On 08/01/2023 at 22:47, JM7 said:

I know City are dodgy but they have got the club set up brilliantly. Their scouting is incredible. Rarely get it wrong. 

£100m for Grealish was poor business tbh. We have been poor with recruitment too, going back god knows how long. Lukaku for £100m was also poor, but in hindsight nobody knew that would happen. The best signing we've made in years happens to be a player we got on a free, Thiago Silva. 

Edited January 9, 20233 yr by enigma

3 hours ago, enigma said:

£100m for Grealish was poor business tbh. We have been poor with recruitment too, going back god knows how long. Lukaku for £100m was also poor, but in hindsight nobody knew that would happen. The best signing we've made in years happens to be a player we got on a free, Thiago Silva. 

The best signings we've made all have that 35-40m limit, with Didier being the most expensive of those. Go further than that and we've only shot ourselves on the foot.I really wish someone at the club finally realized that and we'd settle for smarter deals.

12 hours ago, enigma said:

£100m for Grealish was poor business tbh. We have been poor with recruitment too, going back god knows how long. Lukaku for £100m was also poor, but in hindsight nobody knew that would happen. The best signing we've made in years happens to be a player we got on a free, Thiago Silva. 

Recent years.

Super Dan Petrescu still holds a warm place for me. Publicly announced that he wanted to move to Chelsea whilst at Sheffield Wednesday, thn made the switch, no boll*cking around. Great player, great servant, great value.

13 hours ago, enigma said:

Lukaku for £100m was also poor, but in hindsight nobody knew that would happen.

A lot of people knew that resigning Rom was an error. The forums were full of people saying so. 🙂 

10 hours ago, Brigadeiro Mk II said:

The best signings we've made all have that 35-40m limit, with Didier being the most expensive of those. Go further than that and we've only shot ourselves on the foot.I really wish someone at the club finally realized that and we'd settle for smarter deals.

To be fair 25m for drogba then is probably about 75m nowadays. 

I can't imagine a player with drogbas profile when we signed him going for less than that nowadays. 

7 minutes ago, bisright1 said:

To be fair 25m for drogba then is probably about 75m nowadays. 

I can't imagine a player with drogbas profile when we signed him going for less than that nowadays. 

Even so, Drogba only scored 20+ in 2 seasons at the club. Granted we had the likes of Lampard, Joe Cole, Robben chipping in with goals, but Drogba was mostly a big game player and target man. 

13 hours ago, Brigadeiro Mk II said:

The best signings we've made all have that 35-40m limit, with Didier being the most expensive of those. Go further than that and we've only shot ourselves on the foot.I really wish someone at the club finally realized that and we'd settle for smarter deals.

Hazard cost us 32 million pounds, which at the time was as much as 70 Million today, so you're a bit off there.

1 hour ago, True Blue23 said:

Hazard cost us 32 million pounds, which at the time was as much as 70 Million today, so you're a bit off there.

Well I won't pretend I know much about economics and stuff, especially from England, and obviously inflation and context has to be taken into account, but using an inflation calculator from Bank of England those 32m pounds back then are equivalent to around 42m nowadays. Apparently the deal that's now valued at 70m would be Torres at around 55m back in 2011.

If that's indeed correct, even if a bit off, I'd still say that 50m mark is a much more reasonable threshold than just splashing those 80m deals like it's nothing or 60m for a backup LB. I feel like Nkunku, or even Werner for example, were decent deals, reaching around that 50-60m value today and taking the team into account, it's not just a "Big money signing", even though it's still obviously a large sum. If it fails badly, you take a 10-15m loss and move forward just like we did with Timo. A Lukaku/Kepa on the other hand, they're just 200m down the drain...

Anyway, back on topic, I'd love to have Enzo and hope we end up getting him. At 120m though things will be very hard for him and for us, just hope this one will indeed work out. 

It’s seem like he’s staying for life now.

3 minutes ago, DarkMata said:

It’s seem like he’s staying for life now.

How quickly footballers change their tunes.

Am sure it won't won't long before we see this in United shirt, him tapping the Anfield sign or rubbing Peps bald head.

9 hours ago, Brigadeiro Mk II said:

Well I won't pretend I know much about economics and stuff, especially from England, and obviously inflation and context has to be taken into account, but using an inflation calculator from Bank of England those 32m pounds back then are equivalent to around 42m nowadays. Apparently the deal that's now valued at 70m would be Torres at around 55m back in 2011.

If that's indeed correct, even if a bit off, I'd still say that 50m mark is a much more reasonable threshold than just splashing those 80m deals like it's nothing or 60m for a backup LB. I feel like Nkunku, or even Werner for example, were decent deals, reaching around that 50-60m value today and taking the team into account, it's not just a "Big money signing", even though it's still obviously a large sum. If it fails badly, you take a 10-15m loss and move forward just like we did with Timo. A Lukaku/Kepa on the other hand, they're just 200m down the drain...

