11 minutes ago, Kentonio said:

How many is a number of years? Does it include the two league titles we've won in the last three years?

Seriously, I can understand people being concerned about things, butif the board were so incompetent, then they're doing a pretty impressive job of hiding it behind a giant pile of trophies.

All good Things come to an end.......last season was awesome thanks to Conte and his tactics.......not because the board backed his ass. And you can only get so Lucky for so long riding like this.  we have big big issues at our Club ......the current policy along with these people will see us go Down and Down. But they too are f**ked now......this is not 2007, you can only press that reset button so many times before you are either f**ked or out of quality managers........all the while Clubs all around us show ambition and hunger......willing to spend and back their manager........all this are bound to bite you hard come soon.

6 minutes ago, atomis said:

All good Things come to an end.......last season was awesome thanks to Conte and his tactics.......not because the board backed his ass. And you can only get so Lucky for so long riding like this.  we have big big issues at our Club ......the current policy along with these people will see us go Down and Down. But they too are f**ked now......this is not 2007, you can only press that reset button so many times before you are either f**ked or out of quality managers........all the while Clubs all around us show ambition and hunger......willing to spend and back their manager........all this are bound to bite you hard come soon.

Well you seem to be starting from the automatic assumption that things are failing. When I look at our actual season on season results, this seems to me to be one of our better times, not one of our worst ones. So how is the club strategy and policy failing? What concrete evidence do we have (setting aside gut instincts and suchlike) that anything is actually going wrong over the long term?

People point at players like Bakayoko, Drinkwater and Barkley as 'average' and some kind of proof of a lack of ambition. Cahill was supposedly average and a crappy buy and he won everything there is to win with us. Dave was a £7m Spanish bloke we'd never heard of, and he hasn't done bad has he? We might not have matched United and City pound for pound, but we haven't exactly skimped recently. We just smashed our transfer record and bought a hugely talented £70m striker if I'm not mistaken?

Oh and just a final point on Conte and his winning the league for us. Who exactly was it who hired Conte in the first place?

Edited January 15, 20188 yr by Kentonio

I was talking to my arsenal mate who said he wasn' that worried as he said Liverpool and utd were poor a few seasons ago. 

Which fair enough is true but like is said to him was that:

If Chelsea and arsenal don' bolster their squads with decent signing in the correct positions in this window, then come the summer both mancs and Liverpool will bolster again and leave us Londoners behind and so will spurs if they get 200mil for kane as that's 3 top class positions in an already established team.

For me we need to wing backs either a left attacking mid to let hazard play more central or Sanchez lol. 

I don't get the Barkley signing either yes he's good but he doesn't exacty fit our formation.

Now talk of Carol with bastu going the other way WTF!!! moratas not scoring neithers batsu so why bring in another dud! 

 

Now we got rid of eminalo and that at the time was a good thing but what is going on now is seriously worrying me. We can all see there is clear positions need filled even conte but we are looking at players that are just not good enough or not what we need.

1 minute ago, Kentonio said:

Well you seem to be starting from the automatic assumption that things are failing. When I look at our actual season on season results, this seems to me to be one of our better times, not one of our worst ones. So how is the club strategy and policy failing? What concrete evidence do we have (setting aside gut instincts and suchlike) that anything is actually going wrong over the long term?

People point at players like Bakayoko, Drinkwater and Barkley as 'average' and some kind of proof of a lack of ambition. Cahill was supposedly average and a crappy buy and he won everything there is to win with us. Dave was a £7m Spanish bloke we'd never heard of, and he hasn't done bad has he? We might not have matched United and City pound for pound, but we haven't exactly skimped recently. We just smashed our transfer record and bought a hugely talented £70m striker if I'm not mistaken?

We got him for 58m I think? Ohh yes we have got some very good players for cheap......but you cant get an Azpi or Kante every season.......does not Work that way sadly. Im talking about the overall Picture here, and if that Picture continue then yes imo we are bound to get bitten badly. Its not looking good at all......must we lose conte before we wake up? Must the likes of eden and tibo leave before Roman gets tough? And now we are working to get andy caroll on loan haha.....is it that bad? Or maybe desperate? No matter what you must admit it does look a bit out of place. 

