Chelsea Transfers

[Milan 17,894]

A certain member, a well known moaner, was crying for Mertens...

[King Kante 1,563]

Is anyone up to date on what is happening with Alaba? Is he going to end up on a free this coming Summer? 

[Blues Forever 1,232]

  On 11/11/2020 at 21:28, King Kante said:

Is anyone up to date on what is happening with Alaba? Is he going to end up on a free this coming Summer? 

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Alaba is asking a huge salary to renew (€20m/yr) with Bayern. Their board recently decided to not meet Alaba's demand so basically he will become a free agent in the next summer.

[blu35_army 551]

  On 11/11/2020 at 23:45, Blues Forever said:

Alaba is asking a huge salary to renew (€20m/yr) with Bayern. Their board recently decided to not meet Alaba's demand so basically he will become a free agent in the next summer.

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wow,,it's near €400k/week. we should test the water by offer the alaba's salary,,following to sell the dregs especially one of Rudi/Christ next summer...

[Yeboii 1,844]

  On 12/11/2020 at 00:41, blu35_army said:

wow,,it's near €400k/week. we should test the water by offer the alaba's salary,,following to sell the dregs especially one of Rudi/Christ next summer...

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If Alaba is getting 400k what is stopping Werner, Kova and more asking for a similar amount?

[Jase 43,479]

  On 12/11/2020 at 01:35, Yeboii said:

If Alaba is getting 400k what is stopping Werner, Kova and more asking for a similar amount?

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Exactly. However good Alaba is, can't see the club breaking the wage structure for someone who turns 29 next year and has next to no resale value. And his preference is to go to Spain anyway. 

[Jase 43,479]

  On 11/11/2020 at 14:27, Milan said:

A certain member, a well known moaner, was crying for Mertens...

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Name and shame. 

[Tomo 21,741]

  On 12/11/2020 at 03:12, Jason said:

Exactly. However good Alaba is, can't see the club breaking the wage structure for someone turns 29 next year and has next to no resale value. And his preference to go to Spain anyway. 

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Could potentially be worked around by giving him 200k and the rest in a signing on fee. However he quite clearly has no interest in the PL so it's a moot point.

[bigbluewillie 1,895]

There isn't a player on this planet worth £400,000 PW, and yes I include Messi and the poser.

Look what happened when Manure signed Sanchez for that amount, they couldn't wait to get him off their books.

I thought it was lunacy giving CHO £180,000 a week, look what good that has done us, he can't even get a regular start, or any start for that matter.

[King Kante 1,563]

  On 12/11/2020 at 05:31, bigbluewillie said:

There isn't a player on this planet worth £400,000 PW, and yes I include Messi and the poser.

Look what happened when Manure signed Sanchez for that amount, they couldn't wait to get him off their books.

I thought it was lunacy giving CHO £180,000 a week, look what good that has done us, he can't even get a regular start, or any start for that matter.

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CHO at £180k looks good value when compared to a reported £150k a week for RLC and £190k for Kepa. 

However, I agree with you. £400k a week sets a very dangerous precedent. Personally, if I were convinced Alaba could play CB in the PL it may have been worth it as at 29 a CB probably still has about 4 good years left in them especially one has fit as Alaba. I am working to the basis that this would be a around £75m for a four year contract, which is a bit like £25m fee plus £240k a week. 

Further, he can double up as LB2 so everyone could get their wish in not seeing Emerson and Alonso again and we could go with: LB1: Chilwell, LB2: Alaba/Dave. However, as I said, I suspect he is not suited to play CB in the PL. 

[kiwi1691 255]

  On 12/11/2020 at 05:31, bigbluewillie said:

There isn't a player on this planet worth £400,000 PW, and yes I include Messi and the poser.

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That is objectively not true, Barca and Real have made much more from Messi and Ronaldo than they have paid in salary. 

 

 

[Blues Forever 1,232]

 

[King Kante 1,563]

Just looking at our first team squad: 

GK: Mendy, Cech, Willy, Kepa

CB: Silva, Zouma, AC, Rudi, Tomori

RB: James, Dave 

LB: Chilwell, Alonso, Emerson

CM: Kai, Mount, Kante, Kova, Jorgi, Billy

AM: Ziyech, Puli, CHO

CF: Werner, Tammy, Giroud 

Ignoring those out on loan and the utter dregs like Drinky, Baba, Baka etc, what do people think should be the next three signings in regards to positions? Further, who from the squad would you cull in the next 12 months? 

