Barrettinator

You couldn't possibly be talking about the same Ousmane Dembele who's a forward, right? Or is there another player named 'Ousama Dembele' who's a midfielder?

The real master stroke would be for us to then add Sanchez at RF. An congestion on the left wing and the ball will be swung quickly to the right for the kill in open space. Short of that though, I still think it'll give our right wing a lot of freedom to do damage. And if opposing teams decide to go man to man on Sandro/Hazard, we all know the quality of both players and what they can do. That Herrera man marking on Hazard would never have been successful if Hazard had an outlet like Sandro supporting him.

You JUST said the opposite minutes ago..... Pick a point and stick to it mate. Is your issue the price, the position or the player??? 60m for the second best LB in the world, yes. How much do you think Madrid would let Marcelo go for in this market (hypothetically speaking)? Or Bayern and Alaba? And since when is Wayne Bridge trash? He was a very serviceable full back, not sure where you're getting that from. Let's not act like Alonso is some titan. Alonso is a good player. No more, no less. We need more than "good players" to win the CL. Especially when he's supposed to be playing behind Hazard and cleaning up after Hazard. As has been said above, teams would never be able to put 3 players on Hazard with a player like Sandro overlapping. If you don't want that, then I'm sorry you feel that way. Roman's not complaining about the money so why are you? Is it coming out of your pocket?

Ballack had a sign on bonus too. Cole cost us 5 million and one of our best defenders in Gallas. If you keep worrying about price tags in situations like this, you'll never be comfortable with us signing another world class player again. You need to wake up and realise that the market has changed drastically. 60m is the new 30m, for all intents and purposes. I think with that in mind, you can reassess your views.

Conte isn't the one negotiating transfers mate. And we did offer what Napoli were asking for Koulibaly eventually but we offered it too late and so they rejected it again because we didn't give them enough time to find a replacement before the window closed. And so we went with Luiz on deadline day. Let's not rewrite history here.

We aren't covered at LWB. With the signing of Sandro, NOW we're covered. And who says signing Sandro means we won't spend at CB (VVD/Bonucci), midfield (Bakayoko) and striker (Lukaku)? If the club is pursuing all these deals at the same time, it's clearly because we can comfortably afford it all. So why are you complaining?

I keep referring back to this example: Would you say no to buying Sanchez for our RF spot just because Pedro (and Willian) performed well for us last year? You don't say no to elite talent. It's what wins you the CL. Our midfield wasn't weak when we bought Ballack. Neither was our defense weak when we bought Ashley Cole. I can go on and on. Barca didn't really need to buy Suarez, by your logic. They had Sanchez after all. But you don't say no to the chance to sign a Suarez. Won them a CL immediately.

Aubameyang without question. Shouldn't even be a debate. He's the best option of the available strikers.

We're not getting him if Barca are in for him.

I never took this rumour seriously even though it's been in the air for some weeks now (and apparently no one else one here did either) but it looks like we may have put in a 60m euros opening bid. Why though? This guy's 30 years old ffs. He's got 4 years left at most. We'll have three 30+ CBs. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see him in a Chelsea shirt. But his age is an issue for me. Why not just spend it on Van Dijk? At least you'll get 10 years out of a huge Van Dijk investment.

Thank God it's not up to you. That's a terrible deal for CFC.

They've done that several times in the past 4 years or so.

I'd rather bring Baker into the fold than RLC. I even prefer Baker to Chalobah.

Chalobah has had A LOT of first team experience though. Over 100 first team appearances iirc. Including his spell at Napoli. Let's not act like he hasn't gotten enough game time to impress.

Very fair, especially considering Alaba's performances have dipped a bit recently. I think Sandro's better than Marcelo defensively but Marcelo is still in another world offensively. Which is not to diminish Sandro fantastic offensive output. Marcelo is just unbelievably elite going forward.

Not sure we watched the same Chelsea but yeah we'll definitely have to agree to disagree there. Because Matic had maybe 7 good games during that 13 game win streak and that was it. Reverted back to 15/16 Matic. Incredibly frustrating player.

Actually, Chalobah is about 5 months older than him. I have a lot more faith in Baker than Chalobah.

Bakayoko couldn't possibly perform worse for us than Matic did for 85% of last season. And in that sense, he's an immediate upgrade who has loads of room to improve being 22 years old.

Milan are definitely not selling one of their brightest young talents when they're trying to build a good team. Even Donnaruma may sign a new contract.

Was just about to say this.

Bernardo Silva is a forward though, not a midfielder and it would be silly to misuse him that way. But then again we're talking about Pep here. He'd play Ederson at CF if he thought it was "tactical". Not even sure why a player of Aguero's caliber is being benched. If I were Sanchez I'd be looking at Chelsea or Bayern tbh.