Sexyfootball

Wouldn't work here ... he only flagged up two "c**ts" in that team ... we've got a few more than that dialling it in LOL Funny all the same.

Where is Gol anyway ? He hasn't been on here this year !

That one was down to Joe Shields LOL I think Lavia will be good if we can get him fit, and he'll be down to Shields as well :-)

I just hope that isn't used as an excuse to shoe horn Sanchez back into the team !

He didn't deserve to get the chop at Bournemouth, so it is nice to see him doing well at Wolves, albeit not against us LOL

One of Gallagher or Enzo needs to display some positional discipline and stay in the pivot. Either that or give Casadei a chance, but I think that is even less of an answer at this stage. No obvious answers in the academy either. The potential answers at the club are all "continuing to undergo their rehabilitation program". I'd say "return to a back 5" if we had enough fit defenders ...

Has Eghbali popped into the dressing room yet ? :-)

One of the mascots perhaps ?

Well, I can't see the owners or the DoFs accepting any responsibility, and it's counter-productive to pile in on the players, which just leaves the manager as the Patsy. What are the odds on Clearlake re-appointing Potter LOL

Honestly you just have to look past the price tag. Yes we overpaid, probably double (or more) what they were worth. The selling clubs had all the power though. Benfica didn't want to (or need to) sell Enzo unless they got a massive fee, and similarly for Brighton with Caicedo, plus on that one we were in a bidding war with Liverpool who were also prepared to spend big to get him. Rice is 25 and a lot further along in his career than Enzo and Caicedo, and Bellingham, fair enough ... but he is a bit of a freak for his age ... the exception rather than the rule. Jude would never have signed for us anyway ... If you want to blame anyone, then it's on the owners. The players are probably exactly where you'd expect them to be at this stage of their career.

I'm sure I read somewhere that Poch actually wanted to keep him in the squad. Long term it wouldn't surprise me to see Angelo turning out to be a better wing option than Madueke.

Great start for him at Burnley for sure. His loan in Germany was a disaster though, so probably a bit early to anoint him as the new Drogba !

Two goals now for Fofana !

Looks more like a 4-2-2-2 to me

Congrats to him on his first PL goal this afternoon ! Scored 7 minutes after coming on as sub

Caicedo is 22 and Enzo is 23. The other midfielders in our squad are even younger. Let's have a bit of perspective ... Where were some of our celebrated midfield alumni at a similar age ? Lampard had just joined Chelsea, and it was only in his third season with us that he hit double figures of goals, and subsequently developed into the free-scoring midfielder that eventually became our record scorer. Makelele was playing at Nantes. It would be 5 more seasons before Real Madrid came calling. Ballack had just left Kaiserslautern for Leverkeusen. Bayern moved for him 3 years after that, when he was 26. Matic had just been sold by Chelsea to Benfica for £1m. We would buy him back 3 seasons later, when he was deemed "ready" for the PL. N'golo Kante was learning his trade at Caen. At 25 he signed for Leicester. And then for us a year after that. Anyone see a pattern of development here ? Time to cut the players some slack, and the manager too come to that ...

I swear you must wake up every day and punch "find me some bad news about Chelsea " into ChatGPT or something ...

