2 hours ago, Bob stark said:

The funniest part is that all of us by now know which one of the rumoured players that we will eventually sign.

For example everyone here know that with semenyo, no chance. Oscar Bobb or some random player that we have never heard of, now that is more likely 😂😂😂

So you "knew" we would sign Oscar bobb.....who we didnt sign...but you knew, because all of us know....

That’s clearly not what he said.

Except he clearly did,

"The funniest part is that all of us by now know which one of the rumoured players that we will eventually sign"

"For example everyone here know that with semenyo, no chance. Oscar Bobb"

56 minutes ago, dkw said:

So you "knew" we would sign Oscar bobb.....who we didnt sign...but you knew, because all of us know....

When have I said that we signed Oscar Bobb? 😵‍💫😵‍💫

I only said that we are more likely to sign player like Oscar Bob or some random player than Semenyo.

If you don't understand why I bring Oscar Bobb then you don't follow Semenyo discussion.

Edited February 3Feb 3 by Bob stark

1 hour ago, dkw said:

Except he clearly did,

"The funniest part is that all of us by now know which one of the rumoured players that we will eventually sign"

"For example everyone here know that with semenyo, no chance. Oscar Bobb"

You just intentionally misunderstand what people say to try and make them look stupid. You do it quite a lot.

3 hours ago, dkw said:

Except he clearly did,

"The funniest part is that all of us by now know which one of the rumoured players that we will eventually sign"

"For example everyone here know that with semenyo, no chance. Oscar Bobb"

"...or some random player that we have never heard of, now that is more likely"

3 hours ago, Scott said:

I found this interesting, thought some others might also.

How BlueCo let this guy leave is beyond me ....

17 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

How BlueCo let this guy leave is beyond me ....

Just part of the clean out of the old regime.

12 minutes ago, dermott said:

Just part of the clean out of the old regime.

He chose to leave didnt he, must have seen how this was all going to work out and wanted nothing to do with it. Clever fella.

18 minutes ago, dkw said:

He chose to leave didnt he, must have seen how this was all going to work out and wanted nothing to do with it. Clever fella.

He saw the writing on the Shed End wall.

So Bournemouth manage to find a 6'2" 19 year old Brazilian winger for £25m, who immediately hits the ground running in the PL with an assist and a goal in his first two games, while we have the powder puff Neto, Garnacho and Gittens stinking the wings into new depths of mediocrity every week, despite a collective outlay of £140m on transfer fees and £378K a week of wages .

How on earth do our SDs still have jobs ... ???

8 hours ago, Sexyfootball said:

So Bournemouth manage to find a 6'2" 19 year old Brazilian winger for £25m, who immediately hits the ground running in the PL with an assist and a goal in his first two games, while we have the powder puff Neto, Garnacho and Gittens stinking the wings into new depths of mediocrity every week, despite a collective outlay of £140m on transfer fees and £378K a week of wages .

How on earth do our SDs still have jobs ... ???

Our friend from Vasco gave us a fair heads up about this guy.

8 hours ago, Sexyfootball said:

So Bournemouth manage to find a 6'2" 19 year old Brazilian winger for £25m, who immediately hits the ground running in the PL with an assist and a goal in his first two games, while we have the powder puff Neto, Garnacho and Gittens stinking the wings into new depths of mediocrity every week, despite a collective outlay of £140m on transfer fees and £378K a week of wages .

How on earth do our SDs still have jobs ... ???

It's mad isn't it??

They make it look like it's impossible to find a right footed winger even though around 80% of all professional footballers are right footed, so finding a good one shouldn't be as hard as the SD's make it look.

Edited February 8Feb 8 by 2211

44 minutes ago, WhiteWall said:

Our friend from Vasco gave us a fair heads up about this guy.

Yeah I am wondering how this one slipped by us for such a price.

We have dedicated scouts in South America, and a connection to that same club with signing Andrey Santos from them.

Some have said we are that broke with our loan repayments, that Clearlake wont invest their own money in now and FFP constraints. Perhaps thar is true.