3 minutes ago, atomis said:

We got him for 58m I think? Ohh yes we have got some very good players for cheap......but you cant get an Azpi or Kante every season.......does not Work that way sadly. Im talking about the overall Picture here, and if that Picture continue then yes imo we are bound to get bitten badly. Its not looking good at all......must we lose conte before we wake up? Must the likes of eden and tibo leave before Roman gets tough? And now we are working to get andy caroll on loan haha.....is it that bad? Or maybe desperate? No matter what you must admit it does look a bit out of place. 

I can see why people think there's something wrong, but I think the picture is being distorted, mainly by a combination of City's spending and amazing season so far. Like right now for instance, we're unbeaten in 10 games and have only conceded 4 goals in that time. Obviously there's been far too many draws in there, but its hardly a picture of disaster, yet a lot of poeple are reacting as if we were on a 5 game losing streak. With our transfers, we have a shiny new striker, some great squad additions (which we were saying endlessly last season that we desperately needed) and a young defender come back off loan who looks a match for pretty much any CB in the country. Despite this, City spent a quite insane amount of money and so our spending looks inadequate. 

My point being, if you just look at us and ignore City for a minute, the picture really isn't that bleak. It could certainly be better of course, we'd all love to see Sandro signing for one thing, but we're a long way from a crisis as far as I can see. Oh and if you ignore the tabloids and listen to what Eden and Thibault are actually saying themselves, they're both intending to sign new contracts.

5 hours ago, Kentonio said:

In the last 2 years we've brought in Kante, Rudiger, Morata (who is quality despite his current lean spell), and some good squad players with the likes of Drinkwater, Alonso etc. Bakayoko has had a rocky start, but he's a high potential youngster who could very well turn out to be a good buy. Oh and Christiansen has come back and been superb.

Oh and we've won the league twice in three years..

If this is a crisis, then sign me up for some more of them. So we might bring in Carroll for 6 months. So? He'll enable Morata to rest and get back into form, and we're not winning the league this year anyway.

Sure this isn't one of those 'YAY! THE WORLD IS BLUE!!' periods for us, but come on lets not go all RAWK. WE'll come out of our current dip in form and finish comfortably in the top 4, and hopefully pick up a cup or two as well. 

Carefree.

It's nothing like RAWK on here. If you think threads are bad on here look on other forums, even TalkChelsea for instance, they're telling Bakayoko to f**k off out of the club. http://forum.talkchelsea.net/topic/22835-14-tiemoue-bakayoko/?page=39 

And the bottom paragraph is where people are concerned, are these our expectations now? Top 4 finish and maybe a cup? That's why people are worrying. You just made a point that we've won 2 league titles in 3 years, okay then why are we content with a 4th place finish? Why is Conte unhappy? Why isn't he getting the players he wanted? It looks quite clear that Barkley was not his first choice and he brought up Barkley's nationality. 

There's a horseshoe of being pessimistic and deluded, I think there are definitely concerns here, yes conveniently they do come up after we go into a sour patch but nonetheless, there are concerns, then there are melodramatic people where it's all doom and gloom which just isn't helping anything. And to say Bakayoko has had a rocky start is putting it mildly, but I'm not going to get into that on here. 

1 minute ago, Slojo said:

And the bottom paragraph is where people are concerned, are these our expectations now? Top 4 finish and maybe a cup? That's why people are worrying. You just made a point that we've won 2 league titles in 3 years, okay then why are we content with a 4th place finish? Why is Conte unhappy? Why isn't he getting the players he wanted? It looks quite clear that Barkley was not his first choice and he brought up Barkley's nationality. 

