Enzo is not a nobody of course, Caicedo was wanted by Liverpool too, again not a nobody. Nkunku is a brilliant striker. Sterling is of course well established...and on and on and on. I think with a better manager they play much much better
Boehly is going to ruin Chelsea (hopefully)
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Was listening to Lampard speak on the Overlap yesterday and he said that the problem when he was interim at Chelsea was that out of the 30 players he had, 15 either wanted to leave or had been told they were leaving. I would imagine it's hard to keep a group motivated when there's that much uncertainty. A more inspiring manager might be able to get them together though.
Enzo spent 6 months in the Portuguese league before a winter move to Chelsea where he has done feck all but have excuse after excuse of why he’s seemingly underperforming in every position he plays.
Some day we’re going to have a conversation about what Enzo actually does and it’s not going to be pretty.
Nkunku isn’t even a striker, he’s more of a number 10 in a position that really doesn’t exist at the top end of football anymore and even then he’s a 26 year old striker who has a 1 in 3 record. He really isn’t brilliant.
As I’ve said elsewhere, every season has more players from mid range clubs that impress that everybody thinks may step up.
look at this Bundesliga to scorer list
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/german-bundesliga/top-scorers
You could pick a random new name from here every season (and there will be new names every season) and convince yourself you’ve got a top prospect
The amount of players that do step up from playing well with mid range clubs is tiny. I’ll make up a stat to make it easier so let’s say 1 in 10 that make that leap and really stand out across all leagues since different players are suited to different styles of football. What Chelsea have done is sign all 10. It looks like they’ve signed well at the beginning is actually them fecking themselves over.
this post is getting a bit long but go back in time and pretend Chelsea tried this a few years ago. Look at the top 25 here and imagine they spend hundreds of millions signing all of the top 25 then look further down the list and see the amount of today’s superstars that were under the radar. You could pick the same list that doesn’t age well for every season yet Chelsea have gone out and signed an entire list on its own for over 1b!
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2236373-top-100-european-football-prospects-aged-under-21
Yeah, I'm sure a year ago that was a huge problem but that was always to be expected with a 30-35 player squad and was always intended to be just a short term issue. Last summer we actually did get rid of 16 first team players from the squad we had last season after the January transfer window.
Thing is, what you're describing is very much not the case anymore. Those who wanted to go and those who the club wanted to sell have just about all left already so I don't think Poch has the same excuse as Lampard and to some extent Potter had. If anything, it makes Poch look so much worse because he doesn't have any of these issues and unlike his predecessors he also had a full pre-season with the squad but still he's failing to get any better results or a more motivated looking squad than fecking Frank Lampard did last year.
I'm also convinced that there's players there who would look fantastic under Klopp or Pep or maybe even Tuchel.
Didn't Tuchel get 10 points though before Potter took over, so Pochettino is doing slightly better than Potter.
They could at least give him an 8 year contract so he can be on a par with most of their new players!
Potter was in charge for 22 league games and got 28 points. Poch now stands at 23 games and 31 points.
Points per game 1.27 for Potter and 1.34 for Poch. Not much of an improvement, especially when Poch had a full pre-season with the team and no European football to distract from league fixtures. Potter's CL record for us was actually quite decent, 4W-1D-0L in the group stage, knocked out Dortmund in the RO16 and by the time QFs against Real Madrid came and we were knocked out Potter was already gone. Overall, I would say Potter's record was better.
Tuchel struggled to get the best out of our attacking players but he was brilliant for the careers of Rudiger, Christensen, Mount etc but definitely Klopp and Pep. I feel like 90% of the players we’ve signed would look great under either of those managers.
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Hopefully they won't consider taking less money elsewhere
Chelsea can’t let them go anyway, it’s a FFP disaster due to the 8 year amortisation
Yep. Everyone is of course entitled to their opinion and free to consider all our players shite based on their performances in recent times but I simply refuse to accept any of them are actually as bad as Poch has made them look, especially the likes of Colwill, Enzo and Caicedo.
