4 hours ago, Drogbaholic said:

 

In the B team I'd worry with our left side a bit defensively.

On 31/08/2017 at 08:02, abramovich said:

Newly signed players will say whatever the club's PR department will write for them. At Pool, for example, they all talk from the same script about their 'great history'.

Yep exactly, can you remember when people hated Joe Cole when he signed for Liverpool after the comments he made? Then he came out that he was forced to say the things he said http://www.101greatgoals.com/blog/joe-cole-when-i-joined-liverpool-they-told-me-they-were-the-biggest-club-in-england-but-theyre-not-any-more/

1 hour ago, WhiteWall said:

Or Morata gets a two month injury and Bats gets sent off or injured as well. 

Hazard and Pedro capable, arguably more capable than Bats, at playing up front. And January is never far away.

6 hours ago, Drogbaholic said:

We win against Leicester, move up the table and all this will be forgotten; at least until next summer. Football fans aren't exactly known for their long attention span.

No. Emenalo gets near constant abuse, so did Mikel. Chelsea fans don't seem to be a fickle bunch. I bet this wont disappear atleast until the fans are wowed by the board once. Oh when Conte departs whichever is earlier.

GI think the owner and the Board are great - they've done amazing things for the club.  Great players to watch over the last decade and a half and all those trophies!

Brilliant new stadium in the pipeline too.

Way too much drivel spoken about their performance - don't like it?  Go and support Millwall or some other sh*te penniless London outfit instead.

Edited September 1, 20178 yr by Bloo
Typo

15 hours ago, Barrettinator said:

Alright then. We've had a cracking summer. Fully expect to win the CL. No other team in the league can touch us either. Treble incoming.

There's a difference between constructive criticism and acting like our board are the second coming of Hicks and Gillett, which you are doing.

One thing i have noticed recently and it has been spoke about is clubs are no longer able to spend huge amounts of players consistently. Utd and Real are pulling in their budget too. Just look at their spending for the past few years, only Pogba and Lukaku have been the big money signings for utd but that's been over 2 seasons, not one. Lukaku was being bought from an English club so was always gonna go for big money, but apart from him they've not been spending ridiculous amounts. We have spent close to them in the past couple seasons to be fair.

Clubs all across Europe are finding it difficult to deal with these new increasing player fees. The bubble will burst soon enough and prices will go back to a normal price again because it's not sustainable even for the biggest clubs. the one benefit we do have in all this is our youth system is very good, and we have some very talented youngsters in our ranks which eventually i am confident will get a chance in the near future. it's been too long for there not to be a few youth players to break into the first team. it will mean we can still buy foreign talent for cheaper prices, while giving more chances to youngsters to bump up the english/hg quota yet having quality young english/youth players in the squad. 

Edited September 1, 20178 yr by enigma

Is the Moanalisa still in the gallery?

 Barrettinator, I totally agree with your assessment. Most all members of this board are incompetent...

The issue is not the board's dealing with incoming transfers but their consistent failure to create a culture of youth promotion.

Depth is something that should come from within. We should be making our own Drinkwaters, not signing them. Replacing Matic with Bakayoko will prove to be a shrewd decision, but selling Chalobah and Ake likely will not. The 40m or so we got for them has barely covered one replacement. When Real Madrid were buying their "second" team, they were paying 25m, not 40m for backups.

In some respects, the board and elements of the fan base take opposing sides of a shared delusion that the transfer market solves everything. 

Edited September 1, 20178 yr by SydneyChelsea

4 hours ago, SydneyChelsea said:

The issue is not the board's dealing with incoming transfers but their consistent failure to create a culture of youth promotion.

Depth is something that should come from within. We should be making our own Drinkwaters, not signing them. Replacing Matic with Bakayoko will prove to be a shrewd decision, but selling Chalobah and Ake likely will not. The 40m or so we got for them has barely covered one replacement. When Real Madrid were buying their "second" team, they were paying 25m, not 40m for backups.

In some respects, the board and elements of the fan base take opposing sides of a shared delusion that the transfer market solves everything. 

