4 minutes ago, Niall1905 said:

I'm not saying that what we are doing is the best plan, or that it will even work. But why give up on it after two weeks? 

 

The plan makes no sense, other clubs have tried and failed with similar but better plans.

You can't only sign only young players and expect any success,  success is brought by a mix of quality experienced professionals and talented young players and we've neglected the former.

Most promising and talented young players never fulfill their promise,  some will be stars and others won't be which is why you integrate 4 or 5 with an existing group of proven performers not build your team around kids.

The only possible outcome I see from our transfer policy is the actual talent like Enzo putting in a transfer request in a year or two and joining a club that can compete while we're stuck with a conveyorbelt of kids.

Very similar to Arsenal in the back half of Wengers time when the quality like Fabregas, Van Persie, Adebayor,  Nasri and Sagna all moved on to win trophies at other clubs while Arsenal kept producing and buying young talent.

3 minutes ago, Niall1905 said:

But how can you possibly know? We're two games in! This is the whole point.

Chalobah was/is a decent squad player. Who have we signed that isn't? 

Sanchez hasn't had a great start, granted, but Petrovic (last I saw) hasn't even entered the country. How do we even possibly know that they won't end up settling well and coming good?

Yes, on the surface £1b spent and you look at our squad. It doesn't add up, I won't dispute that. But our transfer policy in the years leading up to Boehly and Co taking over left us with a squad of players signed as ready made stars/starters that ended up out on loan, with us covering part of their extortionate wages to play for a different team and no one wanting to buy them permanently. Some players are still here today! 

I'm not saying that what we are doing is the best plan, or that it will even work. But why give up on it after two weeks? 

 

My football knowledge I suppose. And having seen hundreds of "wonderkids" peter out and amount to nothing at all. I'm going to hold off making an ultimate judgement on our current crop of players but I know how it would have worked out if Boehly arrived 10 years ago and tried to do the same thing, It would not have been a pretty sight and I fear the worst.

If i'm wrong i'll gladly hold my hands up and say I was wrong. Hopefully I am very, very wrong. But I genuinely believe every single team in the entire league have a very good chance of beating us this season despite our spending and despite all our so called talent.

And as I previously said it's been far more than two weeks. It's been almost a full year of being the worst team in the entire league and while the manager may have changed the entire structure and the entire ethos is still very much the same.

3 hours ago, General said:

A page of optimistic Shed Enders ! 

I avoid the match threads until after the results now for a longtime not bc of so called impatient plastics but so I speak my mind not react 

Hate to break it to you all but last season has morphed into a continuation of last - lots of spending but not on key positions in 1st team squad , injuries, only exception is a proper coaching team has been put into place. If you want to wait a few more years to witness the result of the new owners massive financial gamble fair enough - success on pitch reaping financial rewards to recoup massive investment or insolvency ?

I prefer a more conservative rebuild not wholesale demolition and replacement in 2 seasons, only time will tell which approach will work but in the meantime may I suggest the Twitter glory hunters are entitled to their opinion ? 

I wonder in the cooling light, how Boehly rates his Tenure, I’d give him 3/10, and that’s just for spending stupid amounts, apart from Enzo, the jury has retired and waiting to be called back, hope the judge isn’t seen wearing the  dreaded black cap.

 

The only thing we can’t control is the horrible run of injuries to key personnel 🤔

13 hours ago, Ballack & Blu said:

I wonder in the cooling light, how Boehly rates his Tenure, I’d give him 3/10, and that’s just for spending stupid amounts, apart from Enzo, the jury has retired and waiting to be called back, hope the judge isn’t seen wearing the  dreaded black cap.

 

The only thing we can’t control is the horrible run of injuries to key personnel 🤔

A straight A for effort.

D minus for application 

As we are closing in on the end of transfer window after we have seen basically a complete squad overhaul I am thinking about the quick nature of the business. This overhaul is sort of logical as we have new owners but I am thinking how this will change to the next window. Are we always just plucking holes with new big money signings as we go. 

Even us the fans here are in this thinking that if something doesn't work right away, the market is the place to go. This sounds a bit dangerous when we have just bought around 20 new players and most of them are young and far from their peak level. 

On the flip side we need to win. This is Boehly's objective. Chelsea needs to be there with Real and City in the brightest lights and with the biggest revenue. 

With this young squad that is impossible to achieve right away. The prizes are 3-5 seasons away. That is if we stick to this plan and have patience with the likes of Lavia, Mudryk and 20 other young players. 

The manager could also bring stability through the years but do we stick with Poch if we go on and lose 6 in a row come January? 

I guess time will tell.

I can't wait for the end of the transfer window. might put a stop to our ludicrous spending. 

Deivid Washington has just completed his medical and will be announced shortly. I assume another signing for Strasbourg

4 hours ago, olderschoolcfc said:

I can't wait for the end of the transfer window. might put a stop to our ludicrous spending. 

I feel like begging the club to stop buying.

4 hours ago, forbzy said:

Deivid Washington has just completed his medical and will be announced shortly. I assume another signing for Strasbourg

Having signed Washington,  Jackson and got close to signing Adams,  I suppose we could have tried to get the set by signing Maddison and Jefferson........Lerma.

Yeah, okay, I'll get me coat.

Very much agreed.

