Transfer Talk Topic

[Mark Kelly]

@Max Fowler Instead we have essentially gone from Havertz to Jackson, Mount to Palmer, Kovacic to Caicedo, Jorginho to Lavia. 

 

Well , not having seen anything of Lavia , I'm not overly unhappy with the rest of them to be honest , Jackson is a much better CF than Havertz , Mount and Palmer is about evens and I think Palmer has a higher "ceiling" to be brutal and Caicedo actually wants to be here unlike Kovacic who couldn't wait to leave. 

We really won't know too much til January . 

[Max Fowler]

15 minutes ago, Mark Kelly said:

@Max Fowler Instead we have essentially gone from Havertz to Jackson, Mount to Palmer, Kovacic to Caicedo, Jorginho to Lavia. 

 

Well , not having seen anything of Lavia , I'm not overly unhappy with the rest of them to be honest , Jackson is a much better CF than Havertz , Mount and Palmer is about evens and I think Palmer has a higher "ceiling" to be brutal and Caicedo actually wants to be here unlike Kovacic who couldn't wait to leave. 

We really won't know too much til January . 

I do too but we could have bought Jackson and Oshimen, Palmer and Maddison, Caicedo and Milinković-Savić. (just as examples).

Youth and "experience" combined.

Instead we bought Jackson and Washington, Palmer and Angelo, Caicedo and Ugochukwu.

i.e. Young and Younger.

[Max Fowler]

9 hours ago, xceleryx said:

Not in the same manner we've done it, no. We're an extreme example though to be fair. Arsenal adopted a youth policy when they rebuilt under Wenger, and again more recently with Arteta. Dortmund have gone down a youth pathway themselves in more recent years, falling just short of the Bundesliga title last season. Burnley have probably been one of the other more aggressive sides to do it after their relegation. From memory the Leeds team around the 00/01 season or so was also pretty young as well. I'm sure there's more examples, but again nothing to the degree we have.

And this is the crux of the problem, folks. Close this thread - we are done here.

Celery, one of the most well-informed posters on here, admits there is no precedent for what we are doing.

We are running an experiment that for some unknown reason no other successful football club has tried before and we are scratching our heads each season wondering why it's not working.

I have been told on here before that Boehly knows more about football than I do. Truth is the board came from a starting point of knowing very little about football, less than any of us on here, and tried to implement an American model on our beautiful game.

Football reality has reared its ugly head. But we still have not bowed to the reality of needing to have success along the way in order to build confidence and create an environment where our young players can truly flourish.

As is now abundantly clear, we have some very hard-headed folks in charge. We tried to succeed with an inexperienced manager at this level. Now we try to succeed with inexperienced players at this level.

We are on course for a repeat of last season.

 

[Willian Dollar Baby]

53 minutes ago, Mark Kelly said:

@Max Fowler Instead we have essentially gone from Havertz to Jackson, Mount to Palmer, Kovacic to Caicedo, Jorginho to Lavia. 

 

Well , not having seen anything of Lavia , I'm not overly unhappy with the rest of them to be honest , Jackson is a much better CF than Havertz , Mount and Palmer is about evens and I think Palmer has a higher "ceiling" to be brutal and Caicedo actually wants to be here unlike Kovacic who couldn't wait to leave. 

We really won't know too much til January . 

Building a squad doesn't quite work like that. Having 11 highly rated individuals counts for nothing if the team is not balanced. No experience at all except for Sterling and Thiago who's barely hanging on anymore. Player development is not linear and young players will be inconsistent. Having a whole squad of sub 23's is not going to consistently average the 2 points per game which will get you top 4.

Enzo's brilliant whilst Lavia and Caicedo look very good but as a three, there's no cutting edge between them. If we had Salah and prime Mane out wide maybe we could get away with it but Mudryk and Madueke just isn't going to cut it. Sterling can't do it all on his own. 

One under-played  issue is our lack of height, hence playing Colwill LB and Chilwell playing LW. Looking at a potential strongest 11 with 4ATB:

Sanchez

James Disasi Colwill Chilwell

Enzo  Lavia Caicedo

Sterling   Jackson  Nkunku (Palmer for now)

We would have 2 CB's + Chilwell and James marking at corners. If James is injured that's Gusto who's realistically not helping here.  Jacksons big but looks poor in the air and all of our midfielders are sub 6ft except Ugochukwu. We could get murdered from set-pieces. I expect Ugochukwu to see more minutes than expected because of this. 

