half of those players were not in our youth team. Sturridge, Lukaku, Salah, Djilobodji, KDB all either went straight on loan or into the first team after being bought.

Ok maybe I misspoke replace youth team with “young unproven player” and also include Hector and Piazon who are In he exact same position as those you just mentioned.

On 30/08/2017 at 20:35, Barrettinator said:

Whether some of you would like to agree or not, that is the fact.

Go ahead and call me and everyone who shares this opinion "spoilt" or whatever word you may feel like using, it won't change the fact.

I'm not going to blame Emenalo here. It's not his job to negotiate deals. It's his job to spot talent and point them out to Marina to negotiate the deals and he generally does a fantastic job at that (Azpi, Lukaku 2012, Courtois, Moses, De Bruyne, Salah, etc).

The problem here is Marina Granovskaia. For all the great sales she has gotten for us and the great buys every now and then, she has taken one too many L's for us at this point.

Since 2010, we haven't succeeded in having a great summer after a title winning season. There's no reason we should be going for Djilobodji and Hector after just winning a title in 2015. And those two were panic buys, mind.

We win another title and have a big summer planned. Between January and now, we've lost about 10 first team players (Ivanovic, Terry, Mikel, Oscar, Chalobah, Loftus-Cheek, Costa, Matic, Ake, Begovic) and only replaced them with 4 (Bakayoko, Rudiger, Morata, Caballero). 5 if you add Christensen. Holes in the squad needed to be filled and we've known this since January but we've waited till the last 24 hours of the window to try to get deals over the line. This isn't even mentioning the fact that we should have tried to strengthen our starting XI to keep up with the rest of the league but we didn't. 

We're looking for a RB yet we let Conti go to AC Milan, Cancelo go to Inter Milan, Toljan go to Dortmund and Aurier to Spurs. ALL of these deals were there for the taking and guess what? They were ALL cheap! Now we're going after a Bosingwa incarnate in Rafinha. We spent months and months chasing Sandro with no assurance that he actually wanted to come and we seemingly do not have a plan B for him. Even if we did have a plan B, the price of that player will be 50% higher at this point in the window. This is the same way we spent most of the window chasing our tail with Koulibaly last summer. And Pogba the summer before. And Rooney the summer before. None of these deals ever materialized yet we spent over 2 months doing f**k all in each case. And although I prefer the option we ended up with, it says a lot about them that we bottled seemingly the easiest deal to get over the line with Lukaku by being complacent. Or should I say...incompetent.

Last summer Luiz and Alonso were panic buys as well. If it weren't for Conte working hard to get them punching above their weight, we'd have had a terrible season. I give Marina and co ZERO credit for Alonso and Luiz doing well for us last year.

If it happens once, you can just put it down to bad luck. But if it happens more than once, it's time to accept that they're incompetent and they need to go. Peter Kenyon never had problems closing deals like this. For the life of me, even Ron Gourlay got things done when we needed to.

I think it's time to hire someone who'll do a better job. It's probably not going to happen considering how close Marina is to Roman but I sure f**king hope it does. How much more of this can we take? We've fallen behind Europe's elite in the past 4 years and we keep bottling every opportunity to get back up there. I can't be the only one of this mindset.

Four weeks Wednesday since you began this thread. The same day our team dominated in Madrid,with our new signing from Madrid, being watched by the new Madrid signing they bought from us,for more money than we paid them for him.

If only you had waited and given it a few weeks before judging the board.

23 minutes ago, coco said:

Four weeks Wednesday since you began this thread. The same day our team dominated in Madrid,with our new signing from Madrid, being watched by the new Madrid signing they bought from us,for more money than we paid them for him.

If only you had waited and given it a few weeks before judging the board.

Let's get something straight. The fact that Conte can work magic with whatever he's got and he puts his head down and gets down to working once the transfer window is closed does not excuse the disorganised work the board did this past summer.

Not every manager can turn dust to gold like Conte can. Even the great Jose couldn't make it work and neither could Carlo. 

Did we get a proper RWB to displace Moses? No. We got another average player who can't seem to bench Moses so far. Yes, he gets competition there but Zappacosta is hardly lighting everything on fire so far.

Did we get the first choice LWB we'd been after for most of the summer? No. Even if not Sandro, there were other options on the market better than Alonso. At the moment, Alonso has zero competition at LWB as far as like for like replacements. It's going to be down to Conte to mix and match with Azpi or maybe Kenedy in desperate times. Hopefully we don't have to see Kenedy on the pitch in the league or CL. 