20 hours ago, Sexyfootball said:

So Bournemouth manage to find a 6'2" 19 year old Brazilian winger for £25m, who immediately hits the ground running in the PL with an assist and a goal in his first two games, while we have the powder puff Neto, Garnacho and Gittens stinking the wings into new depths of mediocrity every week, despite a collective outlay of £140m on transfer fees and £378K a week of wages .

How on earth do our SDs still have jobs ... ???

I mean, we also have a brazilian kid who hit the ground running for a lot less money than that, or are we just pretending Estevao doesnt exist?

Another goal for Rayan at Bournemouth. 25mill fee.

How much did Garnacho and Gittens cost us this summer again? Or Neto from summers past?

@VascoRF92 should be our recruiter.

On 01/02/2026 at 18:12, markpitts said:

Won’t be surprised if these Sports Directors are here for 5yr, and we go through multiple Coaches in that period. That is the American way, where the coach is the smallest part of the system. The thinking goes as long as you put together a talented core of players, long term it will pay dividends irrespective of the coach.

A parallel is the Lakers manager, Rob Pelinka who is in the job because he was Kobe Bryant’s former manager. He has been in the role for 8yrs with his only notable achievement being winning the NBA championship during COVID. He also appointed a rookie coach who was an NBA veteran, and TV analyst with zero coaching experience to lead one of the biggest teams in the league.

Far from it. In a salary-capped league, the coach is by far the single biggest and most important investment you can make. The exception here is probably baseball, compared to basketball/NFL/hockey there is very little role for the coach and roster management is a much bigger part of success.

The front office matters as well, and a good GM/recruitment manager is vital, but as you point out there is a lot of nepotism which leads to underperformance.

On 03/02/2026 at 23:03, dkw said:

He chose to leave didnt he, must have seen how this was all going to work out and wanted nothing to do with it. Clever fella.

My theory here is that he and Granovskaia walked over Lukaku and similar differences about football. Boehly and co seemed keen to appease Lukaku whereas it seemed like Cech was pushing for a stronger stance, knowing they would get little in the way of money back in any event.

I don't think it was the decision itself as much as witnessing the holy trinity of incompetence, ignorance and overconfidence on full display.

On 01/02/2026 at 15:12, markpitts said:

Won’t be surprised if these Sports Directors are here for 5yr, and we go through multiple Coaches in that period. That is the American way, where the coach is the smallest part of the system. The thinking goes as long as you put together a talented core of players, long term it will pay dividends irrespective of the coach.

A parallel is the Lakers manager, Rob Pelinka who is in the job because he was Kobe Bryant’s former manager. He has been in the role for 8yrs with his only notable achievement being winning the NBA championship during COVID. He also appointed a rookie coach who was an NBA veteran, and TV analyst with zero coaching experience to lead one of the biggest teams in the league.

Coach will always be less important than players. The gap between manager is so much closer than gap between player.

Going through multiple manager is not a problem as long as they are more HC than manager.

Edited February 11Feb 11 by Bob stark

1 hour ago, SydneyChelsea said:

My theory here is that he and Granovskaia walked over Lukaku and similar differences about football. Boehly and co seemed keen to appease Lukaku whereas it seemed like Cech was pushing for a stronger stance, knowing they would get little in the way of money back in any event.

I don't think it was the decision itself as much as witnessing the holy trinity of incompetence, ignorance and overconfidence on full display.

I will be surprised if Lukaku is the problem.

I thought I was simple case of blue co want a clean slate

Edited February 11Feb 11 by Bob stark

1 hour ago, axman2526 said:

Another goal for Rayan at Bournemouth. 25mill fee.

How much did Garnacho and Gittens cost us this summer again? Or Neto from summers past?

@VascoRF92 should be our recruiter.

Hello my friends, how are you all? Thank you for remembering me, it's always an honor.

Well, as you all remembered, I already mentioned Rayan at the beginning of the speculation about him going to Bournemouth. He's a complete player, a rarity in modern football, tall, very strong, very fast, has a terrifying left-footed shot, shoots with his right foot, heads the ball, and has the physical stamina to endure tough matches.

Bournemouth was smart, I commented here because Chelsea didn't make that move, perhaps due to the number of attacking players? But I think it was a mistake not to have tried. Rayan is a player who won't play next season for Bournemouth; he'll start the next Premier League season already at a European giant, that's clear to me.

