Levene is trying hard to reassure the impatient fans that everything is under control, but all I've got from this article is that we can't compete with Manc clubs when it comes to transfers. "Chelsea, who are living within their means" - that line made me wonder if we're turning into Arsenal and that sends shivers down my spine.

http://www.umaxit.com/index.php/columns/chelseas-transfer-caution-isnt-reason-to-panic

 

If you’re panicked by Chelsea’s lack of signings just days after the FA Cup final, then this is going to be a very long summer, I’m afraid. The domestic transfer window opens on 9 June, while most European trading does not commence until 1 July.

That latter date is the one after which teams can register players with UEFA: so, effectively, any deal done before then is still only an agreement-in-principle until it has received their rubber stamp. So why are we already hearing that Manchester City, in particular, are singing and releasing a whole load of players?Window open or shut, teams do deals all year around. For example: the deal to take N’Golo Kante to Chelsea was, by most accounts, pretty much finalised with Leicester City by Easter of last year. If that raises the question of how much involvement Antonio Conte had in the move: he had his feet under the Blues’ table by last February.

Just the same: this summer, Chelsea will already have deals in place for some of the players going in and out over coming months. But why are Manchester City shouting about all this early business, while there is radio silence from Chelsea? Put simply: there are other factors at play.

In Spanish football, the two big clubs’ signings are entirely driven by the cycle of Board elections. Real and Barcelona’s top executives use the recruitment of Galacticos as a vote-for-me exercise. Premier League clubs are structured differently, but the timing of player signings can also be used to please the public.

Spanish-run City have just come off the back of a pretty disastrous season. They need to sell season tickets, and have a large overseas fanbase to keep happy. There is also the issue of Sheikh Mansour’s personal standing.

Chelsea do not need to win hearts and minds: they won the league, have (for the most part) happy fans, will sell out every seat in Stamford Bridge in the coming season, and have an owner who likes to keep a low profile. The way transfers work at Chelsea has remained much the same through several changes of management. The first team coach and Technical Director make shortlists of players to target. There are likely to be players Conte and Michael Emenalo agree upon; while there are also likely to be some that one or other will want to avoid, for whatever reason. There will be several players in each target position, and these will be prioritised according to a number of factors.

There is an expectation, among the FIFA-playing public, that it is as simple as going to the players with the best stats: but availability, price, the likelihood of being a good fit within the group – are all as important. Chelsea, who are living within their means right now, were never in for Paul Pogba over the summer: because, although he was highly rated, they knew they would not be able to match United’s bidding.

If the primary target in a position cannot be secured, they move to the second on the list. But, at any give time, they may be working on several different priorities of player – because transfer window time is precious. David Luiz was not Conte’s top choice of central defender – the word is that he would have liked Leonardo Bonucci. But the Brazilian was sounded-out much earlier in last summer’s window than his deadline day signing would lead you to believe. And Luiz has arguably turned out to be the Premier League’s stand-out defender of the last season.

Marcos Alonso, meanwhile, was a bit of a punt: recommended by Conte late in the day, when other targets failed to materialise. And he too has turned out as a perfectly acceptable option. The paucity of signings in summer 2015 was due for the most part to Jose Mourinho’s key targets being unavailable (remember the breakdown in negotiations between Chelsea and Everton over John Stones), and the manager failing to offer-up any alternatives. Which is how Emenalo ended up signing Papy Djilobodji on deadline day: an investment player, who eventually yielded more than twice what he cost. And that lack of communication within Chelsea was a clear precursor of what happened to Mourinho later the same year.

Chelsea will be hard at work pursuing targets. And they will make several key signings this summer – including players who go on to be mainstays of the side for years to come. But if you’re expecting them to chase Guardiola’s supermarket sweep over coming days, you may be best advised to get back on your games console for the next month or two.

