I was listening to Mark Goldbridge and he hit the nail on the head. He was asking when has it ever worked having a manager that you can manipulate? There’s a reason Pep, Fergie, Klopp and other top managers are successful. It’s because they need to have control.

The whole culture of manipulation of a manager is flawed logic. The SD’s need to change their approach. Every manager they’ve had has either failed or told them where to go.

The depth was much deeper last season. They then started the process of trimming the squad last January (2025).

Madueke, Nkunku and Jackson's end product was miles ahead of Garnahco, Gittens and Delap's total contribution this season.

The only players who should be definite keeps for next season are:

• J.Pedro

• P.Neto

• Estêvão

• Quenda (arrives in July)

• A.Santos

• Caicedo

• Cucurella

• Hato

• Colwill

• Chalobah

• R.James

11 minutes ago, JM7 said:

I was listening to Mark Goldbridge and he hit the nail on the head. He was asking when has it ever worked having a manager that you can manipulate? There’s a reason Pep, Fergie, Klopp and other top managers are successful. It’s because they need to have control.

The whole culture of manipulation of a manager is flawed logic. The SD’s need to change their approach. Every manager they’ve had has either failed or told them where to go.

Why would anyone willingly consume Brent Di Cesare's content?

Yes, a manager needs a certain amount of power. But not complete control. Arteta has a lot of power at Arsenal. It still hasn't lead to major success in terms of trophies thus far. If he doesn't win a trophy this season, it could be argued that all of that time, patiences and control that's been afforded to him has been for nothing.

Chelsea have always had a high managerial turnover policy. It's generally worked for them. BlueCO have made dumb appointments. They only one they got right was Maresca who did actually deserve more time. He had shown signs of building something.

11 minutes ago, JM7 said:

I was listening to Mark Goldbridge and he hit the nail on the head. He was asking when has it ever worked having a manager that you can manipulate? There’s a reason Pep, Fergie, Klopp and other top managers are successful. It’s because they need to have control.

The whole culture of manipulation of a manager is flawed logic. The SD’s need to change their approach. Every manager they’ve had has either failed or told them where to go.

I feel like this is a bad way to express a good point, though. All those managers, including Fergie, worked with someone else primarily responsible for recruitment during their success.

Klopp, famously, wanted Julian Brandt over Mohammed Salah. He didn't want to sell Phillipe Coutinho. He didn't want van Dijk as he was concerned about age. Yet, he backed the pitch from Michael Edwards's analysts. That wasn't a triumph of analytics as much as it was a manager with the intuition and humility to accept advice from someone else.

Ferguson won under the Glazers because David Gill worked minor miracles, and extended Fergie's career by taking over transfers. Guardiola has always worked under some sort of sporting director. Ancelotti thought Galliani was a fool for signing Kaka and Pirlo. On the flip side, you have managers like Tuchel and Conte who have been most successful precisely when they have not had control over recruitment.

Since the 2000s only Arsene Wenger truly had full control of transfers at top clubs and that largely coincided with a decade of failure after 2006.

The way I see it, it's more important to have a functional team that includes the manager, but where no one person has sold control. The sporting director looks at future squad planning whereas the manager identifies the urgent needs. The scouts and analysts are the ones that find the actual targets and the executive makes the deals. None of this happens under BlueCo because there is a mishmash of competing interests, many of our targets appear agent-driven, hype-driven or previous contacts. Worst of all, none of it ever considers the here and now but is predicated on the delusion that talent develops in a vacuum.

There are solutions. Easiest is to fire the current setup and replace them with a single SD to recruit everythung from the ground up. Or if the SDs are to have the control over squad planning, hire a Tuchel or Ancelotti who can win whatever they are given.

Alternatively we can persist with what we have now, where we have 7 people more interested in taking credit than responsibility.

35 minutes ago, Ngolo said:

The depth was much deeper last season. They then started the process of trimming the squad last January (2025).

Madueke, Nkunku and Jackson's end product was miles ahead of Garnahco, Gittens and Delap's total contribution this season.

