HazardousChoice

Lukaku's problem is that he's delusional. He genuinely believes he's a top striker despite showing for over a decade now he doesn't have the talent to play at the highest level. He's never been close to being world class or close to being near the top 15/20 strikers in the world. He was humbled at United, went to Inter and his Ego convinced himself again that he was a top striker because he was performing with arguably the best coach on the planet in a weaker league. He brought that ego back with him here and it just shattered once he realised he just didn't have the talent to operate in the tight spaces or the physical attributes to easily deal with Premier league defenders. That's why he immediately wanted to go back to a weak league where he can score against awful teams and pretend he's as talented as Benzema, Kane, Lewis etc.

But he's not competing against Mount and Reece he's competing about our dismal selection of wingers. CHO has been very poor since his injury but surely we need to clearing out deadwood like Pulisic and moving Ziyech on before we even look at a home grown young player like Cho's future. Personally I think CHO is worthy of a bench role next season provided we ship out the 2 I've mentioned and bring in a new wingers. If he struggles again next season then it may be best to move him on but I'd be very cautious to move on such a young talented home grown player when the only winger we have that can actually beat a man at pace hasn't even played a game for us yet.

That isn't what happened. We agreed a price with a deadline. Which we then missed because Marina wanted to sell Zouma first and then spend weeks trying to get an extra £12.50 from West Ham. Sevilla were clear from the beginning they wouldn't accept a lower price after the deadline because they wanted to bring in their replacement before the season started. They stuck exactly to what they said all along and we weren't prepared to pay what they told us we'd have to if we didn't move early.

He literally agreed personal terms with us last year. Was begging to sign for us and missed games at Sevilla in anger because we left him stood up and didn't want to play for them after not getting his move to us. He literally couldn't be more interested in signing for us, we were the only club interested but we left him standing like a spare man at a wedding. Then he was desperate to sign for us at the start of this window but we sidelined him for Koulibaly (fair enough) and f**king Ake of all people If he didn't want to sign for us now you really couldn't blame him.

Have you considered a career in fortune telling? As I said I'm not too disappointed to miss out on Dembele but it's crazy for people to criticise his past performances and say he was always overrated when we give regular game time to a flop that Dembele had nailed to the bench at Dortmund. Dembele would still have been an upgrade on what we have even if people would prefer other options.

Tbf that was the reason I thought he'd come. The only time Demebele has looked like an Elite player was when he was competing against Pulisic who quite frankly would make anyone look good. Our options (aside from Sterling) are so poor I thought he'd be licking his lips to come here and look a class above his "competition" Not too disappointed to miss out on him but we definitely need another winger and we seem to be running out of names on our list. Raphina, Dembele and Gnabry all down this week.

Might help knock 2 or 3 million off the price.

You just know Marina would have paid 60m for Ake. The same for Koulibaly. Probably more than that for Sterling and our transfer business would be over. They were both in the last year of their contracts but I genuinely can't remember the last time we signed such quality for fees that looked this good. Sterling and Koulibaly for less than Harry Maguire is no joke. Now if we could just get Kounde for a lower price to complete the hatrick our defence would look in much better shape.

Torres set us back years and signing him over Aguero really paved the way for City to become the dominant club in the country. But we spent more money on Lukaku, Kepa, Morata and Pulisic all of whom have been worse for us than Nando was. It probably says a lot that Torres was a better player for us than the majority we spent higher fees on. Torres was incredibly disappointing due to how highly he was hyped and how different he was from the player most thought we were getting but we've signed much worse players than the goal shy version of Nando we got Torres even managed a 22 goal season here.

I've always found it funny how the media tried to pretend and portray that Sterling left Liverpool for the money. Like city weren't a far better team, with better facilities, a better coach and more chance of winning trophies. It was as natural a move as a player leaving Stoke to join Liverpool but the media crucified Sterling for it.

Hard to believe we haven't had a single winger that can beat a man at pace since Willian left. Or a Winger that can score goals since Hazard left. Raheem is a game changer for us. Bless the Lord!

