Transfer Talk Topic

[Chelsea_Matt]

34 minutes ago, martin1905 said:

So, welcome Pedro Neto. 

What. A. Signing.

Didn’t he destroy us when they beat us at home? Great signing anyway - let’s hope he stays fit as Noni and Neto on the flanks is a fantastic prospect. We must trim the squad down now imo. 🫶🏻💯👀

[thevelourfog]

1 hour ago, martin1905 said:

To be fair to Sarri he did play him, was always a weird stick to beat him with as people just didn't like him.

Gave him his debut at 17 and he made 23 appearances, 11 starts, that season before rupturing his Achilles. 

Sarri probably played CHO more than any other 17 year old we have ever had.

Some of our fans decided Sarri hated Hudson-Odoi based on absolutely nothing and it struck despite the unequivocal evidence otherwise. Played a 17 year old kid 11 times in a season where CL qualification and a trophy was a minimum for not getting fired and there was a full senior squad to choose from. Don't know how much more one could do to demonstrate a willingness to play youth.

[NoblyBobly]

4 hours ago, martin1905 said:

To be fair to Sarri he did play him, was always a weird stick to beat him with as people just didn't like him.

Gave him his debut at 17 and he made 23 appearances, 11 starts, that season before rupturing his Achilles. 

Sarri probably played CHO more than any other 17 year old we have ever had.

I don’t think much of that is correct actually . He made his debut under Conte the season before Sarri arrived 2017-18 season. Sarri gave him just 10 starts and he didn’t rupture his Achilles until well after Sarri left ( 2021 season I think). . He ignored  other academy products too . If Hazard had been English he’d have struggled to get in that team. Lampard is the coach that gave 17 and 18 years olds a chance to shine, definitely not Sarri who had his team and pretty much stuck with it the whole season unless injuries intervened . I’m not having  Sarri be painted as the coach that gave youth and the academy a chance because he didn’t. 

Edited August 11 by NoblyBobly

[Ham]

Omorodian off but ....

 

 

[Sleeping Dave]

9 hours ago, xceleryx said:

We don't miss him in the slightest and selling him was 100% the right decision.

You view this far too simplistic. We’ve wasted a good £200m on CBs who aren’t much better to be honest. We could have spent £100m on one proper world class Cb and kept players such as Chalobah, Guehi and Tomori and been a lot better off than what we are now. 

Nobody is claiming Tomori to be world class. But so are none of our other CBs. So why spend so much money on midtable CBs when our academy has produced three of them in the last 5 years? 

And I know what you will say. At the time they were not good enough, they had player X Y Z ahead of them, they aren’t world class blah blah blah. That’s just bad excuses for bad squad planning. Succession planning is absolute key to any successful organisation. Being able to look ahead, plan for it and execute is important. Perhaps even more so in a sports team. We’ve utterly failed with that, both under Roman but also very much so with the new ownership.

Holds true for Abraham and Livramento as well. I suspect Omari Hutchinson will also fall into that category when we’ve watched the current wingers amble about for the rest of their contract with us. Then we have players who are already good enough like Gallagher. Such sales are just absolutely impossible to believe. But here we are. 

 

[Proud-Blue]

28 minutes ago, Ham said:

Omorodian off but ....

 

 

Goodness me. I don't mind Felix, but he's very inconsistent and he'd cost a fortune.

I imagine the issue now is Atletico need the money to sign Alvarez. So they have to sell someone...

[Floyd25]

Couldn’t care less about Omorodion, we don’t need him and Guiu and countless other young strikers that we already have, why do we need Felix though? It’s just desperation so the Gallagher deal doesn’t fall through, he won’t even get in the team & I guess that mean Chuck is off, what a waste. 

Edited August 11 by Floyd25

[Sleeping Dave]

3 minutes ago, Floyd25 said:

Couldn’t care less about Omorodion, we don’t need him and Guiu and countless other young strikers that we already have, why do we need Felix though? It’s just desperation so the Gallagher deal doesn’t fall through, he won’t even get in the team & I guess that mean Chuck is off, what a waste. 

Squad planning is so bad is almost comical. We are just randomly buying players with no plan or idea how to use them. Then we hire managers who won’t use the players we have in their best positions. 

Imagine having probably the strongest fullback set-up in the league in James/Gusto and Cucurella/Chilwell only to proceed to play with no conventional fullbacks? How do you get to that? 

Still a long way to go before we should throw in the towel. But my general feeling is that I don’t think we will ever qualify for the CL under this ownership. 

[Michael Tucker]

39 minutes ago, Proud-Blue said:

Goodness me. I don't mind Felix, but he's very inconsistent and he'd cost a fortune.

Should fit in perfectly then.........

[Floyd25]

23 minutes ago, Sleeping Dave said:

Squad planning is so bad is almost comical. We are just randomly buying players with no plan or idea how to use them. Then we hire managers who won’t use the players we have in their best positions. 

It’s madness, every season we’re back to square one with a new manager, their idea is to chuck things at the wall to see what sticks. 

[Rick1977]

Felix had his chance here and was terrible let's not be daft 

[Original 21]

So he passed the medical but lawyers found a problem with the deal. What does that mean?

Did they find out he’s not a goalkeeper?

[Blue Kratos]

19 minutes ago, Original 21 said:

So he passed the medical but lawyers found a problem with the deal. What does that mean?

Did they find out he’s not a goalkeeper?

Maybe it turned out he was 28 and not 20.

 

Too old for this ownership.