 

10 hours ago, WhiteWall said:

Having signed Washington,  Jackson and got close to signing Adams,  I suppose we could have tried to get the set by signing Maddison and Jefferson........Lerma.

Yeah, okay, I'll get me coat.

I am hearing rumors we are looking for this young vocal chap from Austria.

4 hours ago, evissy said:

Very much agreed.

 

This is not Roman so saying this regime doesn’t have patience Is just not true. They gave Potter longer than Roman would have.

Potter was given far more time considering the results than any Chelsea manager even under Roman's tenure. 

This narrative that Clearlake are trigger happy is a wild one, particularly when those argue Tuchel after getting his signings he was let go. When its been reported he was let go for not just footballing reasons. 

Edited August 24, 20232 yr by Sconnie Blue

The strategy feels a little similar to baseball where young prospects are brought in and then sent out to develop in a B (or farm) team. In our case Strasbourg. But usually a lot of these prospects don't develop into major players and then traded or leave the game. I imagine a decent % of our young players will not fulfil their potential and will never play for the first team. Question in that case is whether we still make a profit on those players? e.g. loan fees, sell on assuming another team is interested. Under Roman we had a lot of these prospects too but FFP wasn't under the same scrutiny then.

Specific examples of promising young players signed from Brazil during Roman's tenure:

Wallace, Nathan, Piazon, Kenedy

I know we got some loan fees and maybe even a transfer fee for 1 or 2 but none of them ultimately fulfilled their promise.

 

Absolutely. There is risk involved. This is why we created the Cobham as it is today. Players like Tomori, Hall, RLC, Guehi, Abraham etc have been brilliant business for us.

Another thing you can do is develop a system for picking up players at the correct age like we are trying here. If you have the intelligence, processes and experience you can make that work.

Third part of it is training and nurturing. There comes the youth coaches and Strasbourg in the picture. 

Have every part of the puzzle in mint condition and you can make profit 

As you say many of these young guns have seen the highest transfer fee ever to be paid for them. 

 

14 minutes ago, evissy said:

Absolutely. There is risk involved. This is why we created the Cobham as it is today. Players like Tomori, Hall, RLC, Guehi, Abraham etc have been brilliant business for us.

Another thing you can do is develop a system for picking up players at the correct age like we are trying here. If you have the intelligence, processes and experience you can make that work.

Third part of it is training and nurturing. There comes the youth coaches and Strasbourg in the picture. 

Have every part of the puzzle in mint condition and you can make profit 

As you say many of these young guns have seen the highest transfer fee ever to be paid for them. 

 

We may never know whether some of those signings under Roman like Wallace & Nathan made a loss or profit as there was less scrutiny over finances back then. However the main difference then was that we tended to bring in only a couple of those kind of signings every year. There was usually a balance between academy signings, prospects, an experienced signings. Currently we are focused almost entirely on prospects so this is new ground. We will see how it pans out but hopefully our scouts have been good.

Can we say that Wallace, Nathan, Piazon, and Kenedy were at the profile that Andrey, Angelo, and Washington are now?

12 minutes ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Can we say that Wallace, Nathan, Piazon, and Kenedy were at the profile that Andrey, Angelo, and Washington are now?

Piazon and Kenedy especially were both very highly rated. We paid up to £10 million for a 17 year old Piazon over a decade ago so that also gives you an indication.

If they are able to land him I think Brighton have again landed a diamond in Fabricio Diaz for about 6 million pounds. He was the best player at the U20 World Cup and already got well over 100 appearances under his belt at 20 years of age. I wish we were looking to pick up those kind of talents in that pricerange instead but let's see how it works out.

Edited August 24, 20232 yr by OriginalS

2 hours ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Can we say that Wallace, Nathan, Piazon, and Kenedy were at the profile that Andrey, Angelo, and Washington are now?

Wallace and Nathan I believe we just got on a deal we made with a Brazilian club. Piazon was touted as a big wonderkid though, a bit like Oscar he had all the Kaka comparisons, I even remember people saying he had the potential of Neymar. 

So I'm not one to get carried away with the likes of Santos. And when people were okay with the prospect of us going into the season without a DM but just Santos there I was very much against that idea. 

Not to write him off, it's just that we've seen many wonderkids come and go, and I think splashing 10-20 million on every single one is a bad idea. 

On 21/08/2023 at 11:02, Valerie said:

It's non-stop negativity. Saw one post accusing someone of "brownnosing" for agreeing with me, instead of him/her/whatever. Dear oh dear.

Match threads bring out the worst in some brave keyboard warriors. Not going there again anytime soon.

Whilst I agree with what you say about the match threads Valerie, if the very many decent forum members amongst us desert the place it will just become an even deeper cesspit.  

It's worth bearing in mind that so called 'journalists' trawl through  threads like that to find clickbait to put on social media which just attracts more morons.  

Giving in and not posting there will just make it worse so please don't give up on it.  I think we all know who most of the the agitators are so ignore the idiots and keep knocking them down.

Sorry. Just had to get that off my chest.

Time for them to dip in to that US culture and sue Mike Dean.

4 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Time for them to dip in to that US culture and sue Mike Dean.

For what, exactly?

2 hours ago, SydneyChelsea said:

For what, exactly?

For being Mike Dean. No deniability there 

I’m sure there are FA EPL rules of participating in the league that preclude clubs suing match officials for perceived (albeit real in this case) damages ?