One thing that's often forgotten with Peps teams is he fills it with big nasty beasts to allow the attacking players to flourish. They won the treble with 4 centre backs and 6ft 3in Rodri on the pitch. 

Edited September 13, 2023 by Willian Dollar Baby

[Sleeping Dave]

8 hours ago, Ham said:

I wish it was this simple.  My positivity comes from the state of the squad available if we had no injuries. It looks exciting and well balanced.

Our full strength squad is capable of top 4 in my opinion.

As things stand today with key injuries, I'm temporarily concerned but that doesn't detract from the excellent work done in the past two windows by the much-maligned TBSD.

My issue on here is with those who have taken a position against TBSD early and who now criticise every aspect of the ownership and massively downplay the quality of our squad. 

Take Odegaard and Saka out of the Arsenal team and they are outside of the CL picture. 

So what would our full strength starting XI be? Arguably;

                  Sanchez

James Silva Colwill Chilwell

               Enzo Caicedo

 Madueke Nkunku Sterling

                     Jackson

Still a goalkeeper that doesn’t add a lot of confidence, still a questionable central defense and still a severe lack of goals. I’d say this, if we are reasonably injury free, is a top 6 side now, possibly a top 4 side within a few seasons. 

I’d say we are some way off being challengers. 

 

[boratsbrother]

Last season Leicester and Leeds  went down after scoring 51 & 48 goals. I look at the above "best starting 11" and wonder where we are going to score around another 50 goals in the remaining 34 games?  Sterling would have had a great season to score 20 in this team, so even if he does,  where on earth are the other 30  from 34 games coming from in this team?  One of our other forwards is really going to have to  step up to the plate to stop us being dragged into trouble.

[Dwmh]

2 hours ago, Max Fowler said:

Another comment to add on our clear out -

Clearly there was a lot of deadwood to shift this summer and certain players - Lukaku, Ziyech, etc. had no future at our club. Other players like Mendy commanded a decent price.

But we also have undertaken a systematic selling of players who arguably could have still done a job and didn't absolutely need to be sold - Jorghino, Mount, Kovacic, Havertz, etc.

People will say those players downed tools and we got the right price for them. I am also enjoying laughing at Arsenal for the fact that Havertz is likely to consistently frustrate them.

The point is - we decided not only to ship out the rotting deadwood but many other experienced lads in the process. We still want to sell more of our trusted youth players for their "pure profit".

.

We the club decided to sell them?  Or they the players decided to jump ship as soon as they could.
Off the top of my head we have Silva (too old for any but his current club to assess), Chilwell  and James who started at teh club in 2019.  Chalobah and Betinelli from 2021.  And everyone else is 2022 or later.

Without counting exactly some 25-30 players must have quit.  
 

[Max Fowler]

34 minutes ago, Dwmh said:

We the club decided to sell them?  Or they the players decided to jump ship as soon as they could.
Off the top of my head we have Silva (too old for any but his current club to assess), Chilwell  and James who started at teh club in 2019.  Chalobah and Betinelli from 2021.  And everyone else is 2022 or later.

Without counting exactly some 25-30 players must have quit.  
 

Personally, and I have had many disagreements with Mark over this, I think the owners made it nigh on impossible for the players and Potter to perform last season. Yes Potter wasn't good enough, and it may be unacceptable how some downed tools.

There has been a systematic strategy from the new owners to get rid of nearly all our existing assets, particularly those who still command a good price. Yet the squad was also outrageously bloated last season - and whose fault was that? Potter's?

Selling assets may seem sensible seeing how we lost Rüdiger and co. on a free, but if you create a culture where all our experienced pros and now our youth players feel they are dispensable, the club loses all its identity as it has done today.

I am prepared to accept some shadiness on the part of Mount, and that Havertz needed selling, but if you are going to sell all your experienced pros at least replace them with similar profiles. As Man City have done replacing Gündogan with Kovacic.