The only players who should be definite keeps for next season are:

• J.Pedro

• P.Neto

• Estêvão

• Quenda (arrives in July)

• A.Santos

• Caicedo

• Cucurella

• Hato

• Colwill

• Chalobah

• R.James

You appear to have put Pedro Neto as 2nd on the list of definite keeps and left out Palmer & Josh.

At some point Eghbali will want to save himself and or sort the financial under performance. He will grow tired of the so called experts around him and their wafer thin model and strategy. That point can not come too soon for me. I hope we are still in some shape or form a quality premier league outfit.

Surely, we will deploy some experienced players in the squad. We must take on an experienced manager with more scope and responsibility and for pity sake we have to streamline and fine tune the Sporting directorate to give better results on the pitch and the balance sheet.

Maybe the talk of a few more seasoned players is a start and maybe LRs imminent departure continues in that positive vein.

Every media outlet is telling him this. The supporters are telling him to F off. You would have thought Eghbali would be having second thoughts. Ultimately its his cock on the block.

Edited April 22Apr 22 by OTL

18 minutes ago, The Boehly Babes said:

You appear to have put Pedro Neto as 2nd on the list of definite keeps and left out Palmer & Josh.

It's an unordered list. It goes from ST backwards anyway.

Palmer needs to be sold. He already has one foot out the door, and has declined massively over the past 16 months. He's scored 10 PL goals since mid January 2025. 6 of the 10 goals are penalties. Cash in on him now while his stock is still perceived as high. United would probably pay £100 million for him.

Acheampong needs a loan. He needs a season of regular starts. Coventry might take him on loan for a season.

Pedro Neto is a good squad player to keep around. He's capable of playing on both flanks.

10 minutes ago, Ngolo said:

Palmer needs to be sold. He already has one foot out the door, and has declined massively over the past 16 months. He's scored 10 PL goals since mid January 2025. 6 of the 10 goals are penalties. Cash in on him now while his stock is still perceived as high. United would probably pay £100 million for him.

Acheampong needs a loan. He needs a season of regular starts. Coventry might take him on loan for a season.

Pedro Neto is a good squad player to keep around. He's capable of playing on both flanks.

Behave.

6 minutes ago, Ngolo said:

The depth was much deeper last season. They then started the process of trimming the squad last January (2025).

Madueke, Nkunku and Jackson's end product was miles ahead of Garnahco, Gittens and Delap's total contribution this season.

The only players who should be definite keeps for next season are:

• J.Pedro

• P.Neto

• Estêvão

• Quenda (arrives in July)

• A.Santos

• Caicedo

• Cucurella

• Hato

• Colwill

• Chalobah

• R.James

Neto over Palmer?

If there is a genuine acknowledgement among the board/sporting directors that their strategy to date has been unsuccessful and they are willing to change it (which I doubt), we should be aware that different doesn't necessarily mean good. There's every chance we end up signing the 2026 equivalents of Koulibaly, Sterling and Aubameyang, or even worse, whoever happens to play well at the World Cup.

We also can't just draw a line under the farcical player recruitment under BlueCo and simply 'do better'. There is no buying club who will be interested in paying the amount for some of the unwanted squad players which wouldn't also f**k us from an SCR perspective. Consider also that we're a less attractive prospect for good players with no Champions' League football, and particularly now that we're a famous mess. We also have no idea who the manager is going to be, and Rosenior is hardly a draw if he stays on next season. We don't want to compound the issue by overpaying for players who won't make us better (which is exactly what we've done over the last two seasons with the exceptions of Pedro and Estêvão).

There's a very real possibility that we won't qualify for Europe next season. This at least gives us the benefit of only needing enough players to win enough of 38 league games to get back into the Champions' League rather than also having to deal with a protracted European campaign. So how do we build the skeleton of a competitive squad out of what we already have? We need to figure out what we already have that is useful then use any money we are able to raise to plug the gaps competently (if they are serious about 'experienced and ready players').

