Chelsea 2023/24 season thread.
- Thread starter duffer
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The market will ultimately punish them as no savvy agent is bringing a truly top young 18-19 year old there at this point given how poor they have been at creating actual pathways for these players.
Strasbourg has a genuine - not high, but not inconsequential - chance of getting relegated, which would make this situation even worse. Nobody signs with Chelsea to develop in Ligue 2.
Not as much as it could've been considering he has only 1 year left on his deal. They atleast appear to be learning from the mistake made with Potter.
They spent all that money and still don't have a single genuine current world class player on their team. I can't wrap my head around that
Interesting quote's from Eddie Howe today on the Lewis Hall loan,
"Howe confirmed Newcastle were not, currently, obliged to make the loan move permanent at the end of the season.
Asked if the criteria had been met for Newcastle to have to sign Hall, Howe replied: “I don’t think that has quite happened yet, but hopefully it will do very soon.”
Pushed to say what those criteria are, Howe declined to do so, adding: “Now you’re digging too deep.”
"Howe confirmed Newcastle were not, currently, obliged to make the loan move permanent at the end of the season.
Asked if the criteria had been met for Newcastle to have to sign Hall, Howe replied: “I don’t think that has quite happened yet, but hopefully it will do very soon.”
Pushed to say what those criteria are, Howe declined to do so, adding: “Now you’re digging too deep.”
The thing is about 150m of that is just young kids who are either lightyears away from being ready for Chelsea or just human trafficking chess pieces moved around bought and sold for profit after being parked with Strasbourg or their original clubs for a few years. Then around 60m worth of players who are no longer at the club plus Fofana (75m) who has suffered back to back season ending injuries. That's roughly 250-300m worth of players being of absolute no use to us right now.
Out of the remaining millions spent, after the first summer windows (Sterling, Koulibaly, Cucurella) they went all in on youth. Other than Disasi who's 25, I do not think they've signed a single player over the age of 22 in the last 3 windows. So they've filled the team with inexperienced players aged 18-22 with the hope that a few of them will develop into world class players. None of them come from any kind of winning background except Palmer at City and Enzo with Argentina. The biggest problem with this is they've signed them all at once. And too many of them. And they've tried to integrate them all at the same time with two coaches (Potter and Poch) who have little to no track record of winning.
And we've now sat in midtable for 2 straight seasons and we have a big bill to pay with the money spent and 8 year contracts handed out like sweets.
I jokingly said when it was clear Mbappe was leaving PSG that with all the money we've spent, it would at least be somewhat understandable if we had someone like Mbappe to in the team to show for it.
It’s an insane project. 1 billion almost all on completely unproven assets while cutting loose home grown players.
It’s almost insane how it has all been allowed to happen so quickly with little resistance from football people at and around the club.
It stinks of unbelievable arrogance from Boelhy, and the result is that he will be seen as a joker in the footballing landscape as his legacy.
Where Chelsea go from here? A gifted Klopp-like coach/leader is probably their only way out competitively
It’s almost insane how it has all been allowed to happen so quickly with little resistance from football people at and around the club.
It stinks of unbelievable arrogance from Boelhy, and the result is that he will be seen as a joker in the footballing landscape as his legacy.
Where Chelsea go from here? A gifted Klopp-like coach/leader is probably their only way out competitively
it’s going to be interesting to see how this does play out, especially if Poch loses his job much like Potter.
At this point you have to wonder who is assembling these players and hope there’s an embedded philosophy at the root of it. I don’t know enough about the club to understand what the set up is but a couple of managers in, and with changes in the recruitment team, you start to wonder if there actually is a theme to this or could they end up with a collection of mismatched players they are stuck with for 8 years a piece.
The thing is, it's not just that none of the kids was ready, none of them bar maybe Enzo even looks, or looked at any point, like a genuine future world eater. Like, where's the Dembele? The Foden, the Saka, the Yamal, feck, the Rashford or the Martial, even??? Not one of those guys makes you think "yeah, this guy is gonna be an absolute beast in a couple years once he matures". These were literally all just punts. It doesn't make any sense to me
Hire Brighton staff, build a Brighton level team. What did they expect 
Not a fan of Palmer? He can maybe eat the world.
Palmer transfer has turned out to be great and I really like him as a player.
But before this season he has had hardly anything to show for.
Sure he may have traits and the scouts would have done its job. But it was still a punt. Heck at the time of their respective transfer most would have said Mudryk was more talented than Palmer. Chelsea/City staff included indicated by their transfer fees.
Sometime players just explode after the move which has been the case with Palmer.
There is a chance they wont play Hall at all so that they can avoid triggering that clause.
They're all punts. I was responding to someone who said only Enzo looks like a future world star.
Bit odd of him to say "he will stay here for many years to come" if he doesn't intend to keep him.
I think the original poster was saying future stars at the time Chelsea purchase maybe not now.
In any case there were 2 Enzo and Caicedo.
@giorno I think you forget/don't rate Palmer in your post. Cannonballs thinks you were talking about how you rated them when we signed them.
