It doesn't make sense that Kepa was one of the most sought after keepers back in 2017 when he was close to a move to Real Madrid, but now people are saying he's poor. No doubt he hasn't be great for us, but we don't know the real reasons behind this. Could be due to personal issues, lost confidence, homesick etc. I am wondering whether the board are willing to lose money on him because, even though we bought him for £71m, we sold Courtois for £35m so maybe they aren't overly fussed about the loss of money. 

We don't know the details but if he is homesick we should grant his wish. I never want to put down a person. He is a human after all but if he is one of the worst keepers in the league we need to fix the problem. The negatives of that will cost us much more tha than the money we lose selling him for less.

When you amortize his £71M transfer fee over his seven year contract, it comes out to £10.1 per season, and he has been here for 2 years already, so we have accrued for £20.2M of his fee already, which is probably how Chelsea got to the desired fee of £50M, with that said, if you can sell him for £35M, you effectively took a £15M loss, and you just be happy you don’t have to pay his salary anymore. At this point it’s a no win for Chelsea, even if you believe you can loan him for a year or two to get his value back up, then you are still getting hit for the £10M every year because of how they amortize transfer fees. 
 

any time you pay record fees for a player you run this risk, because if they don’t end up being great, you won’t get a record return.

50 mil is a lot to ask for for a guy who has the mental breakdowns and lack of focus that Kepa has

54 minutes ago, Munkworth said:

The Dedication And Work Rate To Keep To It Is Something A Few Of Our Players Could Do With. 

The Trouble With Kepa Is That He Shows Neither Work Rate Nor Dedication.

1 minute ago, chiefBlueCFC said:

50 mil is a lot to ask for for a guy who has the mental breakdowns and lack of focus that Kepa has

Those characteristics are quite special for a top flight goalkeeper, so if we present him as a collector's item.... 

1 hour ago, chiefBlueCFC said:

50 mil is a lot to ask for for a guy who has the mental breakdowns and lack of focus that Kepa has

Although we got that for Morata. Go Marina Go!

1 hour ago, Valerie said:

Those characteristics are quite special for a top flight goalkeeper, so if we present him as a collector's item.... 

Expecting Chelsea to put together a late night infomercial. 5 easy payments of 8.89M and one difficult payment of he can't stop sh*t and has an issue with standing there watching the ball go in the net...

3 hours ago, Mick Oscar said:

Chelsea will listen to offers of £50m for under-fire goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga this summer, having accepted that a loss on their £72m investment is inevitable.

The 25-year-old endured a nightmare campaign which saw him make numerous costly errors. He finished the season with the lowest save percentage of any goalkeeper in the Premier League and was dropped for Chelsea's final-day clash with Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Cloud cuckoo land. The fact we paid way over the market value when we signed him does not help but the additional fact that this season he has been absolutely useless, for all to see, will mean the club getting nothing like the figures they are talking, even Marina can't work those sort of miracles!

I expect a loan move, probably followed by another and then another.................until he becomes a distant memory.

Seriously doubt we will sell Kepa, our best option is to loan him out for a few seasons, hope he recovers some form and shines, and we can sell him for a decent fee. We'll never make our money back though, but we'll have to give him the Morata/Bakayoko treatment.

There are far better keepers around the globe for less than 10m to be picked up. If anyone spends over 20m on Kepa they’re doing it based on previous reputation. 
 

We are going to struggle to sell him. 

Loaning him to increase his market value seems like the best option. Given his poor form, I don’t think any team in their right mind will pay more than 30mil.

The best we can do is negotiate a deal with add-ons like a level of clean sheets etc in case he improves if he gets sold.

2 hours ago, MayosNoun! said:

There are far better keepers around the globe for less than 10m to be picked up.  
 

Make sure you give the club a list of names, the board would like a bargain!

Edited July 29, 20205 yr by Valerie

3 hours ago, MayosNoun! said:

There are far better keepers around the globe for less than 10m to be picked up. If anyone spends over 20m on Kepa they’re doing it based on previous reputation. 
 

We are going to struggle to sell him. 

Like who? 

Last season he was ok. Not the worst. This season his form took a major nosedive and never recovered.

Once teams saw that he concedes from long range shots, they always have a pop once they're in a good position

Kepa will still command a hefty value. I think that 50m tag is about right. He is still a very young keeper. For Premier League he seems to be too small and nice. His distribution qualities will still be at a value and he isn't a bad stopper. He just isn't the type we need. We need a tall commander of the box. I say 50% of the corners our opponents scored a tall guy would have just caught them in the air.