Mine would be: DM, CB, AM/CF (depends on how Werner gets on at CF in a 433)

Culled: Kepa, Rudi, Alonso/Emerson, AC, Jorgi, Giroud. 

[Puliiszola 519]

  On 12/11/2020 at 23:34, King Kante said:

Just looking at our first team squad: 

GK: Mendy, Cech, Willy, Kepa

CB: Silva, Zouma, AC, Rudi, Tomori

RB: James, Dave 

LB: Chilwell, Alonso, Emerson

CM: Kai, Mount, Kante, Kova, Jorgi, Billy

AM: Ziyech, Puli, CHO

CF: Werner, Tammy, Giroud 

Ignoring those out on loan and the utter dregs like Drinky, Baba, Baka etc, what do people think should be the next three signings in regards to positions? Further, who from the squad would you cull in the next 12 months? 

Mine would be: DM, CB, AM/CF (depends on how Werner gets on at CF in a 433)

Culled: Kepa, Rudi, Alonso/Emerson, AC, Jorgi, Giroud. 

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12 months? So you would be fine going into the NEXT season with either of Alonso/Emerson as 2nd LB. 😂😂😂

[Vesper 29,448]

A next-level talent with the desire to be different: The rise of Jude Bellingham

https://theathletic.com/2197603/2020/11/14/jude-bellingham-england-birmingham-city-borussia-dortmund/

Birmingham City were widely ridiculed for the decision to retire their No 22 shirt when Jude Bellingham left for Borussia Dortmund in the summer aged just 17 and having made a grand total of 44 first-team appearances for them.

But the midfielder then chose the same number at the German heavyweights, and No 22 appears to mean more to the player and his old club than the critics of that gesture may be aware of.

The story of the teenager and that number goes back several years and is woven into his past and, he hopes, his future.

“I’ll never forget when we went through one of his reviews and we were talking about what he wanted to identify himself,” Mike Dodds, Bellingham’s long-time academy coach, tells The Athletic.

“He said he wanted to be a No 10. I said, ‘I think you can be a 22’. He asked what I meant and I said, ‘You can be a No 4, a No 8 and No 10 — someone who can do it all’.

“We spoke about Paul Gascoigne. We said he could do the not-so-nice bits of the game; breaking play up, running around, making tackles, so he could play in deeper areas as a ‘4’. The ‘8’ would be the box-to-box player, getting up and down with energy and driving the team on. And your ‘10’ would be scoring and creating.

“So I told him he was doing himself a disservice by wanting to be a 10, because I thought he could do it all.”

That conversation happened five years ago. Bellingham might not have managed it all in the half a decade that has followed, but for a player who only turned 17 in June he has come closer than most.

On Thursday, he made the latest history-making step by becoming England’s third youngest full international ever — after Theo Walcott and Wayne Rooney — when he came on as a substitute against the Republic of Ireland.

It has been an extraordinary story already in a career that began with him watching his goalscoring father, Mark, at home.

Gary Hackett remembers well seeing two young brothers playing their earliest football in a park in Hagley, near Stourbridge in the West Midlands.

The former Shrewsbury Town, Stoke City and West Bromwich Albion winger had a particular interest in Jude and Jobe Bellingham as a neighbour, family friend and manager of Mark, their prolific-goalscorer dad.

“I first knew Mark when he signed for Halesowen at 20,” says Hackett. “He was very raw then but you could see at the level he was playing at he was always going to score goals.

“If he hadn’t had as good a job as he did in the police force, he might have been able to play professional football. I used to see Jude and Jobe over the local park and it’s fantastic to see what Jude has been able to achieve.

“Mark used to do coaching with a good friend of mine, Phil Wooldridge, and his lads would always come along and have a ‘kick-in’. Even if they weren’t involved in the session, they would be running and kicking a ball and you could just see they had a passion for football. One thing you could see is they were naturally gifted athletes. They could run and they had good technical skills as well.”

Mark, a sergeant in the West Midlands force, was a well-known figure in non-League football in the region.

Estimates suggest he scored more than 700 goals in a stellar semi-professional career, including 60 in one season for Hackett when he managed Stourbridge.

