15 minutes ago, BordeauxBlue said:

I suspect Brighton wanted to do us over because of our firm stance on Colwill.

Not really. They wanted to sell to the highest bidder. They only care about the money, not where it's coming from.

1 minute ago, coombsie said:

Any chance of us getting Marina Granovskaia back - SOON ??

Kepa ? Lukaku ?

Her signings in total have cost us about £500m of losses ... 

 

Edited August 11, 20232 yr by Sexyfootball

8 minutes ago, grantb said:

I was really disappointed with the news this morning but actually now think it is a positive.

We are not paying Brighton well over the odds for yet another player, get them added to the no transfer list ASAP.

For that money I'd want one of the Madrid Midfield 4 who are far more proven.

Santos will get a chance hopefully.

3 signings in Lavia, Kudus and the guy from Leeds.

1 bad injury and Liverpool have no cover.

Still stings a bit and a colossal waste of time buy I think fits more into our strategy overall just now.

This line, correctly sums it up for me !!!

Just now, Sexyfootball said:

Kepa ? Lukaku ?

Her transfers in total have cost us about £500m of losses ... 

 

It’s absolutely mad. From wasting huge fees on big names to wasting money on no names. Can’t we find some middle ground?

52 minutes ago, SydneyChelsea said:

If we seriously have £100m to spend on a DM, and Tchouameni is seriously available, well there is one other player who is worth paying whatever we can afford to get. We were fools to miss out him the first time with Fabregas practically begging the club to sign him from Monaco for two years before Real.

Couldn't agree more, he is brilliant. If he is actually gettable we should be throwing the kitchen sink at him.

RE: Caicedo - f**king hilarious! The consistency of the ineptitude from the people running the club has now surpassed tragedy and has achieved comedy.

3 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

Kepa ? Lukaku ?

Her signings in total have cost us about £500m of losses ... 

 

I would still take her over Winstanley and Stewart. Far more GOOD- PROFITABLE deals than bad.

We just have to move on to another target and work on that. I am sure the club is at it. Caicedo is a player we wanted but not as badly as Liverpool. 

 

I think the board approached it the right way this time and so be it if we miss out for somebody wanting to massively overpay.

last season we paid asking price for a load of players and everyone has been bashing the board for that.

this year, we are rightly trying to get the best deals (which has worked on the signings we have made already!) and now the board are going to get bashed for not paying asking price for a player at the beginning. 
 

we can’t have it both ways. 

Im angry at our board for piss arsing around for 3 months rather than sitting around a table and thrashing out the deal with brighton long ago. But having said that, there ìs other players out there overseas that are just as good and with more experience, so lets seek those out and test the water with some new targets.

 

Secondly, we still need an attacking midfielder so lets make damn sure now that brighton do not get kudas under any circumstances....not that im bitter 🙄

Edited August 11, 20232 yr by ALTE

23 minutes ago, Hanzen said:

Cesc worked with multiple different players in several clubs. 

Yes, but you're missing my point. Fabregas was a fine player, Enzo is also another fine player, but without another quality midfielder around him, he can only do so much.

2 minutes ago, coombsie said:

I would still take her over Winstanley and Stewart. Far more GOOD- PROFITABLE deals than bad.

From 15/16 season onwards, the only players she signed that we made a profit on were Djilobodji, Hector, Begovic and Ampadu. 

Paid £784m for 31 players that were subsequently sold for £297m.

Jury is still way out on Winstanley and Stewart, but no way would I ever want Marina back. 

10 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

Kepa ? Lukaku ?

Her signings in total have cost us about £500m of losses ... 

 

She made great deals though, not her fault that Kepa didn't turn out to be as good or that Lukaku is Lukaku, the decisions to get those players were not hers.

According to transfermarkt her record is about -300m, which is basically any top club in the world.

3 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

From 15/16 season onwards, the only players she signed that we made a profit on were Djilobodji, Hector, Begovic and Ampadu. 

Paid £784m for 31 players that were subsequently sold for £297m.

Jury is still way out on Winstanley and Stewart, but no way would I ever want Marina back. 

Those stats are pretty damning, I stand corrected !! 😉

6 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

Yes, but you're missing my point. Fabregas was a fine player, Enzo is also another fine player, but without another quality midfielder around him, he can only do so much.

