28 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. 

Absolutely bullsh*t

if we cannot beat any PL level team consistently after spending 1 billion dollars, the one who make those transfer decisions need to be fired to the sun

13 minutes ago, dkw said:

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.

You can't seriously believe that.

The squad is awful on paper we've got what?  The 10th or so best squad in the league and the 15th or so best attack?  

We've won 1 home league game since March against Luton who may be the worst ever PL team we're not beating anyone 99 times out of 100. 

I think people get carried away because we're Chelsea and we've spent so much on players but if you look at the players themselves they're nowhere near good enough. We've bought horribly we don't even have a better striker than Forests Awoniyi at the club.

Edited September 3, 20232 yr by Whats_The_Mata?

16 hours ago, Zeta said:

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.

I disagree Zeta. Without thinking I could name at least 5 who were salivating at the prospect of what a bargain it would be to get him at that price.

I won't name though, it's not a case of I told you so. People just get ruled by emotions and try to live out their FM/FIFA fantasies and manager careers through Chelsea.

The team needs building, the way they have gone about the build is debatable if good or not but whatever the case it is obvious their model isn't predicated on pitch success but financial permutations, asset development and product ecosystem. It's so clear this is being run strictly from a financial perspective. That's what capitalism is about isn't it. No passion or emotion here, just strictly business. And winning in business is all about the money in the bank,nothing else really matters. If the titles come,that's an extra, a good to have so to speak but isn't the motivation here .

I'm so glad and proud I saw Chelsea win everything when we were run by a man that was emotionally vested and no matter how they did him dirty or whatever dirty they say he did to justify doing him dirty the way they despicably and "legally stole" his club from him, he will always be the one that made Chelsea truly one of the greatest clubs in world football.

As for now, I'll watch and patiently hope I see improvement and we can get to a point where we compete for everything again and be that team no one ever considers a push over but one that can always deliver results everytime and on every pitch they set foot on.

 

With their business model, yes it is all about the money, but the plan does require onfield success. However the success is aimed in the near future, NOT immediately, they're 12 months into an 8 year plan, i pray it doesn't take that long.

8 minutes ago, Ajbod said:

With their business model, yes it is all about the money, but the plan does require onfield success. However the success is aimed in the near future, NOT immediately, they're 12 months into an 8 year plan, i pray it doesn't take that long.

Yep, because in 1 year we could be in the championship. And then ? 

18 hours ago, Zeta said:

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.

Well he was raved about by many in the football media and on social media as the next best combative midfielder and was special. 

Btw, for those who hyped up Brighton's scouting. Looks like Lamps had an eye for talent. 

 

Chelsea join race to sign Ecuador wonderkid Moises Caicedo... despite interest from Mancester United | Daily Mail Online

Edited September 3, 20232 yr by enigma

4 hours ago, enigma said:

Btw, for those who hyped up Brighton's scouting. Looks like Lamps had an eye for talent. 

Caicedo was never an unknown quantity in football. The unknown was how to sign him ie who held that actual authority and maybe rights in a South American convoluted agency/ownership structure.

Apparently only Brighton could suss that out hence they got him.

Is alarming how easily we drop money yet is there really any improvement on the playing squad inherited by this ownership group?

Goalkeeper? Sanchez is not better than Kepa or Mendy imo. Will see on Petrovic.

Defence? Gusto is an upgrade on our back ups to Reece. The rest? Not so far.

Midfield? Does a midfield 3 of Enzo, Caicedo and Lavia offer us more goals or creativity than Kante, Kova and Jorginho? No in my opinion. Whether that base proves a waste of money or not depends on what we do further forward.

Wingers? I would like to say yes but we are not seeing them play enough, which suggests they are not good enough and therefore not an upgrade.

Strikers? Again so far I don't see an upgrade on Havertz and Werner, and we have invested so little of our billion spent on such a crucial area. Goals win games, how do they not know this?

