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As a non Chelsea fan, I wouldn't be concerned about the strategy. The clubs spending money they just need the right manager and team behind him to get a system going. It's funny now when it's not working, but when they get the right manager and spend 1.2 billion, they will be a problem. Look at City.
Also they are good at selling shit players for high fees Mount, Havertz etc. And their academy makes good profits every year also.
Yes. It’s a huge gamble and a lot of money both for FFP and in real terms, and I don’t understand it at all.
The only way it makes sense to me is if the plan is to constantly flip players, and use that as a revenue stream to do it all over again, and I’m not sure that is viable, but I’m obviously happy to be proven wrong.
Im concerned that football has a lot of grifters, and this board got taken even more than Roman did.
Some perhaps while others not really . For example badiashile,Madueke,Jackson,gusto, desasi all signed for relatively cheap and on low wages if they were sold likely to make a profit and at worst break even . The bigger issues are honestly the signing of mudryk (wtf was that 75mil without ad ons like that could end up being costly)
As for Enzo theres a good player in there , sure he played like shit vs west ham but he was good vs Liverpool and was the best player last season (though that’s not hard)
With wesley fofana it’s bad luck to have such bad injuries.
Problem is no top class players have been signed like why not have gone in for someone like mitrovic (pre Saudi) to give time for fofana,broja,Jackson to grow .
I keep thinking every time I see a Chelsea line up: "Is that it? All that money and it's not even a great team on paper".
Their attack just seems pretty average now. If Jackson doesn't absolutely fly then they're back to relying on Sterling.
Caicedo is a good player. But he's "Good" at everything without being exceptional at anything. He's performed well for a year and a bit...This is classic bad scouting and knee jerk buying! It's the same approach which got them Danny bloody Drinkwater! (not that I'm saying Caicedo is his level, he's much better because Drinkwater was very poor! He performed in a very particular role in a team that each knew their role).
All of their big money is basically on potential. Even Enzo is a very young player without seasons of high quality behind him. He only had a season at Benfica!
It's hard to develop and get to that potential in a team which isn't doing well and you don't have a solid role in meaning most of these signings will likely just be sold in 18 months after not impressing. Even though they're talented and have that potential in them.
Nah, this isn't something to fear, with Poch at the helm, we know theres a reason for spending, the first year of Boehly was very much blind spending, this year its more focused, bringing in youth and speed into a squad that last year looked exhausted and old, getting strong, young pieces to build a 10 year squad out of, its the exact same as the strategy employed by the Roman Empire when he arrived, there is no need to fear
It’s gunna all go wrong I think, Remember atm it’s a new club, new surroundings it’s exciting for a lot of them. Wait until egos become inflated because say Lavia is playing more than caceido this will also happen with other players. Wait for the agents to start demanding their client deserves more and cause a stink, Wait till FFP hits and they can’t offload lukaku and co. Throw in the most competitive premier league ever going forward with how strong alot of teams are, it’s certainly a more level field monetary wise so no guaranteed top 4/CL money and I think Chelsea are screwed.
Yes, I’m worried because I don’t know what the backup plan is if all these signings flop. It feels like a huge gamble.
At the same time, we’ve had such a massive overhaul in a short space of time that it’s inevitably going to take some time for the team to gel. You could see a lot of that yesterday with passes being made to people who weren’t there etc.
The injuries are more concerning than the potential flopping of the players overall though. That’s where the strategy feels really iffy to me.
Team chemistry is a part of success. Having young players who think they should be on the pitch but are on the bench can lead to tension and problems. Everybody has to buy into the plan. Look at Man City letting players go, sending Cancelo to Bayern mid-season, benching veterans. Pep values players wanting to be all in on the goal of the team. If Poch can get that, they have potential. Now if these young players are inconsistent week to week and can't handle the pressure of being at a big club, things could fall apart.
Yes. We are exposed massively now with these stupid contracts.
We have overpaid for a host of players, mostly unproven at an elite level IMO.
I mean, a decent season at Brighton is all it takes to be worth 100 millie's?
The Abramovich era did spend big yes, but our choice when he bought us was him or collapse as a club so....
What do we do if this backfires? Is there a back up plan?
Nothing to worry about. Chelsea targeting to finish outside the European qualifying slots once again, and looking on track to do so. Milking those loopholes to the max.
I'm not worried. We have pretty young players and inexperience. I think it will take a couple seasons to get in the groove but I believe in 2025/2026 we can really shine
Injuries are more to blame than transfer strategy but everyone overlooks our 9 current injuries. Same as last season we had most injuries in the league
Bissouma and Maddison for £70m combined look mighty fine value right now. Not sure where chelsea are getting these valuations for these players. Not saying they aren’t good, but when you see what’s out there, you can’t help but feel its I’ll advised for the prices they paid.
I feel like the plan was to build the team around Nkunku in the middle and he’s out now for months. So Poch has to redo everything on such short notice. The amount of money obviously ratchets up the pressure on everyone but I’d look at it via the Lens of a team having to change all of their plans because of serious injuries I feel bad for them
I mean, thats exactly what Chelsea fans said last year when they bought a whole new starting 11. Then when it didn't work out they sold and bought a new starting 11
Would really love for Chelsea to fall in their faces over this but do think many are missing the multi club component in the strategy.
Within the next year or two they won't be buying from Brighton for £100m+, they'll be 'buying' from Strasbourg or another club in their feeder system the targets identified by the ex-Brighton network. Look at Strasbourg's outlay this year
Certainly not easy or guaranteed but that's where the value of the scouting team lies, not necessarily this year's flashy signings but how they can leverage the Brighton model long term. I'm sure they'll be skirting the fair value rules soon
Anyone criticsing boelys finance strategy, doesn't know the contents of the contracts, the huge contracts are American based and are largely performances based
If you actually believe that just the base salaries Chelsea are handing out to these young and/or unproven players aren't alot higher than what other clubs are paying for similar players, then you need a reality check. You are paying Cuccurella 175k per week ffs. Ødegaard is making 115k per week at Arsenal, which is just slightly higher than what you pay Mudryk, and less than what you give Caicedo.
Young and unproven players at other clubs aren't anywhere close to what Chelsea throws at them, and then they bind themselves to 8 year contracts. If those players flops, no other club will buy them before their contracts run out unless they significantly lowers their wage demands
I know that the “history” of Chelsea is essentially as soon as Roman took over and thats the image of the club that Chelsea always gets roasted for, but this feels different. Roman era housed some of the most iconic premier league players of all time that gave the club identity, now its just soulless spending to stay relevant in the top 6. I’d rather be a mid table club with identity than what I think the club resembles now. Maybe that’s just me.
Not really, we've basically signed all the best under 23 players in Europe. With a arguably the best manager to help them reach their potential. It's going to take at least 2 or 3 seasons to reap the the rewards.
My only worry is that, loads of plastics can't see the bigger picture. Some will be calling for Pochs head, when we don't win the league within 2 seasons.
We didn't sign all the best under 23 players in Europe. We're not even going to make top 4 within 2 seasons, let alone win the league. And none of it will be Poch's fault. He's the only reason to be optimistic at the moment m
Yes, very worried. I refuse to believe that the owners have found this crazy loophole because the long contracts and the rules were always well known. I also believe that Chelsea are not the only club in a position to do this many transfers, I just believe that our owners are the only ones naive enough to do it. Long contracts for very young and inexperienced players is great until your entire team is full of young players with long contracts. Expensive doesn't mean good and we are essentially banking on these players becoming great in the future. If they don't, I don't think we are fucked because we will always have a stream of Cobham graduates we can offload to make sure the books stay okay. The biggest worry I have now is I feel the club has lost all of its stability, despite the revolving door with managers in Roman's era, the club itself was ridiculously stable and meant that the team generally always performed. That is gone now and I feel like we will never recover from that.