Agreed. He can’t do everything by himself. Let’s hope that Ugochukwu turns out to be out of this world despite his age or that Lavia/Adams (given that we don’t get another player) can do the job.

After all, most of them are more defensive minded than Kovacic/RLC and Gallagher, despite his non-stop running. 

26 minutes ago, Snedger said:

Well, we certainly did our bit paying out huge money for Cucurella and Mudryk, to name just two.

Can't disagree but this Caicedo deal goes from overpaying to extortionate. I really hope we don't try and match Liverpool's bid at the last minute, just pay the £50m for Lavia and be done with it.

Chelsea football club, the new Banter FC.

35 minutes ago, icecoolguy22 said:

Agree, think that's a problem getting ignored under the word of 'potential'. If we want develop get players on potential, go lower and not spending the sort of money you'd get for a regular squad player at most European clubs. I could see the point of  not wanting to overspending 30M on the priority player , but how much money have we spent on those youngsters, when most keen football fan had to google their names?  I think we could have easily come up with the extra 30M if we spent a bit wisely in the expensive youth recruitment

But nobody knows which young recruited player will turn out to be world class. How many of all the young foreign players that nobody has heard of, signed by other clubs, are sold on for £80+ million? Not that many, most of them remain at midtable clubs. It's a common complaint Chelsea never scout the that amazing youngster from Belize, and now that we are trying to do that by signing a stack of them, it's suddenly madness!

It's regretable we failed to sign Caicedo, and I've read more than once that now we can't expect to make top 4. But was that realistically to be expected coming from 12th spot? I think a few posters were a bit ahead of themselves anyway expecting that. We've got a huge squad overhaul and a new coaching staff, it would be miraculous anyway if that gells in one season.

Edited August 11, 20232 yr by Valerie

I said we should pull out north of 80mil. Paid too much for Enzo already. However glad we didnt cause liverpool have now dropped 110 mil which will limit them going forward.

34 minutes ago, coombsie said:

Any chance of us getting Marina Granovskaia back - SOON ??

19 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

She made great deals though, not her fault that Kepa didn't turn out to be as good or that Lukaku is Lukaku, the decisions to get those players were not hers.

According to transfermarkt her record is about -300m, which is basically any top club in the world.

Hazard skews that chart. Granted she got a very good fee for him,. but she didn't sign him in the first place. I'm talking about players SHE signed ... and the numbers don't include Kepa, Ziyech and Lukaku yet either ... 

2 hours ago, nonotnowjim said:

Predictably there is a meltdown on here and socials about this.

Personally I am happy we have not overpaid significantly for the player. 

The worst thing about this are reports that we went in last min to up our offer to £100m. If we were willing to pay that, then we should have stumped up earlier on - but i am glad we didn't.

How many ecuadorean world beaters are there in football? Not many. Whilst caicedo is a decent enough footballer - I don't see the hype, and there are many other decent enough players to go around.

If Chelsea learn a lesson from this, and if fans learn a lesson from this - then it will all be worth it.

Lesson for club - don't deal with brighton, and don't cock around with haggling when the asking price is something we are willing to (eventually) go to. Just get business done.

Lesson for fans - ffs people, don't believe all the hype on social media. Many on here hanging on the words of youtubers like Younes who have been saying it's a "done deal" and liverpool bid is bluff. These people know nothing so stop gobbling up the twitter bs they regurgitate!

Good take on this. 

Another lesson is thatbthe scouts in our employ are lazy and not good enough and they should be fired. 

How can clubs like Brighton and co that have less resources than us be able to unearth £5m players and then we just wait for when those players have become well known and try to buy "ready" products. 

Go out and do your bloody jobs and scout properly or just hand in your notice. It's a shame that even the supposed young up and coming talents we are getting them at £30m whilst we want to buy a player that if two seasons ago you had done your job right, maybe comes to Chelsea and not Brighton. 

Like someone said earlier, we are hitting £100m consecutive seasons. Lukaku, Mudryk, Enzo we haven't done so not because of our own steel against such prices and being fleeced but out of losing to a man who once said having to buy players at such prices were the day he stops managing just because he was trying to get one over Pep and City. 

