Pizy

Senesi would make a whole lot of sense. Right age for a CB signing because he’s highly experienced and wouldn’t cause issues once Colwill gets back. Would theoretically be “cheap” because I think his contract runs out soon. Was super impressed with him when we played him a couple of weeks ago. Would Bournemouth sell their 2 best players in January and torpedo their season, though?

It would’ve been such an uncharacteristic Clearlake signing. They’re obsessed with this youth policy and putting dudes on 10 year contracts. But the player they’d break this obsession for is….Semenyo? Yeah, I don’t think there was a genuine attempt to get him. As good as he is he wasn’t ever going to be that one unbelievable talent that the club felt they just had to get no matter the cost like they did with Enzo and Caicedo. This was PR to make it appear like Chelsea is still in the mix for the same sorts of players that City and Liverpool are.

For me it’s most likely #2. It sounds like Semenyo had made his mind up for quite a while that he’d go to City. He didn’t just decide today. So our genius directors just wanted it out there that we “tried” (though we actually didn’t) so that supporters would stop getting angry that we aren’t trying. Instead, it makes them look even worse.

In his report linking us with Semenyo this morning Ornstein mentioned that any move for him would be us deciding to move forward our plans from summer 2026. How about instead of doing that with an attacker we do so for a midfielder? Feel like that’s much more sensible than an attacker when we’re overloaded there now. In midfield Lavia has disappeared into the abyss again with no signs that he’s going to play again any time soon and Essugo is a mystery as well.

The way City are trending now, if they get Semenyo and keep Haaland fit I think they could win everything again this season. Sure must be nice to be a serious club. Buying plug and play quality rather than players you can tell will be shit before ever pulling on your shirt like Gittens.

My question is why the fuck we’d brief everyone that we have registered our interest only to pull out (or be rejected) within a couple of hours? Why not brief everyone instead that “Chelsea are looking at attackers now with an eye on 2026?” Feels like complete idiocy to tell every credible journalist a specific name and then instantly pull the rug after all our supporters got excited.

Semenyo link dead after only a couple of hours. He probably told us thanks but no thanks. Tbf, an attacking wide player didn’t make much sense in January.

Tbf, nobody with a brain would choose United. But the money they’ll be offering may be impossible to turn down. Bruno injured, Mbuemo and Amad now at AFCON, their results are sputtering. They’re desperate for an injection of real quality and will pay out their asses if he agrees to go to them.

Matt Law has kind of played down this move already. Sounds like yes we checked with Semenyo’s camp but that it’ll be a real long shot if we go all out for him. With the 2 Manchester clubs and Liverpool after him hard I don’t see this happening. They can all blow our wage offer out of the water. United especially will be desperate for him and probably offer £250k per week.

Don’t think so either but now even Ornstein is reporting it. Surely someone has to go for this to make even a little sense. And there’s no way Garnacho, Neto, or Estevão go of course. Is it even remotely plausible that they’ve given up on Gittens after only a few months? I would’ve thought no chance…

Hmm, literally less than 30 minutes after I dismissed the idea it looks like a brief went out that we ARE indeed interested in Semenyo. How that would work numbers wise I have no clue. We’ve already got 4 wingers (5 if you count George) and 2 #10’s.

I don’t think we’ll be buying another expensive winger for a long, long time. The people above Maresca aren’t going to give up on Gittens after spending so much on him. Especially after the Mudryk thing blew up in their faces already. Garnacho has at least shown something and with Quenda coming in next summer we’ll be set in the wide positions numbers wise.

Had we not pissed away £50m or whatever it was on Gittens which we all knew would be extremely poor business we could probably be in the race for Semenyo right now. His game and playing style is super similar to Pedro Neto’s who Maresca loves. So imagine having 2 of them on the pitch at once.

Vitor Roque would absolutely have been the model Clearlake signing before he went to Barca and flopped massively. Thankfully I don’t think even this board isn’t silly enough to buy him now. The last thing this squad needs is another young and inconsistent forward when we’ve already got a bunch of those on our books as is. It is kinda mad how the last 2 Brazilian “wonderkids” to move to the Spanish giants in Roque & Endrick have been complete disasters. We got super lucky that Estevão looks like he has settled much better than those 2 did.

To repeatedly show up to match after match all season long looking completely unprepared and surprised by the intensity and energy of our opponents is criminal. These teams don’t even have to do ANYTHING special or complicated or technical to dominate us. All the opposing manager needs to do is tell his players “hey guys, just run around a lot and press them.” That’s literally all it takes and we can’t deal with it AT ALL. That’s on the manager.