5 hours ago, OhForAGreavsie said:

Strangely, I want us to get to a place where we can pay the big money, and not be bothered about it. Our problem is that we have never quite managed to be in a place where we buy because we want to. Instead we are forever going to the market because we have to. This makes us vulnerable to clubs jacking up their prices, and our owners feeling the pressure to pay them.

Oh for a Greavsie, oh I wish I could have given you a handshake of appreciation. 

Exactly what I'm saying and have been. It's not just about spending, it's about doing it intelligently when it will have maximum impact. 

We keep doing it as well because the team isn't quite ready. No need to have one 8 or 9 over 10 player when the rest are 5 or 6. Get the team  to be 7 or 8 all round then if you need to splash to push it it up, go for it. 

Surely transfers should work like this:

Chelsea:  We'd like to sign Moises Caicedo  please.  We're willing to play £60 million.

Brighton:  If we wish to buy Moises he will cost you £100 million.

Chelsea:  That seems a little steep.  We could probably stretch to £70 million.

Brighton: No, sorry old chap, it's £100 million

Chelsea: £75 million?

Brighton: No, £100 million

Chelsea, £80 million final offer

Brighton: No, £100 million

Chelsea: No can do.  So long and thanks for all the fish!

I'm with Coombsie we should walk away and look at alternative (ideally the guy Brighton have lined up as replacement - but I suspect that's Billy Gilmore 🙈}

There could be a stage in there where we buy a 'keeper off them, but...

Edited August 7, 20232 yr by fester

3 hours ago, abister1 said:

Agreed and a few people have said that in response to my comment too. 

I think the point is being missed, a ten year stay indicates stability and the arguments some are making about pay £100m and sort us out for the next 10 years becomes mute because whether they bid for them at £50m, £100m or £150m it still throws the squad into turmoil and stability out the window as we then need to rebuild again and look to fill the vacated position. 

If indeed Caicedo is the one in the million, do or die player some have vociferously argued for, then what happens next without the said do or die player? 

We will be looking for someone else. And that's the point I was trying to make. When Hazard left we got big bucks, would you say we were better off with Pulisic, Werner, Havertz, Ziyech or even CHO and Mount people thought could replace him? Not even close. Since he left we haven't got anyone close to replicating Eden's wow factor. 

 

Hazard was a star and a brilliant player but we did when the Champions League and two other trophies or more with these so called 'players' after he left. It was a good deal.

12 minutes ago, BordeauxBlue said:

If they move the goalposts again we should 100% move away for the disrespect alone. 

Its obvious they dont really want to sell him.

Still not convinced any holding midfielder is worth £100m. It is the one role on the pitch that is difficult to quantify and depends on the “collective”, the team achieving success. Take Declan Rice at £105m; 28 games into last season West Ham were stuck in 18th and everyone was questioning the ridiculous valuation West Ham had placed on him, and how overrated he was. If they had ended up getting relegated they would have struggled to sell him for £70m. Come the end of the season West Ham finished in the bottom half of the league and managed to win the Conference League, and he has now gone for £105m.

A large chunk of the fee is tied to “potential” which for a holding midfielder is difficult to quantify. If when he retires or leaves Arsenal at say 30+ and they haven’t managed to achieve any major success, it is only at that point he can be deemed a flop. With any other player in another position on the pitch you can quantify and determine if they are a flop or justify the money paid in as little as 1-2 seasons even without the team achieving any success.

1 hour ago, abister1 said:

Oh for a Greavsie, oh I wish I could have given you a handshake of appreciation. 

Exactly what I'm saying and have been. It's not just about spending, it's about doing it intelligently when it will have maximum impact. 

We keep doing it as well because the team isn't quite ready. No need to have one 8 or 9 over 10 player when the rest are 5 or 6. Get the team  to be 7 or 8 all round then if you need to splash to push it it up, go for it. 

I totally agree there are worries with the money being spent including the loan lads its definitely something we have to hope the owners know what they’re doing, but your other point still sounds like you are saying we’re buy players that are too good for us.

Our problem in the past has been paying big money on the wrong players.  At the same time when Abramovich first took over we spent big on the right players.  I don’t see if Caicedo turns out to be the bee’s knees how it would be a bad thing.  

Monday and no announcement. Just like that Twitter user followed by the main faces of transfer rumours this Ecuadorian bloke appears to have been off the mark, to put it kindley 

it's time for our secret weapon

4 hours ago, ducavis said:

Still not convinced any holding midfielder is worth £100m. It is the one role on the pitch that is difficult to quantify and depends on the “collective”, the team achieving success. Take Declan Rice at £105m; 28 games into last season West Ham were stuck in 18th and everyone was questioning the ridiculous valuation West Ham had placed on him, and how overrated he was. If they had ended up getting relegated they would have struggled to sell him for £70m. Come the end of the season West Ham finished in the bottom half of the league and managed to win the Conference League, and he has now gone for £105m.