All we have done is make our squad younger, and mismanaged them and that has resulted in us going from top four to bottom half.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/aug/30/chelsea-owners-may-see-clubs-own-fans-as-obstacles-in-violent-new-world
 

The TWO things that The Club, be that Boehly, the inept Winstanley & Stewart or Joe Shields (Director of Proffesional Football ????) got so massively wrong, is the abject FAILURE to address either of the shockingly obvious issues that have dragged Chelsea into mid table mediocrity.

1, The complete and utter lack of Leadership, on and off the pitch, 2. The lack of and failure to recruit a PROVEN, top level goal scorer. These omissions are so f**king obvious, that my six year old Grandson could have pointed them out and until BOTH issues are put right, do not expect much more from Chelsea than we are seeing at the moment. Forget the £ billion + that we have squandered, that is now making us a laughing stock, if we sort out both of the above, Chelsea will soon be back on track, but it truly beggars belief that these so called football professionals could not identify the clear and obvious solutions.

37 minutes ago, General said:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/aug/30/chelsea-owners-may-see-clubs-own-fans-as-obstacles-in-violent-new-world
 

Pretty encapsulates all that has been going through my head for some time now. Really good, if somewhat apocalyptic article 

35 minutes ago, WhiteWall said:

Pretty encapsulates all that has been going through my head for some time now. Really good, if somewhat apocalyptic article 

What Barney Ronay does not understand is that 1. This is Chelsea FC, 2, we always do things the hard way, 3.Life is ALWAYS a roller coaster ride at Chelsea, 4. We probably wouldn't have it any other way (it would be far too boring)

There was an excellent if long winded YouTube blog posted last week on here which tried to explain the owners financial model, namely that they expect the book price to continue to rise despite massive operating losses. The same model is apparently employed by Netflix and others- go for growth- losses unimportant. Sounds a bit like The Wall St Crash; everyone betting the house on continuous rising stock value.

No profit- who cares- jam tomorrow.

Im no economist but wouldn’t be shocked if the roof caved in

1 hour ago, Fruit Bat said:

There was an excellent if long winded YouTube blog posted last week on here which tried to explain the owners financial model, namely that they expect the book price to continue to rise despite massive operating losses. The same model is apparently employed by Netflix and others- go for growth- losses unimportant. Sounds a bit like The Wall St Crash; everyone betting the house on continuous rising stock value.

No profit- who cares- jam tomorrow.

Im no economist but wouldn’t be shocked if the roof caved in

This would align with comments made then they first purchased the club, that they still thought the outlay represented value and that football had a long way to go before it realised its commercial potential.

The issue they'll have is that they paid the going rate for a champions league regular club, that had recently won the trophy and is regarded as one of the best in the country by many. No matter how much they pump and how much the going rate increases, they'll get nothing if we fail. 

Massive reason for concern, but also confidence that they'll not give up trying to succeed.

4 hours ago, General said:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/aug/30/chelsea-owners-may-see-clubs-own-fans-as-obstacles-in-violent-new-world
 

Well that is very sobering reading , and explains a lot about our ownership " model"

Thanks for posting it, I hope others read it .

5 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Is alarming how easily we drop money yet is there really any improvement on the playing squad inherited by this ownership group?

Goalkeeper? Sanchez is not better than Kepa or Mendy imo. Will see on Petrovic.

Defence? Gusto is an upgrade on our back ups to Reece. The rest? Not so far.

Midfield? Does a midfield 3 of Enzo, Caicedo and Lavia offer us more goals or creativity than Kante, Kova and Jorginho? No in my opinion. Whether that base proves a waste of money or not depends on what we do further forward.

Wingers? I would like to say yes but we are not seeing them play enough, which suggests they are not good enough and therefore not an upgrade.

Strikers? Again so far I don't see an upgrade on Havertz and Werner, and we have invested so little of our billion spent on such a crucial area. Goals win games, how do they not know this?

All we have done is make our squad younger, and mismanaged them and that has resulted in us going from top four to bottom half.