Who are our leaders on the pitch? Enzo? Caicedo? Do they even speak English? Thiago Silva barely does. Reece James is our captain but will likely miss half the season through injury, wouldn't be surprised to see Chilly out for a lengthy period too.

[Max Fowler]

I mean people wonder why Mudryk isn't performing, yet he literally had to sit in the corridor to get changed last season because we'd made so many rushed signings. How is that a welcoming environment for young players to start their Chelsea career? Now the poor lad is traumatized from last season like half of our team hoping that the nightmare doesn't happen all over again.

[Ham]

2 hours ago, Sleeping Dave said:

So what would our full strength starting XI be? Arguably;

                  Sanchez

James Silva Colwill Chilwell

               Enzo Caicedo

 Madueke Nkunku Sterling

                     Jackson

Still a goalkeeper that doesn’t add a lot of confidence, still a questionable central defense and still a severe lack of goals. I’d say this, if we are reasonably injury free, is a top 6 side now, possibly a top 4 side within a few seasons. 

I’d say we are some way off being challengers. 

 

I think there are goals in each one of those 4 attacking players. Thanks for posting this. 

Mudryk off the bench. Carney also.  There were very good signs in pre-season with Nkunku, Mudryk and Jackson.  A really fluid set-up.  They were playing against PL opposition who were each slightly ahead of us in terms of preparation.

As for the CB options I think we're in an excellent position and set up for years. I don't understand the issue.

It's funny how people can have such differing opinions looking at the same line up.

I suppose it depends on whether you start off from the position of a negative or positive person.

 

[boratsbrother]

14 minutes ago, Ham said:

 

I suppose it depends on whether you start off from the position of a negative or positive person.

 

Or we can be neither and just look at the cold, hard facts.

Sterling is the only player in our entire squad who has scored more than 8 league goals in their career at Chelsea. Is that not an alarming and worrying stat?

[Dwmh]

1 hour ago, Max Fowler said:

Personally, and I have had many disagreements with Mark over this, I think the owners made it nigh on impossible for the players and Potter to perform last season. Yes Potter wasn't good enough, and it may be unacceptable how some downed tools.

There has been a systematic strategy from the new owners to get rid of nearly all our existing assets, particularly those who still command a good price. Yet the squad was also outrageously bloated last season - and whose fault was that? Potter's?

Selling assets may seem sensible seeing how we lost Rüdiger and co. on a free, but if you create a culture where all our experienced pros and now our youth players feel they are dispensable, the club loses all its identity as it has done today.

I am prepared to accept some shadiness on the part of Mount, and that Havertz needed selling, but if you are going to sell all your experienced pros at least replace them with similar profiles. As Man City have done replacing Gündogan with Kovacic.

Who are our leaders on the pitch? Enzo? Caicedo? Do they even speak English? Thiago Silva barely does. Reece James is our captain but will likely miss half the season through injury, wouldn't be surprised to see Chilly out for a lengthy period too.

Yes - I don't think you can write any player off on the basis of last seasons performance.  Crazy season, and only Kepa, Silva and Fernandes enhanced or maintained reputation.  Sterling, Cucurella and Koulibaly I thought were excellent for 3 or 4 games, and all had a strong reputation on arrival but by October were looking poor players.
21/21 finished dreadfully (the rot all started around February, we all know why).  But we still finished 3rd with 74 points (not off the 80 points I reckon is a serious title attempt and which is achieved only very rarely by a few clubs and managers).
And that was with a young side having already lost Rudiger.
So the only thing the bad 22/23 told us what that senior management had a lot of work to do - it said nothing of the players.
In those circumstances IMO a club has to concentrate first on getting the system right - getting good or above expected points from the existing players.  Only when it can show it can do that can it consider big  investments.  Until then it is getting faster tyres for a car that still doesn't start.

Yes it appears that Mount and Havertz because people who had watched them for the previous 3 years thought that they were better than the lot that only watched them for last season.  

I don't see any shadiness from Mount or Havertz.  They are both at the level where they should want to win things, and neither think that will be at Chelsea in the next 3 years - of course they want out.  Arsenal seem exactly the  kind of club you could expect good things from next year.  Mount may have errored with Man U - he certainly won't be the first.

