewd with their big signings. Yes, Kepa might be an exception to that rule, but even he’s still relatively young. They recognise potential.”

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Chelsea’s recruitment drive in this window is spectacular, but also strategic. Ziyech, Werner, Havertz and Chilwell were all long-term club targets endorsed by Lampard. The hope is that collectively their impact will help bridge the gulf in class to Liverpool and Manchester City, but at the very least their contributions should enhance the club’s efforts to more clearly separate themselves from Premier League rivals who do not feel able to back up their own Champions League aspirations with the same will to spend.

There is risk, but also logic to Abramovich’s course of action. “It would be wrong to say that Premier League clubs can’t afford to do business in the market because they absolutely can,” Wilson says. “What they’re choosing to do is to look after the future financial models of their respective organisations, which is why we’re seeing a slightly lower spending pattern. Chelsea have gone against the grain.

“They’ve rolled the dice somewhat, and the thinking seems to be, ‘If we spend a fairly significant sum now, those players will be with us for the next three or four years and we can continue building the squad’. They’re signing their superstar front players early, and you’d probably expect them to spend less in the coming years to make up for what they’ve spent this year. It’s just a different strategy.

“The top six is pretty tight, so anyone spending now is going to steal a march on their rivals. Most of Chelsea’s business is coming after they secured a Champions League place, and the additional revenue they generate from broadcast and commercial deals could be as much as £100 million if they reach the latter stages of the competition. That’s £100 million more than those teams outside the top four are going to be earning.

“If we don’t see more spending from those teams outside this season’s top four, what we may see over time is a solidification of those four teams currently in the Champions League, and the Big Six could turn into a Big Four.”

The burden of maximising the return from this investment on the pitch will fall squarely on the shoulders of Lampard, but Abramovich is providing an emphatic answer to those who suggested he lacked the desire to bankroll the construction of another great Chelsea team. “The only way they could bridge that gap to Liverpool and City is by spending,” the agent says. “The alternative is to risk becoming an also-ran, a club that is looking at Europa League qualification at best for the foreseeable future.

“Bayern showed Chelsea how far they are off the pace in a competition like the Champions League. It all basically depended on Abramovich’s appetite, and everything we’ve seen so far suggests he’s as committed to the club as ever.”

[Magic Lamps 11,692]

About the GK conundrum, I have watched a few game clips of Mike Maignan and from the little i have seen there plus 3 live matche sof him including the league game vs PSG he looks like the most complete of our 3 main options (him, Mendy, Onana). Maignan does not have as eyecatching characteristics as Mendy with his wingspan and Onana with his power and reflexes but he handles himself quite well. He does not parry the ball back in the danger area everytime and can actually catch the balls he should catch unlike the other two. He works mostly with his speed and anticipation a bit like a young buffon in terms of style albeit not with the same spectacular reflexes. He is very good in 1 on 1s bc of his positioning and pace. I have actually never seen a goalkeeper this quick on his feet. He literally has the pace of a winger. he is not super big but fairly athletic. he actually makes sprints to get the ball past onrushing attackers which looks crazy and i have never before seen a goalkeeper do this to great effect while being in control of the situation except maybe neuer. Other than that he is a fairly conventional, commanding and proactive gk who is alright on the ball. I think he is miles above even an in-form Kepa and also a bit younger.

[Styl1994 188]

Abraham being linked with a move back to Villa because media doesn’t understand the concept of squad depth.

[Rmpr 8,977]

Hello peeps, I have resuscitated after years and years to ask you to start paying attention to this GK from Brazil. I honestly think he will become big time...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_(footballer,_born_1997)

[BlueLyon 9,359]

8 hours ago, killer1257 said:

 

 

Why could he have only won? Leno is a decent keeper. It is a statement by Martinez that many Arsenal fans believe that he is better than Leno.
What is so different between Arsenal and Chelsea? Same league, we even have better defenders than Arsenal. Martinez could have just been another Kepa, but he showed that he is a great GK.

I do not know any 195 cm GK with that body frame that has shown it in Pl. I think that he has the highest catch rate in PL since he came on

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Its the game sample thats too small.

Onana had 10/10 season in eredivisie last year, but only about 7/10 this year.

Maybe Martinez is top GK, maybe it was just a run.

[Superblue 6,372]

I have far more doubts over Martinez than some seem to on here. 

