I’ll be shocked if Kounde doesn’t come to us, people just need to be patient it’s not as if we’ve started this summer in ordinary circumstances with the takeover.

1 hour ago, HazardousChoice said:

You've misunderstood quite badly.

The point is the deals did not look like good fees prior to the players signing for us.

Marina didn't scout dross like Bakayoko,  Pulisic, Kepa, Drinkwater, Zappacosta etc but when you look at the ridiculous fees they cost did anyone think they looked remotely good value at the time?

Werner is probably the only signing we've made in the last 5 years that I felt we got a bargain price at the time it was announced.

Marina constantly overpays for every player we go after then gives the players such ridiculous contracts we struggle to move them on if they do flop.

How a guy not good enough to play for Dortmund who had 1 year left on his contract cost us 58m and got 150,000 a week I'll never know.

Marina must be getting kick backs.

Pretty certain you are trolling. We were not the only club interested in him, Klopp also wanted him. 

1 hour ago, HazardousChoice said:

You've misunderstood quite badly.

The point is the deals did not look like good fees prior to the players signing for us.

Marina didn't scout dross like Bakayoko,  Pulisic, Kepa, Drinkwater, Zappacosta etc but when you look at the ridiculous fees they cost did anyone think they looked remotely good value at the time?

Werner is probably the only signing we've made in the last 5 years that I felt we got a bargain price at the time it was announced.

Marina constantly overpays for every player we go after then gives the players such ridiculous contracts we struggle to move them on if they do flop.

How a guy not good enough to play for Dortmund who had 1 year left on his contract cost us 58m and got 150,000 a week I'll never know.

Marina must be getting kick backs.

So Liverpool, City and the like would have somehow manage to convince Dortmund to reduce the transfer fee by 20 or 30 million?  I very much doubt it.  

Players are always gonna look over priced after they flop, trick is to be good at scouting players.  No one would give a damn if we paid £20m too much if a player who turn out to be a superstar.  

Darwin Nunez and Tchouameni over paid or good transfers?

 

9 minutes ago, DarkMata said:

So Liverpool, City and the like would have somehow manage to convince Dortmund to reduce the transfer fee by 20 or 30 million?  I very much doubt it.  

Of course not.  None of them would have even entertained the idea of signing a guy that wasn't good enough for the Bundesliga for 30/40m

But if any other club did go for Pulisic that summer they'd have got him for 15/20m.  Still more than he was worth based on his poor 4 seasons at Dortmund but nothing like the insane price we bid.  

Seriously how do you end up paying 58m for a bench warmer who's stuck behind younger more talented players who has 1 year left on his contract?  Absolute Madness.

It would be like if Barca offered us 120m for CHO right now.  He could still somehow turn it around but the fee would be simply absurd for what he's shown so far in his career and his position in the team.  It just made no sense at the time

Nunez incredibly overpriced.  

Tchouameni, good price for a player who may very well go on to be the best in his position in the world.  Better than Rice for the same price.

That said we'd have had Tchouameni for half the price if Marina and the club didn't pull a Marina last year after we had laid all the groundwork for a move.

Edited June 16, 20224 yr by HazardousChoice

1 hour ago, timetowaste said:

I’ll be shocked if Kounde doesn’t come to us, people just need to be patient it’s not as if we’ve started this summer in ordinary circumstances with the takeover.

It's upsetting that our deals are likely to be concluded the moment the season starts whereas Liverpool, City, Spurs, and Arsenal will have their entire team ready by preseason. 

 

30 minutes ago, ducavis said:

Pretty certain you are trolling. We were not the only club interested in him, Klopp also wanted him. 

Klopp didn't want Pulisic,  No one wanted Pulisic.  Even Dortmund didn't want Pulisic which is why they let him go into his last year without offering him a new deal (he didn't deserve one) and had benched him behind 2 younger more talented players that were performing at a much higher level.

Liverpool enquired about signing Pulisic for 5m when he was 16/17.  He actually started decently at Dortmund for a few games but then after he strung together multiple dreadful seasons and lost his place there was no interest in him from Klopp or Anyone.

Until we decided to pay a huge fee for a £5m player based on his commercial value not his footballing ability.   What that commercial value is I'm not sure because I don't know how much Pulisic being here impacts our financials.

How a club manages to spend 58m on a bench warmer who'd proven not good enough in a weaker league with a year left on his contract I'll never know.