What we shouldn't do (but are more likely to) is to identify who we can sell at a profit (i.e. the good or club-trained players) then use the proceeds for incoming transfers. That way is 100% guaranteed to leave us with a mediocre side across the board rather than a smattering of genuinely good players surrounded by idiots. Our current core of good players with the addition of a competent goalkeeper, striker and a couple of wide men could probably pull it off.

Just in case:

DO NOT SELL UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES:

James, Colwill, Acheampong, Caicedo, Palmer, Estêvão, Chalobah, Pedro.

FEEL FREE TO SELL:

Cucurella, Fernández, Lavia, Jackson, Gusto, Santos, George, Anselmino.

PROBABLY CAN'T SELL EVEN THOUGH WE'D LIKE TO:

Neto, Gittens, Fofana, Garnacho, Badiashile, Disasi.

ACTIVELY LOOK TO GET RID OF:

Adarabioyo, Jörgensen, Delap, Guiu, Slonina.

1 hour ago, SydneyChelsea said:

I feel like this is a bad way to express a good point, though. All those managers, including Fergie, worked with someone else primarily responsible for recruitment during their success.

Klopp, famously, wanted Julian Brandt over Mohammed Salah. He didn't want to sell Phillipe Coutinho. He didn't want van Dijk as he was concerned about age. Yet, he backed the pitch from Michael Edwards's analysts. That wasn't a triumph of analytics as much as it was a manager with the intuition and humility to accept advice from someone else.

Ferguson won under the Glazers because David Gill worked minor miracles, and extended Fergie's career by taking over transfers. Guardiola has always worked under some sort of sporting director. Ancelotti thought Galliani was a fool for signing Kaka and Pirlo. On the flip side, you have managers like Tuchel and Conte who have been most successful precisely when they have not had control over recruitment.

Since the 2000s only Arsene Wenger truly had full control of transfers at top clubs and that largely coincided with a decade of failure after 2006.

The way I see it, it's more important to have a functional team that includes the manager, but where no one person has sold control. The sporting director looks at future squad planning whereas the manager identifies the urgent needs. The scouts and analysts are the ones that find the actual targets and the executive makes the deals. None of this happens under BlueCo because there is a mishmash of competing interests, many of our targets appear agent-driven, hype-driven or previous contacts. Worst of all, none of it ever considers the here and now but is predicated on the delusion that talent develops in a vacuum.

There are solutions. Easiest is to fire the current setup and replace them with a single SD to recruit everythung from the ground up. Or if the SDs are to have the control over squad planning, hire a Tuchel or Ancelotti who can win whatever they are given.

Alternatively we can persist with what we have now, where we have 7 people more interested in taking credit than responsibility.

I think it is fine to have SD's above the manager, as backed by the evidence in your post. It seems like we go beyond just having the SD's identify players though. Based on what we have seen from the last few appointments they also seem to have a lot of influence in who plays. Perhaps because we have signed so many players and they want all to get some time in the shop window? Whatever the reason I think that has seemed to undermine the managers.

Also, the volume of young players signed has probably contributed to them refusing to back managers with requests (e.g. Maresca asking for a replacement for Colwill when he was injured). Their response was likely along the lines of "give young player X a go" when a lot of these signings are clearly not ready to play at this level.

The irony in all of this is that the people supposedly discussing the plan for Liam are the same idiots who thought it was a good idea to appoint him in the first place.

Where is the accountability for the Sporting Directors? Or are our ownership that dense when it comes to footballing matters, that whatever these Directors tell them, they believe to be true?

In what other world would the owner(s) of a business allow the leadership team to get away with what these under qualified SD’s are getting away with?

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/chelsea-blueco-todd-boehly-liam-rosenior-brighton-b2962462.html

23 minutes ago, sabin6912 said:

The irony in all of this is that the people supposedly discussing the plan for Liam are the same idiots who thought it was a good idea to appoint him in the first place.

Where is the accountability for the Sporting Directors? Or are our ownership that dense when it comes to footballing matters, that whatever these Directors tell them, they believe to be true?

In what other world would the owner(s) of a business allow the leadership team to get away with what these under qualified SD’s are getting away with?