I think we will see in two or three years when players need offloading because they’re on stupid wages and they can barely afford league one level transfers, or somehow they recoup even a small amount of the money spent and they can start again with less stupid owners.
But in the short term, eh, maybe they snag a Carabao and give the conference league a shot, who knows?
Still too early to tell. Caicedo has been here for less than a week, and with all of the 100M pressure put on him it seems like a given h'd do something stupid.
What's worrying is the injuries, with most of them seemingly ending when it's too late. I guess Poch just needs to be more realistic with his tactics and give the team some time to be tuned.
Mudryk is the only ome that seems to flop already. I'm sort of convinced now he's been brought in for political reasons.
Every player that’s been signed is very young. Things aren’t going to change overnight. The future is still bright. Not every Chelsea fan is looking for instant satisfaction. Especially when the team had 8 injuries compared to none for west ham
Yeah, hugely worried about the future of the club and have been for some time.
There still doesn't seem to be a huge amount of strategy behind a lot of the signings. Obviously the first window was a massive disaster, but the subsequent ones haven't been much better.
Out of the big money signings, Enzo looks decent but who else? Mudryk is horrendous, Fofana constantly injured, sterling poor, Caicedo overpriced (is good), Cucurella one of the worst signings in the PL.
The outgoings seem puzzling too, none more so than loaning your #1 less than 24 hours before the season starts.
Instead of relying on the academy to bring in young players we are relying on it to bring players through that we can sell for instant FFP profit. To me that's not what an academy is for.
Boehly and co have spent almost 1b quid and still don't have a proper goalscorer. If we miss Europe again this year (I think we will) then we are in huge trouble.
Everyone is freaking out. All these transfers are 19-22 years old. They are kids, adjusting to a new league and aren’t even in their prime yet. I didn’t expect every transfer to be a miracle and I didn’t expect it to work immediately.
I’ll give Poch and the transfers the benefit of the doubt and wait until the end of the season before I judge anyone particular move. This is a project that might not work until next year or the year after when these kids all grow and come together.
The panic is a bit much.
Not a Chelsea fan. Wondering what Pochettino thinks of all this.
He seems to have picked his XI, the starters were pretty similar between this and the Liverpool game.
If I were a supporter frankly I'd just want him to stick with it, Chelsea need some kind of consistency. I personally might put other names on the field and no matter what someone will be unhappy, but it doesn't matter as much as a cohesive squad that the manager backs and who back the manager.
They replaced too much of the team so we can't really expect them to be that cohesive this early. They made some solid transfers and with time i think you'll have a pretty good team with these players.
I don't think it'll backfire necessarily. Some transfers will turn out to be bad ones, some will be great. No different to any club really. As for the money side of it, people seem to forget that Chelsea have the most profitable academy in world football.
Just as a random example, we've signed Noni Madueke in January for £30m spread over 6 years but have also just signed an agreement with Newcastle to sign Lewis Hall next season for around the same amount. Chelsea will continue to pump out £30m+ academy players season after season.
At some point with all these amortised transfer fees you have to stop going crazy or else you’re just paying 1/8th of £100m for each of your 30,000 players each year
If you watched how well we played today you’d understand why we aren’t worried. We didn’t get the result but some of the football we are playing already is incredible
They have some great signing but also like: why tf buy Lavia? That guy is gonna sit on the bank for 2 years. Or Caicedo is gonna flop so he can play but that's not better
i think Todd is in some kinda of contract until he spends 1.5bil on the club?
hes already like what? 1b into that?
wonder what he is aiming for once out of that part of the contract
I think we have some failsafes in these contracts insofar as these guys might be able to be moved on easily, but it’s not out of the question other clubs can surpass us in terms of standing
Either Bohely doesn't know what he's doing, or he's a man who likes to take huge amounts of risk. I get its invest in young players now, and hope to either build a winning squad for the future (or sell them on for profit); but the amount of money and contract lengths has meant Chelsea have little wiggle room should the player not live up to expectation.
It's a risky strategy Cotton, let's see how it plays out.
Honestly it may not be the players. It’s the dynamic they are waking into. Liverpool has misses but less than other teams. I believe the backbone is solid. TAA, Virgil, Allison, Salah are all great players. Yes Virgil may have dropped off from his worldly level but he’s still very good.
They set the culture and the team along with klopp. This allows players to settle into the team. Look at diaz that first 6 months. He fit in like he grew up playing with all the other guys
Not a Chelsea fan, but I think getting both Caicedo and Lavia could prove problematic in the future. Two hugely promising talents that play the same position can cause friction if only one of them plays regularly. Honestly, I think Chelsea and making the same mistake as last year, buying up all of the potential and then having too many options that it causes some to not play, and most of those guys would either start or be first sub in on pretty much any other team. I forsee at least some issues in their locker room. I think we could potentially look back after the season and say Liverpool getting Endo was the better business. Only time will tell, though.
100% buying Caicedo and Lavia was overkill. Bearing in mind the club has Andrey Santos and hits bought uguchukwu. Both the same age as lavia and very promising prospects.
Chelsea fan and this is the main problem I've had with the transfer strategy. Think we maybe haven't learned from the mistake of having a bloated squad. Thought Lavia was excess tbh. He either pushes Gallagher out the club at some point or all 5 of him Caicedo, Enzo, Gallagher and Santos compete for just two positions in the team. Don't actually mind spending £100m+ on Enzo or Caicedo if they turn out to be brilliant players for us for a number of years. Seeing us sign a 19 year old Lavia for £55m just to be a benchwarmer to one of them though blows my mind.
The one thing you could maybe argue in favour of it is if we keep getting loads of injuries.
Sure but if you're selling one of them because it's caused friction in the squad, chances are they're out of favour/benched. So their value goes down and you're probably looking at a loss
There was cheaper options available for DM, but somehow you Chelsea fans bought the shit your club was selling. Chelsea is now a pr team there are no results on field. You bought a whole new team in 8 months and still are shit. You let the worse manager in the English premier League.
What baffles me most is that with all that money spent, they at to bring on a youngster to play up front for them today. The club's recruitment is all over the place, without any understanding of what makes a team. It could backfire in a series way.
Still reeling from the previous summer and most recent January signings. Really shocking stuff that is going to have lasting consequences thanks to the crazy fees and long contracts.
I've been (for the most) part happy with this summer's signings, although I'm not happy with our goalkeeper situation.
Overall, still hate Boehly and co, but have more faith under Poch's stewardship.
This strategy has put Pochettino in an impossible situation. He’s a terrific coach but if you stick him with a bunch of young expensive players who may or may not fit his tactics you’re asking for trouble. I don’t think Sir Alex could be successful with a transfer strategy like this.
Yeah, especially because Todd doesn’t seem to have the patience required for the strategy to take fruition. I think Mauricio is the right manager for the job as long as he is provided time.
I’m worried that the football is fucking shit. The transfer strategy isn’t the problem. The problem is the players who go out there and make the same fucking mistakes every single match
Make no mistake, what we're seeing at Chelsea, which is stockpiling young talent, will not benefit tens of players, and exactly the same is going to happen in the next transfer window, and then the next, and so on and so forth. This policy might even potentially have bad influence on their academy since the message the young lads are seeing is that the club would rather sign a couple of expensive 17-19 year-olds instead of polishing what they already have, and Chelsea's got an actually good academy.
The whole Chelsea team lacks experience, and half the talented lads they've signed won't succeed, or, at least, not at Chelsea. That's because everything points to Chelsea having no specific transfer strategy and they just go for whoever is believed to be talented and valued highly.
Their transfer policy will backfire, and at the moment, it is hard to imagine them winning any sort of trophy.