One other point - the Youth.  There used to be an argument that all the kids really wanted a Chelsea career and seeing say Ake go to Bournemouth or Gilmour playing at Brighton must have been very discouraging to young Chelsea lads.
The Counter argument is that these young guys go to Chelsea for one reason only - good odds on becoming a Championship player or above (perhaps even Div 1 is enough).  Well those of us with the counterview must be really pleased with the Academy AND the load system now - it seems to be working absolute marvels - even covering a chunk of its cost - in direct  contrast to sme very poor years  2005-2018.
I'm quite happy to see young Chelsea players go to other PL and Championship clubs on loan or permanently - and I am quite sure they are very happy too. 

[Ham]

2 hours ago, boratsbrother said:

Or we can be neither and just look at the cold, hard facts.

Sterling is the only player in our entire squad who has scored more than 8 league goals in their career at Chelsea. Is that not an alarming and worrying stat?

We're both looking at facts and stats and coming up with different conclusions.  That's the point. 

There are a lot of very negative people on here.  There are a few positive ones too. 

The end of the season and beyond will tell. 

Many on here, myself included, blame the club for giving up on Salah and DeBruyne too easily. 

Now they'd have the club throw the baby out with the bath water on a number of members of the squad after 4 games, in the midst of another unprecedented injury crisis.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Ham

[Michael Tucker]

4 minutes ago, Ham said:

Many on here, myself included, blame the club for giving up on Salah and DeBruyne too easily. 

The club, or Jose Mourinho?

[Ham]

1 minute ago, Michael Tucker said:

The club, or Jose Mourinho?

Agreed but they authorised it.  

[Michael Tucker]

2 minutes ago, Ham said:

Agreed but they authorised it.  

Sure, but Jose carried a lot  of weight back then. If he said they had to go, then they went - at least that's the way I remember it.

[xceleryx]

7 hours ago, Max Fowler said:

And this is the crux of the problem, folks. Close this thread - we are done here.

Celery, one of the most well-informed posters on here, admits there is no precedent for what we are doing.

We are running an experiment that for some unknown reason no other successful football club has tried before and we are scratching our heads each season wondering why it's not working.

I have been told on here before that Boehly knows more about football than I do. Truth is the board came from a starting point of knowing very little about football, less than any of us on here, and tried to implement an American model on our beautiful game.

Football reality has reared its ugly head. But we still have not bowed to the reality of needing to have success along the way in order to build confidence and create an environment where our young players can truly flourish.

As is now abundantly clear, we have some very hard-headed folks in charge. We tried to succeed with an inexperienced manager at this level. Now we try to succeed with inexperienced players at this level.

We are on course for a repeat of last season.

 

Once upon a time there wasn't a precedent for teams playing 433, for transfers over £10m, for sports science, for foreign players within the Premier League, for tiki-taka, and so on. 

What we're doing isn't inherently different to anything that's not already been done before by other clubs, all we've done is amplify it to another level. It may work, it may not. But going out and spending £1bn on established ready made players doesn't necessarily mean we'd be better or could challenge Man City either, it carries just as much risk of backfiring. Then what, we're left trying to dig our way out with expensive deadweight earning mega money. Not a particularly prosperous position to be in either. 

Rather than jumping the gun, maybe showcasing a bit patience to see how things unfold before buying a one way ticket for the doom and gloom train is a little healthier? Just a thought, 

[xceleryx]

10 hours ago, Willian Dollar Baby said:

Going round in circles a bit now so will try to address concisely. 

The squad is massive for a side not in Europe. 23 outfielders and that's not counting Fofana, Sarr or Washington. There's no real disputing that and there will be many players unhappy and pushing their way out in January. Not good for squad morale and not good for player values. 

If Santos spends a season on the bench expecting his value to hold, let alone increase, is optimistic. We tried the talent hoarding strategy before and that was when there were no loan restrictions, it's much harder now. Unlike stocks and shares the owners are experts in, players have thoughts and feelings which mean you can't just buy low, sell high on the scale we are doing. Very quickly players will realise they aren't being purchased to play football but simply to be traded. 

CHO's biggest problem was staying around the first team not playing football rather than going on loan. There's no way he's an £8million footballer injury or not. Ampadu and Gilmour both suffered with poor loans which resulted in them being sold for peanuts. 