Fair comment. It is challenging as young players want to play regularly and we haven't had a history of that. Personally I think we should be setting targets in terms of minutes for perhaps three of the best youth players per season, maybe one on each line. That means there is an incentive to stay and be integrated into our style. Minutes improve players.

I do also think however the inability to identify and pursue multiple targets early in the window has hurt us. Yes Zappacosta may turn out to be a good signing. Would we have chosen him over Conti or others available earlier in the window though? The problem with pursuing Sandro or Koulibaly or Stones with limited backups until the last minute is that if you miss out many a good alternative is lost. 

All of a sudden we're turned down by Oxlade Chamberlain, Llorente and Barkley in the last hours of the window. Only so much we can do at that point.

 

Edited September 2, 20178 yr by Spiller86

Which of the top 10 teams ranked here are bursting with home grown youth talent that play on a regular basis?  To my knowledge the answer is none.

https://www.uefa.com/memberassociations/uefarankings/club/index.html

The youth mantra is a rheumy-eyed yester-year argument.  We are a top club on the global scene - youth need to play elsewhere to cut there teeth before they are good enough to help us realise our ambitions.

Very few will ever make it to the top table.  In those top 10 teams the total number of players in the squads is around 250 - that's from a global pool of millions of aspirants.

Maybe we need to just accept that the academy is a cash cow (a good one at that) that just maybe will throw up a real talent every once in a while.

 

 

 

11 hours ago, SydneyChelsea said:

The issue is not the board's dealing with incoming transfers but their consistent failure to create a culture of youth promotion.

Depth is something that should come from within. We should be making our own Drinkwaters, not signing them. Replacing Matic with Bakayoko will prove to be a shrewd decision, but selling Chalobah and Ake likely will not. The 40m or so we got for them has barely covered one replacement. When Real Madrid were buying their "second" team, they were paying 25m, not 40m for backups.

In some respects, the board and elements of the fan base take opposing sides of a shared delusion that the transfer market solves everything. 

it's frustrating because every coach seems to keep repeating "they are not ready" when they're winning fa cups, league titles, european cups every year or every other year. you cannot tell me van ginkel, loftus-cheek, baker, chalobah, tomori, juan castillo, mason mount etc are much worse than ox and barkley. the only thing those two have over our young players is premier league experience, but experience in a league doesn't make you a better player, it's your ability. 

18 minutes ago, enigma said:

it's frustrating because every coach seems to keep repeating "they are not ready" when they're winning fa cups, league titles, european cups every year or every other year. 

Because the truly special kids aren't playing youth cups...

It just proves they can beat players their age. PL experience means you can hack it against any oppo of any age, its a much better barometer of a player.

Edited September 2, 20178 yr by Stim

20 minutes ago, enigma said:

it's frustrating because every coach seems to keep repeating "they are not ready" when they're winning fa cups, league titles, european cups every year or every other year. you cannot tell me van ginkel, loftus-cheek, baker, chalobah, tomori, juan castillo, mason mount etc are much worse than ox and barkley. the only thing those two have over our young players is premier league experience, but experience in a league doesn't make you a better player, it's your ability. 

The jump from youth team football to Premier League is huge. The jump from lower reaches of the Premier League to the top bracket is similarly big. Young players make mistakes as part of their education, at under 18 level these don't get punished as much as at the elite level. It takes a brave coach to risk his own position, knowing that the difference is very fine between silverware and failure at the top. Only a culture change at boardroom level will afford this luxury and with it a lower expectation from the fans.

Personally I'd advocate every club in the Premier League had to have a minimum of two youth team products within the match day squad. Seven substitute positions should make this very easy to implement without downgrading the product.

Our “useless incompetent” board somehow managed to get 60m for a 29 old costa and replace him with a 23yr old replacement for the same fee who’s already banging in the goals 

Got 40m for a 29 old matic and replaced him with a 23 yr old who’s already a huge upgrade for less 

Got Rudiger and brought back Christensen who’ve made our defence even more solid and with more options than last year

Almost as if these highly paid experienced people know more than forum dwelling nobodies. 