If we have to have a few years of top 4 and maybe a cup or two while our owners spend a billion quid on the new stadium, then yes that seems reasonable to me. As for Conte not being happy, of course he isn't. We won the league last year, and this year he's way behind City. That's not going to make any top manager happy, but if its the price of our overall development as a club then it seems a price worth paying to me. Without the new stadium, we won't develop the financial revenues to be able to compete with United and City. Is that what we want, in exchange for maybe picking up one or two more titles short term and then falling behind long term?

5 hours ago, EdinburghBlue said:

Better delivery? Moses can’t cross the road. Moses had a terrific season last year but that was more the exception than the rule IMO. Walker is miles better than Moses.

He can run more miles that's about it, miles better? Never in a million years. This is the same Kyle Walker who can't defend or cross, delivery isn't just about crossing, Moses got past his fullback more than Kyle Walker did and Kyle Walker is faster.

http://www.squawka.com/players/victor-moses/stats#performance-score#chelsea-(current)#english-barclays-premier-league#8#season-2016/2017#641#all-matches#1-38#by-match

http://www.squawka.com/players/kyle-walker/stats#performance-score#tottenham-hotspur#english-barclays-premier-league#8#season-2016/2017#641#all-matches#1-38#by-match

Moses had by far the superior stats besides assists but he scored more goals and won more games with Chelsea. 

5 minutes ago, Kentonio said:

If we have to have a few years of top 4 and maybe a cup or two while our owners spend a billion quid on the new stadium, then yes that seems reasonable to me. As for Conte not being happy, of course he isn't. We won the league last year, and this year he's way behind City. That's not going to make any top manager happy, but if its the price of our overall development as a club then it seems a price worth paying to me. Without the new stadium, we won't develop the financial revenues to be able to compete with United and City. Is that what we want, in exchange for maybe picking up one or two more titles short term and then falling behind long term?

1

That clearly isn't/wasn't the reason though, because Conte was unhappy before the season even kicked off. 

And when are the stadium plans going through? I've been hearing about stadium plans for the past 8 years and nothing has came of it, still reports of 1 billion being spent but it's being blocked again. This isn't a good argument against why people shouldn't worry. 

1 minute ago, Slojo said:

That clearly isn't/wasn't the reason though, because Conte was unhappy before the season even kicked off. 

And when are the stadium plans going through? I've been hearing about stadium plans for the past 8 years and nothing has came of it, still reports of 1 billion being spent but it's being blocked again. This isn't a good argument against why people shouldn't worry. 

Well, its only my personal opinion of course, but I just don't see much to worry about whether the stadium starts yet or not. It'll be interesting to see how the second half of the season pans out though. If we don't finish top 4 then that would obviously be very worrying.

1 minute ago, Kentonio said:

Well, its only my personal opinion of course, but I just don't see much to worry about whether the stadium starts yet or not. It'll be interesting to see how the second half of the season pans out though. If we don't finish top 4 then that would obviously be very worrying.

I strongly doubt we'll finish outside of top 4, my worries are nothing to do with the here and now, it's the longterm mostly. It's the stadium plans & the constant sacking of managers. How many more years can we go through sacking managers, we are probably paying as much compensation as we are on transfers on players. 

1 minute ago, Slojo said:

I strongly doubt we'll finish outside of top 4, my worries are nothing to do with the here and now, it's the longterm mostly. It's the stadium plans & the constant sacking of managers. How many more years can we go through sacking managers, we are probably paying as much compensation as we are on transfers on players. 

I do agree about the manager thing, its way past the point of silliness. We're genuinely reaching the point of running out of top class managers who we could hire, which is borderline insanity. I do get the impression though that the club know that too. They held on with Jose to the point where relegation actually looked possible, and its not the club trying to push Conte out currently. At the same time I don't think they should just hand him whatever he asks for if it could be detrimental to our long term development. 

I would dearly love us to get a manager in and actually keep them for 5 years or so though..

Because we don't know how to integrate youth players into the team, we end up spending a fortune on average squad players instead of using that money to buy quality players to improve the team. 

