On 26/07/2019 at 16:35, chiefBlueCFC said:

I understand that viewpoint. Personally, I think selling him would be a mistake. I see him as potentially taking over that dominating presence in the middle of the defense. He's very strong in the air and I feel he reads the game well. In fact, if he wouldn't have gotten injured a few years back, I think he would be a stalwart in our defense already.

I disagree. Zouma's recovery challenges and interceptions (as good as they are) come due to his dodgy initial positioning and while he undoubtedly has a good leap he often gets his timimg wrong going too late or too early. 

On 26/07/2019 at 17:53, mwblue10 said:

Looks about what we expected, no real surprises or ommissions

Wouldn’t try to read anything other than the obvious such as  say we know Kepa and say Dave aren’t going out on loan.

For instance there are only two keepers on that list yet we have to name three. What happens is that all under 21 players ( even those out on loan ) will be listed on the B list many get onto that list without a squad number.

 

19 hours ago, Argo said:

I disagree. Zouma's recovery challenges and interceptions (as good as they are) come due to his dodgy initial positioning and while he undoubtedly has a good leap he often gets his timimg wrong going too late or too early. 

Yep I think I agree with this.

if Zouma cut out the bad mistakes be them from his not too good passing and his bad positioning then he would be phenomenal but the dry best CDs have far more to their game than just making recovery challenges just like the modern keeper is  likely to judged on his passing ability alongside their ability to make a save.

Everton are desperate for him and I would snatch their hand off if a post £40 million offer was received 

Based on the first post, we’d have 6 new players in the squad. I don’t think we will be that greatly affected by the transfer ban, with a lot of new faces who’s good enough to break in the team after a good run like Mount, James, Abraham, etc. Plus there’s Pulisic who I imagine will be a regular.

50 minutes ago, dansubrosa said:

Based on the first post, we’d have 6 new players in the squad. I don’t think we will be that greatly affected by the transfer ban, with a lot of new faces who’s good enough to break in the team after a good run like Mount, James, Abraham, etc. Plus there’s Pulisic who I imagine will be a regular.

Thats assuming the returning loan players and youth players hit the ground running. I would expect the 4 players you mentioned to take a while to acclimatise, and i dont think that is unreasonable taking into account there ages. 

We are significantly weaker than last season without hazard, and our rivals have all made some decent signings bar liverpool.

We finished 6 points above 6 placed united last season, with the transfer ban, i don't see us getting the same points as last year, so i think 6th place is realistic with our current resources.

It will be a shame if we miss out on champions league football, but i dont rrally think it would effect the level of player we are aiming to bring in these days.

So if we can bring a few players through, whilst still finishing top 6, then spend big where its needed, i think we can be a real force in 12 months time, but i would definitely temper expectations for this season.

 

6 New signings for Chelsea over the summer:

 

Pulisic (Dortmund)

Zouma (Everton)

Abraham (Aston Villa)

Batshuayi (Crystal Palace)

James (Wigan)

Mount (Derby)

 

Do these really add that much quality on what's already there? With Hazard gone, these six additions don't really do much. 

Barkley might have a good season the way he's been in preseason but we've seen in the past players shine preseason but do nothing significant after. 

The few plusses are that this time hopefully Loftus Cheek and Hudson Odoi will feature heavily whenever fit from the beginning, and Kante will be in his favoured position. 

Also, Mount looks like someone who can add a few goals from midfield. 

Going to be a scrap for top 6 and this Chelsea defence looks far from solid. 

Alonso, Luiz, Emerson all error prone.

Zouma has few mistakes in him, too and Azpi seems to have lost his legs earlier than expected. 

Fullbacks pressing right up when they don't have the pace to recover spells danger all over. (Alonso, Azpi)

6 hours ago, GhostOfDembaBa said:

6 New signings for Chelsea over the summer:

 

Pulisic (Dortmund)

Zouma (Everton)

Abraham (Aston Villa)

Batshuayi (Crystal Palace)

James (Wigan)

Mount (Derby)

 

Do these really add that much quality on what's already there? With Hazard gone, these six additions don't really do much. 

Barkley might have a good season the way he's been in preseason but we've seen in the past players shine preseason but do nothing significant after. 

The few plusses are that this time hopefully Loftus Cheek and Hudson Odoi will feature heavily whenever fit from the beginning, and Kante will be in his favoured position. 

Also, Mount looks like someone who can add a few goals from midfield. 

Going to be a scrap for top 6 and this Chelsea defence looks far from solid. 

Alonso, Luiz, Emerson all error prone.

Zouma has few mistakes in him, too and Azpi seems to have lost his legs earlier than expected. 

Fullbacks pressing right up when they don't have the pace to recover spells danger all over. (Alonso, Azpi)

At this point who cares?

We have a CFC legend as manager with a staff full of CFC legends.  We have a squad of young players (several of which are English and homegrown from our academy) that are going to play big minutes this upcoming season.  

Haven't we bitched and moaned enough over the last 15 years about this team making big splashes only to see them fail (please don't make me list them out) and counter that by asking that our young players get the chance to shine.  We have been given a chance to see what our academy can produce.

• United has spent a boat load of money on top talent and managers and look at how they have performed.  
• Liverpool got lucky that Mane, Salah, Van Djik, and Allison all were able to continue their high level of play at a higher level club / different league.  They also got lucky that TA-A and Robertson became superstars last season.
• Spurs...won't win s**t as we have seen, and at some point will cave in and sell Kane, Alli, Son and Erikson (like they ALWAYS do)
• Arsenal...do we really need to talk about them?

6 hours ago, GhostOfDembaBa said:

6 New signings for Chelsea over the summer:

 

Pulisic (Dortmund)

Zouma (Everton)

Abraham (Aston Villa)

Batshuayi (Crystal Palace)

James (Wigan)

Mount (Derby)

 

Do these really add that much quality on what's already there? With Hazard gone, these six additions don't really do much. 