Vasco's youth academy is full of very talented young players. We have a striker named Bruno Lopes who is a rising star for Vasco; he's 18 years old, a center forward, with a different playing style than Rayan, but he's an incredible player. I guarantee you that Rayan will be one of the top 3 Brazilian players in the world in a few years.

I follow many young players in Brazil from many different teams, and I could certainly offer Chelsea names that would greatly help in their development. CHELSEA, IF YOU WANT TO HIRE ME, I'M HERE! hahaha

A hug to all of you, I promise to be more active on the forum. By the way, my profile picture is Rayan from 2 years ago.

The big question with our director/board, let's say all we need is 1/2 players to compete at the top and those players are available with unfavorable finance (not young, not cheap, not low salary).

Are they going to take risk to do it? Or they are going to continue this never ending evergreen cycle.

28 minutes ago, Bob stark said:

The big question with our director/board, let's say all we need is 1/2 players to compete at the top and those players are available with unfavorable finance (not young, not cheap, not low salary).

Are they going to take risk to do it? Or they are going to continue this never ending evergreen cycle.

Not a chance, last summer was a perfect example. The needed a CB; Huljsen had performed brilliantly at Bournemouth, and had a release clause so it was straightforward. We had a bargaining chip with Kepa on loan at Bournemouth, they were interested in a permanent deal. Huljsen’s agent even expected them to seal the deal, and said he had a brilliant relationship with us. There was always the little issue of Madrid coming into play because he was Spanish, and they had an ageing backline.

Smartest move would have been to buy him in the Jan window, loan him back to Bournemouth and let them have Kepa permanently at a bargain to help smooth things over. When Madrid now signed him, they release a daft briefing about how he was just one of the targets they were monitoring. They ended up signing no one even though it was obvious we needed a change. They now sent Sarr back out on loan, only to recall him midseason and then release another silly briefing that he along with Josh were the reasons why they didn’t sign Huljsen. Why was Sarr sent on loan then? The issue is the wage ceiling which they have in place. No top player in their prime is coming to play here for a pittance.

1 hour ago, VascoRF92 said:

Hello my friends, how are you all? Thank you for remembering me, it's always an honor.

Well, as you all remembered, I already mentioned Rayan at the beginning of the speculation about him going to Bournemouth. He's a complete player, a rarity in modern football, tall, very strong, very fast, has a terrifying left-footed shot, shoots with his right foot, heads the ball, and has the physical stamina to endure tough matches.

Bournemouth was smart, I commented here because Chelsea didn't make that move, perhaps due to the number of attacking players? But I think it was a mistake not to have tried. Rayan is a player who won't play next season for Bournemouth; he'll start the next Premier League season already at a European giant, that's clear to me.

Vasco's youth academy is full of very talented young players. We have a striker named Bruno Lopes who is a rising star for Vasco; he's 18 years old, a center forward, with a different playing style than Rayan, but he's an incredible player. I guarantee you that Rayan will be one of the top 3 Brazilian players in the world in a few years.

I follow many young players in Brazil from many different teams, and I could certainly offer Chelsea names that would greatly help in their development. CHELSEA, IF YOU WANT TO HIRE ME, I'M HERE! hahaha

A hug to all of you, I promise to be more active on the forum. By the way, my profile picture is Rayan from 2 years ago.

And he has scored again. One of our rivals will buy him in the summer, won’t even discount a Madrid coming him for him as they still have issues at RW. Liverpool need a Salah replacement, City can always bin Savinho, Arsenal can move on Trossard and shift Madueke to the left, and Newcastle can go big in the market.

43 minutes ago, markpitts said:

And he has scored again. One of our rivals will buy him in the summer, won’t even discount a Madrid coming him for him as they still have issues at RW. Liverpool need a Salah replacement, City can always bin Savinho, Arsenal can move on Trossard and shift Madueke to the left, and Newcastle can go big in the market.

My feeling is that Rayan will be Barcelona's next great striker.

If he goes to Arsenal it will be a disappointment for me, a mediocre club.

Newcastle I think is stupid too.

Liverpool and Chelsea would be two clubs that would make better use of him in England.

Furthermore, I have information that scouts from Barcelona came to São Januário (Vasco's stadium) last year in search of information.