If the club wants to compete and still be financially prudent, we need to learn how to use some of our youth for squad cover. We sold Chalobah and went and bought Bakayoko who doesn't look any better, to put it mildly. The club looks rudderless, and I fear we might see more turbulent times with the rumored departure of Conte. Worrying indeed!!

Here's the official website headline from last financial years results

"Financial results announced with record revenues

NEWSFRI 16 DEC 2016

Chelsea FC plc today announced our annual financial results for the year ended 30 June 2016 with the club’s highest turnover figure recorded and a profit of £4.7m before exceptional costs.

The group turnover figure of £329.1m was up five per cent on last year’s figure of £314.3m, generating a £4.7m profit before exceptional costs. The club incurred exceptional costs of £75.3m, a significant part of that as a result of a compensation fee payable for early termination of the club’s contract with adidas, resulting in a net loss for the year of £70.6m after exceptional costs."

Explains a little why the club are only selling to buy, admittedly this year a new Nike deal kicked in and CL revenue stream is back, but with an eye on re developing the Bridge you can see why the Board is not going in for expensive squad strengthening (Sanchez) and considering a donkey like Andy Caroll, it seems the days of Roman splashing the cash are over and we must live with it. Don't bother me Chelsea only been flush the last 15 years of 40 years following them. Its all cyclical so we just have to wait !!

 

3 minutes ago, General said:

Here's the official website headline from last financial years results

"Financial results announced with record revenues

NEWSFRI 16 DEC 2016

Chelsea FC plc today announced our annual financial results for the year ended 30 June 2016 with the club’s highest turnover figure recorded and a profit of £4.7m before exceptional costs.

The group turnover figure of £329.1m was up five per cent on last year’s figure of £314.3m, generating a £4.7m profit before exceptional costs. The club incurred exceptional costs of £75.3m, a significant part of that as a result of a compensation fee payable for early termination of the club’s contract with adidas, resulting in a net loss for the year of £70.6m after exceptional costs."

Explains a little why the club are only selling to buy, admittedly this year a new Nike deal kicked in and CL revenue stream is back, but with an eye on re developing the Bridge you can see why the Board is not going in for expensive squad strengthening (Sanchez) and considering a donkey like Andy Caroll, it seems the days of Roman splashing the cash are over and we must live with it. Don't bother me Chelsea only been flush the last 15 years of 40 years following them. Its all cyclical so we just have to wait !!

 

Well, we must be careful not turn into Liverpool or Arsenal and go into a long period of obscurity. The Manc clubs are spending a lot of money, and Liverpool seem to be improving, as are Spurs. If we are not careful we will find ourselves way behind the top clubs before we know it. 

2 hours ago, Kentonio said:

I can see why people think there's something wrong, but I think the picture is being distorted, mainly by a combination of City's spending and amazing season so far. Like right now for instance, we're unbeaten in 10 games and have only conceded 4 goals in that time. Obviously there's been far too many draws in there, but its hardly a picture of disaster, yet a lot of poeple are reacting as if we were on a 5 game losing streak. With our transfers, we have a shiny new striker, some great squad additions (which we were saying endlessly last season that we desperately needed) and a young defender come back off loan who looks a match for pretty much any CB in the country. Despite this, City spent a quite insane amount of money and so our spending looks inadequate. 

My point being, if you just look at us and ignore City for a minute, the picture really isn't that bleak. It could certainly be better of course, we'd all love to see Sandro signing for one thing, but we're a long way from a crisis as far as I can see. Oh and if you ignore the tabloids and listen to what Eden and Thibault are actually saying themselves, they're both intending to sign new contracts.

I am just pointing out that we have been left looking unambitious by the club and any players thinking at the thought of joining could be rather put off. Even more the seeming lack of support for the manager (the last thing we need is another 18 months manager who will then get replaced by another 18 months manager) is also off putting and yes its all down to the club and its poor image.

Edited January 15, 20188 yr by atomis

I've got to admit I will be massively worried about transfer policy if we spend over £20m on Carroll. 

