Such a shame we couldn't simply have used Christensen and Ake ... and saved ourselves from this last minute.com panic buy outcome which is bound to be unsatisfactory.

To the posts above...

We are nothing like Arsenal for gods sake. We are not penny pinching and losing out on deals over 1 or 2m. I've seen us make serious bids for a cb all summer but the Italians are playing hard ball. Would you honestly be happy if we just went and spent 70m on Koulibaly????

Its gonna take silly money to sign defenders who could be no better than Papy yet all I see is people whinging.

WE ARE NOT IN EUROPE AND THIS IS NOT FIFA!!!!!

Not it's not but we are entitled to an opinion and if we fail to land additional defenders in two consecutive transfer windows I think we have a right to express our concern about the progress of the club...I'm still hopeful that new faces can come in that are of good quality but if they don't then yes, I think we need to question the performance of the those challenged with bringing in new talent...

Edited August 27, 20169 yr by doctorblue

To the posts above...

We are nothing like Arsenal for gods sake. We are not penny pinching and losing out on deals over 1 or 2m. I've seen us make serious bids for a cb all summer but the Italians are playing hard ball. Would you honestly be happy if we just went and spent 70m on Koulibaly????

Its gonna take silly money to sign defenders who could be no better than Papy yet all I see is people whinging.

WE ARE NOT IN EUROPE AND THIS IS NOT FIFA!!!!!

Argo is that you?

I have only seen posts not wanting to waste silly money on a defender. People are worried about the lack of signing a defender activity when there is all summer and leaving it to the last week. Also letting players go before replacements are even close to coming in.

No one wants money wasted on signings. So get your facts right.

How have you seen bids being made? Are you making the bids?

So it's a coincidence you refer to yourself as Bellion and there is an ex Man.United player named David Bellion?

Did i ever say they were right? Please quote me in that, the difference is i can acknowledge when they have got things right, we could sign Messi and Bonnuci this Wednesday and you're still call them clueless because they didn't sign a left back.

Who's bellion? You got your nuts loose up there?

Don't post bs like signing Bonucci - the board could sign a seen Papy and you would claim they are the best.

And you NEVER acknowledge the board's f**k ups like letting go for all the experienced back up defenders without replacing them first and thus leading to the sh*thole situation the club is in right now. Yet here you are claiming the board is trying hard and smelling of roses - get the feck off with that sh*te!

To the posts above...

We are nothing like Arsenal for gods sake. We are not penny pinching and losing out on deals over 1 or 2m. I've seen us make serious bids for a cb all summer but the Italians are playing hard ball. Would you honestly be happy if we just went and spent 70m on Koulibaly????

Its gonna take silly money to sign defenders who could be no better than Papy yet all I see is people whinging.

WE ARE NOT IN EUROPE AND THIS IS NOT FIFA!!!!!

What utter tripe .

What serious bids? Post the evidence otherwise gtfo!

.

I am completely unimpressed by the summer's transfer deals even with the signing of Kante.

If signing someone who was the best in their position last season doesn't impress you then you have an odd idea of what the club should achieve in the transfer market.

If signing someone who was the best in their position last season doesn't impress you then you have an odd idea of what the club should achieve in the transfer market.

Note the word even.

Kante is great but it's far from enough.

I know u mean well but I wish our fans would stop blaming the board. I think we've still had a fantastic window already with kante and michy who, have both (espcially michy) had a hand in helping us pick up 6 points already. Nobody expected us to sign kante and we did it. That was huge for us and the board should get massive kudos for securing that deal, but instead people point fingers at the board for not doing enough. We have already spent nearly £70m on two players and there's people who think roman is not throwing enough money at players haha, unbelievable. Fine, city and utd are able to get their targets, but their targets were sinple enough to get, whereas we've had a cb target who we made our no1, but nobody could have known it would have been this hard to negotiate with napoli. It is obvious the board are trying hard in this market so people need to relax and truat in the roman and the board. Yes they have made mistakes (like many people do) but overall we have brought in many fantastic players over the years thanks to them.

This would be a good window in many a recent season. The problem lies in that a few under par windows and last summers mess mean that we have allowed the squad to deteriorate a bit too far in terms of depth quality and age. So to rectify that in one summer would mean an unbelievable outlay.

All that said, while the two signings made are good signings (fingers crossed) another defender looks vital to our hopes of breaking back into the top four. Sure, we might yet win the league with the existing back four playing all season, but in my eyes that would make it closer to a Leicester surprise rather than an early Abramovic era victory.

Edited August 27, 20169 yr by Snedger

Sorry can't disagree with you more...we finished 10th last year...a year where JM defensive targets weren't bought and it would seem that yet another window will go by without improvements coming in...yet we're happy for good players in that position to go out on loan...sorry but that's not good sound business

I've read your post and re-read my own and I'd say you could disagree a whole lot more. I think two 30 million pound players would be good but due to allowing the squad to steadily deteriorate over the last few years has meant that in the greater scheme of things this isn't a good window. But who buys 6 or 7 30+ million pound players in one summer?

Those who want to compete with the best teams in EPL and Europe and have a lot of catching up to do...Kante and Bats are good signings but there needed to be more...and we shouldn't have compromised ourselves by sending out squad cover before replacements have come in...that's what Napoli have done...plus I'm a little afraid that we're becoming too Italio-centric with our CB search...