Kepa, if a club is willing to pay he can go. No other club would loan out their number 1 with no replacement lined up. It's Real Madrid they can afford it. What would happen if we asked Villa for Martinez on loan? Or Newcastle for Pope? 

Brighton made us pay £25million for Sanchez and he was third choice 😉.

Ziyech - yes that's what I meant. Let him be signed for free. We could easily find an arrangement where the same amount of money changed hands. 

Agree to disagree on Chalobahs quality. I am also seeing a clear pattern of HG players being pushed out for FFP profit so believe there is more to the Mount story than him forcing his way out. As alluded to by others, nearly the whole squad and manager has been turned over in a year. Stinks of a mess behind the scenes. 

Since last year we have definitely improved and have bought good players and a significantly better manager, not disputing that. We've not spent smartly though with an unbalanced squad lacking height, no reliable GK and a severe lack of goals. A fortune spent and glaring weaknesses still obvious. We can play as well as we like between the boxes but that doesn't get you points. 

Realistically who can we rely on to score? 

Sterling will be the top scorer but outside of that I struggle to see who gets them until Nkunku is back.

Jackson looks great but not yet composed enough to be trusted leading the line for a club with our ambitions. Broja scored 6 goals in a whole season up front for Saints. Washington who was on the bench last up cost £18million, is 18 and has 2 first team goals in the Brazilian league.

Mudryk, Madueke and Palmer are young, raw and have 1 PL goal between them. 

Gallagher might get a few but none of the other midfielders are likely to contribute much. Chilwell and James could get maybe 5 each if they can stay fit. Top 4 is looking like an incredibly tough ask. 

23 players minus those mentioned isn't that big of a squad, even without European football. When you take into consideration we're carrying several who've had injury issues, going in with any less would put us in serious shit if injuries piled up. Poch wanted a squad around 23, 24, 25 - as per a presser 2 months ago, which is exactly what he got.

Santos cost £18m. As stated before, with his talent, reputation, etc his value has gone up just through his move here alone based on what we paid. If we spent £40m on him I'd be more inclined to agree, but we got him at a low enough price point to where natural football inflation will have kicked in. Similar will apply to others in and around this price point. It's also unlikely he spends a full season on the bench at Forest unless he's truly awful. I don't disagree it'll be harder to hoard talent and loan them out like we once did, however where we often went wrong previously was hanging onto these players for far too long. There's a sweet spot where potential and age meet, allowing for profits to be had. We're also likely to use Strasbourg as a tool to help aid this all somewhat, maybe even other clubs if more get obtained. 

Agree to disagree on Hudson-Odoi. He's a very unintelligent footballer, but his injury is what ultimately hampered him the most because it took away his best asset. Since then he's failed to adapt and if you saw him at all during his stint in Germany last season you'd be questioning a fee of even £8m. It's also important to note that his ridiculous wages also played a part in the fee we received. Ampadu just isn't as good as he originally looked, this was evident across his three major loans. The fact he's playing in he Championship further highlights this. Gilmour I'm sure still divides opinions, for me I never felt he was as good as some liked to believe. Maybe we could've squeezed more out of his transfer, but he's also an undersized midfielder that requires being carried defensively. 

You still didn't answer my question, would you have preferred us to have kept an unhappy Kepa? As that would've been the outcome had we not allowed him to join Madrid on loan.

I know what you meant about Ziyech, I'm explaining that it would've cost us money to allow that to happen. We'd have to pay out his remaining contract, which makes zero sense for us when we could just get another club to pay that for us. Effectively ridding ourselves of his on book costs a season early in exchange for a loan. 

There's a variety of factors as to why we've sold some of the HG players we have, context around each sale is important and they aren't all one and the same. Too many just look at it casually and see a bunch of HG players going, which makes it look worse than it actually is. 

Never claimed we had remedied all of our problems, then again Rome wasn't built in a day either. We've got some promising foundations in place, if we can add to that in a few areas of need suddenly we're going to look pretty damn rosy. If we're still in the same boat in 3-4 years time then I'll be more concerned, but there's a lot of water that needs to pass under the bridge before we are there. I've said myself that I'd have liked another attacker or two of established quality, but am also aware that the market hasn't been littered with attractive options that are reasonably priced or truly obtainable, while also fitting the sort of timeframe ownership and manager have envisioned. It was also unlikely we solved all our issues in one window, more so when you consider the size of the job we had on hand. The fact we got what what we have done is remarkable in itself. 