I get we needed some homegrown players, but this is the worse crop of English players for years, and we are signing players that aren't even good enough for this England team. 

Barkley I can understand, the price was fair and he is young enough to improve, but spending over £50m on drinkwater and Carroll, 2 decent but limited footballers both unlikely to improve, is just mind boggling. 

If this was more of our rivals, then no doubt we all would be laughing at them. 

We should be spending £50m odd on a player that will improve the starting 11, and increase our homegrown quota by utilising the best youth setup in Europe. 

It's a no brainer. 

13 minutes ago, big blue said:

I've got to admit I will be massively worried about transfer policy if we spend over £20m on Carroll. 

Barkley I can understand, the price was fair and he is young enough to improve, but spending over £50m on drinkwater and Carroll, 2 decent but limited footballers both unlikely to improve, is just mind boggling. 

I'm not sure I view it as mind boggling.

Barkley - we all get this transfer. Wonderful price for a young English player with a lot of potential.

Drinkwater - Before we signed him, Conte had gone on record saying he was a "big fan", so despite us maybe not getting all the players he wanted in the summer window, I believe this was one player he wanted and did get. A price we probably didn't want to pay and hence the transfer going to the final hours of the window. This transfer seems to make sense to me (adding to squad depth and giving the manager someone he wants despite being the club maybe being uncomfortable with the fee).

Carroll - Remains to be seen but lots of unanswered questions on this one. Does Conte want him and are we supporting the manager? We will have to wait and see how it potentially plays out (loan/permanent transfer/the potential fee). Let's not forget we were long linked with Llorente all summer and it never happened so I feel a long way to go on this one. Think it's early to jump to conclusions he will be signing tomorrow for 35m

12 minutes ago, Nickcook26 said:

I'm not sure I view it as mind boggling.

Barkley - we all get this transfer. Wonderful price for a young English player with a lot of potential.

Drinkwater - Before we signed him, Conte had gone on record saying he was a "big fan", so despite us maybe not getting all the players he wanted in the summer window, I believe this was one player he wanted and did get. A price we probably didn't want to pay and hence the transfer going to the final hours of the window. This transfer seems to make sense to me (adding to squad depth and giving the manager someone he wants despite being the club maybe being uncomfortable with the fee).

Carroll - Remains to be seen but lots of unanswered questions on this one. Does Conte want him and are we supporting the manager? We will have to wait and see how it potentially plays out (loan/permanent transfer/the potential fee). Let's not forget we were long linked with Llorente all summer and it never happened so I feel a long way to go on this one. Think it's early to jump to conclusions he will be signing tomorrow for 35m

If he comes it will be for £20m, the fact that we are even pursuing andy Carroll, which is widely reported is very strange. 

Drinkwater is an okay player, conte hasn't exactly thrown him in at every opportunity though has he? If he was one conte's top targets, you would expect he would been in the team fairly regularly. Personally I don't think having him in the squad has won us anymore points than if rlc was still here. So it's  £35m that could've gone on a better player. 

I don't agree with this, but funny nonetheless. saw it on twitter. 

10 hours ago, big blue said:

Drinkwater is an okay player, conte hasn't exactly thrown him in at every opportunity though has he? If he was one conte's top targets, you would expect he would been in the team fairly regularly.

He was injured when he signed remember. It's not surprising that he has only appeared sporadically so far.

59 minutes ago, Kentonio said:

He was injured when he signed remember. It's not surprising that he has only appeared sporadically so far.

Injured twice, when he arrived and then a short while later.

One of my issues is signing three crocked players, that is a risk as they may not be the same player after.

Too early to tell yet whether that is the case.

It's unlucky to sign a player on injury, but signing 3 in 6 months is just outrageous. In the case of Bakayoko, we knew he's injured, why didn't we keep RLC a few weeks longer just for the sake of making up the numbers at least? I saw the the rumour we are in for a Roma Left back who's just come back from a long term injury, let's hope he's not coming in by wheel chair.