Edited June 16, 20224 yr by HazardousChoice

12 minutes ago, HazardousChoice said:

But if any other club did go for Pulisic that summer they'd have got him for 15/20m.  Still more than he was worth based on his poor 4 seasons at Dortmund but nothing like the insane price we bid.  

Haha come on you’ve just made that up.  Well done you’ve trolled me. 

22 minutes ago, DarkMata said:

Haha come on you’ve just made that up.  Well done you’ve trolled me. 

Made what up? Who was offering 30m for Pulisic after his 4 terrible seasons at Dortmund?  Do you think Dortmund would have turned down 20m for a bench warmer with 1 year left on his contract?

I think some people who hadn't watched him bought into the myth that because we paid a huge fee for him he was performing well there.

But he was Awful for Dortmund beyond a bright first few games were people hyped him as a prospect then was so bad for the next few years he got benched by 2 younger more talented players and all the interest around him outside of his own country completely dried up.

He was literally a 3 goal a season Winger playing for the 2nd best team in the weakest defensive league in Europe 🤣

Edited June 16, 20224 yr by HazardousChoice

15 minutes ago, Sconnie Blue said:

It's upsetting that our deals are likely to be concluded the moment the season starts whereas Liverpool, City, Spurs, and Arsenal will have their entire team ready by preseason. 

 

It’s a bit annoying but we’ve got to look at the issues we’ve had regarding the ownership and sanctions, all of those teams you mentioned will have known their targets and transfer budget for months

13 hours ago, HazardousChoice said:

Klopp didn't want Pulisic,  No one wanted Pulisic.  Even Dortmund didn't want Pulisic which is why they let him go into his last year without offering him a new deal (he didn't deserve one) and had benched him behind 2 younger more talented players that were performing at a much higher level.

Liverpool enquired about signing Pulisic for 5m when he was 16/17.  He actually started decently at Dortmund for a few games but then after he strung together multiple dreadful seasons and lost his place there was no interest in him from Klopp or Anyone.

Until we decided to pay a huge fee for a £5m player based on his commercial value not his footballing ability.   What that commercial value is I'm not sure because I don't know how much Pulisic being here impacts our financials.

How a club manages to spend 58m on a bench warmer who'd proven not good enough in a weaker league with a year left on his contract I'll never know.

I think Hazardouschoice is right about our failure in negotiating reasonable price for players we want to buy. Lukaku was not worth more than 50m when we bought him. Kepa  was massively overpriced, and same goes for Bakayoko and Drinkwater. I never understood why we bought Bakayoko over Fabinho and Pulisic for 58m was just insane. And if care is not taken, we would go and buy Declan Rice for 150 from Westham when there are several players that would do better in his position.  The sad thing is that we pay world class fees for average players or good players that cannot fit in to our pattern of play

I really hope we swerve this player, I haven’t seen anything in him that makes him stand out, get us a decent young Italian, it’s their Forte

22 hours ago, DarkMata said:

Everyone was over the moon when we bought Havertz, Zyiech, and Werner

I'm with you on your general points but on this one in particular, not me guv: -

• I liked Kai in videos until it became clear that we might actually get him whereupon I realised that he must not be as good as he looked; that he must be well below the level he appeared to have. This was because of my long held view that players who have proved that they have superstar ability do not choose to join Chelsea.
• It was clear from Hakim's age and league he was playing in that there would be a very firm lid on what we could expect from him.
• I never believed that load of old tosh about Liverpool being unable to afford Timo. If they had wanted him they'd have spent the money. They clearly did not rate him highly enough to write the cheque and I told people that should be a warning to us.

Edited June 17, 20224 yr by OhForAGreavsie

15 hours ago, HazardousChoice said:

Klopp didn't want Pulisic,  No one wanted Pulisic.  Even Dortmund didn't want Pulisic which is why they let him go into his last year without offering him a new deal (he didn't deserve one) and had benched him behind 2 younger more talented players that were performing at a much higher level.

Liverpool enquired about signing Pulisic for 5m when he was 16/17.  He actually started decently at Dortmund for a few games but then after he strung together multiple dreadful seasons and lost his place there was no interest in him from Klopp or Anyone.

Until we decided to pay a huge fee for a £5m player based on his commercial value not his footballing ability.   What that commercial value is I'm not sure because I don't know how much Pulisic being here impacts our financials.

How a club manages to spend 58m on a bench warmer who'd proven not good enough in a weaker league with a year left on his contract I'll never know.

Some big claims here...