“He was focused, driven and just wanted to score goals,” says Hackett. “His overall contribution did improve over the years in terms of bringing other people into play but I never got too concerned about that, I was happy to let other people do that for him.”

Halesowen Town and Leamington were among the other area clubs to benefit from Mark’s eye for goal and his gift for sport was passed down to his sons, not to mention his drive.

“At 11, Jude just stood out,” remembers Fady Jadayel, a long-serving coach at Hagley Cricket Club, where Jude and Jobe, his younger brother now aged 15, nurtured their love of sport.

“He stood out as unbelievably talented. He had a raw sporting ability. It’s difficult to express it without sounding a bit weird but he moved with a poise and a grace. His co-ordination was unreal.

“We were doing an indoor session once and he took a one-handed catch. It was only a tennis ball but he threw himself and dived and took it and you just saw he was an unbelievable athlete. We didn’t know how good he was at football. People said he was at Blues (Birmingham City) but there are tons of kids who are at Blues at 11. It doesn’t really mean a great deal.

“I can’t remember much about his batting but he had a really natural bowling action. He looked like he was going to be able to bowl quickly. His pure cricket was quite raw, but it was his fielding that made him stand out and made you realise that this kid was next-level talented.”

---

Bellingham’s time at Hagley Cricket Club ended after a couple of summers when he left the village where he’d spent his earliest years. His football was beginning to get serious and Birmingham were beginning to think they had a special talent on their hands.

“I signed him at seven in our pre-academy,” says Dodds. “At under-sevens he was just like any other boy, really. He was just a local boy playing at a local club and one of our scouts quite liked him. We liked him but if someone had said he would be in the England squad at 17 we’d have thought that person was crazy.

“He loved the game, had a real enthusiasm for it and always had a big smile on his face but it wasn’t until possibly 12 or 13 that we started to think, ‘Hmm, this boy might have something different to everybody else’. The rest is history.

“It was his ability to take and retain information and his desire to do more that made the difference. He put pressure on me as a coach to pressure and stimulate him but I put pressure on him as well.

“Being a kid, there were times when he didn’t want to run around and there were times when he went over the top with his competitive edge. But that’s no different to a lot of boys. That’s about learning in the game. We reflected on it when we did his review just before he left and he said, ‘I’ll never forget getting back in the car after that 22 conversation’.

“So he asked for 22 as his squad number at Birmingham, and when he went to Dortmund he asked for 22 again.

“So the biggest thing I take from my 10 years with him is that conversation about identity. That’s what set him apart from the other boys — he wanted to be different.”

It became clear to Birmingham that Bellingham was different.

The family had moved to Bromsgrove, with Bellingham leaving Hagley’s Haybridge secondary school to attend the Priory School in the Edgbaston area of south Birmingham, one of the schools with close links to the Birmingham City academy. Odin Bailey and Geraldo Bajrami, two more youngsters from the academy, also moved to Priory.

Bellingham’s progress was so quick that even when still a schoolboy he was being considered for first-team duty, with Birmingham chief executive Xuandong Ren taking a special interest in the midfielder.

References about the youngster’s character and attitude are universally positive.

Birmingham staff recall a polite, well-mannered player and FA coaches still recall how the Bellingham brothers turned up at an England Under-16s game played at Solihull Moors’ Damson Park ground last year despite Jude being rested before Championship fixtures with his club. “It’s a measure of his character that he comes along to support his team-mates even when he isn’t playing,” then-England Under-16s coach Kevin Betsy told The Athletic.

Jadayel says, “He was a lovely kid. It’s easy to say it after the end, but I said it at the time, when he was 12 or 13, that he had a good chance of making it because he came from clearly a good family. His parents were obviously good people and he was a really nice kid, really respectful. He had such a good head on his shoulders.”

“He’s an unbelievably humble boy, down to earth and so career-focused,” adds Dodds. “He’s had this call-up but he will want 100 call-ups and that thought process helps to ground him.

“He’s articulate and bright, so he processes things quickly, and he’s got high emotional intelligence.

“He actually makes you sick. He’s got a lot going for him! I would be lying if I said I wasn’t proud of him, of course I am, but I’m more proud of the boy, and the man he’s turning into.

“He’s an ambassador for a charity and he’s still doing his A-levels. He’s a real people person and his character as a boy is what I’m most proud of.”

---

Paul Robinson was still a fixture in Birmingham’s defence when he first heard the name Jude Bellingham being spoken of in the corridors of Wast Hills, the club’s training ground.