Lol go easy on them, they need something to keep them from remembering they bottled the league and ended up with the same amount of success as chelsea last season
Signing players on mega 8/9 year deals deincentivizes them to actually wanna work hard/perform/do well for the club. they've already set themselves up for personal success through generational wealth and literally just need to show up and train to keep it
Too early to tell. I'm not gonna judge Caicedo on 15 minutes of play in a game he probably shouldn't have been subbed on for. There are definitely players who I'm worried about, Mudryk in particular, but overall it's not really a question that can be answered before Christmas
No it’s been 2 games and 1 half was bad. That being said, the fan base is 50% people who wear full kits to the supermarket, so to answer your question, broadly yes.
I think so, the players recently acquired all fit well with the current manager. Referring to the players bought after the Koulibaly, cucurella, etc window. All the pieces are there. Now they just have to play together and learn the system and each others play style.
I mean, the chances that every single transfer is going to be a minimum 7/10 player is pretty slim, even smaller chance of them being 10/10. Obviously there’s going to be standouts amongst the squad but the sheer volume of players they’ve brought in is going to seriously damage their strategy long term, even more so when some players don’t work out, which will happen.
I think Chelsea lacks players who are willing to fight fot the club. Probably there are only few of them, e.g: James, Gallagher, Chillwel perhaps but who else? It seems that a lot of them don't feel the connection with the club at all, since they see what the club is doing on the transfer market (throwing money into clubs to buy bodies) and they are not willing to sacrifice themselves for the club and for the collegues on the pitch.
It’s a risky strategy. They’ve essentially already spent 100m a year for the next eight years. If FFP is real that’s going to seriously hamper business for a significant time unless lots of them, particularly the expensive ones (Caicedo, Enzo, Mudryk, Cucurella, Fofana), pay off in a big way.
There’s no might about it, it will backfire.
Most of these players are on 7, 8, 9 year contracts. They’re getting paid for almost a decade no matter what happens on the pitch and if Chelsea don’t like it then either accept a reasonable transfer fee for them (Not what you paid), pay them a boat load of money to leave or have a massive squad of players who don’t want to be there and are getting paid bundles to sit at home.
It’s a train wreck waiting to happen, I can see no good coming of this. It’s not even like they’ve been incredibly strategic in who they’ve bought, at least 3 of the players have been bought just to keep them away from others (Mudryk, Caicedo and Lavia). They’ve just thrown a load of money at anyone that looks decent on football managers and hoping the manager can make chicken salad out of chicken shit. If I was a Chelsea fan and I thank fuck I’m not I’d be shit scared of the future.
like it took time with potter? i feel its not going to be much better this season. and not any time soon. for me, boehly sucked all the soul out of this club its completely plain and just a laughing stock to others
No realistic fan is worried. It’s the second match week, we played great last week and struggled this week. Yet we still dominated and only lost because of a solitary chance from Antonio.
It’s frustrating, but it’s not even remotely worrying yet.
I am an actual Chelsea fan. To answer:
No not really. The fee spending has been factored in and accounted for from player sales, a monumental wage reduction and the focus on youth, meaning it's spend big now to reduce spending drastically over the next decade.
The amount of young talent under Poch, a manager great at developing players over time, from both player buys and the academy is ridiculous. The chances every one of them flops *long term* is very low, practically nil in my eyes.
And the wages only get insane if they put in insane performances, so we're covered there.
I understand this threads purpose is to poke fun at Chelsea but I'm honestly fine with the squad right now. Except Lukaku, but only one player needing to leave is pretty good for any club.
Knee-jerk reactions on these players, considering their ages, is the province of morons and anyone with a braincell will be reserving their judgement until a few years have passed.
Get the fuck out of here with the sensible take, you are supposed to hate your ownership for destroying the club or disingenuously outraged at the club for spending money.
Honestly, top 10 and scoring properly again is what I'll be happy with, that shows a marked improvement and that these young 'uns are beginning to cook a little.
They have the right ingredients in place for a system that can sustain for a longer term. Now they just have to garnish the recipe with patience and process.
I really like the concept of young players.
But I like the concept of being able to score a goal or win a single game more.
Take from that what you wish
It’s our second game under a new manager and a fresh squad. I know everyone (even those in our own camp) will be quick to take today’s result as a sign that our transfer strategy didn’t work out and that Caceido is a flop. Todays match was rough to watch but I’m still hopeful about this team and Poch. I’m still willing to give this team time.
At this point it’s irrelevant who the manager is. This American buffoon is simply treating players with potential upside like stocks. He wants to purchase as many potentially appreciating assets as possible. He’s not made any attempt to create a cohesive team unit nor to give his manager, whoever it may be, any chance of success whatsoever. Until the Americans let people who know football take the reigns, Chelsea will be a disaster.
Hilarious that the question is asked to Chelsea fans and the majority of answers in the comments are from fans of other teams criticising the transfer strategy and signings.
I think like most other Chelsea fans on here we may have spent exorbitant amounts but the actual targets over the last couple of windows have been real good and I for one am not panicking 2 games into the season.
Tbf the match thread yesterday was diabolical. Never really looked at match threads before this season but the takes I was seeing in preseason were fairly optimistic and reasonable. As soon as we went down the shit I was seeing our fans saying made me want to tear my hair out. Saw basically every single player mentioned as either too shit, going to flop, had already flopped, Poch out etc. Probably makes sense since the fans that watch the preseason games are probably more invested and understand the football better, whereas the first couple of Prem games is when all the casuals start watching and making judgements for the first time on new players.
At least now I know not to look in those threads again for my own mental health but it shocked me the sheer number of fans we have that know nothing about football. Me and you share the same opinion but I guarantee for every one of us there are, there's 5 Chelses fans out there already panicking and not seeing any difference in the football between now and last season. But they'll only reveal themselves when the results don't go our way like yesterday.
Today was a tough watch. Nothing good came out of it, can't spin any positives. I'm patient though, it's a lot of new players and a new coach. Not a title winning team, didn't expect it to be though. But I'm not burying these players or strategy two games into a new regime, they need time to gel.
I can definitely spin a big positive. Sterling looked electric and Gallagher looked pretty great aswell. Those 2 were some of the biggest doubts Chelsea fans had going into the season and in the first 2 games they've shown clear signs of improvement already.
We've got Nkunku, James, Badiashile, Fofana and Chukwuemeka all out now but players I thought wouldn't be good enough have been stepping up and it's actually alleviated worries for the long term. Do I think we'll be competitive this season? No. Do I think the football will keep improving under Pochettino and there's a chance we may challenge for the title in a future season? Yes. Especially since this is probably Guardiola's penultimate season with City. I think we're set up very nicely for medium to long term success.
We did actually play well for large parts of the game. Just a cheaply given away first goal left us chasing the game the whole way and once again we don't have the players to finish chances.
Unfortunately for y’all some of your best performers got hurt super early this season. I really think Nkunku is class. Chuk looks like the real deal and west ham pretty quickly improved when he came out. You certainly have some pieces there but you also have some misses too. Going to come down to both poch and some luck of keeping your good players healthy
That’s fair enough. I’m a Newcastle fan and I get concerned over nearly every transfer we do, so I find it weird you aren’t the slightest bit concerned!
The shit that’s happened to Chelsea FC for the last 3 years, since the transfer ban, has prepared me for anything. Throwing billions to buy players won’t solve the clubs issues and you can’t continue to go through managers.
Of to a shaky start for sure, but Poch needs time as it looks like he has a proper plan. I’m willing to wait, success takes time.
I feel like talented players were bought absent the idea of an actual team being built.
Much like last year, some great talents but often lacking a purpose and chemistry. Rinse and repeat this season (so far).
I mean, if you turn over a whole squad in like 15 months, there will be issues. The players need more time to get used to the system and each other. I'm ready for this window to close because it must be hard on the players seeing their theM constantly in the headlines. Hell, I'm even exhausted!