They're American. Buzzwords, bullsh*t and no idea.

1 hour ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Behave.

As bad as Palmer has been, we don’t have the ability to replace him. If Dembele had a similar season at PSG, and they decided to offload, you could kick back and relax knowing Luis Campos would sort it. May as well stick with him and pray he gets his edge back, has a good summer (if Tuchel decides not to bring him) and we have less pre-season touring (unlikely, as we’ve already booked a big Asian tour).

1 hour ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Behave.

Foden and Palmer should be playing in The Baller League next season.

1 hour ago, PloKoon13 said:

Neto over Palmer?

If there is a genuine acknowledgement among the board/sporting directors that their strategy to date has been unsuccessful and they are willing to change it (which I doubt), we should be aware that different doesn't necessarily mean good. There's every chance we end up signing the 2026 equivalents of Koulibaly, Sterling and Aubameyang, or even worse, whoever happens to play well at the World Cup.

We also can't just draw a line under the farcical player recruitment under BlueCo and simply 'do better'. There is no buying club who will be interested in paying the amount for some of the unwanted squad players which wouldn't also f**k us from an SCR perspective. Consider also that we're a less attractive prospect for good players with no Champions' League football, and particularly now that we're a famous mess. We also have no idea who the manager is going to be, and Rosenior is hardly a draw if he stays on next season. We don't want to compound the issue by overpaying for players who won't make us better (which is exactly what we've done over the last two seasons with the exceptions of Pedro and Estêvão).

There's a very real possibility that we won't qualify for Europe next season. This at least gives us the benefit of only needing enough players to win enough of 38 league games to get back into the Champions' League rather than also having to deal with a protracted European campaign. So how do we build the skeleton of a competitive squad out of what we already have? We need to figure out what we already have that is useful then use any money we are able to raise to plug the gaps competently (if they are serious about 'experienced and ready players').

What we shouldn't do (but are more likely to) is to identify who we can sell at a profit (i.e. the good or club-trained players) then use the proceeds for incoming transfers. That way is 100% guaranteed to leave us with a mediocre side across the board rather than a smattering of genuinely good players surrounded by idiots. Our current core of good players with the addition of a competent goalkeeper, striker and a couple of wide men could probably pull it off.

Just in case:

DO NOT SELL UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES:

James, Colwill, Acheampong, Caicedo, Palmer, Estêvão, Chalobah, Pedro.

FEEL FREE TO SELL:

Cucurella, Fernández, Lavia, Jackson, Gusto, Santos, George, Anselmino.

PROBABLY CAN'T SELL EVEN THOUGH WE'D LIKE TO:

Neto, Gittens, Fofana, Garnacho, Badiashile, Disasi.

ACTIVELY LOOK TO GET RID OF:

Adarabioyo, Jörgensen, Delap, Guiu, Slonina.

Neto is a consistent 7/10 player most games. Not a superstar, but a solid player to have in a squad. He'll get close to 10 goals and 10 assists a season. A nice age too, at 26. A lot of the other wide players are 18-22. He brings some needed maturity to the flanks. He's been surprisingly injury free at Chelsea compared to Wolves.

I'd cash in on Palmer now before he potentially has a poor start to next season, which would tank his value. A quality AM would have to be brought in. Maybe Palmer will regain his form under a new coach. 16 months of sporadic form is worrying though.

19 minutes ago, Ngolo said:

Neto is a consistent 7/10 player most games. Not a superstar, but a solid player to have in a squad. He'll get close to 10 goals and 10 assists a season. A nice age too, at 26. A lot of the other wide players are 18-22. He brings some needed maturity to the flanks. He's been surprisingly injury free at Chelsea compared to Wolves.

I'd cash in on Palmer now before he potentially has a poor start to next season, which would tank his value. A quality AM would have to be brought in. Maybe Palmer will regain his form under a new coach. 16 months of sporadic form is worrying though.