For people that highly criticised the previous ownership about not running the club properly and then going to attempt to stump even more than the previous regime did for near a 3rd time, it just shows a lack of responsibility. 

If Saudi didn't come in and "help" us we were on the verge of breaching FFP. Surely these things should matter to fans of the club too. It's not just about success in the window and failure in other sections of the club. 

Focus on building the team to a level where they are in the mix then go and splash out to complete the pieces not starting out the rebuild season with expensive buys otherwise you'll spend such sums every single window as clubs will know to just value high and wait till we yield. 

As a last point this is football, there are no loyalties nor do I even expect it, I said the other day us buying him at £100m didn't mean we would have stability for 10 years as if he came and lived up to expectations in a year or 2 one of the big 2 in Spain come for him.evwn if we get a £150 or 200m at that point it throws us into exact same situation of having to rebuild the squad so best we rebuild it now to a level where we can compete and then maybe if we are winning things we stand a chance of holding on to our players when the big boys come to town, though it's still doubtful. No one should blame him who wanted only us all window to decide in one day that it's now the bin dippers he would like to be with. 

51 minutes ago, Chelsbear said:

Chase a player all summer, miss out for 10 or so million despite spending best part of 70 million buying young players to ship out on loan.

Moronic 

Also extremely true. 

2 minutes ago, Valerie said:

But nobody knows which young recruited player will turn out to be world class. How many of all the young foreign players that nobody has heard of, signed by other clubs, are sold on for £80+ million? Not that many, most of them remain at midtable clubs. It's a common complaint Chelsea never scout the that amazing youngster from Belize, and now that we are trying to do that by signing a stack of them, it's suddenly madness!

It's regretable we failed to sign Caicedo, and I've read more than once that now we can't expect to make top 4. But was that realistically to be expected coming from 12th spot? I think a few posters were a bit ahead of themselves anyway expecting that. We've got a huge squad overhaul and a new coaching staff, it would be miraculous anyway if that gells in one season.

I don't think we are doing that though. Most of these players aren't really unheard of and they are being signed for massive amounts of money. Some are so well known that people have seen enough of them and don't rate them highly at all.

6 flops, 3 successes (Ronaldo, bale, grealish), 3 this year. And two of those winners were a cherry on top of an already great side. 

Let's remember this. Not signing Caicedo won't be the reason we fail to win a trophy this year or next. 

It is clearly disappointing, not least because of the ridiculous time elapsed of inactivity to be followed up with bids that everbody else knew would be rejected. There were countless number of people just on this forum alone advocating sh*t or get off the pot, weeks and weeks ago. Now to the mocking media we once again are left with Egbahli on our faces.

But the reason why i never felt Caicedo was worth us risking paying the money being touted is becuase of that single break out season and the fact that Brighton and their players fall under the scrutiny radar. Firstly all kudos to them and their manager, they play great attractive football and de Zerbi has a system that others are yet to properly fathom out.

But what i mean is that we see all of their great play and the quality their players exhibit, be it Caicedo, Trossard, Estupinan, Enciso, Mitoma. They have all rightly been in the spotlight. But there is no other side to the coin. Because they have all overachieved nobody notices when they under achieve. Don't get me wrong they have overachieved more often then not, but when they do lose, when they do have individual poor perfromances no mention is made, because it is kind of expected to a degree.

If we truly had 100m to spend on Caicedo, i think that gets you Tchouameni, or pretty damn close. RM have Tchouameni, Camavinga, Valverde, Kroos, Modric, all vying. Surely if they are gearing up for the financial rollercoaster of Mbappe, they would be open to an enticing grown up offer for one of these players. THe difference being of course is that Tchouameni has played in one of, if not the, top club in the world. Every performance, win lose or drasw is scrutinised. Tchouameni's valuation is gauged upon a far greater degree of scrutiny and based of deliverign week after week. Granted teh domestic league may be weaker but i would imagine the media demands and scrutiny is every bit and more intense than over here. Beat Getafe 5-0 but Tchouameni has a bit of a stinker, i bet its not overlooked.

£100m for Tchouameni is a definite marquee signing and would also set us up. Whether a team showing great promise but no European football would be able to pull it off is questionable. Hence why we may have to cut our cloth accordingly for a while.