Better have another midfielder lined up.

Moronic decision to sell to Utd. Our board are complete  f**king clueless idiots at times.

Bought for £21m, won two titles and sold for double what we paid... not too shabby.

Made us a better team and I thank him for everything he contributed to our recent success. 

^^my thoughts exactly.  Thanks for your services matic and all you did to help us win two titles.  But 40m is too hard to pass up.  Let's hope this means we have another midfielder or two lined up and ready to come in.  

Utterly ridiculous. So for a measly £35 million we were perfectly fine to save United from a midfield crises while we are going into the season with two(!) fit midfielders of our own? One of which doesn't work in a midfield two that also happens to be the managers prefered system. Give yourself a pat on the back whoever signed off on this deal, absolutely baffling.

Good signing for us , I personally thought we were after someone younger but Matic joins us as a seasoned premier league professional and at the price quoted it's a good deal for both clubs.

2 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

We don't have a problem with Matic being sold. We are complaining because we are selling to a team that is expected to challenge us next season and we are selling another player before adding to the squad. Our squad is threadbare, which is being made worse when 3 of those players are injured / lacking fitness. The season is soon to begin and our squad is nowhere near ready to compete seriously for major titles.

The days of Lavish spending are over, we are behind City, United, Barca, Real, Bayern, PSG, All have bigger grounds(PSG not so much) bigger pockets and willing to use it.

Unless the spending and selling affects you directly just enjoy the ride we were in a far worst position just over 20 years ago 

Edited July 31, 20178 yr by Brutos

I think its mind blowing that we are 2 weeks away from the beginning of the season and we are weaker. Who knows if Morata is an upgrade on Diego, who knows if Bakayoko is an upgrade on Matic. Is Rudiger an upgrade on an experienced Terry and is Christensen an upgrade on Zouma. We've riskely replaced some of our key players but we've lost all our depth in the process and we have more games to play.

Something must be going on in the background, It feels incredibly hard to believe that we've sold Matic to a rival without having reinforcements lined up.

The only positive out of pre-season I can see is that Michy has found some hunger and he could have a breakout season.

 

Edited July 31, 20178 yr by Sheva

9 minutes ago, Sheva said:

I think its mind blowing that we are 2 weeks away from the beginning of the season and we are weaker. Who knows if Morata is an upgrade on Diego, who knows if Bakayoko is an upgrade on Matic. Is Rudiger an upgrade on an experienced Terry and is Christensen an upgrade on Zouma. We've riskely replaced some of our key players but we've lost all our depth in the process and we have more games to play.

Something must be going on in the background, It feels incredibly hard to believe that we've sold Matic to a rival without having reinforcements lined up.

The only positive out of pre-season I can see is that Michy has found some hunger and he could have a breakout season.

 

Couldn't agree more. The squad is threadbare, surely we have some signings close otherwise the board is truly risking everything including losing Conte. We need something like 5/6 signings (or youth to actually play signicant minutes) before the end of the window just to be adequately stocked ahead of a long and winding campaign. Mindblowing.

I have to admit, I'm not very happy with that transfer. I agree that Matic doesn't perform like he did 2 seasons ago, but he still had an important part this season. He won 2 titles in 3 years with us, he offered us a lot of defensive work. Anyways, let's hope we've got a good enough replacement for him.

Thanks for everything Nemanja Matic and good luck in the new club! Good bye!

We must have something planned otherwise we look complete armatures 

15 minutes ago, Sheva said:

I think its mind blowing that we are 2 weeks away from the beginning of the season and we are weaker. Who knows if Morata is an upgrade on Diego, who knows if Bakayoko is an upgrade on Matic. Is Rudiger an upgrade on an experienced Terry and is Christensen an upgrade on Zouma. We've riskely replaced some of our key players but we've lost all our depth in the process and we have more games to play.

Something must be going on in the background, It feels incredibly hard to believe that we've sold Matic to a rival without having reinforcements lined up.

The only positive out of pre-season I can see is that Michy has found some hunger and he could have a breakout season.

 

Conte is making the squad his.  He's gotten (or getting) rid of all the mourinho players and bringing in players he has clearly asked the board for.  I imagine he has asked for more players and I'm sure the board are trying to get that done for him.  But we are also, at the same time, trying to run like a business and not just buy players with no look toward the future.  That time has passed for Chelsea...our ambitions in the transfer market are in the second tier now.  So this is the frustration...I think Conte is happier with the players he has to suit his starting 11, but he knows there is absolutely no depth so he's asking for more players/upgrades and the board is like, well OK we will try to get them but we will not overpay so prepare for some squad filler type players to come in if we can't get the ones you want.  

It's as if Conte wants to completely overhaul the squad in a matter of one transfer window...that simply cannot happen.  