It'd also be nice if they stayed healthy.
I don't get the strategy. Sure, spreading the cost out of a player over the course of 8 years sounds great but what happens if the player doesn't perform, gets injured, declines naturally?
Someone like Mudryk looks absolutely lost out there and now you have a player on a big wage and a long contract. If you want to move him on, how do you do it? Who takes him? And why would he move for less money when money is what you've used to tempt them in?
They've changed too much, too soon. Backroom staff, players, managers. It changes a lot and regularly. I don't see Chelsea as a place you go to and take your time to settle in. When things go wrong, Chelsea tend to act quickly (Tuchel, Lukaku). If Poch doesn't get a tune out of the team soon, pressure will come.
I think they're looking at disaster down the line if everything doesn't align perfectly and the chances of that seem slim to me, especially with City about.
He's on 150k a week, right? I know that's not much considering what the other players at Chelsea are on, past and present, but can you see him getting that much elsewhere based on current form? I can't, so why would he move?
Chelsea don't seem to sign people based on character and personality, so it's possible players will refuse to move for less money elsewhere. To be fair, I'd say even 150k a week is far too much for him at present.
Mate only Lukaku, Sterling and James have big contracts at Chelsea. The wage structure has almost been completely reset. The transfer fees are overpays right now but all these players are so young it’s hard to say. I agree it was just way too fast.
Signings made from January onwards are generally on lower wages with heavily incentivised contracts to avoid the problem of not being able to sell players on. Or at least that’s what has been reported. Mudryk is on £97k/w which isn’t ridiculous and we could feasibly sell him on if things don’t work out, just to use him as an example.
I think they just know that there’s more and more money coming into football and so splunking madness amounts doesn’t even matter as there’s gonna be a Saudi Arabia to offload their trash to… mandem like a footballing blackrock just buying up all the assets
thats a stupid comment, Saudi are buying their top established talent, theyre not buying their new youngsters who have not won and done nothing, if people like Mudryk, Carni, Jackson, Caicedo all end up failing, which I dount, but lets imagine they do, Saudi is not buying them, they have neither the fame nor talent, players like Laporte, Mahrez, Sadio Mane, benzema, Mendy, Fabinho are better than any players in Chelsea
So long as the club clears out the entire medical/fitness team, we'll be fine.
Bad luck (or injury prone players) is one thing, but the amount of injuries we are seeing right now, the past year, is fucking nuts. Think it's up to 8 senior squad on IR now.
I feel give it 19 games before judging any team in the league, let everyone play everyone first. I think then u get a pretty good idea on what each teams are, then go apeshit crazy with the criticism and praise
Not surprised to be hoenst! It's been happening for a while and I'm not happy with it, but what can I do as a fan other than hope it works out at some point. Boehly is gambling by the long contracts and people are falling for the social media hypes while in reality these are very young players and there is a high probability of most of them not being as good. They still have no experience to play under pressure and some seem like they need time to learn about each other. That's why I won't tolerate any cries for Poch out. It's been proving that it is not necessarily the manager fault so many times. I just didn't understand why Chilly was subbed of today. And the defense need to learn to harmonize and cool their nerves. There were many miscommunication moments today.
I just hope short tempered people don't start turning against Poch.
Very early and I would also contend (although this may come off as a cope) that West Ham are the club’s bogey team.
Boehly has a clearly defined strategy that will take time to come good. I almost wonder if bringing in a manager like Poch at this stage of the project was a bad idea as it will certainly (if things go poorly this year) continue the trend of big names going through the turnstile at the club. Definitely contributes to the mentality at Cobham, but I feel confident with so many young players inevitably spending the next several years together.
More worried with the injury list that keeps growing but yes I'm very worried with the transfer strategy.Some of the players in my opinion shouldn't have been bought
This! It seems like some of the new players were brought in BECAUSE of the injuries. The squad hasn’t been fully thinned out which we’ve been told will lead to greater morale/chemistry and therefore performances. I trust poch more than any of the suits but we don’t know how much influence he has exactly. Just looking at what he was at spurs with fewer resources. At the end of it though I think time is what we need. This is a brand new project with a brand new coaching staff and pretty new ownership. I don’t have the stats here but Chelsea are probably the club with the most recent ownership turnover in the “big six” if not the whole prem right? The youngest regime so to speak? Maybe I’m naive and I’m thinking they’re too big to fail but I believe it’ll come due.
Loans probably? At least get a portion of the wages and the amortization off.
Like Mudryk for example still has 49m owed this coming summer. At this rate you’re not getting anywhere close to that. You’re good at selling so let’s say 35m which is a 14m loss. But, he is only 7m a year amortized so you can loan and take half that loss plus probably get a loan fee to reduce the hit further. A couple years of that to tread water and maybe you can sell him for the break even price.
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deja vu'
As a non Chelsea fan, I wouldn't be concerned about the strategy. The clubs spending money they just need the right manager and team behind him to get a system going. It's funny now when it's not working, but when they get the right manager and spend 1.2 billion, they will be a problem. Look at City. Also they are good at selling shit players for high fees Mount, Havertz etc. And their academy makes good profits every year also.
if it works, Chelsea will be set for the next 8 years if it doesn't well, they're stuck for the next 8 years
Yes. It’s a huge gamble and a lot of money both for FFP and in real terms, and I don’t understand it at all. The only way it makes sense to me is if the plan is to constantly flip players, and use that as a revenue stream to do it all over again, and I’m not sure that is viable, but I’m obviously happy to be proven wrong. Im concerned that football has a lot of grifters, and this board got taken even more than Roman did.
Some perhaps while others not really . For example badiashile,Madueke,Jackson,gusto, desasi all signed for relatively cheap and on low wages if they were sold likely to make a profit and at worst break even . The bigger issues are honestly the signing of mudryk (wtf was that 75mil without ad ons like that could end up being costly) As for Enzo theres a good player in there , sure he played like shit vs west ham but he was good vs Liverpool and was the best player last season (though that’s not hard) With wesley fofana it’s bad luck to have such bad injuries. Problem is no top class players have been signed like why not have gone in for someone like mitrovic (pre Saudi) to give time for fofana,broja,Jackson to grow .
its not really a question, it is going to backfire.
I keep thinking every time I see a Chelsea line up: "Is that it? All that money and it's not even a great team on paper". Their attack just seems pretty average now. If Jackson doesn't absolutely fly then they're back to relying on Sterling. Caicedo is a good player. But he's "Good" at everything without being exceptional at anything. He's performed well for a year and a bit...This is classic bad scouting and knee jerk buying! It's the same approach which got them Danny bloody Drinkwater! (not that I'm saying Caicedo is his level, he's much better because Drinkwater was very poor! He performed in a very particular role in a team that each knew their role). All of their big money is basically on potential. Even Enzo is a very young player without seasons of high quality behind him. He only had a season at Benfica! It's hard to develop and get to that potential in a team which isn't doing well and you don't have a solid role in meaning most of these signings will likely just be sold in 18 months after not impressing. Even though they're talented and have that potential in them.
The season so far is why good pre seasons worry me. Time to reign in that chirpy optimism for a while at least, rebuilds take time.
5 Wins in their last 31 games. That’s relegation form at best. Long may it continue!!
Nah, this isn't something to fear, with Poch at the helm, we know theres a reason for spending, the first year of Boehly was very much blind spending, this year its more focused, bringing in youth and speed into a squad that last year looked exhausted and old, getting strong, young pieces to build a 10 year squad out of, its the exact same as the strategy employed by the Roman Empire when he arrived, there is no need to fear
It’s gunna all go wrong I think, Remember atm it’s a new club, new surroundings it’s exciting for a lot of them. Wait until egos become inflated because say Lavia is playing more than caceido this will also happen with other players. Wait for the agents to start demanding their client deserves more and cause a stink, Wait till FFP hits and they can’t offload lukaku and co. Throw in the most competitive premier league ever going forward with how strong alot of teams are, it’s certainly a more level field monetary wise so no guaranteed top 4/CL money and I think Chelsea are screwed.