Neto's career high for league goals in a season is 5. He has only once got more than 6 assists. I don't think he has either the output (or indeed the maturity) that you've suggested. He has scored two goals against teams that were in the Premier League last season: against Postecoglou's Forest (who were 19th) and at home to Wolves (who at that point had 2 points from 11 games). His qualities are 'stands out against lower league opposition' and 'runs fast'.

Palmer has scored 22, 15, and even in a 'sporadic' season which he has spent the vast majority of carrying an injury still has 9. Palmer at his worst is still significantly better than Neto at his best.

8 minutes ago, PloKoon13 said:

Neto's career high for league goals in a season is 5. He has only once got more than 6 assists. I don't think he has either the output (or indeed the maturity) that you've suggested. He has scored two goals against teams that were in the Premier League last season: against Postecoglou's Forest (who were 19th) and at home to Wolves (who at that point had 2 points from 11 games). His qualities are 'stands out against lower league opposition' and 'runs fast'.

Palmer has scored 22, 15, and even in a 'sporadic' season which he has spent the vast majority of carrying an injury still has 9. Palmer at his worst is still significantly better than Neto at his best.

Enough with the common sense already.

7 minutes ago, PloKoon13 said:

Neto's career high for league goals in a season is 5. He has only once got more than 6 assists. I don't think he has either the output (or indeed the maturity) that you've suggested. He has scored two goals against teams that were in the Premier League last season: against Postecoglou's Forest (who were 19th) and at home to Wolves (who at that point had 2 points from 11 games). His qualities are 'stands out against lower league opposition' and 'runs fast'.

Palmer has scored 22, 15, and even in a 'sporadic' season which he has spent the vast majority of carrying an injury still has 9. Palmer at his worst is still significantly better than Neto at his best.

Nobody mentioned only league output. He's scored 10 goals and assisted 7 goals this season. He scored 9 goals and assisted 9 goals last season.

Palmer's poor form started before his injuries this season. He scored 1 PL goal across his last 16 PL games last season. And it was a penalty.

Since the 14th of January 2025, Palmer has 25 goal contributions. Over the same period, Neto has 27 goal contributions.

It's a dumb comparison anyway. Palmer is not exclusively a RW. He plays lots of games as an AM

18 minutes ago, Ngolo said:

Nobody mentioned only league output. He's scored 10 goals and assisted 7 goals this season. He scored 9 goals and assisted 9 goals last season.

Palmer's poor form started before his injuries this season. He scored 1 PL goal across his last 16 PL games last season. And it was a penalty.

Since the 14th of January 2025, Palmer has 25 goal contributions. Over the same period, Neto has 27 goal contributions.

It's a dumb comparison anyway. Palmer is not exclusively a RW. He plays lots of games as an AM

Half of Neto's goals were in cup competitions against lower league opposition. Last season one of the nine you've counted was against Barrow in the League Cup, one was in the Conference League, and three weren't even in competitive fixtures!

Marc Guiu scored more goals in Europe last season than Lamine Yamal. Using your own logic, you'd take the former over the latter.

Context matters.

5 minutes ago, PloKoon13 said:

Half of Neto's goals were in cup competitions against lower league opposition. Last season one of the nine you've counted was against Barrow in the League Cup, one was in the Conference League, and three weren't even in competitive fixtures!

Marc Guiu scored more goals in Europe last season than Lamine Yamal. Using your own logic, you'd take the former over the latter.

Context matters.

You're not serious. You're wasting both of our time now. Guiu played in The Conference League, Yamal played in The Champions League.

It's okay. You're a Palmer fanboi and don't like Neto. Some lads like cock, others don't. The duality of man. There's your context.

This was never a case of Neto vs Palmer anyway.

1 hour ago, Ngolo said:

Neto is a consistent 7/10 player most games.

I think you fat-fingered 4 as 7 on your keypad

1 hour ago, Ngolo said:

You're not serious. You're wasting both of our time now. Guiu played in The Conference League, Yamal played in The Champions League.

I think you may have missed the point somewhat.

So are those at fault will finally be held accountable? They haven't a leg to stand on.

7 minutes ago, PloKoon13 said:

I think you may have missed the point somewhat.

It's okay if you want to be gay in 2026, bro.