Barkley might have a good season the way he's been in preseason but we've seen in the past players shine preseason but do nothing significant after. 

The few plusses are that this time hopefully Loftus Cheek and Hudson Odoi will feature heavily whenever fit from the beginning, and Kante will be in his favoured position. 

Also, Mount looks like someone who can add a few goals from midfield. 

Going to be a scrap for top 6 and this Chelsea defence looks far from solid. 

Alonso, Luiz, Emerson all error prone.

Zouma has few mistakes in him, too and Azpi seems to have lost his legs earlier than expected. 

Fullbacks pressing right up when they don't have the pace to recover spells danger all over. (Alonso, Azpi)

Same defense that only allowed 39 goals last season + you add Zouma and potentially James (while hopefully dumping Zappacosta and leaving Alonso out of the 1st team entirely)

6 hours ago, TrueBlueSeaFC87 said:

Same defense that only allowed 39 goals last season + you add Zouma and potentially James (while hopefully dumping Zappacosta and leaving Alonso out of the 1st team entirely)

And that was with Kante not playing in his best position 

On 25/07/2019 at 07:27, Davey Baby said:

If you're right and there's only room for one more, then agreed Kenedy could get the nod. However are you sure there's 16 non-homegrown players in your list? I'm assuming you've picked 2 of Pulisic, Zouma and Christensen as non-homegrown. Which 2, and are you sure they're not homegrown? I'm asking because I'm not exactly sure what the criteria is.

For me 24 is actually a massive squad, not sure we need the extra non HG, we certainly don't need it if it is Kenedy. He's deadweight in my view.

Will be exciting to see our Club Home Grown quota just about filled for the CL: Ruben, Andreas and Tammy all qualify. We will also have CHO, James and Mount all U21 but eligible for that as well. Plus Ampadu coming back. Could be homegrown quotas filled entirely from the academy soon. 

On 27/07/2019 at 18:53, Argo said:

I disagree. Zouma's recovery challenges and interceptions (as good as they are) come due to his dodgy initial positioning

That was always Cahill's big flaw to be honest.

Scoring goals will almost certainly be our biggest issue this season for me. Batshuayi is certainly not good enough, Giroud is 33 and far past his best and Abraham is the wildcard but he's only proven himself in the Championship until now.

On 27/07/2019 at 11:53, Argo said:

I disagree. Zouma's recovery challenges and interceptions (as good as they are) come due to his dodgy initial positioning and while he undoubtedly has a good leap he often gets his timimg wrong going too late or too early. 

Hopefully he proves that view to be wrong, but it looks like we are going to find out either way. I didn't watched him a whole lot while he was at Palace (I think it was CP) and Everton, if I'm being honest. I don't watch out rivals all that much really. Sometimes I do, but I don't spend every week watching as many matches as possible. I pretty much stick to Chelsea and that's it. Hopefully we see him improve in that regard (positioning and timing his jumps) if your critique of him is true. 

17 hours ago, chiefBlueCFC said:

Hopefully he proves that view to be wrong, but it looks like we are going to find out either way. I didn't watched him a whole lot while he was at Palace (I think it was CP) and Everton, if I'm being honest. I don't watch out rivals all that much really. Sometimes I do, but I don't spend every week watching as many matches as possible. I pretty much stick to Chelsea and that's it. Hopefully we see him improve in that regard (positioning and timing his jumps) if your critique of him is true. 

He was at Stoke prior to Everton.  From what I saw, he was much much better this past season at Everton and seemed to have improved a good amount.  His season at Stoke was his first back after injury too, though.

2 hours ago, mwblue10 said:

He was at Stoke prior to Everton.  From what I saw, he was much much better this past season at Everton and seemed to have improved a good amount.  His season at Stoke was his first back after injury too, though.

That's right! It was Stoke, thank you. The few amount of matches of Everton I watched, Zouma was their best defender in my eyes, but I didn't watch to critique all of them and I didn't watch that often either. It seemed to me that prior to his injury, he was improving quite a bit every week and was becoming one of our better defenders. His injury was a bad one and it takes some time to fully get your feet under you after an injury like that,

Edited July 30, 20196 yr by chiefBlueCFC

Look who is back with the squad!

34 minutes ago, evissy said:

 

 

Look who is back with the squad!

 

Picture day!  We should soon have an official squad announcement along with squad numbers.

Pleased to see the list on Sky sports news this morning of all the players sold-retired-released. There are around 12 gone and only about 10 on loan, saving a lot of wages on players that had no chance of making it to the first team.

Apologies if this poitn has already been made

I am not sure how they would get on but we are 2 players short of fielding a full English team with an English manager, long time since we could say that.

        Cumming

James Tomori

Mount Barkley Loftus-Cheek  Drinkwater

Abraham Hudson-Odoi

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, andy said:

Apologies if this poitn has already been made

I am not sure how they would get on but we are 2 players short of fielding a full English team with an English manager, long time since we could say that.

        Cumming

James Tomori

Mount Barkley Loftus-Cheek  Drinkwater

Abraham Hudson-Odoi

 

 

 

 

Dave is basically a cockney now just like Eidur used to be 

4 hours ago, Richard P said:

Pleased to see the list on Sky sports news this morning of all the players sold-retired-released. There are around 12 gone and only about 10 on loan, saving a lot of wages on players that had no chance of making it to the first team.

Still a few more to sort out ....

Hector, Omeruo, Blackman, Piazon, Rahman, Pantic, Izzy Brown being the oldest ones ... I expect most of those will be sold, assuming we can find any buyers.

 

Loaned until their contracts expire more like. We must get good fees for these players to justify all these loans.