Just now, enigma said:

Didn't people moan about the players over the age of 25 that we got rid of for being poor? Now all of a sudden we should have signed over 25s lol. I think people need to decide what we need and don't need, and how old the perfect players must be to help us win and score goals. 

That's unfair.  The vast numbers of our fan base were asking all the way along that we add some experience to the squad rather than countless unproven kids.

3 minutes ago, Whats_The_Mata? said:

Anyone praising them for signing Caciedo is a complete idiot

Even if the lad was worth it and he was obviously wasn't  how can you praise the owners for paying £115m for a player after the seasons started when they could have had him for £100m before pre season.

So you are going to act like our fans weren't frothing at the mouth to sign him for close to £100? People were praising Boehly for getting him. Now all of a sudden it wasn't worth it lol. 

3 minutes ago, WhiteWall said:

That's unfair.  The vast numbers of our fan base were asking all the way along that we add some experience to the squad rather than countless unproven kids.

 People online look at the Internet and Google players now.

But most the old heads at the Bridge haven't even heard of most the new signings

Had a feller ask me if I knew some of the players from his pre match program last week.

Not sure people are praising or criticising individuals just wondering how we spent a billion to end up with the cast of glee playing for us.

Edited September 2, 20232 yr by Whats_The_Mata?

4 minutes ago, WhiteWall said:

That's unfair.  The vast numbers of our fan base were asking all the way along that we add some experience to the squad rather than countless unproven kids.

Like what experience though? Who was out there as targets that were experienced? We got rid of most of them, and people on here and social media were wanting them older players gone. People acting like they weren't clambering for Kova, Jorginho, Koulibaly etc to be sold because they weren't good enough. So many people wanted Colwill back. They had no issue with signing Nkunku. No issue with Gusto as back up to Reece. No issue with Caicedo. No issue with Enzo. The only area we have struggled with is the Striker situation, but that isn't a new issue. Lukaku was signed for a lot of money and didn't want to play for us. 

Edited September 2, 20232 yr by enigma

2 minutes ago, Whats_The_Mata? said:

 People online look at the Internet and Google players now.

But most the old heads at the Bridge haven't even heard of most the new signings

Had a feller ask me if I knew some of the players from his pre match program last week

All we can say really is Trust the Process. These kid's will be worth their weight in gold soon.

Todd's big plan

8 minutes ago, enigma said:

So you are going to act like our fans weren't frothing at the mouth to sign him for close to £100? People were praising Boehly for getting him. Now all of a sudden it wasn't worth it lol. 

I didn't see anyone frothhing at anything over spending 100m+ on Caicedo. Everyone said it was too much and he's only had 1 good season.

5 minutes ago, enigma said:

Like what experience though? Who was out there as targets that were experienced? We got rid of most of them, and people on here and social media were wanting them older players gone. People acting like they weren't clambering for Kova, Jorginho, Koulibaly etc to be sold because they weren't good enough. 

Okay, so at various times I have read posts where people have mentioned the likes of Aymeric Laporte,  Denzel Dumfries, Cancelo, Mitrovic ( that was me), Dybala, Chiesa and various others if I went back and looked. Every team, well every successful team, that bleeds youngsters does so with older heads around them to help them develop. The only time I can think of an exception would be Fergies class of 92, but if you look close enough they still had a number of experienced pros around them as well, Hughes, Ince, Irwin, Schmeichel etc.

From the first 3 games it was obvious to me a striker was needed but money keeps getting spent on young players. Jackson isn't an out and out striker, his more a Werner than anything and better of the striker. Nkunku I feel will score goals but there could be alot of games like today when you just need a striker to be taking chances on crosses.

14 minutes ago, enigma said:

So you are going to act like our fans weren't frothing at the mouth to sign him for close to £100? People were praising Boehly for getting him. Now all of a sudden it wasn't worth it lol. 

I don't think that. He's not worth the money. Definitely but no footballer is in this age where everything is so massively overhyped. Caicedo, Grealish, Rice etc. None of them.