I'll take the "Ouch" for Nico LOL 😀

Someone made an excellent analogy comparing Fernandez to Juan Sebastian Veron the other day. Great player, does some lovely stuff, but hard to fit into a team that requires it's midfielders to be able to defend. Basically, the stereotypical "luxury" player conundrum ... Our midfield issue is one of balance to me. The club has signed players seemingly to enable a 4-2-3-1 formation as the preferred formation and "style of play". Ideally the pivot is going to be made up of one DM and one CM, with an AM between the lines in front of them. Issue for Poch is that for most of the season he's had his two DMs injured (Ugochukwu and Lavia), plus his two AMs also injured (Nkunku and Chukwuemeka). As a result, he's had to play a CM at DM, and another CM at AM (or he can try Palmer, which has worked, but then creates a problem at RW with either Sterling playing "out of position" - he's best at LW - or Madueke, who has had some issues with attitude and fitness in first half of season, and is also very inconsistent. And then if you move Sterling to RW, you have to play Mudryk at LW ... which brings new problems LOL ). None of the CMs (Caicedo, Gallagher, Enzo) offer quite enough protection at DM for the defence, nor do they offer enough as an AM to support the attack, especially when the attack has it's own issues. Hence Poch has tried, and continues to try, a lot of variations to try and find something that works. But even putting all that to one side, you still have the youthful issue of a chronic lack of experience. Our midfield "experience" is 23 year olds like Gallagher and Fernandez. Everyone else is 19, 20, 21. Caicedo and Enzo looks a good pivot on paper, but as a pivot pairing, it lacks height (both 178) and neither is quite good enough as DM, particularly Enzo. You could argue that he should simply play a different formation if the midfield lacks DMs and AMs, but concurrently he's also been short of wing backs (all four have had significant absences) so 3-4-2-1 or 3-4-3 would be problematic. He could also have lined up 4-3-3, but our forward line is not strong enough to have a midfield of Gallagher, Enzo and Caicedo behind it. Simply not enough goals in the team. And again you have the defensive issues with all the CMs, and not one of them even 6 ft to help with winning headers. Not sure what the answer is, apart from recovering injured players and having patience as all the players mature ! I don't think the manager is the problem myself.

I guess they decided the CF hierarchy was something like this : Plan A : Jackson Plan B : Nkunku Plan C : False 9 (Palmer, Sterling, Mudryk, Madueke) Plan D : Broja Plan E : Washington Plan F : Academy Player (Richards or Scutter) Hence plenty of options ahead of Broja, so why not loan him and see if he can develop in an environment with less expectation and media scrutiny ?

Negotiation skills and a proper sense of perspective seem to be lacking all the way to the top ! It's ridiculous. Total by-pass of any common sense. Football has been that way for a while though, ever since the Sky money came in. Great for the current generation of players and their agents, but that is about it. It also breeds huge discontent in fans, as what they see on the pitch is poor value for money for what these blokes are all paid now. It creates a totally false sense of expectation that players like Sterling (for example) cannot possibly meet. Similarly with the daft fees paid for Enzo and Caicedo (as that is topical on here right now). It's not just in football either. Look at Musk being awarded his 56 f**king billion dollar pay package at Tesla. Thankfully some judge has seen sense on that.

Just figured Nkunku might be more involved the way round I showed it ! In reality they all change around and interplay a fair bit anyway.

Jackson Nkunku - Chukwuemeka - Palmer Sterling, Mudryk and Madueke as (lack of) impact subs :-)

Not only have we overpaid on transfer fees for just about everybody, but they have also handed out salaries that were a huge increase on what players were on at their previous clubs (assuming data on the Capology website is correct). A few examples : Cucurella £50K at Brighton ; now £175K per week Caicedo £60K at Brighton ; now £150K Fernandez £41K at Benfica ; now £180K Fofana £19K at Leicester ; now £200K (ffs) Badiashile £9.5K at Monaco ; now £90K Disasi £11.8K at Monaco ; now £80K Jackson £8.5K at Villareal ; now £65K Chukwuemeka £1.5K at Villa, ; now £100K These are all right out of the Peter Ridsdale play book ... in fact they make Ridsdale look like a rank amateur ... The old salaries are a more accurate representation of current "ability" for me. We might even be overachieving with this group of players LOL. Interesting that Leboeuf talks about Nkunku being on a different performance level, as he was on £164K a week at Leipzig which is multiple levels of remuneration above all the other signings bar Sterling. We are paying Nkunku £195K a week, and Sterling of course is on a silly £325K, (he was on £300K at City, but for me we should have been offering much lower than that, like we did with Silva, who went from £296K at PSG to £110K with us) Going to be nigh on impossible to shift anyone that doesn't make the grade ...

That's a good question, and I have a few thoughts on that, but I don't think this thread is the right place for it. I'll see if I can find a suitable thread to resurrect that will be a better platform for some debate on the midfield :-)