There has to be question marks that three managers at Arsenal have now considered him nothing better than a backup, and it's hardly like he's gone out on loan and been successful either. He's just about to turn 28 and he's barely played 50 games in his career. In a top flight that number drops to about 20. 

We're talking about a seriously untested player here. He had a good end of season at Arsenal, but any player can hit a purple patch. Even Kepa looked half decent for stretches in his first season. 

For me though he has to play more games to be considered.

[Blues Forever 1,232]

 

[MoroccanBlue 5,381]

Romano has a lot of patience replying back to these knobheads. 

[shrenshah 186]

Silva - free
Mbuyamba - free
Sarr - free
Werner - 45mn
Ziyech - 36mn
Chilwell - 50mn

Net net we have just spent 131mn still
If i am not wrong the hazard deal in itself covers this outlay with the addons we are getting

We still have the 50mn morata money and a shitload of deadwood which we need to sell

Even if we buy havertz for 90mn and maybe oblak for 110mn & Rice for 60mn we just end up being 210mn in red (deducted motata money) with a lot of player sales expected

On a conservative side if we sell the below we are set
Jorginho - 40mn
Emerson - 20mn
Barkley - 25mn
Bakayoko - 25mn
Pasalic - 10mn (done)
Kante - skriniar plus 30mn (will also help cover oblak wages)
Alonso needs to be sold if we can get 20mn and we just keep hold of sarr (no loan)
Zouma - 30mn
Ac - 20mn

We are left with a solid team without spensing anything or maybe even make a profit

Gk - oblak, Caba, youth keeper
Lb - chilwell, sarr
Rb - reece, azpi
Cb 1 - thiago silva, rudiger, sarr
Cb2 - skriniar, ampadu, rice
Cdm - rice, gilmour, ampadu
Cm1 - mount, rlc, gallagher
Cm2 - havertz, kova, ziyech
Lm - pulisic, cho, werner
Rm- ziyech, havertz
St - werner, tammy, havertz

I dont know i might be missing someone

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[shrenshah 186]

Silva - free
Mbuyamba - free
Sarr - free
Werner - 45mn
Ziyech - 36mn
Chilwell - 50mn

Net net we have just spent 131mn still
If i am not wrong the hazard deal in itself covers this outlay with the addons we are getting

We still have the 50mn morata money and a shitload of deadwood which we need to sell

Even if we buy havertz for 90mn and maybe oblak for 110mn & Rice for 60mn we just end up being 210mn in red (deducted motata money) with a lot of player sales expected

On a conservative side if we sell the below we are set
Jorginho - 40mn
Emerson - 20mn
Barkley - 25mn
Bakayoko - 25mn
Pasalic - 10mn (done)
Kante - skriniar plus 30mn (will also help cover oblak wages)
Alonso needs to be sold if we can get 20mn and we just keep hold of sarr (no loan)
Zouma - 30mn
Ac - 20mn

We are left with a solid team without spensing anything or maybe even make a profit

Gk - oblak, Caba, youth keeper
Lb - chilwell, sarr
Rb - reece, azpi
Cb 1 - thiago silva, rudiger, sarr
Cb2 - skriniar, ampadu, rice
Cdm - rice, gilmour, ampadu
Cm1 - mount, rlc, gallagher
Cm2 - havertz, kova, ziyech
Lm - pulisic, cho, werner
Rm- ziyech, havertz
St - werner, tammy, havertz

I dont know i might be missing someone

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Since marina is already playing fifa on her console...thought i will add to that [emoji14]

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[1chelsea 864]

Seriously with this delay he would be receiving abuse of not knowing anything about the deal and more all over the world. Poor guy

[Dimitr 488]

Ok  he works for the Sun. but he is a good source.

[Artandur 939]

I dont think anybody disputes that we want Rice. But i'm pretty sure we'd have to finally get rid of some deadweight, for that to become realistic. Feels like if it happens this window, it will be late. 

[kellzfresh 7,229]

8 minutes ago, Artandur said:

I dont think anybody disputes that we want Rice. But i'm pretty sure we'd have to finally get rid of some deadweight, for that to become realistic. Feels like if it happens this window, it will be late. 

If we can sell Jorginho or Batshuayi, then Rice suddenly becomes a serious option. But if not, we can go for Idrissa Gueye from PSG to temporarily cushion any effect of a Kante Injury.

[Ryan Fong 2,776]

If even he said so, we maybe have a chance in this window.

[Jase 43,479]

If we get Havertz, a new GK and Rice on top of what we've already got, this would be our best transfer window ever.