Should never have spent the entire summer chasing a target whom we weren't sure we'd get, especially because we'd spent the previous 2 summers doing the same damn thing. 

They did well with getting Morata and Bakayoko in. Rudiger is looking a fine buy as well. But let's not try to paint over their mistakes and act like it was all perfect. 

There were A LOT of RWBs we could have gotten this summer, especially young ones with potential to be world class players. Semedo for example. Barca didn't go in for him until late in the summer. We could have gotten him for a reasonable 35m. Instead we faffed about and were barely able to get Zappacosta over the line on deadline day with an extra hour's extension.

A club of this statue should never be THAT disorganised, especially when we know the value of having your summer signings have a proper pre-season with the rest of the squad in order to hit the ground running. 

There's a lot more I could say but in summary, the fact that Conte is so good that he can work magic (like last season) should not excuse our board when the f**k up. You should know better.

Your like a Cadburys Chocolate shareholder who demands shiny foil paper, instead of profits and growth.

I'm just amazed that someone with such in-depth knowledge of how the board works and the intricacies of a whole load of cross-Europe transfer negotiations would be on this forum in the first place.  Roman?  Is that you, in disguise?

Probably not.  Probably just another punter with no knowledge at all, reacting to twatter nonsense and click-bait from the good old british media.

13 minutes ago, yorkleyblue said:

I'm just amazed that someone with such in-depth knowledge of how the board works and the intricacies of a whole load of cross-Europe transfer negotiations would be on this forum in the first place.  Roman?  Is that you, in disguise?

Probably not.  Probably just another punter with no knowledge at all, reacting to twatter nonsense and click-bait from the good old british media.

It's hard for some people to admit they're wrong, but for others it's impossible.

3 hours ago, coco said:

Four weeks Wednesday since you began this thread. The same day our team dominated in Madrid,with our new signing from Madrid, being watched by the new Madrid signing they bought from us,for more money than we paid them for him.

If only you had waited and given it a few weeks before judging the board.

Let's be fair here coco, it's still only September. 

Admittedly we are all a bit fickle, but who knows how the season will finish. At the moment we look like strong contenders but it's a long season, one injury, one big dip in form and you don't know what will happen. 

I still think there is a good argument about the signing we made in the summer regarding depth but Baka & Morata have been absolutely superb, Zappercosta & Rudiger look good also. 

4 hours ago, Barrettinator said:

Did we get a proper RWB to displace Moses? No. We got another average player who can't seem to bench Moses so far.

 

Did it ever occur to you that you are at completely the wrong club? You hate everything about it, the board, the players, and probably all those of us who don't hate the club.

Edited September 29, 20178 yr by Blue Ballet

Anyone seen that brakeit character lately, seems to have completely disappeared since we started winning games. How very odd.

20 hours ago, Shotgun883 said:

Youth Team players who never made significant appearances for Chelsea yet were sold at massive profit:

Ake, KdB, Lukaku, Djiloboji, Traore, Hazard, Salah, Bertrand, Atsu, Sturridge. All in all I work that lot out to be in excess of £80 mil profit. Most of their wages were paid by loans clubs too.  Whilst I can agree with Piazon and Hector in hindsight, they will not lose us significant money yet could have been tidy profits if successful. The ultimate low risk high reward scheme in football.

I cant disagree more about player acquisition. Whilst I think it would be amazing to see us buy a true worldie, I can only think of a single first team player (Remy) we have bought in 5 years who hasn't paid us back either by a decent sell on or trophies. Neither of which we are particularly lacking in.

Hardly any of the players you mentioned were bought in as youth players... I think only Ake is youth team player from that list. The rest were bought to play in our first team but clearly were never really good enough so they immediately got loaned out

For me we addressed all our team needs very well with the exception of the wingbacks.

Goalkeeper we replaced experience with experience. We have quality depth in central defence and central midfield. Batman is getting better and a different option to morata who has started very well.

Wingback though I have not seen enough of zappacosta to see if he is any good. Kenedy backing up Alonso is a concern. We did not upgrade these positions imo. Hopefully in January we can.

7 hours ago, Barrettinator said:

Let's get something straight. The fact that Conte can work magic with whatever he's got and he puts his head down and gets down to working once the transfer window is closed does not excuse the disorganised work the board did this past summer.

Not every manager can turn dust to gold like Conte can. Even the great Jose couldn't make it work and neither could Carlo. 

Did we get a proper RWB to displace Moses? No. We got another average player who can't seem to bench Moses so far. Yes, he gets competition there but Zappacosta is hardly lighting everything on fire so far.