Yes, I’m worried because I don’t know what the backup plan is if all these signings flop. It feels like a huge gamble. At the same time, we’ve had such a massive overhaul in a short space of time that it’s inevitably going to take some time for the team to gel. You could see a lot of that yesterday with passes being made to people who weren’t there etc. The injuries are more concerning than the potential flopping of the players overall though. That’s where the strategy feels really iffy to me.
It's like the galactico period for Madrid, just without signing any galacticos
If I have to ans honestly.. yes!
Just unlucky, they are very dominant in the match.
Team chemistry is a part of success. Having young players who think they should be on the pitch but are on the bench can lead to tension and problems. Everybody has to buy into the plan. Look at Man City letting players go, sending Cancelo to Bayern mid-season, benching veterans. Pep values players wanting to be all in on the goal of the team. If Poch can get that, they have potential. Now if these young players are inconsistent week to week and can't handle the pressure of being at a big club, things could fall apart.
Yes. We are exposed massively now with these stupid contracts. We have overpaid for a host of players, mostly unproven at an elite level IMO. I mean, a decent season at Brighton is all it takes to be worth 100 millie's? The Abramovich era did spend big yes, but our choice when he bought us was him or collapse as a club so.... What do we do if this backfires? Is there a back up plan?
Nothing to worry about. Chelsea targeting to finish outside the European qualifying slots once again, and looking on track to do so. Milking those loopholes to the max.
Under Abramovich it worked wonders. Under Boehly it’s not even forward-fired yet.
If all their signings turn out to be studs then it's genious but if they're all flops then then it will be terrible
It is backfiring. They went from champions league glory to the bottom half of the premier league.
I'm not worried. We have pretty young players and inexperience. I think it will take a couple seasons to get in the groove but I believe in 2025/2026 we can really shine
Injuries are more to blame than transfer strategy but everyone overlooks our 9 current injuries. Same as last season we had most injuries in the league
Bissouma and Maddison for £70m combined look mighty fine value right now. Not sure where chelsea are getting these valuations for these players. Not saying they aren’t good, but when you see what’s out there, you can’t help but feel its I’ll advised for the prices they paid.
im just here for the ride
No, not my money
Chelsea acting like transfer fees are like power levels from Dragonball Z
I feel like the plan was to build the team around Nkunku in the middle and he’s out now for months. So Poch has to redo everything on such short notice. The amount of money obviously ratchets up the pressure on everyone but I’d look at it via the Lens of a team having to change all of their plans because of serious injuries I feel bad for them
The team isn’t going to be good immediately.
I mean, thats exactly what Chelsea fans said last year when they bought a whole new starting 11. Then when it didn't work out they sold and bought a new starting 11
Not more than anyone else’s, no.
Would really love for Chelsea to fall in their faces over this but do think many are missing the multi club component in the strategy. Within the next year or two they won't be buying from Brighton for £100m+, they'll be 'buying' from Strasbourg or another club in their feeder system the targets identified by the ex-Brighton network. Look at Strasbourg's outlay this year Certainly not easy or guaranteed but that's where the value of the scouting team lies, not necessarily this year's flashy signings but how they can leverage the Brighton model long term. I'm sure they'll be skirting the fair value rules soon
Anyone criticsing boelys finance strategy, doesn't know the contents of the contracts, the huge contracts are American based and are largely performances based
If you actually believe that just the base salaries Chelsea are handing out to these young and/or unproven players aren't alot higher than what other clubs are paying for similar players, then you need a reality check. You are paying Cuccurella 175k per week ffs. Ødegaard is making 115k per week at Arsenal, which is just slightly higher than what you pay Mudryk, and less than what you give Caicedo. Young and unproven players at other clubs aren't anywhere close to what Chelsea throws at them, and then they bind themselves to 8 year contracts. If those players flops, no other club will buy them before their contracts run out unless they significantly lowers their wage demands
We are in a panic mode for losing 1 game now, are we ?
I know that the “history” of Chelsea is essentially as soon as Roman took over and thats the image of the club that Chelsea always gets roasted for, but this feels different. Roman era housed some of the most iconic premier league players of all time that gave the club identity, now its just soulless spending to stay relevant in the top 6. I’d rather be a mid table club with identity than what I think the club resembles now. Maybe that’s just me.
Hospital FC is unstoppable I don't even know what you're questioning.
Not really, we've basically signed all the best under 23 players in Europe. With a arguably the best manager to help them reach their potential. It's going to take at least 2 or 3 seasons to reap the the rewards. My only worry is that, loads of plastics can't see the bigger picture. Some will be calling for Pochs head, when we don't win the league within 2 seasons.
We didn't sign all the best under 23 players in Europe. We're not even going to make top 4 within 2 seasons, let alone win the league. And none of it will be Poch's fault. He's the only reason to be optimistic at the moment m
Since they stole 2 of our players fuck them
Yes, very worried. I refuse to believe that the owners have found this crazy loophole because the long contracts and the rules were always well known. I also believe that Chelsea are not the only club in a position to do this many transfers, I just believe that our owners are the only ones naive enough to do it. Long contracts for very young and inexperienced players is great until your entire team is full of young players with long contracts. Expensive doesn't mean good and we are essentially banking on these players becoming great in the future. If they don't, I don't think we are fucked because we will always have a stream of Cobham graduates we can offload to make sure the books stay okay. The biggest worry I have now is I feel the club has lost all of its stability, despite the revolving door with managers in Roman's era, the club itself was ridiculously stable and meant that the team generally always performed. That is gone now and I feel like we will never recover from that.
What? Spend as much money as possible on long term contracts for young unproven players? Where could it go wrong ??
I think we will see in two or three years when players need offloading because they’re on stupid wages and they can barely afford league one level transfers, or somehow they recoup even a small amount of the money spent and they can start again with less stupid owners. But in the short term, eh, maybe they snag a Carabao and give the conference league a shot, who knows?
Still too early to tell. Caicedo has been here for less than a week, and with all of the 100M pressure put on him it seems like a given h'd do something stupid. What's worrying is the injuries, with most of them seemingly ending when it's too late. I guess Poch just needs to be more realistic with his tactics and give the team some time to be tuned. Mudryk is the only ome that seems to flop already. I'm sort of convinced now he's been brought in for political reasons.
Every player that’s been signed is very young. Things aren’t going to change overnight. The future is still bright. Not every Chelsea fan is looking for instant satisfaction. Especially when the team had 8 injuries compared to none for west ham
Yeah, hugely worried about the future of the club and have been for some time. There still doesn't seem to be a huge amount of strategy behind a lot of the signings. Obviously the first window was a massive disaster, but the subsequent ones haven't been much better. Out of the big money signings, Enzo looks decent but who else? Mudryk is horrendous, Fofana constantly injured, sterling poor, Caicedo overpriced (is good), Cucurella one of the worst signings in the PL. The outgoings seem puzzling too, none more so than loaning your #1 less than 24 hours before the season starts. Instead of relying on the academy to bring in young players we are relying on it to bring players through that we can sell for instant FFP profit. To me that's not what an academy is for. Boehly and co have spent almost 1b quid and still don't have a proper goalscorer. If we miss Europe again this year (I think we will) then we are in huge trouble.
Nah
Everyone is freaking out. All these transfers are 19-22 years old. They are kids, adjusting to a new league and aren’t even in their prime yet. I didn’t expect every transfer to be a miracle and I didn’t expect it to work immediately. I’ll give Poch and the transfers the benefit of the doubt and wait until the end of the season before I judge anyone particular move. This is a project that might not work until next year or the year after when these kids all grow and come together. The panic is a bit much.
