Now that the transfer window is over, we can go a bit more in-depth. My take: Transfer window before the Camara deal collapsed: 9/10 After the Camara deal collapsed: 8–8.5/10 Sales: 10/10 First, just briefly on the sales, because there isn't really much to say. I don't see how you could rate a window where you sell €500M worth of deadwood anything other than a 10/10. Garnacho, Sanchez, Delap, Jackson, Tosin, Badiashile, Fofana, Sarr, Mudryk, Disasi... I wouldn't even be able to name all of them, but I think there were around 20 if I remember one of the posts correctly, half of them on loan. Garnacho is a must-buy (or will easily reach the required targets), so we're at 11/20 actually sold, and Sanchez also has an option to buy, if I'm not mistaken. I also know Chalobah and George went to Como and Everton, and of course Cucu and Enzo. As for the latter two — we've been talking about both of them leaving for about a year now, and both publicly expressed at different points of the season, and in different ways, that they wanted out. Cucu would fit this team ridiculously well, so I'll miss him. Enzo, not so much. City will probably get rid of him just as quickly as he arrived if the right club decides to come calling. Bit of a fail on his part. "I want Real Madrid, Madrid is beautiful," then City show some interest and he's immediately off to City. His quote about how he had "always wanted to play for a big club like City" only confirms to me that it's probably better he left. I don't blame him for wanting to leave, but Cucu at least isn't being a c**t about it from a distance, because there's really no need for that. Anyway, we'll survive without both of them. Overall, though, the sales are a 10/10. Absolutely brutal business. Full credit to the board. Selling that much deadwood for a profit? Respect. The incomings are a little more complicated. We've been crying for years that a goalkeeper is the #1 priority, yet it felt like Sanchez was basically cemented as the starter. Alonso comes in, watches one game and goes, "nah mate, off you go." Brilliant. Four managers and two years too late. Every Sunday-league fan could see that Sanchez wasn't good enough for this level, yet he just wouldn't f**king leave the team. Bizarre. There was clearly something going on behind the scenes, and we'll probably never know what. But it's hard for me to believe that every manager before Alonso was simply too stupid and kept playing Sanchez because they liked him. I just don't buy that at this level of football. Bringing in Martinez is TOP, 10/10 signing for me. We desperately needed a goalkeeper. Martinez is an unlikeable character, but f**k it, the guy has always been a very good goalkeeper. Let's see how he does here. Defence: we have the depth, but do we actually have the quality? I've already said that I'm still not entirely convinced we did enough defensively. Okay, Chavarria will cover for Cucurella, but it's difficult to call that a 1:1 replacement. It's a downgrade, let's be honest, but expecting us to replace Cucurella like-for-like was unrealistic anyway. Palestra is fine. Lacroix was a top signing, no complaints there. Overall, there is enough depth. My concern is still the quality, as well as the injury history of some of these players. But defence wasn't really the priority considering we had bigger problems elsewhere. Midfield: this is where I have a few more question marks. Trying to guess whether we genuinely expected Enzo to stay or not is probably pointless. If it was obvious to us that there was a 99% chance he was leaving, the club knew it 400%. I agree that it would have been stupid to throw ridiculous money at some random player on deadline day just for the sake of bringing someone in. But that's exactly why I'm saying: they had plenty of time to sort this out. Even without selling Enzo, we probably should have brought in another midfielder just for comfortable rotation. After Enzo left, even more so. And the fact that we didn't bring anyone in is, for me, a little unexpected. I'm actually disappointed. We all know the names — James, Henderson, Barco, Caicedo, Lavia — and that's fine. But when you take all the injury records into account, Caicedo's current issues, James' history, Henderson being old... we're really gambling here that everything goes our way, at least until January. In hindsight, it's almost a shame we sent Santos out, but I still think it was the right decision to take the €56M rather than keep him around purely for depth. I don't know. It's difficult to be smart about this one. It could be completely fine, or we could be one or two injuries away from being f**ked. We're going to have to put a lot of faith in Barco and hope Lavia and Caicedo stay fit. That's it. Attack: we cleared out the deadwood, brought in Palmer's buddy Rogers and suddenly Palmer looks alive again, and even Neto is somehow playing better. The attack is genuinely really fun. The first three games have been great to watch. Lethal. We're quick on the counter, we're creating a lot of chances and, so far, I really can't complain. Obviously Arsenal's defence this weekend will be a completely different test, so we'll see where we actually stand, but offensively we've looked really good. Pedro is class, Rogers has clicked immediately, Palmer looks like the old Cole again — you just keep waiting for us to explode into another attack from somewhere. I like it. Overall, I'd give the window around an 8.5/10. I like the signings of Lacroix, Rogers and Martinez. I'm sad to see Cucurella go, and to some extent Enzo as a player. I'm absolutely f**king delighted about practically every other departure and sale. Full credit for the business we've done. And since we're here, I also want to touch on the manager and the board. For the first time since the new owners came in, I genuinely feel like we're operating like a big club again. The Chelsea way. Under this ownership we've already spent ridiculous amounts of money and "won transfer windows", but even back then plenty of us were saying: okay, yes, we're buying players, but what we're actually doing doesn't really make much sense beyond spending money at completely unreasonable levels. And over the medium-to-long term, it turned out that we were right. Just look at how much deadwood accumulated. Selling it all for a profit deserves huge credit. But, just as we've been complaining about for years, we completely neglected the short-term plan. We were nowhere. The CWC is still something I don't really know how we managed to win, but whatever — at that point Tosin apparently decided to turn into prime Maldini for one game. Everything else? We were basically just surviving. We weren't anywhere close to making a serious run in the Premier League even once. We weren't winning cups. We played Champions League football once in five years. And now, finally, we've hired a manager who actually knows what he's doing. Not some Liam Who-the-f**k-are-you man-ager Rosinor, not Potter, not whoever else. A guy who has already proven something. On top of that, they finally started treating him like an actual manager. And, to be fair, it looks very much like they actually listened to him. The deadwood we've accumulated over the years was cleared out quickly. The incomings made sense. Everything finally looks like it's supposed to. Respect. This is what we've been asking for as fans for the last five years. Whether this shift in mentality was caused by the fans turning on them week after week, or by all those years of mid-table mediocrity and missing out on European football finally hitting them where it hurts most — in their wallets — who knows. I think it's probably a combination of both. They're not blind, deaf and stupid. We've made a shift in mentality, or at least it looks like we have, and I'm absolutely all for it. What finally convinced them to do it doesn't really matter. As long as it takes the club in the right direction. And while we're talking about a shift in mentality: I genuinely think this squad is good enough to get us back into the Champions League next season. A capable manager is in place. The board finally, and very obviously, seem to trust the guy they've appointed, and they've backed him in building the squad during the transfer window. We're not playing European football either, which could actually work in our favour. So yeah, I'm excited. What do you guys think?