Edited June 1, 20179 yr by abramovich

Much of this has already been discussed. Mourinho failing to produce alternatives, that the manager AND Emenalo together create a list of players etc. Appfently Kanté was also a "done deal" for a while before we got wind of it. What I do find concerning is that we seem to fail at getting most of our top targets and that to me is a concern. You can blab about thibgs taking time all you want, but we seem to always get our signings in later then other teams and often they miss out on a lot of preseason and thats not ideal

It's worrying that both under Jose and Conte we have failed to provide the managers with any of their first choice players. Scrambling about last minute to bring names in and under Jose it was a train wreck while we were in luck with Conte.

seems to me we are not at the same level as some in this regard which is highly disappointing 

well considering we have a stadium which will need to be paid for by roman himself, of course we will be tightening the budget. it doesn't mean we can't compete for all honours, but city and utd just go and throw money at anything hoping they can become the new real madrid and barcelona. it will only work for so long. 

We're clearly behind two manc clubs, even if we're talking domestically. Nowadays even top Serie A clubs start spending big, plus you've got your usual suspects in Real, Barca, Bayern and PSG. Now, if we can't compete with top tier clubs for prime targets, we're bound to be left behind and eventually turn into Arsenal/Liverpool version of the last decade.

What really bothers me is that we actually took FFP seriously and decided to do things the right way. I'd imagine the club really bought into the whole thing. I can understand United spending like there's no tomorrow, we all know how they made their money. But what about City? There's no way in hell they can afford to keep spending and stay within the guidelines and yet they do and nothing happens. 

1 hour ago, Xfaxtor said:

What I do find concerning is that we seem to fail at getting most of our top targets and that to me is a concern. You can blab about thibgs taking time all you want, but we seem to always get our signings in later then other teams and often they miss out on a lot of preseason and thats not ideal

We seem to have taken a bit of a hard nosed approach to negotiating transfers in the last few years, flat out refusing to meet valuations of players. 

Which is fine, if we don't think John Stones (for example) is worth £50m then that's the club's choice not to pay that much. But we seem to be dragging out negotiations rather than just walking away, which in turn means that any players we have lined up as an alternative don't get signed until really late in the window or possibly not at all. 

2 hours ago, enigma said:

well considering we have a stadium which will need to be paid for by roman himself, of course we will be tightening the budget. it doesn't mean we can't compete for all honours, but city and utd just go and throw money at anything hoping they can become the new real madrid and barcelona. it will only work for so long. 

Pretty much this. Teams like Utd and City are part of the reason why all these players are becoming ridiculously overpriced. Tbf to Utd they've only really been doing that since Fergie left, whereas man sh*tty have been doing this since the arab money

26 minutes ago, JJP said:

Pretty much this. Teams like Utd and City are part of the reason why all these players are becoming ridiculously overpriced. Tbf to Utd they've only really been doing that since Fergie left, whereas man sh*tty have been doing this since the arab money

Yeah, we've definitely never paid over the odds for players since Roman bought the club... Especially in the first few years. 

2 minutes ago, ForeverCarefree said:

Yeah, we've definitely never paid over the odds for players since Roman bought the club... Especially in the first few years. 

We may have overpaid for a couple, but certainly not a ridiculous amount. 

3 minutes ago, JJP said:

We may have overpaid for a couple, but certainly not a ridiculous amount. 

Exactly, Torres, Sheva and SWP. I seriously doubt there is a viable 4th option.

Also, our highest transfer is 50mil. After which, we have a lot of 30/32 millions. but not many where we overpaid.

In this current team, how many players have we overpaid for? None according to me. Infact if we see the market evaluations and the price we bought them for, you will see that most are on par or ridiculously low (hazard, Costa, Kante, tibo, GC, azpi)

14 minutes ago, didierforever said:

Exactly, Torres, Sheva and SWP. I seriously doubt there is a viable 4th option.

Ferreria at £14m back in 2004 was pretty hefty. 

£24m for Essien raised a few eyebrows. 

£8m on Del Horno 

£17m on Bosingwa 

£15m on Veron 

£10m on Scott Parker 

£18m on Zhirkov 

 

It's all subjective how much a player is "worth" and I think we look at over club's signings through Royal Blue tinted specs. 

22 minutes ago, ForeverCarefree said:

Ferreria at £14m back in 2004 was pretty hefty. 

£24m for Essien raised a few eyebrows. 

£8m on Del Horno 

£17m on Bosingwa 

£15m on Veron 

£10m on Scott Parker 

£18m on Zhirkov 

 

It's all subjective how much a player is "worth" and I think we look at over club's signings through Royal Blue tinted specs. 