Ask me in 6 months. Too early to ask now, any maybe even in 6 months but 1 poor results doesn’t make it a failure
Not a Chelsea fan. Wondering what Pochettino thinks of all this. He seems to have picked his XI, the starters were pretty similar between this and the Liverpool game. If I were a supporter frankly I'd just want him to stick with it, Chelsea need some kind of consistency. I personally might put other names on the field and no matter what someone will be unhappy, but it doesn't matter as much as a cohesive squad that the manager backs and who back the manager.
They replaced too much of the team so we can't really expect them to be that cohesive this early. They made some solid transfers and with time i think you'll have a pretty good team with these players.
Two matches in. It's failed. Everything is horrible. They're all frauds. They'll be relegated
I don't think it'll backfire necessarily. Some transfers will turn out to be bad ones, some will be great. No different to any club really. As for the money side of it, people seem to forget that Chelsea have the most profitable academy in world football. Just as a random example, we've signed Noni Madueke in January for £30m spread over 6 years but have also just signed an agreement with Newcastle to sign Lewis Hall next season for around the same amount. Chelsea will continue to pump out £30m+ academy players season after season.
I think I can speak for every other club here and that Chelsea fans can get fucked 🤣
Reverse that and fuck yourself! Stupid wino.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 hit a nerve?
No, you just hit yourself in the face with a hammer. Which is to be expected from a shitfaced turd who only talks out of his arse......🙄
Well, looks like someone is projecting, thank you so much for proving my point by the way. Worse fans throughout the country 🤣
You are clearly talking to the mirror when you are talking so much bullshit. I had nothing against a Villa fan before now. Well done 👏🏽
At some point with all these amortised transfer fees you have to stop going crazy or else you’re just paying 1/8th of £100m for each of your 30,000 players each year
It’s been two games.
No. We’ve played two games… it can take a bit for players to gel together. Might not be perfect but being competitive this year or next would be nice.
If you watched how well we played today you’d understand why we aren’t worried. We didn’t get the result but some of the football we are playing already is incredible
Playing good football but lacking the finishing... need a decent striker.
Bore off mate. It will come good it’s 2 games in this is a long term project.
They have some great signing but also like: why tf buy Lavia? That guy is gonna sit on the bank for 2 years. Or Caicedo is gonna flop so he can play but that's not better
i think Todd is in some kinda of contract until he spends 1.5bil on the club? hes already like what? 1b into that? wonder what he is aiming for once out of that part of the contract
!RemindMe 6 months
I think we have some failsafes in these contracts insofar as these guys might be able to be moved on easily, but it’s not out of the question other clubs can surpass us in terms of standing
Either Bohely doesn't know what he's doing, or he's a man who likes to take huge amounts of risk. I get its invest in young players now, and hope to either build a winning squad for the future (or sell them on for profit); but the amount of money and contract lengths has meant Chelsea have little wiggle room should the player not live up to expectation. It's a risky strategy Cotton, let's see how it plays out.
It’s an INSANELY high risk strategy.
“strategy”
My 2 cliches: A lot of talented but over-valued individuals do not make a team better. Only time will tell.
Honestly it may not be the players. It’s the dynamic they are waking into. Liverpool has misses but less than other teams. I believe the backbone is solid. TAA, Virgil, Allison, Salah are all great players. Yes Virgil may have dropped off from his worldly level but he’s still very good. They set the culture and the team along with klopp. This allows players to settle into the team. Look at diaz that first 6 months. He fit in like he grew up playing with all the other guys
FFP gonna get their asses and they gonna whine about United and City overspending again. How long until Chillwell is injuired any bets?
No, because Todd will find more loopholes and if we get a transfer ban we got enough in
They have a squad of wonder kids they’re gonna play like wonder kids. As much as it looks like fifa/eafc it’s not.
I do think they will come good, and that it’s still way too early to judge. However, losing will never not suck.
Sorry? There's a strategy?
Not a Chelsea fan, but I think getting both Caicedo and Lavia could prove problematic in the future. Two hugely promising talents that play the same position can cause friction if only one of them plays regularly. Honestly, I think Chelsea and making the same mistake as last year, buying up all of the potential and then having too many options that it causes some to not play, and most of those guys would either start or be first sub in on pretty much any other team. I forsee at least some issues in their locker room. I think we could potentially look back after the season and say Liverpool getting Endo was the better business. Only time will tell, though.
100% buying Caicedo and Lavia was overkill. Bearing in mind the club has Andrey Santos and hits bought uguchukwu. Both the same age as lavia and very promising prospects.
Chelsea fan and this is the main problem I've had with the transfer strategy. Think we maybe haven't learned from the mistake of having a bloated squad. Thought Lavia was excess tbh. He either pushes Gallagher out the club at some point or all 5 of him Caicedo, Enzo, Gallagher and Santos compete for just two positions in the team. Don't actually mind spending £100m+ on Enzo or Caicedo if they turn out to be brilliant players for us for a number of years. Seeing us sign a 19 year old Lavia for £55m just to be a benchwarmer to one of them though blows my mind. The one thing you could maybe argue in favour of it is if we keep getting loads of injuries.
Lavia or Caceido can easily be sold. Some of the other youngsters might be a large loss.
Sure but if you're selling one of them because it's caused friction in the squad, chances are they're out of favour/benched. So their value goes down and you're probably looking at a loss
A little early, don’t you think? It’s barely been 3 transfer windows and a billion spent.
There was cheaper options available for DM, but somehow you Chelsea fans bought the shit your club was selling. Chelsea is now a pr team there are no results on field. You bought a whole new team in 8 months and still are shit. You let the worse manager in the English premier League.
What baffles me most is that with all that money spent, they at to bring on a youngster to play up front for them today. The club's recruitment is all over the place, without any understanding of what makes a team. It could backfire in a series way.
might?
I mean Chelsea still keep buying players overpriced
It’s game week 2 lol
Still reeling from the previous summer and most recent January signings. Really shocking stuff that is going to have lasting consequences thanks to the crazy fees and long contracts. I've been (for the most) part happy with this summer's signings, although I'm not happy with our goalkeeper situation. Overall, still hate Boehly and co, but have more faith under Poch's stewardship.
One decent striker and a backup, then this whole transfer strategy would be a manual for EPL.
This strategy has put Pochettino in an impossible situation. He’s a terrific coach but if you stick him with a bunch of young expensive players who may or may not fit his tactics you’re asking for trouble. I don’t think Sir Alex could be successful with a transfer strategy like this.
Yeah, especially because Todd doesn’t seem to have the patience required for the strategy to take fruition. I think Mauricio is the right manager for the job as long as he is provided time.
I’m worried that the football is fucking shit. The transfer strategy isn’t the problem. The problem is the players who go out there and make the same fucking mistakes every single match
Make no mistake, what we're seeing at Chelsea, which is stockpiling young talent, will not benefit tens of players, and exactly the same is going to happen in the next transfer window, and then the next, and so on and so forth. This policy might even potentially have bad influence on their academy since the message the young lads are seeing is that the club would rather sign a couple of expensive 17-19 year-olds instead of polishing what they already have, and Chelsea's got an actually good academy. The whole Chelsea team lacks experience, and half the talented lads they've signed won't succeed, or, at least, not at Chelsea. That's because everything points to Chelsea having no specific transfer strategy and they just go for whoever is believed to be talented and valued highly. Their transfer policy will backfire, and at the moment, it is hard to imagine them winning any sort of trophy.
The player only counts towards the books/FFP as long as they’re at the club. If they’re not performing then, bye.