A large chunk of the fee is tied to “potential” which for a holding midfielder is difficult to quantify. If when he retires or leaves Arsenal at say 30+ and they haven’t managed to achieve any major success, it is only at that point he can be deemed a flop. With any other player in another position on the pitch you can quantify and determine if they are a flop or justify the money paid in as little as 1-2 seasons even without the team achieving any success.

It's recognised that measuring midfielders is difficult. As taken from baseball one way, if you have enough data is to look at the results of the team with the player on the pitch as opposed to results with the player off the pitch. Of course on this basis you would probably have to rate Jorginho a success, as in fact I do.

Also see:
https://medium.com/@PepFiction/setting-fundamental-parameters-for-judging-midfielders-ft-aurelien-tchouameni-case-study-45293ed2015d

There is an emerging literature in this area.

I don't know what a midfielder is worth but I can say that every great team I've ever seen has great midfielders possibly excepting Maradona's Mexico world cup side. 
In particular for Chelsea where would we have been with out Makelele or later Kante or Ballack or Lampard or Ramires or Essien. Those players define modern chelsea just as much as or more than Drogba, or Terry or Cech.

Brightons rumoured price increase may be down to them being unhappy with Caicedo as he apparently refused to play yesterday and did not turn up for training today.

11 minutes ago, ozboy said:

It's recognised that measuring midfielders is difficult. As taken from baseball one way, if you have enough data is to look at the results of the team with the player on the pitch as opposed to results with the player off the pitch. Of course on this basis you would probably have to rate Jorginho a success, as in fact I do.

Also see:
https://medium.com/@PepFiction/setting-fundamental-parameters-for-judging-midfielders-ft-aurelien-tchouameni-case-study-45293ed2015d

There is an emerging literature in this area.

I don't know what a midfielder is worth but I can say that every great team I've ever seen has great midfielders possibly excepting Maradona's Mexico world cup side. 
In particular for Chelsea where would we have been with out Makelele or later Kante or Ballack or Lampard or Ramires or Essien. Those players define modern chelsea just as much as or more than Drogba, or Terry or Cech.

While Ramires certainly had his uses I wouldn't put him in that company if I'm honest.

For the period he was our best midfielder we were pretty much universally begging for improvements in the pivot. He, Mikel and an ageing Lampard just weren't cutting it.

23 minutes ago, Argo said:

While Ramires certainly had his uses I wouldn't put him in that company if I'm honest.

For the period he was our best midfielder we were pretty much universally begging for improvements in the pivot. He, Mikel and an ageing Lampard just weren't cutting it.

Yes but we wouldn't have won the champions league without him. Still I agree.

17 minutes ago, ozboy said:

It's recognised that measuring midfielders is difficult. As taken from baseball one way, if you have enough data is to look at the results of the team with the player on the pitch as opposed to results with the player off the pitch. Of course on this basis you would probably have to rate Jorginho a success, as in fact I do.
 

The statistic you are talking about is Value Over Replacement Player (VORP). It has its critics in baseball because the model requires a very arbitary set of assumptions about overall league quality, but it has been wildly successful in basketball and hockey. One thing that all these sports have in common is that they have interchange subs and a large number of games per season, both of which means you have much, much larger sample size of direct comparisons than that available in football. Secondly, and IMO most importantly, VORP is successful in basketball and hockey because there are only 5 players on the court for each side, meaning that each individual's contribuition to their team's performance is much higher.

It does not work and cannot work in football because we have a) low numbers of substitutions, b) lineup changes are permanent, so direct comparison is rare and c) there are 11 players per side. All three factors mean that the variance is so impossibly high that any conclusion would be weakly supported, in a mathematical sense. I have seen this idea pushed by many American amateur bloggers/journalists (Ryan O'Hanlon of ESPN the main culprit) but has it no real merit in maths.

Quote

Also see:
https://medium.com/@PepFiction/setting-fundamental-parameters-for-judging-midfielders-ft-aurelien-tchouameni-case-study-45293ed2015d

There is an emerging literature in this area.

I don't know what a midfielder is worth but I can say that every great team I've ever seen has great midfielders possibly excepting Maradona's Mexico world cup side. 
In particular for Chelsea where would we have been with out Makelele or later Kante or Ballack or Lampard or Ramires or Essien. Those players define modern chelsea just as much as or more than Drogba, or Terry or Cech.

Not really - scouting algorithms, just like any other corporate HR data analysis, are unfortunately propietary, tighly-guarded trade secrets! The stuff we see in media are just Football Manager and fantasy football bloggers. Conversely, the professional data sets available to clubs is miles beyond anything we see from consumer-level Opta, and consequently the depth of performance and scouting analysis is much deeper than the usual.