“You could always hear the murmurings of Jude going around,” says Robinson, the former Watford and West Bromwich Albion defender who retired as a Birmingham player in 2018 then had two years coaching the club’s developmental sides.

“You heard the academy staff talking about him but you never thought much of it because he was a young lad. When they’re young lads, you want to see them develop and grow and if they turn out to be exceptional players then it’s meant to be.

“But the first time I really got to know Jude and got to see how good a player he was was when I worked with him when he was 15. Then he was involved with the under-23s, when I coached them.

“He was an exceptional talent. He could see a picture before the ball got to his feet, so he could see where his next pass was going to be. His range of passing with both feet was great and so was his awareness and his body position, so he was strong at holding players off. For a 15-year-old boy, it’s very rare to have those qualities.

“They come around once in a blue moon. To see the way he was and the way he used his body and his feet as a 16-year-old, you could see there was potential for him to go on and do great things.”

Garry Monk, then the first-team manager, had reservations about throwing someone so young into the attritional arena of the Championship. But Bellingham was being accelerated through England age groups by FA coaches, had become a regular in Robinson’s under-23s side and seemed destined for the senior ranks sooner rather than later.

“Players of that ability need to be stretched,” says Robinson. “They need to be challenged, so Jude always played above his age group. He needed to be playing against players who were bigger than him, who would challenge him physically.

“He wasn’t physically strong. You could see he was quite a lean, skinny kid going through the age groups but I saw him working in the gym and he showed great dedication to strength and conditioning.

“You can see now how he looks and he’s mentally tough as well. It’s quite scary to still be calling him a kid, but he’s only 17.

“I always believe if you’re good enough then you deserve your chance and he was a game-changer for us sometimes, even as a teenager playing against men. He would sometimes get pushed off the ball too easily, but that was him learning and developing and working out how to use the ball and protect the ball better.

“You could see in under-23s football that he had a great chance of playing for the first team by the end of that season, and that was nearly two years ago. Then, last season, he made a name for himself in the first team.

“You could see his talent in training with the way he would leave people lying on the floor. He could just move the ball so quickly. I remember we played in a Premier League Cup game at Fulham and he started in a No 10 role off the striker. He did this unbelievable bit of skill where he left two or three players on the floor and then banged the ball in the top corner with his left foot.

“He would produce those bits of quality that made you think, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen skill like that from a kid of 16’.”

When Monk was sacked in the summer of 2019 to make way for Pep Clotet, who has been his assistant, Bellingham’s first-team chance came. With Bellingham developing tactically, technically and physically, and with the club under a transfer embargo, Clotet was persuaded that the time was right.

“It was challenging because we needed to get him up to speed with a lot of details,” the Spaniard told The Athletic in a detailed assessment of Bellingham this summer.

“The club was not in the best situation, because that (2018-19) was the season that we got a nine-point deduction.

“I was telling Garry Monk many times that it would be good to speed him up, to fine-tune all the details that he needs to because it would be good for the fans and the club in a tough moment to have one of their own coming through. Garry was more conservative about it, so Jude had to wait a year.”

---

Bellingham was not simply blooded in Championship football. He became a mainstay of Clotet’s team at 16, playing in 41 of the 46 league games last season and starting 32 of them.

Inevitably, speculation about his future escalated quickly, and with good reason. Some of England’s biggest clubs had tried to lure him away from Birmingham even before his first-team breakthrough and they were soon joined in the chasing pack by sides from the continent.

Tottenham Hotspur expressed a strong interest, perennial Italian champions Juventus too and Manchester United came closest to beating Borussia Dortmund to his signature.

But it was the German side who emerged as favourites to sign him for an initial £25 million as Bellingham continued to enhance his reputation.

“I watched him in the Championship religiously and you had to pinch yourself and say this was a first-year scholar playing in the Championship, one of the most brutal leagues in the world, and not only surviving but thriving,” says Dodds.

“We used to watch him play for England when he was a schoolboy and he played with a level of maturity that blew us away. He played for England like he was almost in first gear.

“So there were points along the way when you almost had to check yourself and think, ‘Wow, that was special’.”

Eventually, with the pandemic-delayed Championship season finally over in July and the impending move to Germany one of football’s biggest open secrets, Bellingham flew to Dortmund to complete his life-changing move.