I noticed some conveniently timely departures from this forum since the close of the window. What's the odds they return an hour after our final game of the season bitching about how 4 world class player's haven't been signed yet.

Edited September 24, 20178 yr by Argo

Just now, Argo said:

I noticed some coviently timely departures from this forum since the close of the window. What's the odds they return an hour after our final game of the season bitching about how 4 world class player's haven't been signed yet.

Shh, I'm enjoying the peace and quiet. Sort of peace and quiet 

In my opinion we have the best board and best owner in the league by some distance.

Emanalo and Maria, you have ruined this club. 

On 25/09/2017 at 08:22, KonaKai Blue said:

Emanalo and Maria, you have ruined this club. 

No, no they haven't.

In terms of selling players and getting good momey for players, I'd say we probably have the best board in the world. I mean looking at some of the fees we've gotten for some of our players in recent years

Luiz - 50m

Oscar - 50m

Costa - 58m

Matic - 40m (Despite selling to wrong club)

Ake - 20m (Good for a player of his age and solely based on potential)

etc etc.... and I'm sure there are many many more players who we have sold for great sums of money to unexpected clubs.

 

However saying that, the problem I have with the board is the buying of players where I think sometimes we are severely lacking or buying unecessary waste. Of course players like Papy and Hector come to mind, and last month Zappa and Drinkwater where they were both probably 4th or 5th options in their respective positions, fair enough they could come as great signings but that doesn't help the fact that they are never our first choices. Even Bakayoko, we were trying to sign Nainggolan and Vidal before him and when those deals didn't work we went for Baka (which I'm now glad we did anyway) so you can see the point I'm making. On top of that, signing constant youth players when we already have a brilliant academy churning out quality prospects year after year there isn't too much of a need to focus on buying youth players as much. I know it brings in some money, but not enough to justify putting A LOT of effort into. 

Though, I can say with confidence that since Conte has come in, we haven't bought in any first team signings that were destined to be loaned out instantly (like a papy or a Hector or one of the many others) so maybe Conte has had a great affect on the board, which goes to show that we need to put in more effort to get him to stay here for a long long time.

Ideally, in the coming transfer windows, I'd like to see more first choice players come in that the manager needs and wants, not to mention at the same time replacing older less used players with younger, better alternatives (Baka for Matic, Rudiger for Terry etc) and also finally, cut down on some of the dead wood still in our loanees. We got rid of a few the last window for decent fees also, but i think there is still a lot more to come.

TL:DR; Transfer outgoings - We're excellent

Transfer incomings - need to improve

Youth - No need to make as many youth signings as we do

Loan players - Sell or get rid of a few more dead wood players, and give our youth team players a chance to be loaned out where it will help them much more instead of signing a Piazon or a Hector and constantly have them loaned out to lower league clubs

On 25/09/2017 at 05:21, Drogbaholic said:

Our “useless incompetent” board somehow managed to get 60m for a 29 old costa and replace him with a 23yr old replacement for the same fee who’s already banging in the goals 

Got 40m for a 29 old matic and replaced him with a 23 yr old who’s already a huge upgrade for less 

Got Rudiger and brought back Christensen who’ve made our defence even more solid and with more options than last year

Almost as if these highly paid experienced people know more than forum dwelling nobodies. 

Spot bloody on. I get the frustration with the youth but Christensen is showing it is possible and the level you need to be at. Mus on da will get chances this season and Abrahams and or Ruben have the chance to show what they can do in premier league. Chalobah was a shame but presumably forced the issue himself, probably would have got some time if he stayed this season but even then if he turns out to be total class and we've got a buy back clause happy days. There's still work to do but we're continuing to build one of the top 10 football clubs in the world with a passionate and dedicated owner.

13 hours ago, JJP said:

Youth - No need to make as many youth signings as we do

Loan players - Sell or get rid of a few more dead wood players, and give our youth team players a chance to be loaned out where it will help them much more instead of signing a Piazon or a Hector and constantly have them loaned out to lower league clubs

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.

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.