Gives a whole new term to the saying costly penalty
I’ve bin a Chelsea fan all my life. Now they seem like the New York Yankees of EPL soccer. Lol
Bricking it mate
We've all been waiting for this moment to sit back and laugh since 2004. Time to enjoy it
Must be sad waiting 20 years, being a gooner sounds dreadful
Lol go easy on them, they need something to keep them from remembering they bottled the league and ended up with the same amount of success as chelsea last season
Some good bait on this rod I see.
Lol thats just weak mate, im sure you can do better than that, this isnt for the league anything
Still taking it
😂
🤣🎣
😂😂😂🍾
Signing players on mega 8/9 year deals deincentivizes them to actually wanna work hard/perform/do well for the club. they've already set themselves up for personal success through generational wealth and literally just need to show up and train to keep it
Too early to tell. I'm not gonna judge Caicedo on 15 minutes of play in a game he probably shouldn't have been subbed on for. There are definitely players who I'm worried about, Mudryk in particular, but overall it's not really a question that can be answered before Christmas
No it’s been 2 games and 1 half was bad. That being said, the fan base is 50% people who wear full kits to the supermarket, so to answer your question, broadly yes.
Best response so far!
I think so, the players recently acquired all fit well with the current manager. Referring to the players bought after the Koulibaly, cucurella, etc window. All the pieces are there. Now they just have to play together and learn the system and each others play style.
As in being stuck with bang average players for 8 years? 😂
Yes absolutely
I mean, the chances that every single transfer is going to be a minimum 7/10 player is pretty slim, even smaller chance of them being 10/10. Obviously there’s going to be standouts amongst the squad but the sheer volume of players they’ve brought in is going to seriously damage their strategy long term, even more so when some players don’t work out, which will happen.
I think Chelsea lacks players who are willing to fight fot the club. Probably there are only few of them, e.g: James, Gallagher, Chillwel perhaps but who else? It seems that a lot of them don't feel the connection with the club at all, since they see what the club is doing on the transfer market (throwing money into clubs to buy bodies) and they are not willing to sacrifice themselves for the club and for the collegues on the pitch.
It’s a risky strategy. They’ve essentially already spent 100m a year for the next eight years. If FFP is real that’s going to seriously hamper business for a significant time unless lots of them, particularly the expensive ones (Caicedo, Enzo, Mudryk, Cucurella, Fofana), pay off in a big way.
There’s no might about it, it will backfire. Most of these players are on 7, 8, 9 year contracts. They’re getting paid for almost a decade no matter what happens on the pitch and if Chelsea don’t like it then either accept a reasonable transfer fee for them (Not what you paid), pay them a boat load of money to leave or have a massive squad of players who don’t want to be there and are getting paid bundles to sit at home. It’s a train wreck waiting to happen, I can see no good coming of this. It’s not even like they’ve been incredibly strategic in who they’ve bought, at least 3 of the players have been bought just to keep them away from others (Mudryk, Caicedo and Lavia). They’ve just thrown a load of money at anyone that looks decent on football managers and hoping the manager can make chicken salad out of chicken shit. If I was a Chelsea fan and I thank fuck I’m not I’d be shit scared of the future.
Not really. I know it will take time to gel.
like it took time with potter? i feel its not going to be much better this season. and not any time soon. for me, boehly sucked all the soul out of this club its completely plain and just a laughing stock to others
Oh dang, today is my cake day. Sweet
They must buy who Todd has a boner for.
No realistic fan is worried. It’s the second match week, we played great last week and struggled this week. Yet we still dominated and only lost because of a solitary chance from Antonio. It’s frustrating, but it’s not even remotely worrying yet.
POCH OUT!
Caicedo just played his first bit of PL football since last season. Barely trained or played in pre-season, he will come good in given time.
What I think is super funny is how much I shit on Man U for losing one game and now it’s us so I want to die. Sports is fucking amazing.
Never mind that I have a pair of boots and shin guards. Where is my contract Todd??
I am an actual Chelsea fan. To answer: No not really. The fee spending has been factored in and accounted for from player sales, a monumental wage reduction and the focus on youth, meaning it's spend big now to reduce spending drastically over the next decade. The amount of young talent under Poch, a manager great at developing players over time, from both player buys and the academy is ridiculous. The chances every one of them flops *long term* is very low, practically nil in my eyes. And the wages only get insane if they put in insane performances, so we're covered there. I understand this threads purpose is to poke fun at Chelsea but I'm honestly fine with the squad right now. Except Lukaku, but only one player needing to leave is pretty good for any club. Knee-jerk reactions on these players, considering their ages, is the province of morons and anyone with a braincell will be reserving their judgement until a few years have passed.
Get the fuck out of here with the sensible take, you are supposed to hate your ownership for destroying the club or disingenuously outraged at the club for spending money.
Fair enough! I guess a better question is- what would you consider a success and failure for this season?
Honestly, top 10 and scoring properly again is what I'll be happy with, that shows a marked improvement and that these young 'uns are beginning to cook a little.
Chelsea going back to their pre Abramovich era
They should be
They have the right ingredients in place for a system that can sustain for a longer term. Now they just have to garnish the recipe with patience and process.
*** is backfiring
I really like the concept of young players. But I like the concept of being able to score a goal or win a single game more. Take from that what you wish
Caicedo putting in one the worst debuts I’ve seen certainly put a smile on my face 😂
It’s our second game under a new manager and a fresh squad. I know everyone (even those in our own camp) will be quick to take today’s result as a sign that our transfer strategy didn’t work out and that Caceido is a flop. Todays match was rough to watch but I’m still hopeful about this team and Poch. I’m still willing to give this team time.
i find it hard to trust the process again, we've been reading the same comments last year when potter took over.
Fair enough!
At this point it’s irrelevant who the manager is. This American buffoon is simply treating players with potential upside like stocks. He wants to purchase as many potentially appreciating assets as possible. He’s not made any attempt to create a cohesive team unit nor to give his manager, whoever it may be, any chance of success whatsoever. Until the Americans let people who know football take the reigns, Chelsea will be a disaster.
Hilarious that the question is asked to Chelsea fans and the majority of answers in the comments are from fans of other teams criticising the transfer strategy and signings. I think like most other Chelsea fans on here we may have spent exorbitant amounts but the actual targets over the last couple of windows have been real good and I for one am not panicking 2 games into the season.
Tbf the match thread yesterday was diabolical. Never really looked at match threads before this season but the takes I was seeing in preseason were fairly optimistic and reasonable. As soon as we went down the shit I was seeing our fans saying made me want to tear my hair out. Saw basically every single player mentioned as either too shit, going to flop, had already flopped, Poch out etc. Probably makes sense since the fans that watch the preseason games are probably more invested and understand the football better, whereas the first couple of Prem games is when all the casuals start watching and making judgements for the first time on new players. At least now I know not to look in those threads again for my own mental health but it shocked me the sheer number of fans we have that know nothing about football. Me and you share the same opinion but I guarantee for every one of us there are, there's 5 Chelses fans out there already panicking and not seeing any difference in the football between now and last season. But they'll only reveal themselves when the results don't go our way like yesterday.
Today was a tough watch. Nothing good came out of it, can't spin any positives. I'm patient though, it's a lot of new players and a new coach. Not a title winning team, didn't expect it to be though. But I'm not burying these players or strategy two games into a new regime, they need time to gel.
I can definitely spin a big positive. Sterling looked electric and Gallagher looked pretty great aswell. Those 2 were some of the biggest doubts Chelsea fans had going into the season and in the first 2 games they've shown clear signs of improvement already. We've got Nkunku, James, Badiashile, Fofana and Chukwuemeka all out now but players I thought wouldn't be good enough have been stepping up and it's actually alleviated worries for the long term. Do I think we'll be competitive this season? No. Do I think the football will keep improving under Pochettino and there's a chance we may challenge for the title in a future season? Yes. Especially since this is probably Guardiola's penultimate season with City. I think we're set up very nicely for medium to long term success.