[Max Fowler]

2 hours ago, xceleryx said:

Once upon a time there wasn't a precedent for teams playing 433, for transfers over £10m, for sports science, for foreign players within the Premier League, for tiki-taka, and so on. 

What we're doing isn't inherently different to anything that's not already been done before by other clubs, all we've done is amplify it to another level. It may work, it may not. But going out and spending £1bn on established ready made players doesn't necessarily mean we'd be better or could challenge Man City either, it carries just as much risk of backfiring. Then what, we're left trying to dig our way out with expensive deadweight earning mega money. Not a particularly prosperous position to be in either. 

Rather than jumping the gun, maybe showcasing a bit patience to see how things unfold before buying a one way ticket for the doom and gloom train is a little healthier? Just a thought, 

The problem is you keep moving the goalposts to suit your agenda Celery. One minute there is no precedent for what we are doing in the transfer market, no club has ever done what we have done before.

The next it's just the same as changing formation or prices being inflated.

Oh and by the way, our average age when we were 2015 PL Champions? 26.3.

Average age of Man City's squad last season? 26.7. There seems to be a running theme here...

 

[xceleryx]

2 hours ago, Max Fowler said:

The problem is you keep moving the goalposts to suit your agenda Celery. One minute there is no precedent for what we are doing in the transfer market, no club has ever done what we have done before.

The next it's just the same as changing formation or prices being inflated.

Oh and by the way, our average age when we were 2015 PL Champions? 26.3.

Average age of Man City's squad last season? 26.7. There seems to be a running theme here...

 

How in the hell have I changed the goal posts, much less have an "agenda". I've been hella consistent with everything I've said. It seems to me that your comprehension skills aren't grasping the rather clear points being made.

• Plenty of teams have gone down a youth direction, we've amplified that to another level.
• We've got a young side, more news at 6pm. 
• No one is expecting us to win anything yet, instead we're building the foundations to hopefully be in a stronger position to win in a few years time. 
• Just because something hasn't been done before doesn't mean it's wrong or can't work, that's the comparison between formations, transfer fees, etc. Once upon a time none of these things existed in the manner they do now, at some point clubs or individuals running them had to take that leap. 
• It's common knowledge more mature squad stand a greater chance of winning, it's almost as if players tend to peak at around 25 to 27 years of age.

The fact you still throw Oshimen's name around in other posts as a player we should've signed in the summer despite being told, with actual verified quotes clearly outlining it was never feasible, goes to show your refusal to listen. 

If you wish to cling to the pessimistic mindset you're stuck in, go right ahead, I'll just not participate further in it. 

[ROTG]

SSDD "Dreamcatcher"

[Michael Tucker]

8 minutes ago, ROTG said:

SSDD "Dreamcatcher"

Sorry, but you've lost me.

[Sleeping Dave]

9 hours ago, Ham said:

I think there are goals in each one of those 4 attacking players. Thanks for posting this. 

Mudryk off the bench. Carney also.  There were very good signs in pre-season with Nkunku, Mudryk and Jackson.  A really fluid set-up.  They were playing against PL opposition who were each slightly ahead of us in terms of preparation.

As for the CB options I think we're in an excellent position and set up for years. I don't understand the issue.

It's funny how people can have such differing opinions looking at the same line up.

I suppose it depends on whether you start off from the position of a negative or positive person.

 

Usually, to be a top 4 side you need to score +70 goals, there are exceptions to that, both less and more. Looking at that starting XI plus Mudryk, Chuk, Broja and Palmer, I’m not sure how anyone can reach the conclusion it’s likely we’ll score 70 league goals. That would require something like 3-4 players reaching double figures in goals… Personally I’m not sure I’d back either of them reaching double figures, let alone 3-4 of them… Personally I think a figure around 50-60 goals is more realistic and that will plant us firmly in 6-10th place (depending on how good we are defensively). 