[NoblyBobly]

2 hours ago, Rick1977 said:

Felix had his chance here and was terrible let's not be daft 

What? He was a great little player 

 

Edited August 12 by NoblyBobly

[xceleryx]

3 hours ago, Sleeping Dave said:

You view this far too simplistic. We’ve wasted a good £200m on CBs who aren’t much better to be honest. We could have spent £100m on one proper world class Cb and kept players such as Chalobah, Guehi and Tomori and been a lot better off than what we are now. 

Nobody is claiming Tomori to be world class. But so are none of our other CBs. So why spend so much money on midtable CBs when our academy has produced three of them in the last 5 years? 

And I know what you will say. At the time they were not good enough, they had player X Y Z ahead of them, they aren’t world class blah blah blah. That’s just bad excuses for bad squad planning. Succession planning is absolute key to any successful organisation. Being able to look ahead, plan for it and execute is important. Perhaps even more so in a sports team. We’ve utterly failed with that, both under Roman but also very much so with the new ownership.

Holds true for Abraham and Livramento as well. I suspect Omari Hutchinson will also fall into that category when we’ve watched the current wingers amble about for the rest of their contract with us. Then we have players who are already good enough like Gallagher. Such sales are just absolutely impossible to believe. But here we are. 

 

Okay, but you're also warping the context of the situation to justify keeping those players, while ignoring the side at the time and the influx of straight up better options that we had. When we sold Guehi and Tomori for example they were behind Rudiger, Christensen, Silva, Zouma and at times Azpilicueta - when we played a back three. No sane person would've selected either of those two ahead of what we had at that point, so what then? Looking at it retrospectively completely negates this, then tries to make it an argument around our present day CB's. 

I'm sure had we known with hindsight that we were going to be sanctioned, lose Rudiger on a free, and then have Christensen go from extending his deal to changing management and reneging to join Barca, we'd have maybe approached things a little differently. None of that was foreseeable at the time. 

You also continue to ignore the fundamental factor that Guehi wanted guaranteed first team football upon returning from his Swansea loan, something that simply wasn't ever going to be possible. Similar applies with Livramento, which you've had explained to you before. Continuing to ignore that these players CHOSE to leave on their own accord isn't fault of the club either. There simply wasn't space for them, not unless we sold some of the options ahead of them to make room. 

Sure, we've spent a lot of money on CB's since and ended up with so-so options, but what's to say spending a huge lump sum on a single world class defender would've panned out either? 

And in fairness, it's not as if all our CB's purchases since have been ill-advised theoretically. Badiashile was considered hugely talented, had a bunch of senior experience already, and honestly looked the goods in the games he played after joining. Disasi has been solid overall, provided us with some physical size, height, aerial ability and progressive passing. Big Wes was a gamble on the back of a big injury, and has maybe been a bit unlucky since, but he is also very talented and had demonstrated that in the PL already. You paint it as if we've gone out and spent £100m on CB's from L2 or non-league. 

I recall reading something about Arteta having signed like 11 CB's since he took over at Arsenal. Obviously they've finally found a good partnership, but it goes to show that it's not necessarily easy either. Heck, how many CB's have Man Utd spent on over the years and it still remains a problem they're trying to fix. 

[xceleryx]

Huge no from me about bringing Felix back. Firstly, we don't need him. Secondly, he's not worth the sort of money Atletico Madrid would want. 

This would 100% be a senseless signing.

[NoblyBobly]

With Felix , Neto and Palmer we are going to be cooking on gas!  I’m well excited about that! 

[NoblyBobly]

9 hours ago, thevelourfog said:

Don't know how much more one could do to demonstrate a willingness to play youth.

How about because he became the first Chelsea coach under Abramovich to not give a Chelsea academy player a debut in a whole season? 

[Leo]

If we sign Felix I'm done. Terrible attitude. What on earth are the board thinking.

[Bison]

Every single day without fail, this stupid club finds ways to make things worse. Felix is the last thing we need.

[Spawton]

What an absolute pig's ear they've made of this Gallagher exit.

[Bison]

2 minutes ago, Spawton said:

What an absolute pig's ear they've made of this Gallagher exit.

This is what happens when you overpromote two idiots. 

[thevelourfog]

3 hours ago, NoblyBobly said:

How about because he became the first Chelsea coach under Abramovich to not give a Chelsea academy player a debut in a whole season? 

Can't be bothered to fact check this, but why would anyone care when he gave serious playing time to the one academy player who was available? 11 starts is a much bigger deal than a few minutes in an early League Cup game, a much bigger show of faith.

Who was here that he could and should have been giving debuts to?

[BMox81]

3 hours ago, NoblyBobly said:

With Felix , Neto and Palmer we are going to be cooking on gas!  I’m well excited about that! 

Yes! That’s more like it! Less of the Moody Minnies thank you very much!

[martin1905]

Joao Felix does actually make a lot of sense, for the right money. He can play from the left, where we still only have Sterling and Mudryk,  as a 10 or as a ST.

There's no doubt he's a quality footballer, still only 24 so for the right money, possibly a loan with some sort of option I wouldn't be against it.

The really interesting thing is why the Samu deal fell through. We were incredibly close yet something went wrong at the contract stage. 

Apparently Osimhen is now very, very likely to be done and I can't help think that we've pulled out of a deal for Samu as Osimhen was always pur preferred target. Osimhen and Samu never made any sense. Osimhen and Felix though, really does.

Interesting few days ahead.