I think the midfield is definitely a big upgrade. A few years from now we should be much better defensively and boss pretty much every opposing midfield with Caicedo, Lavia and Enzo. This was always an investment for the future not for the present.

The GK situation is awful though, I very much agree with that. Sanchez has been dropped by Brighton for good reasons. I have no idea why he was signed for that much. He seems like a typical back-up GK you buy/sell for a small fee to keep on the bench.

Gusto has been good so far. His crossing was poor but other than that I was quite impressed considering he has no PL experience and is very young.

Madueke looks promising. Needs to work on his end product but I think this is going to turn out to be a great transfer. Mudryk on the other hand seems a desaster considering the fee. You can see that he has potential with his pace and athleticism but other than that a lot of question marks.

2 of the starting lineup against Forest played in the champions league winning team, 6 players were new signings or returning loans. We have a new team and it's going to take a while to bed them in and get used to the demands of the manager. The biggest issue is that 90% of them are all young and they will naturally go missing and perform hot and cold throughout the season which means our results are going to be very sporadic.

Talent means nothing without the right application and it's a massive risk by the board to invest so much into it without the much needed experience.

I have faith in the manager and it's pretty silly to question him now and I think the more glaring issue is the strategy of the board as we have spent a billion in transfer fees and we don't look any stronger than we did under Tuchel. You could say well we had Werner, Havertz and co but who's to say the players we have now won't be as frustrating? Just because they are young, new and have flashy highlights on youtube doesn't make them better than Timo Werner. Timo Werner, Kai Havertz, Mason Mount, Pulisic were all big talents when they were young and probably even bigger than the ones we just signed. Kai Havertz was odds on favourite to be snapped by Real Madrid before we stepped in and labeled as the new Zidane!

There's a strong chance where in a 2-3 years time we have a squad which just ends up being the same level or worse than we had under Tuchel and we're back to square one again. Which for me blows my mind after the amount of spent, this squad needed 2 or 3 more Raheem Sterling signings than Cole Palmer, Noni, Mudryk signings and that's no disrespect to them and if anything we've made their development much harder because all the pressure is on them to succeed now with very little senior pros to fall back on.

James Maddison was there to be bought from a relegated club. We spent the same on Cole Palmer who could end up hitting the heights of James Maddison in 3 - 4 seasons, same price and it's likely Maddison is not on huge wages. James Maddison helps us achieve top 4/5 this season here and now while other younger players bed in and that's the fundamental issue of our transfer window. We are banking on potential all over the squad and it's going to take time, time in which we will continue to fall behind for a chance that all these players MAY come good.

Edited September 4, 20232 yr by Sheva

I think the idea that we have no experience in the squad is false.

Sanchez - GK - 25 years old with over 100 career appearances and capped for Spain at international level.

 

Chilwell - 26 - several top level seasons, trophy winner, England caps.

 

Disasi - 25 - several top level seasons, french international.

 

Thiago Silva - 38 - need I say more

 

Nkunku - 25 - prolific and proven goalscorer, France international. This injury has really hurt us.

 

Raheem Sterling - 28 - vastly experience top level, goalscorer, trophy winner, international.

 

That's over half the team, if all were fit. You've then got Reece James, Gallagher - both multiple seasons at the top and international caps. Even Enzo is a World Cup Winner for god's sake.

 

Sure we could have more experience and definitely more depth in attack but I think injuries have screwed us over there.

You can then compare that with City's.

And many of the new lads, that are part of the team, are new to Chelsea, London, team mates etc

I don't have problems with losing if we know what the objective with the team is. Big companies usually tell their targets. If they said we are targeting for European places as we understand the squad is new it would be marvellous. We didn't have to listen to media go on about 1bn pound team and fans here go knee jerking and people are worried for the coach etc. 

