strong centreback

To be fair has he ever had the opportunity to spend more than 15m on a player? a manager should be judged on who they sign and how that player performs for them, personally im optimistic about this appointment, with mourinho despite what the guy achieved first time round I wasnt sure he was the right appointment considering the way in which the board was trying to position us the few years prior to him coming back, it just didnt seem the right fit for the wants of the club. Now I dont know lots about conte besides obviously he did well with juventus and seemingly had them step up a couple of levels straight away upon arrival, and that he is tactically astute and likes to play attacking football with width, but not to the detriment of the defensive responsibilities, it very much feels like to me at least like the mourinho mk1 appointment, the right guy at the right moment who will kick us on to better things. Heres hoping he is backed by the club in both the transfer department but also in letting him apply his vision for the team, if he wants to play 352 let him, if he wants a brute of a centre midfielder let him have the guy he wants, let conte do his job and if nobody gets in his way then hopefully things will work out well for us and he wil take us to next level.

I agree a wingback still needs to be able to defend but id say at wingback its slightly less important than if he were at fullback, I have always thought that a wingbacks main function is to be a deep sitting winger whos main job is to provide width as well as doing their bit in defence, kinda like a defensive winger basically, but yes he still needs to improve his defending as its pretty poor for a 13-18m left back in my opinion, his positional sense is all over the place and without his athletic ability would be caught out even more than he already does.

Rahman is a wingback not a fullback, bit of a liability defensively imo but pretty good going forward so maybe converting into an out and out winger could be a better option.

sorry misread the post didnt see the 'not' for some reason, apologies

On the last statement surely nobody is silly enough to believe that? and even worse if the board does, I believe that under guus, like you say playing more conservatively we have shored up and started doing the basics better again but that by know means means that the squad doesnt need surgery on it over the next few summers shaped by the new guy (conte?) and not the board/emanelo, the main point that needs addressing is the size of our squad and from that point progress can be made, if thats signings so be it or if its using our youth/loan players thats fine too as long as they are players the manager wants so that he uses them and he has options. Of the youth/loan players I think there is a few that could do a job for us depending on the formation used, I personally think baker could do a job for us as a squad player as could christensen/musonda and maybe pasalac, Id say them due to their experience in the leagues they are on loan at, baker can play a few positions in midfield and the others have shown to be able to play to a good standard in a good league, not only would it be cheaper option for the club by utilising players we already have, but it will go along way to reassuring the younger lot we have that we can actually offer them a route to the first team, as at the moment if it looks from the outside its a fruitless exercise imagine what it feels like from the inside?

Maybe so but arguably whats more of an achievement, us or them winning the league? if people have forgotten what claudio did here then shame on them, without his work we wouldnt be where we are, yes he made some mistakes, but ultimately was the main architect of our success with the squad he built on the back of romans first season, he has a great eye for a player.

I agree its not black and white, but id have to question mourinhos thinking as if he had done a couple of basic things whilst still in charge to get back on track, like you say guus has done gone back to basics and been less ambitious but it has brought results, results that probably would of kept mourinho in the job even if no trophys were to appear if he had done similar. For a manager like mourinho who has a reputation for changing tactics and players to suit the opposition based on the attention to detail in his opposition reports it boggled my mind at how rigid he was, a few minor changes could of steadied the ship but he either didnt see it or want to implement them, its fine going all out for the win in a cup competition but 6/8 games into this season he should of realised that something wasnt right and that he needed to make a change to get things on track, instead he carried on seemingly hoping that they would play into form again.

Theres only a few thousand of them and would be a nice gesture from our club even if it is crap lager we have on tap lol I hope they put something over the tanoy for claudio should they do it, hope he gets a very good reception as I think alot of people forget he helped put us where we are now/were, mourinho built on his squad and took it to next level but claudio did the groundwork

Are you taking into account our pre guus form? end of the day we had lost 9 games in the league by jan and at best looked clueless, I look at it with the question how many of those draws would of been loses if we hadnt made a change to get a reaction?

Minutes applause at start of game and a free pint at halftime in the away end would suffice id say, make them feel welcome I say, and id definitely throw the game if they needed a win to stop arsenal/spurs winning it as far as im concerned, I couldnt care less about the europa league so if we miss out on that even better, Leicester winning it is the ideal scenario I just hope it doesnt force arsenal into removing wenger as I dont see him ever choosing to leave/move upstairs which is a plus point for anyone but arsenal.

To be honest I think we will be better off longterm by playing youth, id also say missing out on europa league is a bonus, I personally couldnt care less about that competition and was very meh even when we won it with the fat spanish waiter.

Personally I think if we need to sell to finance moves this summer oscar should be one of the first offered up, ive always been a fan even if I do think he should be playing in a midfield 3 and not behind strikers, if we insist on sticking with the 4231 then an upgrade is needed, after having his first summer off in 5 years he should of been at it this year like willian has been, instead he has produced another season of inconsistency but with arguably less of the better performances, its a shame as I think he has been handled/developed wrong while here, all of his plus points lead to him playing as the attacker in a midfield three for me (in a 433) and he has never played there.

The pato deal sums up our clubs way of thinking nicely I feel, why trust a youth player probably good enough for the backup role when you can buy/loan a shiny new player instead. Falcao will have cost us 7m in wages by the time he leaves, pato about 750k, bamford no more than 1.5m all season plus we are getting to find out if he can cut it at our level, money saved and upside, we need to stop wasting money when its quite obvious we have a player already at the club who can cover that role, ake and rahman is another example, one has looked good in our league and the other was bought for 13/14m and looks out of his depth and you know full well it will be rahman that gets persisted with and ake will be sold the mind boggles.