 

Essien turned out to be one of our best signings and Ferreria was great for us also, so how exactly did we overpay for them? Bosingwa was also okay for us. 

You don't seem to understand that when players are usually this low price, then the chance of them "not living upto the price" is low. 

 

Then you look at a team like City... Stones, Otamendi, Mangala, Dimechelis, Sterling, Bony... Just to name a FEW. All of them were WAY overpriced and all of them have produced poor displays. Compared to us paying £8m on Del Horno, the amount City have paid for players who haven't even produced that much is way way WAY worse than us

 

2 minutes ago, JJP said:

 

Essien turned out to be one of our best signings and Ferreria was great for us also, so how exactly did we overpay for them? 

Because a signing turns out well that does not mean that you didn't overpay initially. 

Buying a dud is different to overpaying. 

You cite £8m for Del Horno but in the market at the time he was bought, £8m for a fullback was a huge sum of money. It's contextual to when the transfer took place. 

1 hour ago, ForeverCarefree said:

Yeah, we've definitely never paid over the odds for players since Roman bought the club... Especially in the first few years. 

 It doesn't bother me that City or any other club overpays for their transfer targets, we did the same in mid - 2000s and inflated the market back then, too.

My problem with it is that they are clearly playing by their own rules. When we were overpaying, it was legit because there were no FFP in place and any other club owner could have done the same. In fact many did, long before Roman arrived at the scene, Jack Walker, Bernar Tapie etc.  Once the FFP was introduced we got in line and made sure that we're run as business. City didn't and still don't. The irony of it is that the UEFA came up with the whole FFP concept under pressure from the old European elite (Real, Bayern, Barca, MU) in order to stop Chelsea. And now PSG and City wipe their asses with these rules and are seemingly able to get away with it, too.

Edited June 1, 20179 yr by abramovich

45 minutes ago, ForeverCarefree said:

Ferreria at £14m back in 2004 was pretty hefty. 

£24m for Essien raised a few eyebrows. 

£8m on Del Horno 

£17m on Bosingwa 

£15m on Veron 

£10m on Scott Parker 

£18m on Zhirkov 

 

It's all subjective how much a player is "worth" and I think we look at over club's signings through Royal Blue tinted specs. 

Ferreira was part of the team which won EL and CL back 2 back. 

IIRC, essien was very much coveted by a lot of clubs. Still 24mil was not that high. He was nominated for the 2005 FIFA World Player of the Year Award.

I agree about Bosingwa. But 8mil, 15mil are hardly overpaying. Parker was a young english player and decently rated, thus the extra english fee.

Point being the amount of money that we "overpaid" by is minimal (you can say GC was not worth 7mil with just 6months on his contract and being in a relegation bound team), but these are all highly highly acceptable figures. The figures by which city/united overpay (Stones for 50, thats 30 more than his value will ever be) is ,in my opinion, a massive factor of what has actually brought about the sudden inflation in market.  

Edited June 1, 20179 yr by didierforever

29 minutes ago, didierforever said:

Ferreira was part of the team which won EL and CL back 2 back. 

IIRC, essien was very much coveted by a lot of clubs. Still 24mil was not that high. He was nominated for the 2005 FIFA World Player of the Year Award.

I agree about Bosingwa. But 8mil, 15mil are hardly overpaying. Parker was a young english player and decently rated, thus the extra english fee.

Point being the amount of money that we "overpaid" by is minimal (you can say GC was not worth 7mil with just 6months on his contract and being in a relegation bound team), but these are all highly highly acceptable figures. The figures by which city/united overpay (Stones for 50, thats 30 more than his value will ever be) is ,in my opinion, a massive factor of what has actually brought about the sudden inflation in market.  

