Big Nigel

Maatsen is 5'6, he'll struggle in the prem - best to sell for a good fee with a decent enough buyback clause in there

You can guarantee werner being a success? Guess Liverpool have finally found their Michael Edwards replacement😂😂

then you must hang around too many old timers who have poisoned your brain

Im in the 35-40 range. I would imagine most the members here are over 50 and seen plenty from other threads claiming to be quite a bit older

Hazard in his first season scored 9 league goals in 34 games, yet he was undoubtedly one of our best players that year. Felix only came here in January and has barely played, but you can still see the impact he is making.. Whether its a dribble to get out of a sticky situation or a great pass or through ball or whatever it is he is making things happen on the pitch and linking up well with others. Its clear we are never gonna agree on this though so lets just agree to disagree

passion, desire, fight, heart, effort and running a lot are usually terms synonymous with some of these old school fans. These metrics may have been of note back in the 70's or 80's when football in general wasn't anywhere near as technical in England, but in the modern day those attributes are not worth anywhere near as much. Being a technically very good footballer far outweighs those things, and thats what matters in todays game

They very much are, but I just meant from a numbers perspective they were never that great apart from the last season he had - and even without getting G/A he was still very much our best player most the time because of what else he brings - Similar to Felix at the moment, albeit at a lower level

Cleary we view the game differently then - I rate technical ability and the intelligence of player e.g. someone who can pick out a pass nobody see's or a perfectly weighted ball so for me someone like a Felix stands out. whereas its quite apparent that you like to see the passion and running side of the sport. I go to plenty of games and watch plenty of matches at home as well and various different clubs - doubt you could say the same. Outside of your 3pm pub sesh on a saturday I doubt you watch much other football outside of it

Seems like a few of these old timers have banded together in this. dkw, rip mourinho and valerie - constantly liking each others posts to show their support of each other haha

what an archaic dinosaur view on football😂😂😂 "flicks and tricks, fifa generation" - these sort of fans imo bring a much higher level of thinking, better than the old school dino's who think only showing passion on the pitch and running around a lot doing nothing is whats rated. You sort of fans would probably say Hazard didnt do much either because his G/A stats were never that impressive

what nonsense are you rambling about? Did you actually ever watch Werner play for Leipzig? He would miss several chances a game before he scored, and most of his goals were a direct result of the bundesliga high line thats so prominent in that league. He didnt have a great touch and general technical ability wasnt there. Sure if you just watched a compilation of his goals there were some decent finishes in there, but if you watched him throughout the game you could see how many easy chances he had and messed it up completely - Much like how he did for us. Only difference is in the PL you dont get loads of chances a game. Im not saying I have a superior method, but it sure as hell seems a lot better than rating players just based on "passion and desire" which is what a lot of idiots in our fanbase judge players on, and its laughable😂 p.s I notice you dwk, all you seem to do is stay quiet like a mouse and just "like" posts that just disagree with me in several posts haha

Nkunku isn't going to do that well for us here, his best season hes having is not as good as werner's best season for leipzig... I didnt want him in the first place, but its too late now so we dont really have a choice. if there was some way to cancel the deal and stop him from coming here, we should do it and just focus on signing Felix instead

There's 2 sides to every coin and there are opinions on performances where some people might think 1 thing and other people another. im not doing a direct comparison, but I just used lukaku as an example. Fans will always have a bit more affinity towards academy players but a line needs to be drawn about the level of bias there is towards then and which players. Just because they are from the academy does that automatically mean I have to rate every single one of them? No it does not. The academy was always supposed to be used to get the very best coming through to break into the first team and the rest we sell for profit. But the last few years fans have just wanted every single academy player to be shoehorned into the first team when most are either nowhere near ready or nowhere near good enough. In reality we should be just promoting 1-2 of the very best if they are good enough to become a squad player and then eventually start - at the moment I would say James and Colwill are the 2 that from cobham that are at the level of the Chelsea first team. The rest are there to make money on, either by selling or loan. We make a lot of players who are good enough for championship/mid-lower table prem level - i.e a chalobah or a gallagher who will be okay at say, a crystal palace or something, but not for Chelsea. Mixing in the top cobham players like a James with quality recruitment from abroad/other clubs like an Enzo Fernandez is the way to build a great team. Starting 11 academy players will not bring us any success, and sadly thats the truth that a lot of our fans need to get into their heads.