Copenhagen keeper against ManU in the EL last night.... Replace the keeper and we will ship out goals 10-20 less in the season. This is backed up statistically as well. If we can't get new defenders at least get a good goalie.

There's a good break down and analysis of Kepa's season on The Athletic for those of you who might have a subscription. 

In particular an interesting insight into his save technique where he's putting his arms behind his back before attempting a save, meaning he's making life harder for himself, particularly on shots within the box. 

Kepa is a modern keeper. Modern keepers are good with their feet. They can easily pass a short pass or a longer one with good percentage. They are also shorter than the old school keepers. It makes it easier for them to let the defenders handle the box. They also save about half of the shots compared to regular keeper. It is the philosophy of controlling the ball always. The modern keeper is there merely to remind outfield players to just keep hold of the ball as no one is there to save the shot. Modern keepers are also quiet because they don't need to say simple things to the outfield players like who is behind them or how to organize. Modern indivual talents all know what is happening around them at all times.

Kepa is a modern keeper.

All good except for the fact that he is not good with his feet either. 

Unfortunately now some guys that know jack about statistics will show up with some irrelevant features and percentages to prove me "wrong". 

Edited August 17, 20205 yr by Droopy

13 minutes ago, Droopy said:

Unfortunately now some guys that know jack about statistics will show up with some irrelevant features and percentages to prove me "wrong". 

Exactly who would argue that Kepa is a great keeper?

3 hours ago, ForeverCarefree said:

There's a good break down and analysis of Kepa's season on The Athletic for those of you who might have a subscription. 

In particular an interesting insight into his save technique where he's putting his arms behind his back before attempting a save, meaning he's making life harder for himself, particularly on shots within the box. 

You usually do that to generate momentum.. to try to push the ball further away.. in his case it still doesn’t work for some reason..  the last great keeper with his frame was Iker Casilas .. Can think of a single keeper in the last decade of his height who has been a top 10 keeper in the last decade. I know it’s not Kepa’s fault but we panicked big time on securing his signing.

6 minutes ago, Jangz said:

You usually do that to generate momentum.. to try to push the ball further away.

The Athletic article goes into a bit more depth with it:

Quote

In professional goalkeeping circles, many have pointed out that Kepa has a significant flaw in his shot-stopping technique: as he prepares to make a save, he tends to swing his arms back behind his body before springing to try to intercept the ball.

The theory might be that this motion gives him momentum for the dive, but in reality, it means he needs a split-second longer than other goalkeepers to bring his arms forward again into position to make a save.

“There’s an argument that you can have a slightly bigger arm swing when the shot is from further out, but the closer it is, there’s always going to be a slight lack of coordination,” (Richard) Lee says. “There have been a couple of times, with headers or shots close in, that he’s still doing quite a big arm swing, and then to execute the save is quite difficult.”

Over the past two seasons, there have been several goals that Kepa has conceded despite getting one or both hands to the ball, and it’s hard not to conclude this might be connected to the fact his arm swing is costing him vital time to react to attempts from close range.

Interestingly they also include:

Quote

They do highlight a technical issue that, according to many goalkeeping experts, should be relatively easy to coach out of him — and in truth, probably should have been coached out of him already.

Lampard wanted to bring Shay Given to Chelsea as goalkeeper coach having worked with him at Derby but he declined the offer and so Hilario remained in the role. Interestingly Christophe Lollichon, the goalkeeping coach who Petr Cech rated so highly, is still employed by Chelsea but is apparently in a scouting role now. I believe he moved away from coaching duties a couple of years back after a falling out with Courtois. 

Personally I would like to see him reinstated as goalkeeping coach as I'm not sure Hilario's lack of experience is necessarily helping Kepa based on the evidence. 

Would Kepa look more confident and play better with a better defence in front of him though? I feel like he could. Dont get me wrong, given the chance id swap him out for another GK in a heartbeat, but there are just no good, reasonably priced options available.= so we might be better off focus fully on just the CB/LB situation and see how Kepa does, and if he's still just as sh*t then we can go for another GK next summer when we have a bigger budget

2 hours ago, SydneyChelsea said:

Exactly who would argue that Kepa is a great keeper?

No one is arguing that. But people up until July were claiming that he is great with his feet showing some useless and stupid statistics like number of passes, passes accuracy nonsense. Not only is he bad with his feet, in terms of mistakes directly resulted in goals he is probably around the top. In terms of passes going out of bounds when put on pressure, he is among the worst. There were also mistakes that did go unpunished. People conveniently forget about them. Too bad there are no such statistics or they are not being shown. 

Edited August 17, 20205 yr by Droopy