But was he worth us getting him. Yes and he will come good, in the right structure, playing the way that suits these players. Poch needs to find the teams mojo pretty quick. He had it in pre season and the mood was massively positive. Now already we can see the familiar doubts and confusion creeping in.

3 minutes ago, WhiteWall said:

Okay, so at various times I have read posts where people have mentioned the likes of Aymeric Laporte,  Denzel Dumfries, Cancelo, Mitrovic ( that was me), Dybala, Chiesa and various others if I went back and looked. Every team, well every successful team, that bleeds youngsters does so with older heads around them to help them develop. The only time I can think of an exception would be Fergies class of 92, but if you look close enough they still had a number of experienced pros around them as well, Hughes, Ince, Irwin, Schmeichel etc.

The class of 92 wasn't a squad of just kids I think people romanticise the young players but the best player at the club was Cantona at the back end of his career as well as Dennis Irwin and Schmeichel. 

Similar to us our best players are Nkunku, James, Sterling and Enzo not the youngest players.

Only different is our kids are nowhere near as talented as theirs were and we bought them all for 30 million each.

The only thing thats giving me comfort right now is knowing we have a buy back clause for Billy Gilmour.........oh wait 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤮

1 minute ago, Whats_The_Mata? said:

The class of 92 wasn't a squad of just kids I think people romanticise the young players but the best player at the club was Cantona at the back end of his career as well as Dennis Irwin and Schmeichel. 

Similar to us our best players are Nkunku, James, Sterling and Enzo not the youngest players.

Only different is our kids are nowhere near as talented as theirs were and we bought them all for 30 million each.

Interesting about the Matt Law comment about not signing anyone over 25, with many likening Jackson to early Drogba. Under this regime we would never have had the point of reference as Drogba was 26 when Jose signed him.

8 minutes ago, Whats_The_Mata? said:

The class of 92 wasn't a squad of just kids I think people romanticise the young players but the best player at the club was Cantona at the back end of his career as well as Dennis Irwin and Schmeichel. 

Similar to us our best players are Nkunku, James, Sterling and Enzo not the youngest players.

Only different is our kids are nowhere near as talented as theirs were and we bought them all for 30 million each.

A more accurate team to compare us to would be Palace, who in 79 were supposed to be the team of the 80s such was their potential. We all know what happened to that dream and they had the luxury of growing up together.  
With the money we have spent we should undoubtedly be challenging for the title. We have become a farm for young talent, the hope is that enough of them actually become world class and generate wealth either by transfer fee or perceived wealth as a paper value. 

 

@enigma nice to see someone speaking a lot of sense. I’ve said on this thread previously the ownership got absolutely crucified last summer for a “shotgun” approach to recruitment that involved big money for experienced players.

I like that since then we seem to have a plan of how we want to move forward, am expecting it to be a bit up and down until it all starts to gel. 

7 minutes ago, Blueboys said:

@enigma nice to see someone speaking a lot of sense. I’ve said on this thread previously the ownership got absolutely crucified last summer for a “shotgun” approach to recruitment that involved big money for experienced players.

I like that since then we seem to have a plan of how we want to move forward, am expecting it to be a bit up and down until it all starts to gel. 

But again why does it have to be either end of the spectrum.  We could all see the folly of bringing in players, of questionable stature at that time and paying them shed loads. But similarly buying up multitudinous kids from the same Brazilian league and paying tens of millions for each has nothing to do with Chelsea as a football, its just human venture capital.

Poor Omari Hutchinson must be sat that thinking what the fck. Having been nabbed off of Arsenal he has now seen half a dozen other kids get signed in his position.

I have mentioned Mitrovic before and Bob Stark has said, with some justification that nobody buys a 28 year old second string striker for 50m. But that is the point. We've spent something like 200m on risky investments. Surely there was room in the cabinet for an experienced leader amongst the youngster that may not give a positive financial return but would provide a huge amount on an intangible basis by being a leader, a voice, a focal point.

Newcastle spent 20m on Callum Wilson, who is now 31. He'll probably only play half of their games this season. Bet he outscored any of our forwards.