 

The thing that gets me is so many of our fans were loving Boehly for being able to get rid of our deadwood like Kova, Azpi (although he was still admired for his longevity with us) Jorgi, Mount, Havertz, Ziyech etc because they were deemed not good enough. Now they do that and bring in players that the fans were mostly in favour of, Boehly gets criticised for not knowing what he's doing and ruining the club. It's so interesting to hear the opinions change like the British weather. One minute Boehly is a genius (positive memes of him) and then because we start the season not well, he is the worst thing to happen to Chelsea and Roman all of a sudden is a saint and never did anything wrong at the club. ]

Boehly, Egbahli and Co have come in at probably the most competitive that the league has ever been. If Roman had come in now as a new owner at Chelsea, I truly believe he would struggle just the same. Roman came in when the only other competition to Chelsea were Arsenal and Utd. We had the fortune of Mourinho being the right manager at the right time, and the players brought in were quality and the likes of Terry and Lampard already at the club who had genuine world class potential and ability. It is a different time now and so many clubs are improving with new investment, along with better managers, improved tactics etc. 

8 minutes ago, enigma said:

The thing that gets me is so many of our fans were loving Boehly for being able to get rid of our deadwood like Kova….

I wouldn’t have put Kova in a deadwood category, he was signed by the treble winning champions. He was probably one of our better players in a dire season.

Looking at the squad now, I don’t think that much thought was put into who was sold. It was all about return of sales and justifying the money already spent or that was going to be spent.

9 minutes ago, Modueke said:

I wouldn’t have put Kova in a deadwood category, he was signed by the treble winning champions. He was probably one of our better players in a dire season.

Looking at the squad now, I don’t think that much thought was put into who was sold. It was all about return of sales and justifying the money already spent or that was going to be spent.

I disagree. Many people were moaning about Kovacic and what he wasn't offering us, as well as being constantly injured and it would be better to sell him. 

I think my worry is that we got rid of many players and let's face it, the fees were very low for what we sold them for. Kovacic has long been my favourite player when he was at us and I think he is one of those players who will only be fully appreciated when he is at another team i.e playing virtually every game at City. They got him for a bargain considering it is another English team and I think most people knew he would fit into City easily and them getting £25-30m for him is low but I get it in terms of that he had one year left and he picked up injuries at us but he had a unique style of play that is difficult to replicate.

Pulisic divides opinion but again I think he is a decent player and in another environment he can do well. We received just under £20m for Pulisic which is very low for a player who is still has many years left. Iwobi went to Fulham for a higher fee than Pulisic and also had 1 year left in his contract which I find hard to comprehend. Yes I get it that English teams have more money to spend than Italian teams but I think £20m personally for Pulisic for the fee we bought him for was very low considering his age, even though he had 1 year left on his cotnract. Bar Sterling, the other wingers are not proven with goals at all, so for me selling likes of Ziyech, Pulisic without having proven replacements was always a risk and I think it is too early to say any of our wingers bought from last season are any better than Pulisic. Hopefully they will be and time will tell.

I am excited with what is ahead but expecting a lot of ups and downs. Personally not a fan of the whole stockpiling of players/youngsters but just have to keep the faith.

2 hours ago, Gonoir Beniashile said:

I think the idea that we have no experience in the squad is false.

Sanchez - GK - 25 years old with over 100 career appearances and capped for Spain at international level.

 

Chilwell - 26 - several top level seasons, trophy winner, England caps.

 

Disasi - 25 - several top level seasons, french international.

 

Thiago Silva - 38 - need I say more

 

Nkunku - 25 - prolific and proven goalscorer, France international. This injury has really hurt us.

 

Raheem Sterling - 28 - vastly experience top level, goalscorer, trophy winner, international.

 

That's over half the team, if all were fit. You've then got Reece James, Gallagher - both multiple seasons at the top and international caps. Even Enzo is a World Cup Winner for god's sake.

 

Sure we could have more experience and definitely more depth in attack but I think injuries have screwed us over there.

That's not over half the team, that's half of a starting eleven. One of them being injured and two of them I question even being good enough at all (Sanchez and Disasi) The squad as a whole is massively inexperienced.