The way Poch has set the team up has too often left our midfield and defense unncessarily exposed while still offering feck all going forward. The spaces left between players are fecking huge and a simple misplaced pass or being caught out in possession will always result in a dangerous counter attack because there's never anyone close enough to offer some cover. Of course the individuals deserve some blame too but let's just say the current setup doesn't seem to help anyone. Either Poch needs to have a serious re-consideration of how he wants the team to play or he's the wrong man for the job, it's really simple.
Could not agree more. Everytime there's an underperforming team, everyone starts saying players are shite....these same players who were fantastic at different clubs...yeah my finger would point to Poch and the club to a greater extent
Boehly and his clever boys are disrupting football allright.
TBH I wouldn't mind taking some of their players maybe on loan
Gusto is a good RB, Enzo instead of Scott/Amrabat/Eriksen will be an upgrade, Lavia will be another option
If those players are smart enough and will be a success at our club, they will try to force a move by themselves and join us
Gusto is a good RB, Enzo instead of Scott/Amrabat/Eriksen will be an upgrade, Lavia will be another option
If those players are smart enough and will be a success at our club, they will try to force a move by themselves and join us
From all the signings they've made mostly are total deadwood. Palmer is looking like their only hit. Surely a good manager can get more out of Enzo, Caicedo, Jackson, Sterling and Colwill.
Maybe youngsters such as Madueke and Gusto can improve enough to be good players, but it's clear Mudryk, Badiashile, Cucurella, Disasi, etc are just not good enough they'll have to invest to get another 3-4 players to get that squad going but FFP won't allow it. they're in trouble
I didn't included Nkunku and Lavia as they've shown potential but due to injuries haven't played enough.
Maybe youngsters such as Madueke and Gusto can improve enough to be good players, but it's clear Mudryk, Badiashile, Cucurella, Disasi, etc are just not good enough they'll have to invest to get another 3-4 players to get that squad going but FFP won't allow it. they're in trouble
I didn't included Nkunku and Lavia as they've shown potential but due to injuries haven't played enough.
I cannot post any media but there is a video on Twitter / X by 'ProudN17' today that shows Rory Jennings breakdown from Poch love to Poch hate. It's truly a thing of beauty 
twitter.com/ProudN17/status/1754850218200211929
twitter.com/ProudN17/status/1754850218200211929
As bad as Chelsea have been recently the FFP charges are yet to arrive…it’s only going to get worse for them before it even starts to get better.
According to Swiss Ramble even a 6th place finish (which looks ambitious from here) will leave them nearly a 100 million short of where they need to be to balance the books for FFP. And one of the downsides of these really long contracts is that selling players who are early on in these contracts can only raise a very small sum (as most of their value not yet paid for) so they’ll have to sell all their best homegrown players to try and keep their head above water. What a fecking shambles.
Who are their best homegrown talents?
Will quote myself on this on early on.
Chelsea are potentially fecked, they've lumped a bunch of overpaid potential on the club, potential that will never be reached by most of those players. It's even funnier that Lukaku is still under contract with them until 2026..
They've got Hall, Colwill, James, Gallagher, Broja? I don't see anyone else really.
You might have a few players on second contracts that could be sold too.
I think that's the issue in the long run.
Caciedo could've just signed for Liverpool and he'd be battling for all four trophies. Instead he's playing for 9th or 10th. With another seven years to run and on comparatively lower wages how long before him and Enzo start playing up?
Less so for Mudryk who's shown very little but again he could be playing the Trossard role at Arsenal of coming on as impact sub, scoring the odd goal and being part of a squad still in contention for title and involved in CL.
For all that Chelsea could get it right.....sign a top class CF and him with Nkunku and Palmer either side does have huge potential.
What Chelsea need to then do is show a bit more restraint. I imagine the plan this season was to play Lavia as the advanced midfielder but he's never been fit. If he can stay available for more than five minutes I suspect Gallagher will be sold and he'll just take his place.
So again Caciedo-Enzo-Lavia, interested how that works out as I thought Lavia had huge potential in a very difficult season for Southampton.
Their biggest problem will remain backline. Keepers are average, injury prone full backs and they'll still need to source a senior CB to hold the hand of all their relatively inexperienced CBs so that is going to cost money they might not have if they splash a huge amount on the striker.