Edited August 27, 20169 yr by doctorblue

Not signing a defender this window has to be the dumbest move in the history of transfer windows. After all of last year, after all our leaking goals, how on earth can anyone think otherwise. We will be dipping into the youth squad come December

Edited August 27, 20169 yr by TheChelsRVA

considering we're looking at young central defenders who are unproven with handling the english game, i would rather nurture tomori and/or clarke-salter into first team players. i honestly know nothing of koulibaly, romagnoli etc before now and it seems neither have done a huge amount to be considered top class centre backs. i understand the inexperience standpoint from the coach, but romagnoli is 20/21 years old, zouma was 19 (when he started for us) and christensen was late teens when playing in bundesliga, stones 19/20 when a regular starter for everton and the list goes on. do we really have such lack of faith in tomori and jcs not to give them a go? best time to break them in imo. 

We are going to pay over the odds for an okay defender.

All this criticism of Emanalo yet not a word on Marina who actually handles transfer negotiations, I wonder why?? Hmmmmm.....

Nonetheless it's just a spoilt fan base we have now desperate on someone and something to moan about.

 

Quote

How much longer can Roman Abramovich tolerate Chelsea’s transfer market failures?

http://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/2016/8/30/12705482/abramovich-chelsea-transfer-window-mismanagement

7 minutes ago, KonaKai Blue said:

All this criticism of Emanalo yet not a word on Marina who actually handles transfer negotiations, I wonder why?? Hmmmmm.....

No one actually has a clue how things work behind the scenes?

26 minutes ago, Socrates said:

 

http://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/2016/8/30/12705482/abramovich-chelsea-transfer-window-mismanagement

There is so much crap on that site, and the comment section is usually toxic. 

23 minutes ago, Socrates said:

 

http://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/2016/8/30/12705482/abramovich-chelsea-transfer-window-mismanagement

Soc - thx for posting that opinion piece from WAGNH - a provocative but thoughtful piece as are the comments that follow it - one comment on the piece particularly struck me & aligns with my thoughts on the current defence imbroglio which is why Conte doesn't want to start Fab in certain games. Anyway, this fella/sheila's (TheInsideJob) rather apposite comments on the on-going saga are as follows:

"You have made one assumption in your article which is RA is willing to sanction fees of 70Mil 80Mil pounds for the likes of K2. I’m pretty sure people like Maria has got to refer to RA if the player we intent to buy has a price above a defined threshold. In the case of K2 I’m also pretty sure RA pulled the plug on the deal and I agree with RA. While there is a dire need to upgrade of CB options it makes no sense to pay figures north of 50Mil Pounds for a player of K2’s skill level. 50Mil Pounds is already a ridiculous number to pay.

Our reluctance to spend really big on players appears to me like RA having learned his lesson after getting his fingers burnt badly with the Shevchenko and Torres deals. That is 80Mil pounds just in transfer fee and we plus wages that is north of a 100Mil Pounds money down the drain. A 100Mil Pounds. That is a lot of money. The kind of money that will enable you and me to retire and leave out the rest of our lives in comfort.

On the John Stones deal, wasn’t it an Everton based reporter who first made our pursuit public? It wasn’t Chelsea that made this public IIRC. I’m also not sure if we kind of pissed Everton off in the negotiations. Everton was asking for 50Mil Pounds. We said we could pay up to 40Mil Pounds? I don’t think that is unfair on Chelsea’s part.

Of course then Everton made a public statement about how we are a big bad horrible club. Everton and Martinez were the only guys making public statements throughout the entire time we were after Stones. They would of course say that in public to show their fans that they can hold onto their important players from big clubs like Chelsea. I suspect Everton promised John Stones that if he stayed one more year they would let him go the next year if another big bid came in. Man City were willing to pay what Everton was asking for and so Everton decided to let him go.

We learned our lesson. We applied what we learned with the K2 deal. They asked for 30, 40, 50 and then 60Mil Euros. We matched their asking price right from the start up to 50Mil Euros. The difference was Napoli was taking us on a magic carpet ride and K2 and his agent was using Chelsea to broker a better deal for him self. The John Stones saga and the K2 sagas are different. If Napoli was willing to sell we would have got the deal done 8 weeks ago. I’m sure of that. I also suspect there was no real desire on K2’s part to join us. He never pushed for a move. John Stones at least put in a transfer request.

Where I agree with you is the lack of back up options once it became clear that the K2 deal was not going to happen. We knew that Mustafi was available. The club did not rate him so we never made any attempt to buy. The wisdom of that decision will become apparent in the next 10 to 12 weeks. Maksimovic is a strange one. The players wants to leave and he has forced the club into selling him. Why are we not going in for him I don’t know. I’m not privy to the background negotiations so I cannot really answer that question. Is he going to move to Napoli and therefore that would free up K2 to sign for us? Is there indeed truth in the reports that Maksi only wants to go to Napoli and does not want to come to Chelsea. Things will become clearer in the next 48 hours.

For me personally, I have made peace with the idea that we are not going to sign any CB this transfer window and it will be even harder to do that in the January window. So any CB signings will be a surprise for me."

by TheInsideJob on Aug 30, 2016 | 5:46 AM

I'm likewise resigned & I think that we must take this opportunity & this season to blood/rotate - have some bloody faith - in our youth as far as the defence is concerned. JT has this season alone to mentor/teach these kids.

7 minutes ago, kiwi1691 said:

There is so much crap on that site, and the comment section is usually toxic. 

don't think it's the site that's crap..

I wish we had just kept some of the young men and gave them their chance when our main first team players get injured etc. 

It's all well and good saying we are not going to pay over the odds for certain players. But if we had paid the 30m for Luke Shaw and the 45m for John Stones I reckon the Board would be pretty pleased right now at picking up two promising English defenders for the next ten years. 

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