The blog piece also relies on two false premises. Firstly, the appeal to authority that because tech companies are successful, football data analysis gives us incontrovertible insights; anyone who unironically says "the numbers don't lie" is not a data scientist. Data needs context, and models need assumptions to work. Most football data analysis is devoid of context and attempts to narrow the game down to a set of factors. Mathematically, this is like doing analysis focusing on averages without considering variance. Most "analysis" is just the author's confirmation bias played out with numbers and graphs - astrology for grown men, if we're being honest.

The second false premise, and most pertinent to this discussion, is that all positions on a field aspire to a perfect archetype, defined by some sort of statistical ideal. This is a core assumption of the analyst's model and one that doesn't make any sense. Not all DMs will follow an "optimal ratio" of tackles per zone, because that would vary by play style and by tactics/formation. John Obi Mikel would no doubt be a perfect example of an "optimal" 40/40/20 DM as defined in the blog, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who suggests he is objectively better than Claude Makelele!

Move on from Caicedo this window, let him be unsettled and have an average season, his price tag will drop and Brighton may just come knocking. Even If he has a great season, it's not like he will become a 120M player, nobody else is willing to go for 80M so far.

8 hours ago, icecoolguy22 said:

Move on from Caicedo this window, let him be unsettled and have an average season, his price tag will drop and Brighton may just come knocking. Even If he has a great season, it's not like he will become a 120M player, nobody else is willing to go for 80M so far.

Think we very much need him. If we do get him I reckon he'll be considered our best midfielder and one of our very best players by the end of this season.

Clearly trying to push a move through so lets get this done. Today would be best because we'll need him against Liverpool. Without him we make take a hammering on Sunday and thats the last thing this club needs right now.

10 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Brightons rumoured price increase may be down to them being unhappy with Caicedo as he apparently refused to play yesterday and did not turn up for training today.

They need to sort their midfield as well and the clock is ticking. It is not easy to replace him but I also don't feel there is that much pressure to deliver for De Zerbi. Their aim should be to survive in the Prem this season, and introduce 2-3 new young players to the Premier League so they can make a profit of them.

Come on, Let's get this done before the season starts.

as a player i wouldn't sign for Brighton without a release clause, seeing how they operate

4 hours ago, OriginalS said:

Think we very much need him. If we do get him I reckon he'll be considered our best midfielder and one of our very best players by the end of this season.

Clearly trying to push a move through so lets get this done. Today would be best because we'll need him against Liverpool. Without him we make take a hammering on Sunday and thats the last thing this club needs right now.

Even if we sign any more players this week I am not sure he would just be thrown into the starting lineup against Liverpool. They would need some time training with the team to fit into our system. I am pretty sure our starting lineup against Liverpool will reflect players who featured heavily in pre-season. Most likely close to the team that started against Dortmund, with the obvious exception being Nkunku.

4 hours ago, evissy said:

They need to sort their midfield as well and the clock is ticking. It is not easy to replace him but I also don't feel there is that much pressure to deliver for De Zerbi. Their aim should be to survive in the Prem this season, and introduce 2-3 new young players to the Premier League so they can make a profit of them.

I asked a neighbor Brighton fan how they would do this season and in Europe.

His reply was typical football fan

" I don't think we will ever be as good as last season ever again !!"

1 hour ago, azpi28 said:

as a player i wouldn't sign for Brighton without a release clause, seeing how they operate

Cucu, Bissouma, Tossard, Burn, Mcallister all got their move away without release clauses. Given that Caicedo signed a new 4 year contract 6 months ago might explain why in his case Brighton feel justified in not letting him follow them out the door in a hurry 

 

39 minutes ago, Gulllible said:

Cucu, Bissouma, Tossard, Burn, Mcallister all got their move away without release clauses. Given that Caicedo signed a new 4 year contract 6 months ago might explain why in his case Brighton feel justified in not letting him follow them out the door in a hurry 

 

that's a good point. Maybe Caicedo was naive in trusting a verbal agreement that he could leave in the summer

40 minutes ago, Gulllible said:

Cucu, Bissouma, Tossard, Burn, Mcallister all got their move away without release clauses. Given that Caicedo signed a new 4 year contract 6 months ago might explain why in his case Brighton feel justified in not letting him follow them out the door in a hurry 

 

Mac Allister did have a release clause and he signed a new contract 6 months ago were the release clause was possibly added.

3 minutes ago, DarkMata said:

Mac Allister did have a release clause and he signed a new contract 6 months ago were the release clause was possibly added.

Yes, signed before the WC. It was called a release clause for 35m. It was more of an option, on his side, for him to leave. The 35m was a token figure. The real figure was closer to 55m. Clever work on McAllister's agent's part. Caicedo's agent, on the other hand, was a dolt.

If we had reached an agreement with Brighton this deal would have happened by now. Looks like we are still not in agreement on a price. Assuming Brighton are sticking to their position we may well already be looking at alternatives. Perhaps we will grab Kudus ahead of them now that Nkunku is out for months.