As for our central defense, this is likely to be Silvas last season. What do we have then? Chalobah is on his way out (appalling decision by the club but there you go), Fofana permanently crocked. It’s a mix of Disasi, Badiashile and Colwill. Disasi an ok option in the mid-20’s bracket and two up and coming defenders.

Having spent so much money on the side, we still lack a goalscoring midfielder, a star in central defense, a reasonable goalkeeper and a high-scoring striker. What really worries me is that this is basically the same thing we’ve been talking about for several seasons now. All that money spent and we haven’t solved any of our main deficiencies. It’s us and Man U who have spent the most over the last decade - we have grossly underperformed in the market. Don’t understand how anyone can have a different opinion to be honest with you. 

 

[Morgs]

13 hours ago, boratsbrother said:

Last season Leicester and Leeds  went down after scoring 51 & 48 goals. I look at the above "best starting 11" and wonder where we are going to score around another 50 goals in the remaining 34 games?  Sterling would have had a great season to score 20 in this team, so even if he does,  where on earth are the other 30  from 34 games coming from in this team?  One of our other forwards is really going to have to  step up to the plate to stop us being dragged into trouble.

Well put mate. Totally agree. 

....and the thing is, we don't have a decent keeper so we'll NEED to score those goals or we will get beat. We aren't good enough at the back to grind out 0-0s any more. Scoring goals is even more important for us than for teams that are defensively better. 

This is in a nutshell why I think we have big problems. 

Kepa (distinctly average though I think he is) is and would be a huge upgrade on any of our current goalkeepers and was one of our few decent players last season. Allowing him to leave without signing a decent replacement is sheer lunacy and will cost us grievously this season. 

[Ham]

2 hours ago, Sleeping Dave said:

Usually, to be a top 4 side you need to score +70 goals, there are exceptions to that, both less and more. Looking at that starting XI plus Mudryk, Chuk, Broja and Palmer, I’m not sure how anyone can reach the conclusion it’s likely we’ll score 70 league goals. That would require something like 3-4 players reaching double figures in goals… Personally I’m not sure I’d back either of them reaching double figures, let alone 3-4 of them… Personally I think a figure around 50-60 goals is more realistic and that will plant us firmly in 6-10th place (depending on how good we are defensively). 

As for our central defense, this is likely to be Silvas last season. What do we have then? Chalobah is on his way out (appalling decision by the club but there you go), Fofana permanently crocked. It’s a mix of Disasi, Badiashile and Colwill. Disasi an ok option in the mid-20’s bracket and two up and coming defenders.

Having spent so much money on the side, we still lack a goalscoring midfielder, a star in central defense, a reasonable goalkeeper and a high-scoring striker. What really worries me is that this is basically the same thing we’ve been talking about for several seasons now. All that money spent and we haven’t solved any of our main deficiencies. It’s us and Man U who have spent the most over the last decade - we have grossly underperformed in the market. Don’t understand how anyone can have a different opinion to be honest with you. 

 

Personally I CAN see them getting double figures each. Maybe not this season because of injuries and missing half seasons.

Also, I'm happy with our CB options, even without Silva.  I think we've scouted smart. Colwill is going to be getting a lot of "pre-assists" too with his passing prowess down the left hand side. Mark my words.

As for the midfield, and with the support behind of Caicedo and Lavia, Enzo will get goals and assists.  Carney was a diamond in the rough before we bought him.  Anyone who saw what he did for the England U21s just before we bought him will have seen that.  We just saw a shapshot of his threat before he was injured. He'll be some player for us. Watch this space.

I'll reiterate. I'm really impressed with our work in the last two windows since the transfer/scouting committee took over from TB. 

As Celery says, this squad isn't for this year although at full strength I'd still have us in top 4. 

I think we've seen the end of prime DeBruyne at city and they'll miss Gundogan and Mahrez over a season. 

Man U massively flatter to deceive. They are so unbalanced and in a state of flux with Greenwood , Antony and Sancho. 

Arsenal are a couple of key injuries away from implosion. They can't field the same 11 every game like they did last season with PL, CL and cups.  They'll pick up injuries.

Newcastle over achieved last season. We looked very good against their full strength side in pre-season. 

Liverpool are well away from their best of a few years ago. 

The next few years could be very interesting.