Its very difficult to judge attaxking players based on stats, because as you say the games are open and the defenders always play a high line. I.e people like werner and sancho who did well in the bundesliga and had good stats, but on the eye test they failed and clearly cant translate to the prem you can still judge midfielders and defenders fairly well though based on eye test and how they look when they play, and for me Kone has the attributes of a very good player

Its mainly the hypocrisy that strikes me. We aren't allowed to critique certain players, as certain members will always defend him like for example Mount, however we're freely allowed to bash the likes of Auba, Lukaku and nobody bats an eyelid I just think everyone is fair game to being criticised and nobody should get special treatment just because they might be from cobham and/or english

you definitely havent seen him play if you think he is average

......General Kenobi! Im Nigel, long term chelsea fan and been going to games since I was a kid. Used to be a couple season tickets in the family but sadly were given up a few years ago due to some financial difficulties. Still try to go to a few games during the season, but feel like last couple years its gotten really hard to get tickets, especially premier league games. My favourite players would have to be Terry, Drogba, Zola and Hazard. Terry being the greatest centreback english soil has ever seen and Hazard being the most talented player to ever play for the club. Zola and Drogba also adored for obvious reasons. Also have a soft spot for the likes of Carvalho as I think he was one of the main factors in getting to where we are, and I would quite like to think I had a similar play style from the back when I used to play football years ago😂

I dont know what you do on every thread, but I open to read some threads and I see you post in most of them, and most of the time its just some shameful mount defending going on... whats this about making new accounts, I have only just joined a few days ago and not really that active. IIRC you accused me of being another user above as well, but it took me a few seconds to see one of those accounts you mentioned wasn't even a banned account so it makes even less sense that I am that user you are trying to say I am haha

yeah sorry I meant the 17/18 season aka Conte's 2nd season

Impressive squad, one which most people would be happy with! Only slight changes I would make are that I would sell RLC and CHO as I think their times are truly up now, I was a big CHO fan and really thought going into the bundesliga this season would help kickstart his career again, but he has just not been good there at all, injury really finished him which is sad. Plus a backup to Mudryk at LW can be Felix anyway. Kante I would also release as he's too injury prone and not the same player he was as a few years ago. Santos I think needs a loan at a prem/championship club once his work permit has come through, but instead would sign one extra midfielder of the many good midfielders we are linked with at the moment (Lavia, Kone, Caqueret etc) - so we have 2 new midfielders Would also sell Broja as personally dont think hes good enough, but would promote Charlie Webster and Ben Elliot and loan them out to prem/championship clubs as well. Only position I am still undecided on is our striker. Havertz is okay there, at least at times and Nkunku/Felix can both play there as well, but if we need a pure 9 then im not sure who I fancy at the moment

Exactly, just found it weird that people thought he'd suddenly massively changed after 1 year at Inter. This is why its crucial when scouting or judging players to actually watch them play and not just base it off of stats. The service argument was also very weak in my eyes, unless you are haaland and an absolute machine in the box that will score with almost every touch in the box, you cant just sit there and wait all game for the ball to come to your feet. Even when we did try that on occasion, his touches and finishing was utter crap and ended up missing so many easy chances.

The league title with us was when we didnt have any CL football either, so the 1 game a week really helped him. As soon as there was CL football the next season, we are such an awful side. That 16/17 season was probably the worst season I ever had to endure as a Chelsea fan

Hes not a good player at all, and I was definitely in the minority when it was rumoured we were going to get him before for 97m. I remember so many people telling me hes changed and improved as a player, but they really couldnt see how bad he still was. Just because he had some success scoring goals in a weak league wasnt going to translate into the prem. If people actually watched him play they would have seen how bad his first touch still was and just not a good player at all. Truly baffling how he always has such a high pricetag with his name

I put him in the sell list, 3rd from the end. 30m for him and I think thats decent enough Not a fan of Rice.

The way Havertz has been linking up with our other players recently has been good, I would rather keep him than go back to lukaku even if he scores a few less goals. The team will be worse with lukaku