Did we get the first choice LWB we'd been after for most of the summer? No. Even if not Sandro, there were other options on the market better than Alonso. At the moment, Alonso has zero competition at LWB as far as like for like replacements. It's going to be down to Conte to mix and match with Azpi or maybe Kenedy in desperate times. Hopefully we don't have to see Kenedy on the pitch in the league or CL. 

Should never have spent the entire summer chasing a target whom we weren't sure we'd get, especially because we'd spent the previous 2 summers doing the same damn thing. 

They did well with getting Morata and Bakayoko in. Rudiger is looking a fine buy as well. But let's not try to paint over their mistakes and act like it was all perfect. 

There were A LOT of RWBs we could have gotten this summer, especially young ones with potential to be world class players. Semedo for example. Barca didn't go in for him until late in the summer. We could have gotten him for a reasonable 35m. Instead we faffed about and were barely able to get Zappacosta over the line on deadline day with an extra hour's extension.

A club of this statue should never be THAT disorganised, especially when we know the value of having your summer signings have a proper pre-season with the rest of the squad in order to hit the ground running. 

There's a lot more I could say but in summary, the fact that Conte is so good that he can work magic (like last season) should not excuse our board when the f**k up. You should know better.

4

Going to jump on the bandwagon because I missed this comment, we haven't even seen Zappercosta play except one game and he was exceptional. 

Moses should not be replaced anyway, he's one of the best RWB's in the world. City signed an overrated Mendy and a very overrated Kyle Walker for ridiculous fees, United don't even have any wingbacks at all besides a 32 year old Valencia. 

The only one I agree with is Sandro, we should've got that wrapped up early before Juve sold too many players, we messed around in the market, a new LWB would've been good. 

Edited September 29, 20178 yr by Slojo

Hardly any of the players you mentioned were bought in as youth players... I think only Ake is youth team player from that list. The rest were bought to play in our first team but clearly were never really good enough so they immediately got loaned out

No, if you read a post 2 later I also said change that to “young unproven player”

All of these were invested in before they became prohibitively expensive. Some were loaned out for experience and didn’t make it (MvG, Chalobah, Delac) some were loaned out and whose value increased to such a degree we had to sell at a massive profit or play when we still weren’t sure (Ake, KdB, Lukaku) and some are now first team players (Courtois, Zouma, Christiansen, Moses)

It’s like trawler fishing, to get the good fish, you have to catch a lot of stuff you didn’t actually want.

3 hours ago, dkw said:

Anyone seen that brakeit character lately, seems to have completely disappeared since we started winning games. How very odd.

On the piano with Hinge singing melodies.

17 minutes ago, Slojo said:

Going to jump on the bandwagon because I missed this comment, we haven't even seen Zappercosta play except one game and he was exceptional. 

Moses should not be replaced anyway, he's one of the best RWB's in the world. City signed an overrated Mendy and a very overrated Kyle Walker for ridiculous fees, United don't even have any wingbacks at all besides a 32 year old Valencia. 

The only one I agree with is Sandro, we should've got that wrapped up early before Juve sold too many players, we messed around in the market, a new LWB would've been good. 

No, no, Moses is absolutely NOT among the best RWBs in the world. He's a very serviceable RWB. Nothing more. Doesn't offer much going forward but is solid defensively more often than not. I certainly trust him defensively more than I do Alonso. But we were suppposed to UPGRADE in that position and we didn't. Same for LWB.

How on earth can you call Mendy overrated? Did you watch him at all last season? I'm guessing you didn't. I do agree for Walker. Nowhere near worth what he was bought for. 

3 hours ago, Blue Ballet said:

Did it ever occur to you that you are at completely the wrong club? You hate everything about it, the board, the players, and probably all those of us who don't hate the club.

I do wonder how some of you actually get on in your everyday lives. Do you go on living your lives being hyper sensitive to criticism everyday? Christ, with this mentality there's absolutely no chance you'd be able to run a successful business, for one. 

I'm sorry that my love for Chelsea doesn't mean I can't criticise how it's being run. There's no club in the world where the fanbase doesn't hold their feet to the fire. Barca, Real. Bayern, Juve, you name it. If it wasn't for the heat Barca got over the summer their board may not have seen the need to go out and get the likes of Dembele and Semedo after their catastrophic Neymar debacle. Even Real fans despite coming off back to back CL wins have criticised Perez and co for selling Morata. You don't want to know what the mood is like among the Bayern fanbase right now. I can go on and on. These are clubs that have had a lot more success than us both in history and in the past few years yet their fans still hold them accountable. But somehow if I as a Chelsea fan who wants to see this club join (and be a perpetual member of) that elite group of European club criticises the club in any way, shape or form, then it means I just haattteeee the club and everything about it. 