Anyway, back on topic, I'd love to have Enzo and hope we end up getting him. At 120m though things will be very hard for him and for us, just hope this one will indeed work out. 

It isn't about economics in general though, it's about the bubble that is high level football. And inflation there has been a lot higher.

I’m sure everyone’s seen that pass by now from the last game, exactly what we need.

Boehly inheriting mistakes of the past so early in his tenure, it’s gonna be Aguero all over again isn’t it?.. 🤦‍♂️

 

6 hours ago, axman2526 said:

How quickly footballers change their tunes.

Am sure it won't won't long before we see this in United shirt, him tapping the Anfield sign or rubbing Peps bald head.

So that is pretty standard. As long as the club paying his salary gets what they want from him let him tap whatever he wants. 

Why would an 21 yr old Argentine in Europe behave anyway different? He thanks the fans for cheering for him. If you are after true love, steer away from football 😁

In the mean time we have switched back to chasing attacking players rather than pursuing to solve our midfield weakness.... Beggars belief.

The easiest solution would have been putting up Ziyech and Kante for sale then add a couple of millions to buy Enzo. 

We needed a person of Enzo's mould and we keep pissing away money on "future" players. 

 

9 minutes ago, Deino said:

The easiest solution would have been putting up Ziyech and Kante for sale then add a couple of millions to buy Enzo. 

We needed a person of Enzo's mould and we keep pissing away money on "future" players. 

 

Why 

 

9 minutes ago, Deino said:

The easiest solution would have been putting up Ziyech and Kante for sale then add a couple of millions to buy Enzo. 

We needed a person of Enzo's mould and we keep pissing away money on "future" players. 

 

Why not Mount and Havertz? Or Gallagher and RLC?

 

 

Just now, Edjmendy said:

Why 

 

Why not Mount and Havertz? Or Gallagher and RLC?

No reason, sure you can add those names too.

I hope we can finally put this chapter behind us, never a fan of spending north of £75m on a single player.

Was he what we needed perhaps, but the whole point of getting all these people in place for our recruitment team is so we can find the players we need at a good price that not only guarantees relatively high resale potential, but also puts less pressure on the club and the player due to the smaller price tag.

Potter might have been given time atm, but signing a £100m player at the start of your long-term project only tightens the noose around your neck when things start to go from bad to worse, especially if Enzo also doesn't perform too well.

I wanted Enzo just not at the price being quoted and I for one won't lose sleep that we didn't pay the release clause. Do I think we look silly in all of this ofc, Boehly hasn't done him self any favours here.

3 hours ago, evissy said:

So that is pretty standard. As long as the club paying his salary gets what they want from him let him tap whatever he wants. 

Why would an 21 yr old Argentine in Europe behave anyway different? He thanks the fans for cheering for him. If you are after true love, steer away from football 😁

Agreed. 

Genuine love for the clubs is a supporters thing. 

Players come and go and we're always there. Sounds like silly obvious but it is also an absolute true. 

2 minutes ago, LongtimerLurker said:

I hope we can finally put this chapter behind us, never a fan of spending north of £75m on a single player.

Was he what we needed perhaps, but the whole point of getting all these people in place for our recruitment team is so we can find the players we need at a good price that not only guarantees relatively high resale potential, but also puts less pressure on the club and the player due to the smaller price tag.

Potter might have been given time atm, but signing a £100m player at the start of your long-term project only tightens the noose around your neck when things start to go from bad to worse, especially if Enzo also doesn't perform too well.

I wanted Enzo just not at the price being quoted and I for one won't lose sleep that we didn't pay the release clause. Do I think we look silly in all of this ofc, Boehly hasn't done him self any favours here.

I disagree, if he goes to a rival we are really, really going to regret this, I'd go as far as saying it would be worse than seeing KDB at City.

He would have been gamechanging for us and I'm absolutely gutted we appear to have fluffed it.

1 minute ago, Aguia_SLB said:

Agreed. 

Genuine love for the clubs is a supporters thing. 

Players come and go and we're always there. Sounds like silly obvious but it is also an absolute true. 

Not only that, we as fans will happily wish a player who (we believe) isn't good enough to leave their club but moan about loyalty when the boots on the other foot.

Never fails to amuse me.

We just didn't have enough money, we tried to bluff and get away with it and it was never going to work.

He ain't coming here we messed him about just like we did to Kunde, promising players to buy them and pay release clause then when they agree terms with us we go back and lowball their clubs. He will be at City in the summer and we will pay the high cost of this cock up as usual

Absolutely nothing to see here, back to the original plan for buying Rice 🙃 I mean if he's as good as people said, Chelsea is the worst place to go to right now.