Gallagher with 12 months to run is obviously going to be sacrified in similar way to Mount. Will still be 40m + with Spurs, West Ham and perhaps Newcastle if they sell Guimaraes all interested.
I'd take him at Villa tbh given McGinn is coming up to 30 and we can't really attempt to play a CL season with just 15-16 core players otherwise we'll quickly slide back down the league as Newcastle have.
Broja will go to Fulham or somewhere else for 30m if he scores 5-6 by end of season and has a decent euros for Albania.
Chelsea will raise the capital but it still then leaves a mismash of first 11 and then very unproven squad options.
Maatsen and Chalobah will both go.
I can pretty easily see us getting in100 mil in the summer.
Isn't it 60m for Maatsen and Hall.. Gallagher + Broja/Chalobah should easily be more than 40.. Gallagher would be close to it alone..
so yeah.. very do-able..
They need to sell before June 30th, so they might have to settle for a few million less than they'd want.. but it'll happen.. unless someone like Gallagher refuses to go.
also, the problem will remain.. no CL means significantly lower revenues.. Chelsea are already making a loss.. They'll need to sell some players they might not want to..
Do Chelsea have more reserve players they can sell every year? I know a few years back they had something like 30 players out on loan..
so yeah.. very do-able..
They need to sell before June 30th, so they might have to settle for a few million less than they'd want.. but it'll happen.. unless someone like Gallagher refuses to go.
also, the problem will remain.. no CL means significantly lower revenues.. Chelsea are already making a loss.. They'll need to sell some players they might not want to..
Do Chelsea have more reserve players they can sell every year? I know a few years back they had something like 30 players out on loan..
He’s more interested in an all star north vs south play off match, maybe he’ll contribute £200m to the Wembley of the North Stadium, recently being pushed by Sir Jim!
of course! Where else could the All Stars of the North have their home games?
In the last 5 or so years the academy has churned out valuable players at a pretty consistent rate but as nobody can predict the future it's hard to say whether good ones keep popping up. Right now I'd say our current crop of homegrown youngsters 18-20yo are not as great as the ones before but a successful loan or two and things can of course start looking very different very quickly.
Aside from the academy grown players there's also the group of players brought in under the current ownership groups to farm out on loans and eventually either make use of them in the first team or try to sell on for profit. I'm talking about Gabriel Slonina, Andrey Santos, Cesare Casadei, Angelo Gabriel, Datro Fofana, Deivid Washington and the likes. For these players the club has paid on average around £12M each to buy them so selling them wouldn't be quite the same as selling academy players with zero value on the books, but assuming some of them develop into £25M+ players and get sold it's still going to help out.
But yeah it's a pretty shite state of affairs if the club gets forced to selling off the future to help mitigate the effects of bad business in the present.
Was reading an article from the athletic.
Some rather unsurprising comments.
Some rather unsurprising comments.
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Poch is toast there. So Chelsea, Liverpool, United, Barca and Bayern all looking for managers in the summer. Wage demands will be through the roof.
It’s mad. These were nearly all decent players. Enzo and Caciedo especially. Most would have taken gusto or Lavia or poch here too. What on Earth is going on there?
Chelsea have some very good players, but like most clubs they could strengthen their squad. Their manager, however, isn’t up to the task.
Where is @Amadaeus
Not been seen since November.
Too much change too quickly.
No idea why people think we've got good players. They've almost all come from mid table clubs or leagues that are a lower standard. I don't think Poch is the problem at all, squad is too young and some seem to have a poor attitude as well. We're not any better than are current league position.
Pretty much only Gusto and Palmer look worth near what was paid for them. Spent all that money and the squad has gone massively backwards since the end of 21/22 season.
Pretty much only Gusto and Palmer look worth near what was paid for them. Spent all that money and the squad has gone massively backwards since the end of 21/22 season.
Most teams including ManCity buy players from midtable club or from worse leagues. Very few transfers happen between Top 15 clubs anyway.
Caicedo / Lavia / Nkunku / Sterling were all good players. Chelsea did overpay for a few but they were/are still good players.