Trying my best to keep this civil because this was actually quite offensive to me, but with all due respect, you're being absolutely ridiculous here and you need to give your head a wobble.

6 hours ago, coco said:

It's hard for some people to admit they're wrong, but for others it's impossible.

Not one rebuttal to anything I said in reply to you but I'm supposedly wrong. Ah well, let's all just enjoy the season.

If we'd had Conte in 15/16 and he came into the season with the likes of Djilobodji and still finished in the top 4 rather than 10th, I'm sure a lot of you in here would say we'd had a successful summer. 

27 minutes ago, Shotgun883 said:

It’s like trawler fishing, to get the good fish, you have to catch a lot of stuff you didn’t actually want.

 

Are you Eric Cantona in disguise?

My opinion on the whole situation is it doesn't matter if the board signed world beaters or non-league cloggers, this is what we've got until January so let's get behind them!

1 hour ago, Slojo said:

The only one I agree with is Sandro, we should've got that wrapped up early before Juve sold too many players, we messed around in the market, a new LWB would've been good. 

Juventus lost 2 of their regular defenders, there was no way they were going to let Chelsea buy Sandro. Losing 3 players out of your defence would be terrible. 

1 minute ago, kiwi1691 said:

Juventus lost 2 of their regular defenders, there was no way they were going to let Chelsea buy Sandro. Losing 3 players out of your defence would be terrible. 

That's why I said get it wrapped up early, Juventus sold far too many players when we started bidding for Sandro, it was too late by then. 

1 hour ago, Barrettinator said:

No, no, Moses is absolutely NOT among the best RWBs in the world. He's a very serviceable RWB. Nothing more. Doesn't offer much going forward but is solid defensively more often than not. I certainly trust him defensively more than I do Alonso. But we were suppposed to UPGRADE in that position and we didn't. Same for LWB.

How on earth can you call Mendy overrated? Did you watch him at all last season? I'm guessing you didn't. I do agree for Walker. Nowhere near worth what he was bought for. 

Who's a better RWB than Moses in the Premier League right now? And I have watched Mendy I find him very overrated even in his Marseille days. 

1 hour ago, Barrettinator said:

I do wonder how some of you actually get on in your everyday lives. Do you go on living your lives being hyper sensitive to criticism everyday? Christ, with this mentality there's absolutely no chance you'd be able to run a successful business, for one. 

I'm sorry that my love for Chelsea doesn't mean I can't criticise how it's being run. There's no club in the world where the fanbase doesn't hold their feet to the fire. Barca, Real. Bayern, Juve, you name it. If it wasn't for the heat Barca got over the summer their board may not have seen the need to go out and get the likes of Dembele and Semedo after their catastrophic Neymar debacle. Even Real fans despite coming off back to back CL wins have criticised Perez and co for selling Morata. You don't want to know what the mood is like among the Bayern fanbase right now. I can go on and on. These are clubs that have had a lot more success than us both in history and in the past few years yet their fans still hold them accountable. But somehow if I as a Chelsea fan who wants to see this club join (and be a perpetual member of) that elite group of European club criticises the club in any way, shape or form, then it means I just haattteeee the club and everything about it. 

Trying my best to keep this civil because this was actually quite offensive to me, but with all due respect, you're being absolutely ridiculous here and you need to give your head a wobble.

I don't know who you are, but I'd hazard a guess that you are living in a very small universe. 

1 hour ago, Blue Ballet said:

I don't know who you are, but I'd hazard a guess that you are living in a very small universe. 

I live in a universe where people who can't take criticism tend to not be able to make themselves better and improve on their weaknesses. Maybe you're in another universe, I don't know.

40 minutes ago, Barrettinator said:

I live in a universe where people who can't take criticism tend to not be able to make themselves better and improve on their weaknesses. Maybe you're in another universe, I don't know.

Well at least that is a moderation on this..........."with this mentality there's absolutely no chance you'd be able to run a successful business, for one" I think some of those criticising you would surprise you greatly with what they can and have done. To me your approach to being a fan seems arid and narrow.These players and people you dismiss with a wave of your keyboard are people who are real and part of a living breathing thing called Chelsea football club. It has a heart and a soul and a long history in which this era is the most spectacular and extraordinary. Try knowing the value of what you have rather than just the cost or the ratings.

Edited September 29, 20178 yr by Blue Ballet