 

100% agree with this. Slightly overpaying by a few million and then paying 50m for the likes of Stones and Sterling when they aren't anywhere near that are completely different

Some of you arent looking at what the norm was at the time. We completely flooded the market and threw obscene amounts of money around. Our total spend from those years completely dwarfed anyone at the time. We changed the game as far as spending goes, complaining that other teams now do the same is a bit rich

54 minutes ago, Xfaxtor said:

Some of you arent looking at what the norm was at the time. We completely flooded the market and threw obscene amounts of money around. Our total spend from those years completely dwarfed anyone at the time. We changed the game as far as spending goes, complaining that other teams now do the same is a bit rich

100%.  Abramovich changed the landscape of the transfer market and basically single-handedly is responsible for FFP.  We've been trying to play by the rules recently, but it really makes me laugh when people complain about our spending in a negative way.  We've got one of the best owners in all of team sports when it comes to the willingness to fork over cash to better the club, be it players, managers, stadiums...etc.  

Fairly simple summer soloution :

In

Tolliso 

Lacazette

Bernadeschi

Christensen 

Kyle Walker/Conti

 

Out 

Costa 

Willian 

Zouma 

Traore 

Kennedy

 

All in's are realistically achievable 

 

the outs provide good fee's 

 

the result is a much better squad AND first team, not a ridiculous net spend and bring down the average age of the first team it's perfect. 

 

Courtois 

 

Azpi 

Luiz (c) 

Christensen

 

Walker

Alonso 

 

Tolisso 

Kante 

 

Hazard 

Pedro/Bernadeschi

 

Lacazette 

 

Edited June 1, 20179 yr by I Am Gay 4 Diegod

the problem with player prices increasing is it will only benefit the likes of utd, barcelona and real madrid who are commercial giants with huge financial revenue. i don't know city's financial situation, but they're not on the other top 3 clubs level at the moment. i don't think even juventus or bayern compete with those other three clubs, and bayern have always been a club to rely on youth system and making shrewd signings for lower fees. unless a player at chelsea becomes the next big thing and our popularity grows tenfold, our commercial/marketing revenue will still be behind the top 3/4 for a few years yet. 

3 minutes ago, enigma said:

the problem with player prices increasing is it will only benefit the likes of utd, barcelona and real madrid who are commercial giants with huge financial revenue. i don't know city's financial situation, but they're not on the other top 3 clubs level at the moment. i don't think even juventus or bayern compete with those other three clubs, and bayern have always been a club to rely on youth system and making shrewd signings for lower fees. unless a player at chelsea becomes the next big thing and our popularity grows tenfold, our commercial/marketing revenue will still be behind the top 3/4 for a few years yet. 

City have got those sponsership deals from their owners companies though, to pump even more money in.

It's a good job we got Hazard when we did, could you imagine how much we would have had to pay if we went in for him a year or two later ?

7 hours ago, Chelsbear said:

It's worrying that both under Jose and Conte we have failed to provide the managers with any of their first choice players. Scrambling about last minute to bring names in and under Jose it was a train wreck while we were in luck with Conte.

seems to me we are not at the same level as some in this regard which is highly disappointing 

By the looks of it the difference was the manager's which is what i suspected all along, Conte had contingency plan's right down to Z wereas Jose was only interested in plan A. The board should have overruled Jose as soon as Stones was clearly out of reach but Jose was more responsible for that summer than the narrative suggested.

We've got 150m from the PL alone.

 

 

Nike adds 60m per annum, Yokohama 40m, Carabao another 10m, don't know about the rest. Oscar, Cuadrado, Bamford, Atsu, Begovic, Solanke sales brought in over 100m. Add to it the CL money, plus whatever we'll get from future outgoing transfers and savings on a wage bill after JT, Ivanovic and Mikel's departures and it doesn't look like too shabby.

2 hours ago, I Am Gay 4 Diegod said:

Fairly simple summer soloution :

In

Tolliso 

Lacazette

Bernadeschi

Christensen 

Kyle Walker/Conti

 

Out 

Costa 

Willian 

Zouma 

Traore 

Kennedy

 

All in's are realistically achievable 

 

the outs provide good fee's 

 

the result is a much better squad AND first team, not a ridiculous net spend and bring down the average age of the first team it's perfect. 

 

Courtois 

 

Azpi 

Luiz (c) 

Christensen

 

Walker

Alonso 

 

Tolisso 

Kante 

 

Hazard 

Pedro/Bernadeschi

 

Lacazette 

 

I guess you're not that gay for Diegod afterall seeing as you want to ship him  off for Lacazette. What will your new username be?

Edited June 1, 20179 yr by Joust