With regard to Matic and Costa, these two players wanted to leave.  They were never going to play for us so we may as well sell them now and move on without them, rather than keep them in the squad and always wonder and have them lose value.  

Edited July 31, 20178 yr by TheChelsRVA

8 minutes ago, TheChelsRVA said:

Conte is making the squad his.  He's gotten (or getting) rid of all the mourinho players and bringing in players he has clearly asked the board for.  I imagine he has asked for more players and I'm sure the board are trying to get that done for him.  But we are also, at the same time, trying to run like a business and not just buy players with no look toward the future.  That time has passed for Chelsea...our ambitions in the transfer market are in the second tier now.  So this is the frustration...I think Conte is happier with the players he has to suit his starting 11, but he knows there is absolutely no depth so he's asking for more players/upgrades and the board is like, well OK we will try to get them but we will not overpay so prepare for some squad filler type players to come in if we can't get the ones you want.  

It's as if Conte wants to completely overhaul the squad in a matter of one transfer window...that simply cannot happen.  

With regard to Matic and Costa, these two players wanted to leave.  They were never going to play for us so we may as well sell them now and move on without them, rather than keep them in the squad and always wonder and have them lose value.  

This is Conte's second summer with the club. And he didn't get the players he wanted last summer, either. He also managed to win the league in between those summers so he deserves to get the players he wants and full backing from the board/owner.

40m for a 29 year old was too good to turn down. If we had the option to sell him to Juve for 30/35m we should have done that IMO. I'm not a fan of selling to rivals, well I don't think Matic is the powerhouse he was, it's still disappointed to give a player to our rivals when they never return the favour.

 

I wish him all the best as a person, but I hope he has a terrible footballing career while he's at United.

@abramovich Conte came to us last year and sure wasn't given his players I suppose but still had two key acquisitions in Kante and Luiz.  This year he has earned the right to pick players and he has...Bakayoko, Rudiger, Morata are all Conte type signings.  The problem is if we are transitioning to get all Conte's players there has to be some hold over.  We rid ourselves of Oscar, Mikel, Matic, Costa, Terry, Cuadrado (who Conte wanted to stay even), demoted Fab, etc.  We have gone on this summer to sell and loan youth players who made the squad last year.  

We are trying to overhaul in one season and I again say it is not feasible.  Chelsea are no longer a club looking to buy up players for any fee.  We need to be sensible about our business now and that is in direct opposition to the way Conte wants to work the transfer market.  If up to me, I'd say sure let's go ahead and buy Sandro for 80m, let's bring in Lukaku for another 80m, don't sell Matic for 40m to a rival, etc.  

Selling Matic for 40m is great business, think about it we can now use that for a younger central midfielder!

No idea who we're going for but I'm sure we will get one! The Chelsea board aren't completely clueless, they'll know we can't rely on just 3 midfielders for the whole season considering we will have at least 60 games to play in.

Can't help but feel with Matic gone as well, we could have offered some serious minutes to RLC or Chalobah.

As others have said surely we must have a replacement lined up makes no sense if not.

Not long now til the season starts and any new signings will have to hit the ground running. 

On the surface, a good bit of business considering his decline and the fact we have Bakayoko already.

HOwever, it does make the Chalobah sale a little more puzzling.  With the sale of Matic and Oscar we have about 100M in the "war chest" that i truly hope we use to strengthen the squad 

Who we rumoured to be after then? All I've seen is Ross Barkley and The Ox..

 

Keita from RB Leipzig would be something

 

 

Edited July 31, 20178 yr by Andreas

The day the Matic tree moved to somewhere high up in the Stretford End ... a good day ....  :-)

Kante, Bakayoko, Cesc, Pasalic and Baker is our current set.

Got a lot of criticism last year on here so can't see him changing his form by signing for united. He's looked slow in the middle with Kante so will just have to see how he does. What bothers me is the players in the side from last year that have gone/ going may have been replaced, but Conte stated with chmp lge football we would need a bigger squad. Unless there are deals in the background I think we are short by 3-4 players once the others are fit i.e. Hazard etc.

1 minute ago, evissy said:

Kante, Bakayoko, Cesc, Pasalic and Baker is our current set.

pasalic is set to go back to italy on loan. i am not mad at that, i don't think he's good enough for us. at least not yet. 

2 hours ago, mad_mac said:

On the surface, a good bit of business considering his decline and the fact we have Bakayoko already.

HOwever, it does make the Chalobah sale a little more puzzling.  With the sale of Matic and Oscar we have about 100M in the "war chest" that i truly hope we use to strengthen the squad 

apparently we've made 200m since january 2017 from player sales. not sure how true that is though.