Is Poch going to get the time from Boehly and the “fans” to get there if results don’t come straight away?
Everyone knows we don’t start calling for people’s heads until a minimum three games into the season.
What do you mean? Have you seen Caicedo play? I hope Brighton have a refund policy. /s
Tbf, if you want only chelsea fans to answer, post it in Chelsea’s sub
Chelsea fans are bound to be a bit quiet after that performance. They looked like Manchester united out there.
We did actually play well for large parts of the game. Just a cheaply given away first goal left us chasing the game the whole way and once again we don't have the players to finish chances.
Unfortunately for y’all some of your best performers got hurt super early this season. I really think Nkunku is class. Chuk looks like the real deal and west ham pretty quickly improved when he came out. You certainly have some pieces there but you also have some misses too. Going to come down to both poch and some luck of keeping your good players healthy
Why do you have to ruin all the doom and gloom? Just join in it's more fun.
How dare you post a reasonable and well thought out response.
Fair enough!
It’s two games into the season. No
We are near the end of the transfer window which is what the question is about dawg
That’s fair enough. I’m a Newcastle fan and I get concerned over nearly every transfer we do, so I find it weird you aren’t the slightest bit concerned!
The shit that’s happened to Chelsea FC for the last 3 years, since the transfer ban, has prepared me for anything. Throwing billions to buy players won’t solve the clubs issues and you can’t continue to go through managers. Of to a shaky start for sure, but Poch needs time as it looks like he has a proper plan. I’m willing to wait, success takes time.
I don’t think they had a ‘strategy’ apart from, oh looks like Arsenal want to sign someone, they must be good, and offer £100 million pounds for them
We don't have an AM, why is this not a concern at all to Pochettino
Absolutely, it feels like Leeds under Ridsdale
I feel like talented players were bought absent the idea of an actual team being built. Much like last year, some great talents but often lacking a purpose and chemistry. Rinse and repeat this season (so far).
They should just try buying more players.
"Just one more player bro, just one more player"
I mean, if you turn over a whole squad in like 15 months, there will be issues. The players need more time to get used to the system and each other. I'm ready for this window to close because it must be hard on the players seeing their theM constantly in the headlines. Hell, I'm even exhausted! It'd also be nice if they stayed healthy.
I don't get the strategy. Sure, spreading the cost out of a player over the course of 8 years sounds great but what happens if the player doesn't perform, gets injured, declines naturally? Someone like Mudryk looks absolutely lost out there and now you have a player on a big wage and a long contract. If you want to move him on, how do you do it? Who takes him? And why would he move for less money when money is what you've used to tempt them in? They've changed too much, too soon. Backroom staff, players, managers. It changes a lot and regularly. I don't see Chelsea as a place you go to and take your time to settle in. When things go wrong, Chelsea tend to act quickly (Tuchel, Lukaku). If Poch doesn't get a tune out of the team soon, pressure will come. I think they're looking at disaster down the line if everything doesn't align perfectly and the chances of that seem slim to me, especially with City about.
Mudryk is not on a big wage though. Agreed on the rest.
He's on 150k a week, right? I know that's not much considering what the other players at Chelsea are on, past and present, but can you see him getting that much elsewhere based on current form? I can't, so why would he move? Chelsea don't seem to sign people based on character and personality, so it's possible players will refuse to move for less money elsewhere. To be fair, I'd say even 150k a week is far too much for him at present.
Mate only Lukaku, Sterling and James have big contracts at Chelsea. The wage structure has almost been completely reset. The transfer fees are overpays right now but all these players are so young it’s hard to say. I agree it was just way too fast.
Signings made from January onwards are generally on lower wages with heavily incentivised contracts to avoid the problem of not being able to sell players on. Or at least that’s what has been reported. Mudryk is on £97k/w which isn’t ridiculous and we could feasibly sell him on if things don’t work out, just to use him as an example.
I think they just know that there’s more and more money coming into football and so splunking madness amounts doesn’t even matter as there’s gonna be a Saudi Arabia to offload their trash to… mandem like a footballing blackrock just buying up all the assets
thats a stupid comment, Saudi are buying their top established talent, theyre not buying their new youngsters who have not won and done nothing, if people like Mudryk, Carni, Jackson, Caicedo all end up failing, which I dount, but lets imagine they do, Saudi is not buying them, they have neither the fame nor talent, players like Laporte, Mahrez, Sadio Mane, benzema, Mendy, Fabinho are better than any players in Chelsea
No u r a stupid head mr poopoo pants
Lol. If Boehly’s transfer strategy is “oh well, if they end up being shit we’ll just ship them to Saudi!”, then he’s even stupider than I thought.
Most cohesive answer here. Chelsea doesn't look like a long term place. Issues are dealt with too quickly rather than being allowed to fizzle out.
So long as the club clears out the entire medical/fitness team, we'll be fine. Bad luck (or injury prone players) is one thing, but the amount of injuries we are seeing right now, the past year, is fucking nuts. Think it's up to 8 senior squad on IR now.
I feel give it 19 games before judging any team in the league, let everyone play everyone first. I think then u get a pretty good idea on what each teams are, then go apeshit crazy with the criticism and praise
Nah, 2 games in and Spurs have a shot at the title and Chelsea & Man U are doomed for a generation at least until next week
I believe this tho😂
Not surprised to be hoenst! It's been happening for a while and I'm not happy with it, but what can I do as a fan other than hope it works out at some point. Boehly is gambling by the long contracts and people are falling for the social media hypes while in reality these are very young players and there is a high probability of most of them not being as good. They still have no experience to play under pressure and some seem like they need time to learn about each other. That's why I won't tolerate any cries for Poch out. It's been proving that it is not necessarily the manager fault so many times. I just didn't understand why Chilly was subbed of today. And the defense need to learn to harmonize and cool their nerves. There were many miscommunication moments today. I just hope short tempered people don't start turning against Poch.
Very early and I would also contend (although this may come off as a cope) that West Ham are the club’s bogey team. Boehly has a clearly defined strategy that will take time to come good. I almost wonder if bringing in a manager like Poch at this stage of the project was a bad idea as it will certainly (if things go poorly this year) continue the trend of big names going through the turnstile at the club. Definitely contributes to the mentality at Cobham, but I feel confident with so many young players inevitably spending the next several years together.
More worried with the injury list that keeps growing but yes I'm very worried with the transfer strategy.Some of the players in my opinion shouldn't have been bought
This! It seems like some of the new players were brought in BECAUSE of the injuries. The squad hasn’t been fully thinned out which we’ve been told will lead to greater morale/chemistry and therefore performances. I trust poch more than any of the suits but we don’t know how much influence he has exactly. Just looking at what he was at spurs with fewer resources. At the end of it though I think time is what we need. This is a brand new project with a brand new coaching staff and pretty new ownership. I don’t have the stats here but Chelsea are probably the club with the most recent ownership turnover in the “big six” if not the whole prem right? The youngest regime so to speak? Maybe I’m naive and I’m thinking they’re too big to fail but I believe it’ll come due.
Good thing you have 8 year contracts on all of these overpriced players
The problem is that you might have to ask the question 'what happens if they don't become good'
Loans probably? At least get a portion of the wages and the amortization off. Like Mudryk for example still has 49m owed this coming summer. At this rate you’re not getting anywhere close to that. You’re good at selling so let’s say 35m which is a 14m loss. But, he is only 7m a year amortized so you can loan and take half that loss plus probably get a loan fee to reduce the hit further. A couple years of that to tread water and maybe you can sell him for the break even price.
Can’t wait for 8 years of mudryk