Statistically the premier leagues worst ever keeper Right back that has never played a game in english football. Centre back in his 2nd premier league season that has never played a premier league game in a back 2. Centre back that has never played a premier league game. Centre back that got relegated in his last season as a starter now playing at left back. The midfield is fine though Kante in a midfield 3 is not good at all. Injury prone Winger with 4 goals in 5 premier league seasons. Injury prone Winger that has flopped in 2 leagues and never had a good season in 7 attempts. 20 year old striker with 6 Premier league goals in his 1 season. If you think that team is beating 70% of the teams in the league I have a bridge to sell you. It's a far cry from the quality squad depth we used to have.

The first 11 is great. The 2nd 11 is absolutely horrible. Just shows how little depth we actually have.

I can't see it being 5 years. Romano doesn't know sh*t. But perhaps the club is still scared from Marina letting all our centre backs go into the last year of their contracts last season and don't want a repeat

Think most people would like this signing. But there is a concern in signing a 31 year old defender from a league with such poor attacking players that even Lukaku looked decent by comparison.

We finally have a talented left winger in the squad. It's been so long. I'm going to shed a tear. The delay may be down to use planning a double signing announcement to kickstart the new Regime but we can't find a 2nd player who wants to sign for us.

Half of the players you mentioned are right backs.... But i agree with the post you replied to, Chilwell is incredibly overated. He's nothing special and wasn't even before his injury. He's solid, decent and certainly not an issue. But he's not an Ashley Cole level player and never will be and I don't see him as having the position locked down for the next decade like Reece James does.

There's absolutely nothing more embarrassing than suggesting Pulisic's nationality and commerical value didn't play any part in him being signed. It's just a completely ridiculous position to take. If we thought Pulisic could bring in 100m worth of revenue due to his commerical appeal it makes sense why we'd sign him. Certainly a lot more sense than trying to pretend we spent 58m on a Bundesliga flopped benched by 2 other teenagers because we thought he'd improve the squad. generating revenue is important for any clubs long term success I'm not sure why Americans would be so defensive about it especially since it's the exact reason our players are in America right now.

It's Clearlake Capitals Chelsea. What that means for the future we'll see

That's just flat out wrong. I don't think many people outside of America would argue Pulisic got signed for any reason other than his nationality and the marketing perspective. Do you honestly think If Pulisic was German we would have signed him? Or decided a 3 goal a season bench warmer was worth 60m? A top club signing a player that isn't good enough to play in a weaker league and has been benched by 2 more talented teenagers like Pulisic was at Dortmund for a big fee is a very very strange scenario. He was signed almost solely due to his commerical hype which is a really poor mistake but here we are. Even United didn't want Pulisic and he was a proper Ed Woodward signing.

Ake has the advantage of only playing against the worst teams in the league at home in games City have 75%+ possession. Ake's stats don't reflect his performances against decent opposition because he's always sat last on the bench in those games if he makes the squad at all. Pep choosing to use his actual good centre backs in those games.

Strange theory. It has nothing to do with us. if he wants to play for Barca and only Barca we're just not involved. We're not letting them do anything.

If we sign FDJ then we simply have to sell one of Kante/Jorginho this summer. No point leaving one on the bench in their last year. Personally I'd let Kante go before Jorginho because we can't rely on him to be fit and we'd probably be able to get a decent fee based on his name alone.

Everyone makes a good impression when they're throwing money at you. Even a clown like Rishi Sunak was popular when he was giving money away. Given we came in with a 60m bid for Raphina straight away I can't imagine Leeds would be anything less than thrilled with Boehly.

In the league fair enough. But we're not competing against past Chelsea teams in different era's of football. We don't score enough goals to compete against City or Liverpool over the full season and it's not a small gap. We're routinely 20-25 and sometimes even 30 goals behind over the course of a season Do you think the attacking players at the club have the talent to score as many goals as City and Liverpools forwards do?