Its gonna get worse before it gets better unless the next manager (conte most likely) actually makes a decent fist of bringing some through, roman has been in charge for over ten years and we have had the grand total of no youth players to properly come through and its not for the lack of money thrown at it by the owner. Its the club mentality that stops it from happening which needs to change, pato and falcao are great examples of our clubs strategy, instead of showing bamford a tiny bit of faith and giving him a shot with us after a good loan we go after a busted injury prone flush who proceeds to get injured for the vast bulk of the season whilst bamford gets no where on a bad loan, we then bring bamford back from said bad loan and then bundle him off on another loan after bringing in another injury prone busted flush who had been holidaying for a month or so on his off season break, he then takes 6 weeks to get match fit before it seems the club realise that he too is a busted flush, all the while bamford has stagnated from a bad loan whilst we have paid falcao circa £140k a week all season to get leg massages and use the facilities and pato £30k a week since late jan to do a spot of shopping in london, if I did as poorly in my job as the guy who sanctioned that lot id be sacked plain and simple.

None knows for sure what will happen if he gets knocked back by cpo, although I might add that if he was willing to build new stadium but then backed out because of cpo then I might be a little suspicious as to why, I mean its a seemingly commonly held thought that roman intends on passing down the club to his sons at some point so is committed longterm as far as we are aware, if this is the case having the freehold should be inconsequential really, end of the day a possible reason to want the club lock stock is so that he has a higher bargaining chip if he decided to sell one day? 1b worth of land (if he was to redevelop himself and make all profit himself) is a mighty big bargaining chip in negotiating when selling on in the future and would essentially of put himself in position of owning a top 5/10 club in world football for nothing. Leeds/portsmouth is a very good example of what can happen to a club at the mercy of a rich owner I bet their fans wished they had a cpo of their own in place, we just happen to of got one of the better rich owners going mind (if getting some dodgy advice on occasions) but that may not always be the case. It could only take roman getting on wrong side of putin and having his position made hard before being forced into selling and then an american speculator coming in who has the great idea to sell the ground and build us a budget one out in guildford so he can redevelop stamford bridge into god knows how many apartments, its a remote possibility but one non the less, thats what the cpo has to work on, the worst case scenario.

It's very likely that he will be leaving from what I have read, was very complimentary about the training he has had and the education footballing and otherwise that Chelsea have provided him with but is out of contract and looks highly doubtful he will sign new deal, I'm expecting more to follow suit from here on out due to a lack of commitment from the club in helping them make that last step up to the first team, maybe conte can change the perception if he seriously integrates a few on arrival but I'd say it's perceived that if your not bought for big money then you don't really stand a chance.

He/club will own the stadium he/club just wont own technically speaking own the patch of mud under it, the cpo is abit complicated in that manner as the club and cpo kind of jointly own the stadium just in unequal bits.

Im expecting over the next year or two for that to become more apparent, that portugese youth player has just left too and christensen/musonda were making permenant move noises before we let them go on loan, theres only so long you can block the path to the first team before people realise its fruitless, and with the money that is in england nowadays you can get paid as much hanging about here for a few years going on loan before being sold as you can at a just promoted team where you will play.

devils adovc I trust roman wouldnt do anything intentionally to harm the club but I do think some of his decisions leave might hurt us unintentionally, once we are on a sound financial footing then maybe, but with us losing money hand over fist (you cant keep making transfer profits each year) then id be inclined not to hand over the keys of the kingdom just yet, a few years ago when battersea was an option I was all for him getting the freehold assuming the powerstation stadium was built first.

Would see no reason for that not to be the truth, end of the day the cpo will say that roman doesnt need to have the freehold to redevelop the bridge they would just technically have to give permission for him to do so, can understand why roman would want the freehold but as a counter who would of though a club like leeds would of had to sell their ground? until our finances are ship shape id not be inclined to sell to him yet, he gets us financially level and gets the wage bill under control before that as other wise we are still at risk (no matter how small)

Best away/third kit in ages that one.

I believe his reputation is partly based on being a manager who is quite willing to adapt his formations dependant on the players he already has and the style of play he is trying to implement, of everything ive read about conte it seems to me like he is similar to the way mourinho was at porto and first time round with us, only abit less spikey, the not forcing square pegs in round holes is what pricks my interest with him as it would to me signify that we will be playing a different formation next year as we dont even have the players currently to play 4231 convincingly imho, so id not be surprised to see him go 433 or something different altogether but id be very surprised at lining up first game of the season in 4231.

I wouldnt bother without a ticket pre bought to be honest if you dont want to spend to much, expect to pay a fair bit if you havent bought tickets via the club before hand otherwise you are looking at face value plus 50% or more for a ticket from a tout

I think the thing that somebody could backup/refute that didnt help us on our preseason tour this season was that we were based bloody miles away from where we were playing the games, so were doing additional flights everywhere to play the games before flying back to the camp, wasnt it basically games on west coast of america and training camp was east coast? ill google it as im sure it was the case that we were clocking up loads and loads of extra unnecessary airmiles. edit: Ok camp/base was in montreal canada, whilst games were east coast of america with flights to and from inbetween, which with a short preseason wasnt the greatest idea in hindsight

Preseason tours abroad are nothing new and didnt we have them on each of our title winning seasons? just as most of our title winning rivals do too, its the post season tour that does the damage something which we shouldnt repeat again.