sabin6912

Team I expect to see is Willy Azpi Zouma Rudiger Alonso Mount Kante Havertz CHO Giroud Werner

Brighton 1-2 Chelsea, Werner 28 mins

I’m far more positive about this deal at £50m than I would’ve been at £80m. Granted £50m is still expensive for a 23 year old who right now doesn’t fall in the ‘world class’ bracket but we know about the Premier League tax and that there’s a premium price on proven English talent. He’s supposedly been Frank’s number one target at left back, is an England international and up until the transfer speculation surrounding him earlier in the season was playing very well for Leicester. My only concern is that he won’t get a full pre season training/playing with the team because of his current injury - hopefully he can recover from that quicker than expected.

Just signed a new 5 year contract at Brighton. Dodged a £40m+ bullet. Next.

He’s holding the Chelsea shirt up on his official Instagram page, so unless we get an Obi Mikel saga I’d say he’s our player.

I think it’s really encouraging that young talent now sees Chelsea as an excellent club to play for and fulfil their potential. Pre Mount, Abraham, James, Tomori, CHO, would he have chosen Chelsea over the other big European clubs who were interested? Hopefully with Lampard at the helm we can reap the rewards of a stable structure which promotes youth and adds to the first team with the necessary quality. Exciting times ahead - welcome, Xavier.

Sign him up. An experienced head amongst what will be (after losing Willian & Pedro) a relatively inexperienced team. On a 1/2 year deal I think he’d be an excellent signing.

Quite how a supposedly credible news outlet are allowed to generate transfer stories and simultaneously take bets on the outcome of those same transfers is beyond me. A couple of trusted journalists on Twitter have rubbished this rumour so don’t think there’s anything in this one.

Interestingly it seems like Ilkay Gundogan has inadvertently confirmed that Claudio Bravo is leaving Man City. Anyone? May I suggest a back 5 of Bravo, Moses, Christensen, Rudiger and Emerson for next season?

Johnny Evans as an alternative to Lewis Dunk... slight difference to suggesting he ought to be our first choice target.

Off the top of my head Jonny Evans has 1 year to run on his Leicester deal and has just had an excellent season - can’t see him costing anywhere near what Dunk would cost. Tyrone Mings at Villa? A year younger with recovery pace and probably available for a fee in the region of what’s being quoted for Dunk?

Does Dunk really fit our style under Lampard? The intention seems to be to move to a high pressing team who hold a high defensive line. Is Dunk really suitable to that type of game? His leadership qualities would be a great asset but for the price and at his age, I think we can do better.

Looks a serious threat going forward. He hasn’t had a mass of defending to do so far and does look a little weak. That said he’s a better option than Chilwell IMO. Best player on the pitch tonight.

I’m seeing a lot of noise on Twitter from various sources that this is very close. Was surprised to see the above tweet saying that the deal is off. Really not sure how I feel about it until we see the fee. Really hope we haven’t spent over £50m on him. Will be even more worried if what we do spend means we have less to spend on at least one quality CB.

Personally I’d rather we signed one quality centre back than try and get 2 in to replace two of Rudiger/Christensen/Zouma. Hypothetically, whichever of those 3 then stays should be boosted by their new centre back partner and a new goalkeeper behind them. As we’ve seen with both VVD and Laporte such is their quality that they make the person at the side of them look good also. I just hope our scouts can pick out whoever that gem may be.

Let’s not try and compare Ampadu’s loan to Mount, Abraham, Tomori or James’ loan spells. Ampadu has played a total of 4 league games since he signed for Chelsea. The other 4 all got plenty of minutes in the Championship last season whilst Ampadu barely featured for RB Leipzig. If he does go to Fulham I’d like to think we’d put a clause in there that we can recall him in January if he hasn’t played x number of games. The fact we didn’t/couldn’t do that when he wasn’t featuring for Leipzig was madness. Hopefully we learn from that this time. He really needs minutes this season or his development will suffer.

Whereabouts have you seen this info? Saul and Rodri both of a similar age and if his mindset is anything like theirs I’d snap him up in a heartbeat.

Given he has 2 years left on his deal and has made his desire to leave quite clear the fact this isn’t done yet makes me wonder if we’re stalling until a little later in the window? In theory the further into the window we go his value decreases by a few £m. I suppose that could also be a tactic on his/his agents part, so other teams may come back into the picture?

I think this makes far more sense than Chilwell. He must’ve done something right to be voted the best of 20+ LB’s in the entire Spanish League. I doubt there’d be a player in the entire Premier League best 11 you could get for less than £40m so financially it seems to stack up.

I like your thinking! All we need to top it off is Kenedy at left back. Should work an absolute treat.

Perhaps he might be best suited to playing as a ball playing defender alongside the colossus that is Andreas Christensen? I think those 2 infront of Kepa would make for the perfect core to our team next season.

Dreadful. Again. Caballero must be in for the final 2 games now. Kepa is unsalvageable at this stage and we shouldn’t give ourselves false hope that he’s going to improve. I don’t care whether we sell him for nothing or loan him out for the next 5 years. He’s the worst first choice goalkeeper I’ve ever watched at Chelsea, he’s probably a lot worse than some of the back up options we’ve had, too.

We’re becoming more and more reliant on Pulisic aren’t we - similar to what it felt like with Hazard at times. If he doesn’t have a great game then neither do we. Pulisic looks exhausted and despite that is still our most dangerous player.

Any chance of some urgency at all? I’ll be asleep for the entire second half at this rate.

Worst 45 minutes of the season so far. Too slow, second to every ball, first touch a tackle too often and the lacklustre defence we’ve become accustomed to. 2-3 subs needed at half time. Possibly Abraham, Jorginho and Barkley all off. Put Kovacic as CDM and let Loftus Cheek and Mount go ahead of him. Giroud for Abraham who has been awful again. Too many sideways and backwards passes between the centre halves and Jorginho. We don’t need that at 2-0 down now.