Who is wrong?
I am not sure natural market mechanisms really punish them. Their intentions are just to make some money on these youngsters while they continue to overpay for top 21+ year olds in the meantime. Fairly certain the player would know whether or not they have a real shot of making the Chelsea team when they sign. Most of these loans will never play a game for Chelsea but the club will keep doing it to generate some income. Agents will still push it because they get paid either way and the kids get a massive pay hike.
Strasbourg going down could indeed hurt this, but that seems far from certainty. It seems like it is a bit of a traffic jam at the bottom of league 1.
Maaaaybe, I dunno. I don't see a special player there. He's good, probably the one punt you took that is looking good instead of silly, but I don't see a Saka/Foden level player there. Which would be fine if he wasn't looking like the biggest talent you've got
You just said you thought that was Enzo.
No, I said Enzo is the one who maybe looked like a player worth that kind of investment at the time of the signing. As it stands Palmer looks like your best player. Also I was being lazy. Palmer is your best attacking talent. Happy now, you damn pedant???
I'm always happy!No, I said Enzo is the one who maybe looked like a player worth that kind of investment at the time of the signing. As it stands Palmer looks like your best player. Also I was being lazy. Palmer is your best attacking talent. Happy now, you damn pedant???
Gusto looks good too?No, I said Enzo is the one who maybe looked like a player worth that kind of investment at the time of the signing. As it stands Palmer looks like your best player. Also I was being lazy. Palmer is your best attacking talent. Happy now, you damn pedant???
A billion spent = Palmer, Gusto and Enzo (even if overpriced) look like players
Apparently they're getting 50m + for participation in the Club World cup in summer 2025 so that will help offset the loss of European income.
Pretty generous though as I assume it's same format as World cup so could only play three matches? How much do the winners get?!
Pretty generous though as I assume it's same format as World cup so could only play three matches? How much do the winners get?!
That would help financially for sure.
It sounds like a poisoned chalice in sporting terms though. The tournament runs 6/15-7/15 and assumedly if you play there is a de facto commitment to bring your best squad. And top European clubs are going to make the quarters at least. Give players three weeks off afterward and then you’ve got like a week or two at best until the PL season opens.
It’s like a World Cup/Euros except your entire team and manager goes while your competitors are on the beach and then instead of the season starting when a few of your squad are regaining fitness it’s the whole group.
It's going to be way bigger than the current world club cup...
https://www.fifa.com/fifaplus/en/to...ncil-confirms-key-details-club-world-cup-2025
I don’t know much about the kid personally, or his future potential, but the way people (and I mean people who have followed his rise so far) say Kendry Paez does have that future world star potential. You are largely right though.
He's already starting every game for Ecuador and looking good. Guess that part explains Caciedo being signed, give him a compatriot to help him settle in.
Reading between the lines, Newcastle are making sure that he doesn't hit the required playing time so that they don't have to pay the obligation fee. They will try and negotiate it down nearer the time as they know Chelsea are desperate.
That would be sensible on their part. Howe saying they are "close to triggering" makes me think that's not their plan though.
He's barely played for them so I have no idea what the clause is if he's "close to triggering".
I hope the move fails and he comes back personally.
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If you want him to play LB for Chelsea then its ok but otherwise no one else is paying 30m for him this summer.
30m is a great deal for him.
This has to be parody. After their obscene transfer fees, salaries and contract lengths dished out on mostly dud players, they have been anything but clever in all of this financial engineering.
Their poor attempts so far is the resign they are now needing to carry out a repair and damage limitation operation.
I would rather have Hall at Chelsea than £30m. But this is basically a done deal.
Wasn't he playing more CM when he had a few starts under Potter?
Been strange him not playing much at Newcastle when Burn is in his 30s and will need to be phased out of their team soon. Perhaps he's struggled to settle.
No Potter played him exclusively as LB in the first team, except once at Anfield I think. Poch, in preseason played him in midfield in the few mins he afforded him. He spent pretty much all of his youth career in midfield though.
Petrovic has also been very good in fairness - certainly better than Sanchez for me.
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Badiashile, Petrovic, Jackson, Disasi all look good, talented to varying degrees. Caicedo is fantastic. Nkunku is a brilliant player but his season has obviously been decimated by injuries. Same with Fofana, who is a brilliant talent but shame about his injuries. Lavia showed last season he was an exceptional talent but again, another player struck down by injuries.
The problem isn't that the players we've signed are all horrible. It's that we've signed them all at the same time.
Oh I don’t think they are all horrible, I’m not that sure as many as you say were improvements on what you had though.
It feels to me like you’ve assembled a set of players before having a settled coach, staff and backroom/recruitment set up though. Kind of the reverse as to how you should do things really.
You could be on your 4th Clearlake era manager by the summer, unless Poch stays on. It must be a bit of a concern you’ll end up with lots of square pegs in round holes? Something that’s happened to us over the years, new manager comes in and doesn’t fancy player A, prefers player B, rinse repeat.
Can be quite challenging for squad harmony.