As far as I remember there were quite a few clubs that wanted Pulisic - hence the reason we ended up paying too much for him.
Furthermore, buying him in February probably didn't help the case. You have to remember that he was only 20 years old, American (commercial value in a massive market) while being captain at the NT as well as playing regularly since his debut at just 17 on both teams. 

His number for Dortmund - when looking only a G/A - wasn't special, even though he was young. I agree on that part. However, he had the most successful dribbles in the league two years in a row, and he was primarily benched by the to younger players after being signed by Chelsea. 

In the NT he made his debut at the U17 being only 14 years old if I remember correct ... scoring 20 goals in 34 games. For the NT (excluding friendlies) he has playes 37 games, scoring 17 times and making 10 assists. At the time of the transfer he had only played 16 games for the NT, scoring 7 goals and delivering 7 assists. 

Now... did we overpay? Probably. But his market value was indeed high. There are still several articles posted online with pretty consistent rumours saying that Dortmund only would let him leave in the summer of 2018 for around €70m. We bought him half a year later - just after the January window. 

Looking at his statistics for us, he's played 115 games while averaging ~60 minutes per game. Had he played 90 minuted per game, it would equal 78 full games (yes, I'm well aware that it's like this for all players given our rotational habits). He has scored 25 goals and made 19 assists. 44 goal contributions in 115 games for a winger is hardly THAT terrible. Even more so, 44 goal contributions in gametime equal to 78 full games, that a decent output. 

I'm, not really so pro Pulisic as it may seem, but what I hope is seeing the Pulisic we saw under the pandemic. Explosive, quick thinking and effective. He's only 23 and has been quite prone to injuries as well. 

But other than that, yeah. We definately have a history of overpaying for the wrong players.

Barca given cash injection for their transfer plans. Makes signing Kounde more realistic.

21 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Barca given cash injection for their transfer plans. Makes signing Kounde more realistic.

Great as Kounde gets caught up field too often for a right back. There are much better and cheaper options for a defensive right back. I don’t see why Chelsea are wasting their time on him. 

1 hour ago, TheGreatestGame said:

Great as Kounde gets caught up field too often for a right back. There are much better and cheaper options for a defensive right back. I don’t see why Chelsea are wasting their time on him. 

Hold on; we are buying him to play CB, RCB, and in emergencies as a RB. I don’t think we are buying him primarily as a RB.

One of Kounde and de ligt and Koulibaly are the two centre backs I like the idea of personally. I really rate bastoni and gvardiol looks impressive and if we didn't have colwill coming through I'd prefer one of those 2 over Koulibaly. However with Koulibaly and colwill rotating and phasing colwill into a starter in a couple of seasons we could have our starting back line (Chilwell, Colwill, De Ligt, James) sorted for a long time. 

Koundes set for Barca. Reports are he has agreed a contract with them, sevilla and Barca have an agreement in prinicpal Sevilla just has to decide which of 3 players are going in exchange and how that effects the final price. And of course convincing said player to join them from Barca.

Good use of 1 1/2 years of faffing around if we miss out.

1 hour ago, axman2526 said:

Koundes set for Barca. Reports are he has agreed a contract with them, sevilla and Barca have an agreement in prinicpal Sevilla just has to decide which of 3 players are going in exchange and how that effects the final price. And of course convincing said player to join them from Barca.

Is there a source to this? Because most of the journalists I've been following have said otherwise and that he's already agreed personal terms with Chelsea and it is just the fee that needs to be agreed.

19 minutes ago, Frankie8Lampard said:

Is there a source to this? Because most of the journalists I've been following have said otherwise and that he's already agreed personal terms with Chelsea and it is just the fee that needs to be agreed.

Last place I saw was the metro. 

 

Sky Sports has reported a Barca cash injection to help their bids for lewa and Kounde.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/london-is-blue-chelsea-fc-soccer-podcast/id914691565?i=1000566779210
 

Interesting podcast here. According to The pod, Barca defo interested but haven’t got the cash and can’t even register Christensen. 

8 hours ago, JM7 said:

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/london-is-blue-chelsea-fc-soccer-podcast/id914691565?i=1000566779210
 

Interesting podcast here. According to The pod, Barca defo interested but haven’t got the cash and can’t even register Christensen. 

Off to West Ham then 

10 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Last place I saw was the metro. 

 

Sky Sports has reported a Barca cash injection to help their bids for lewa and Kounde.

Metro are one of the worst sources of information tbh.

7 hours ago, STATS said:

Metro are one of the worst sources of information tbh.

Aye they are, rumour still a rumour though and every now and again the blind squirrel finds the nut.