Whiskyjack

Tuchel is addicted to having 3 central defenders which preclude the luxury of fielding Gallagher as a central attacking midfielder. And to be honest, even if we do end up having a free-role attacking midfielder, Gallagher would probably be third in the pecking order after Havertz and Mount for that role.

You are more or less right. His issue is he doesn't have the technical ability to play Tuchel ball. He would actually be fine under a Mourinho or Conte system I suspect.

Actually I had more issues with him on the 1st goal. He could have easily tipped that over the bar instead of palming it off to a west ham player. Poor decision making in the moment. He has also lost all confidence coming out to collect, which was a strength in his first couple of seasons. Kepa had the same problem when he lost confidence - stopped commanding the area.

That would make us even worse at defending set pieces than we already are.

I don't understand the love for cucurella. He doesn't beat people 1v1, doesnt make enough threatening runs, he's not that fast and not particularly strong either. Tidy in possession but no better than Chilwell. I'd take a 26 year old Marcos Alonso over Cucurella any day.

He is much much much better when there is another striker to play off and he can make runs into the box from deeper positions.

Not going to judge him on defensive discipline given he is so young, it will either get better (Gerrard) or stay terrible (Xhaka) but what worries me is that he isn't really technically good enough to play for modern day Chelsea in CM, and that's not something you can really improve alot at after 22. I don't think there has ever been an example of a below average technical midfielder turning into a maestro further into their career. They pretty much gotta have it already before 22.

How does a European level pro-footballer have such skinny legs? no wonder he's slow, he's got no muscles on those legs!

With that group of 3 in the middle we would ship 3 goals a game. We'd probably score a lot too mind, but it wouldn't win us any trophies.

This is why I like both Raphinha and Richarlison. Their teams were damn near relegated and neither one gave up the fight, in fact they both got better the more their team struggled. I don't see either of them having the mental weakness of fair-weather Lukaku.

I'd prefer Richarlison over Sterling any day of the week, but seems like we are going to go with Sterling. Hope he proves me wrong.

I like Raphinha, I think he is a more tenacious and effective version of Willian, who absolutely every coach we've had at Chelsea loves.

He will probably succeed especially with Giroud and Zlatan to aim for, but lmao he'll be a 30 yr old long ball winger you won't get more than 20m for him next year. 20m would be the ceiling IF he knocks it out of the park next season. Also a decent probability he doesn't and just becomes another Bakayoko.

See I completely agree with you here and your previous post too, she doesn't pick the players herself, BUT my conclusion differs: as she decides how much to pay to get the options in the list, and whether or not to get them, already makes her the single most powerful (and responsible) figure in our transfers committee. For example, theres a list of 3 strikers from last season, her saying "option 1) Haaland and option 2) Kane for 150m is too much or can't get, I'm going with Option 3 Lukaku", gives her the discretion to assign worth (or lack thereof for Kounde, Rice and some Conte transfer targets) makes her the most responsible person for our lacklustre incoming transfers record imho.

Surely has to be Lukaku. Courtois was bad but at least he tried when he was at the club. Lukaku didn't even try.

The idea is we get a coach we trust and don't change him for the next 8-10 years following the Klopp Guardiola model. We could get it wrong, but then we could get it wrong with a DoF too.

Point out where I ever said anything was fact. It's my opinion (I thought this clearly goes without saying but I guess not) that she is the single most influential person on the committee that has collectively determined transfers at Chelsea in the previous regime. You are entirely free to disagree with that or not.

Fair call, this is true. There are no absolutes in football. If our ambition is to unseat Man City though I still don't think we should be buying their bench players, and as a rule we probably shouldn't be buying bench players from tier 2 European clubs like Dortmund either.

This is a pointless argument, you don't have evidence that she doesn't either. I'll have to agree to disagree with you. Marina having this power from being the most stable authoritative figure at the club as coaches move on at an almost yearly basis tells me she has that power at the club. You don't have to believe me.

The point still stands Modric and Kroos were the better players and would have been better than Kovacic. Like Iniesta and Xavi were better than Fabregas. Just because a bench warmer is OK doesn't mean we should get him.

See on statistics that's probably true but I can't help but feel United are butchering his development. He just looks like he is capable of alot more.

I don't blame Lukaku at all. He is who he is, not who we wanted him to be. I blame whoever the hell did the psychometric assessment. No excuses, for how long he'd been in our setup we HAD to know he was weak willed and immature.

Truthfully, although I knew very little about Pulisic at that time, this was a massive red flag for me at the time. Sancho was keeping him on the bench. We rather should have been going for Sancho instead. Another case of buying who was available rather than waiting for the right player to become available.

The only realistic window to have signed rudiger was offering him 250k before January. He probably would have taken it, but we just didn't want to do it. Once January came and he tested out his value on the market it was over. I guess you could say that's on Marina for low balling him initially. Personally I think he's worth 250k in this market because a replacement would have cost us more and with more risk of not working out.

True, many mistakes are only realized in hindsight (I didn't think Morata would flop as hard as he did for example), but some things were reasonably foreseeable, Kepa being one. Panic buys, panic decision making generally in all things (not just football, investments too) have statistically lower probabilities of being winners. Kepa was a panic buy.