Already, his debut season has brought four starts in the Bundesliga and another in the Champions League, plus last week’s unexpected elevation to the England squad after a couple of withdrawals and that 17 minutes against Ireland.

The move to Germany has brought its own challenges.

Unable to legally drive on the country’s roads, Bellingham is taken to training each day by one of his parents. Either Mark or mum Denise will be with him in Dortmund while the other is back in England where Jobe, still in Birmingham’s academy ranks, is hoping for his own breakthrough in the next few years.

“Maybe I come across as mature, but when you’re in the environment that I’ve been in last year and the start of this season, you have to grow up quickly,” Bellingham said last week.

“You have to leave behind childish habits because you’re expected to be at a certain level that’s similar to your team-mates. Otherwise, you’re letting them down, you’re letting yourself down; you’re not going to maximise your own ability.”

Bellingham continues his academic studies remotely having worked towards his A-levels in the evenings in the final year at Birmingham but football is the 17-year-old’s immediate future, complete with expectation, pressure and unavoidable attention.

“God knows how he copes with the amount of press he gets and the social-media stuff that is always thrown towards him,” says Robinson, who remains in contact with Bellingham. “He has to be able to switch off and concentrate on what he loves doing, which is playing football. All you can do is make sure your family are safe and well and then, when you play football, make sure you love it.

“He is always going to get this publicity just because of how good he is; from the age of 15 and 16, he has had the media spotlight on him. It helps that he has great people around him. His family are there for him and they’re very grounded, he knows he can always bounce stuff off me and he’s got other people too. It’s about having trust in those people.”

“His parents have been phenomenal,” adds Dodds. “Have myself and the parents fallen out at times? Yes, of course. Over a 10-year period, it’s not all going to be smooth sailing. But we’ve always had common ground. I’ve always wanted what was best for both brothers and I’ve always respected Mum and Dad for the fact that, in every decision they make, both boys are always at the forefront of their mind.

“They could have left the club long before Jude left but Jude was happy and they felt it was the right place for him. There will be a lot of people who haven’t been in their situation, being told by 1,001 different people, ‘Come to us, come to us, we’re the best decision for you’. But they made their decision based on their boys’ happiness.”

---

All of which leaves an obvious question.

As a first-team regular for one of Europe’s leading clubs, a Champions League player and an England international well before his 18th birthday, just how good can Jude Bellingham become?

Can the lad who kicked a ball around the parks of Hagley with his brother and watched his dad rattling in non-League goals maintain his steep trajectory and become one of Europe’s top stars? Can the player who was unremarkable at seven but special by 12 become the ultimate ‘22’?

“He can play at the highest level for as long as he wants to, but Jude is the only person who can make that happen with his dedication and his will and desire,” says Robinson.

“He was still growing when I first worked with him and when you’re a lad of 15 taking hits from lads who are 20 or 21, that will hurt. But he dedicated himself with the strength and conditioning sessions we put on for him and when you look at him now, he’s a strong lad.

“He was given a pathway. If you’re at an academy and you’re given a pathway, you know you’ve got a possibility to play for the first team of that club you love and care about; that’s the goal for everybody.

“Jude was dedicated and switched on, so he knew the right time to get his head down and focus and work. If he wants to go on and be one of the best players in the world then he can, but Jude has to answer those questions with the way he performs week in, week out. I can see where he should be and where he wants to go.”

“As soon as we’d had that ‘22 conversation’, we were always reviewing him on that,” says Dodds. “I’d say, ‘What were you today’ and he’d say, ‘I was a 4 and an 8 today’ or, ‘I was more of a 10’.

“We always reviewed him around being a 22 and what set him apart was that desire to be different. The rate of his physical development over the last 12 months has been astonishing. I don’t think anyone could have predicted it, because he was just an average 15-year-old.

“I’m happy for him playing for England but, knowing Jude the way I know him, he’s so career-focused he will see this as a very small dot in terms of the career he wants to have.”

[Vesper 29,448]

Real Madrid: Florentino and Sergio Ramos to speak about captain's contract renewal on Monday

The Real Madrid captain and president will speak publicly - Ramos from his hometown Seville, where he will be on duty with the national team.

https://en.as.com/en/2020/11/13/football/1605284781_421910.html

[ZAPHOD2319 4,598]

 

[Fernando 6,534]

Finally of the book. 

More players need to be sold.