5 minutes ago, WhiteWall said:

But again why does it have to be either end of the spectrum.  We could all see the folly of bringing in players, of questionable stature at that time and paying them shed loads. But similarly buying up multitudinous kids from the same Brazilian league and paying tens of millions for each has nothing to do with Chelsea as a football, its just human venture capital.

Poor Omari Hutchinson must be sat that thinking what the fck. Having been nabbed off of Arsenal he has now seen half a dozen other kids get signed in his position.

I have mentioned Mitrovic before and Bob Stark has said, with some justification that nobody buys a 28 year old second string striker for 50m. But that is the point. We've spent something like 200m on risky investments. Surely there was room in the cabinet for an experienced leader amongst the youngster that may not give a positive financial return but would provide a huge amount on an intangible basis by being a leader, a voice, a focal point.

Newcastle spent 20m on Callum Wilson, who is now 31. He'll probably only play half of their games this season. Bet he outscored any of our forwards.

I don’t think it does but you need to get one side right first before filling in the other. And getting the good younger players in first is the logical way of doing that. Don’t be surprised if our next signings are a couple of more experienced heads to help in positions. 
 

The Mitrovic/Wilson arguments are interesting but they are just as big a risk in their own right. Washington for £20m might turn into a world beater in 18 months, he might not in which case the club will get most that £20m back. Mitrovic for £50m, picks up regular knocks, not played for a bigger team before. Won’t get much, if any of the £50m back for not guaranteed performance. 
 

Your human venture capital but I don’t disagree with, but that’s just football. The top teams hoard as many players as possible for various reasons. Look at us, ours has changed from hoarding lower prem level pros to farm out in a loan army to balance to balance the books to hoarding young talent for a similar reason. 

We should spend another billion on players who aren't absolute sh*t. We've done the opposite already. 

7 minutes ago, ross91690 said:

We should spend another billion on players who aren't absolute sh*t. We've done the opposite already. 

We could be the only club to send our players out on loan with a clause that they have to play against us, to improve our chances of winning  

I personally thought 45m for Gallagher was great money but also City will be very happy with the 40m +5m for Palmer especially when Maddison was 45m and was Ward Prowse around 30m, I would have taken both players at Chelsea.

any chance the our fans will do what United fans did - the Glazers out movement?

 

At least make some noise, let our voice heard for the fans who cant afford to go to the games

For all this blaming the owners, that squad is absolutely good enough to beat Forest at home, this defeat is on the manager with his sh*thouse tactics and weird player choices/positions.

We've got a long season ahead of us. That's my prediction - we turned over Luton, we lost to Forrest who have signed as many players as us but look far more effective running off Awonyi, who on two trips to the bridge has looked like a world beater and only cost 17 million. I imagine we'd pay nearly treble that is we inquired about him. 

 

2 hours ago, dkw said:

For all this blaming the owners, that squad is absolutely good enough to beat Forest at home.

I don't think it is.  Not consistently anyway we can beat them on our day and could have won yesterday but you can't look at our squad and think it's good enough to consistently win games or beat any team at PL level.

Just read we've picked up 48 points in 42 games since Boehly bought the club and have a -9 goal difference so we're not beating many teams home or away unfortunately. 

Edited September 3, 20232 yr by Whats_The_Mata?

1 hour ago, olderschoolcfc said:

We've got a long season ahead of us. That's my prediction - we turned over Luton, we lost to Forrest who have signed as many players as us but look far more effective running off Awonyi, who on two trips to the bridge has looked like a world beater and only cost 17 million. I imagine we'd pay nearly treble that is we inquired about him. 

 

The difference with Forest and us is that most of their team HAVE had a season together, last season took them until March to finally gel properly, we NEED to get going much quicker than they did.

25 minutes ago, Whats_The_Mata? said:

I don't think it is.  Not consistently anyway we can beat them on our day and could have won yesterday but you can't look at our squad and think it's good enough to consistently win games or beat any team at PL level.

Just read we've picked up 48 points in 42 games since Boehly bought the club and have a -9 goal difference so we're not beating many teams home or away unfortunately. 

Don't be ridiculous, that squad should beat forest at home 99 times out of 100, its easily good enough. The manager set us up and had us playing all wrong.

Beat them on our day, come on.