Skinnedy

THAT'S the one you picked out as improbable?

It's high risk.... high reward... I'm OK with that and the reporters are going to make up sensationalist bulls*it regardless 🙂

In January, while I was watching Hudson-Odoi rot on the bench and suffering Willian and Alonso every single game, I was willing to trade Hudson-Odoi for Willian. That seemed to get sorted out back third of the season as Hudson-Odoi, Loftus-Cheek, and Emerson started getting regular minutes, and I was happy with the overall direction, knowing that we were still short on personnel. But only... only... if he wanted to be here. I don't want another Conte repeat. I was so excited to Conte's first season and was really hoping he would be backed after winning the league, and we could go on to build something lasting... but if the manager and the board don't see eye to eye on a macro level, it's never going to work... and the board isn't going anywhere, so it's time for Sarri to move on. I'm not overly concerned with Lampard's lack of experience. Kind of like young players, if he's good enough, he's old enough. For a job like Chelsea, it's not about the man management and tactics that require years of managing experience, it's the off the field distractions with the media and the expectations... and that kind of experience ONLY comes once you have a high profile job like Chelsea... I'm much more concerned about the personnel than I am the manager right now.

I watched a lot of him this year. He was an old fashioned stopper. Not a lot of glamorous highlights in putting in a tackle or interception and fishing it tov a midfielder, but he was very, very good in that role for Milan. Was also very good in the air in the middle of the park.

That and they had said all season that they needed Champions League in order to keep him. He was arguably their player of the season.

Couldn't help but think of this when I read what you wrote.

Think of it like a criminal trial. You're convicted and have to serve a year If there is an option to appeal, you don't want to plead guilty, so you take that option. You could ask to be let out on bond while you're appealing, but you haven't for fear of pissing off your appeals judge. In this case, you're hoping you win your appeal to shorten your sentence, but your original sentence has already begun. In short... we don't want to plead guilty, but we also don't think we're going to win anything... predicted outcome -- This Summer and the January Window, we are banned. Open for Business June of 2020. Best case, and least likely outcome is that we win an appeal and only serve this window. We're not bringing in new players this summer.

more? Hell, 5 goals against the likes of Newcastle (2), Southampton, Bournemouth, and Crystal Palace won him Player of the Season in 15/16 https://mavenfc.io/chelsea/news/willian-vs-willian-the-myth-of-2015-16-dKrx8zSLKE-OHl5pPS9umg/

The average Salary in the NBA is $6.4M. That money skews heavily towards the top 2 or 3 players on a team, but isn't that what the club is expecting out of Hudson-Odoi? I was the one talking about baseball. The money in sports is insane. So insane that 100K per week will hardly show up on the balance sheet for a team like Chelsea whose gross earnings were nearly 500M in 2017/18. The early money in baseball is starting to catch up to other sports though. Draft picks are getting bigger money as signing bonuses right out of the gate. The salaries are so astronomical later on, teams do things like this... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/sports/ronald-acuna-contract-extension-atlanta-braves.html Ronald Acuna / Callum Hudson-Odoi is actually a very good comparison. Acuna hasn't even played a full season in the league yet. The overall point I'm trying to make is that 100K per week isn't much of a gamble for Chelsea, especially for one of the most valuable assets in all of the world right now... young, talented footballers. It would be much, much more harmful to lose him next summer on a free.

Yeah, this dumb American has trouble finding the right $€£¥¢ That's why I just put 130/90 in the final part of the post 😊

That's the point though, Matt Law says "easily achievable" From the sounds of it, it's all presentation. RM gets to say €88M! While paying €130 I bet you the final number to Chelsea is a whole lot closer to 130 than 90

I'm sure the big ones are appearances and minutes played. Those are easily achievable. We should seriously have about €300M of sales in the bank come next summer. Hopefully there will still be a great crop of young players available to rebuild. Hate missing out on the likes of Pepe and Jovic this season.

Having a billionaire owner sure makes negotiating easier. When you're willing to sit Costa for a year and let him rot, you get €60M. When you're able to let Hazard go on a free, you can get a much better price. Negotiate from a position of strength. And even when Chelsea looks to have the weakened position, it's still strong, because "we don't need your f@#$in money"

Purely from a business perspective compared to peers in other sports, Footballers are incredibly underpaid. 100k a week for someone projected to be a starter in one of the biggest clubs in the world is peanuts on their balance sheet. £5M a year for a club that grossed nearly half a billion and is worth several billion... That's a blip on the balance sheet. 300k per week wouldn't crack the top 50 in baseball https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/rankings/ Or the NBA https://www.spotrac.com/nba/rankings/ Considering the enormous amounts of revenue in the EPL and the international game, footballers are still relatively underpaid. And for a club like Chelsea, £100k a week isn't a gamble. Not really. But I get the point. Relative to his peers in football, that's an awful lot of money.

I'm almost positive Giroud's is just for this year. It was known 2 months ago that we were picking up his option. I think he got a bump in pay to sign a "new" one year deal, but I'm pretty sure he's still out of contract next summer. Willian? Hopefully it's technically a one year extension getting him to end of 2021. Two year extension on top of this year? Ugh...