Fuck it, just get Morata, Sandro, Rudiger and Bakayoko and call it a window. Nice to see the talk on Chalobah slowing down...maybe he's staying after all.
It's almost hilarious how badly Mourinho has fucked us in the transfer market with his decisions during his second stint. Alienates and sells Mata (my favorite player at the time), sells De Bruyne, sells Lukaku (and specifically advises to avoid attaching a buy back clause), sells Bertrand (never gave him a chance), loans out Salah. We're paying for it fucking big time now.
After Jose was canned I posed the question if the residual impact of Mourinho Part II was worth it and a resounding yes was the response.
Well he won a title and left Conte with enough to win year one. Even if we don't have a great window, this is still going to be a good team, it's not nearly as dire as y'all are making it out to be.
I still think it's a yes but I never imagined that the board would watch ANOTHER manager win a title and not back him to the fullest in the transfer market. The sales of KDB/Lukaku/Salah etc. Become worse when the board will not buy players of their quality on a consistent basis.
Were those good moves or something? Obviously we benefited from his Costa, Fabregas, and Willian moves so no one is saying he batted .000.
The board needs to do a better job with selling young talent. I understand the manager should have a say, but with how the club removes managers so frequently, the philosophies change too much to sale the type of talent we do. Especially for the amount we are getting for them.
League titles are great but frankly, the club's ambitions are higher than that. In order to compete with Real, Barca, PSG, Bayern and the Manchester clubs, Chelsea can't afford to fuck these types of situations up.
Is there anyone else out there other than Belotti or Morata that could be brought in to prevent Conte's head from exploding? I realize the powers that be were pissed at him for causing Costa's value to dip with that text message but they would be foolish to allow that rift to become a bigger issue.
Apparently he is a diva of tremendous proportions. Even after being told to stop by Dortmund, he would do these celebrations that incorporated Nike which obviously infuriated Puma. His kind of personality doesn't seem like it would mesh with Conte's. If life were like a game of FIFA, it would be an amazing signing. Alexis Sanchez is who I think you should go all in on. It would cost a fortune though. And Milik if everything goes to shit.
I get that but when you look at the talent we had on the books and what we ended up losing them for (the money but also lack of sell on/buyback clauses) criticism is justified. Chelsea had a strategy to buy young and loan and develop for their first team. Mourinho blew that up. Still a VERY good roster but the roster they had developed required very little investment if you bring lukaku and KDB I got the first team and Christensen this year. You buy a kante and 1-2 others and that's it. Chelsea currently don't seem to have a strategy. I think some want the mourinho/original roman plan of buy titles and move on and some want the more pragmatic approach of buy youth and loan/slow integrate into the first team. Personally I think both can work and be effective but if you are in the middle and don't know which direction to go in you tend to make panic moves and not have long term sustained success.
There was a brief moment in time where Doumbia and Ibarbo were on Roma's squad together and it was so annoying how 99% of the people you would play against online were Roma. Ibarbo has always been garbage in real life and would have never been close to playing for a club of Roma's caliber if not for his FIFA ratings. 27 goals in 273 career appearances as a striker is atrocious. 0 goals in 13 appearances is what he did for Roma. He is now slumming it in the J League in Japan.
In hindsight it is clear that he knew he'd move to Manchester United and did a great job of unloading a lot of the talent at Chelsea, weakening what would become a major adversary for him going forward. He also made it possible for him to eventually purchase Lukaku without Chelsea being able to activate the buy back clause. So crafty.
What does this have to do with selling multiple players for literally peanuts compared to their value a few years later? Chelsea doesn't have unlimited funds anymore and these fuckups hurt.
What they sell for a few years later is pretty irrelevant to what Chelsea sold them for at the time imo. Even if he had still had a few years left on his contract, it's not like United could have gotten even £10m-15m for Pogba when he went to Juventus. He only had a handful of PL appearances under his belt at the time. Complaints about no buy-back/sell-on clauses are completely valid tho.
Oscar still would have pulled 30 from a Euro side. Our net would still be way under other top English clubs.
The whole China thing has pretty much been shut down so any hopes of stupid money for bit part players is finished. The Chinese government now requires any transfer fee over something like 30 million dollars to be matched by the buying club that would go towards developing youth players. Basically a 100% sales tax
It all comes back to the club A. changing managers too much B. letting managers who stay more than 2 years have too much power to change the talent level within the youth ranks. Its the main reason I am going to rage if Chalobah gets sold or Christensen is loaned (already demanded to be sold if we loaned him again)
It seems that the young players they have are actually now starting to overcome their own egos and see for themselves that the never ending loan system is career suicide. The clubs they get sent to have no interest in carefully developing them as they know they will only be there for a season and have nothing to gain from their development. Having massive number of young players with high potential can only be sustainable with actual B teams getting to play against capable opposition. B teams also seem to be beneficial for developing managers considering that's how Zidane and Pep started out.
That's fair. I think in general people just overestimate how much 'potential' factors into what a player can be sold for when they only have a small amount experience at the top level.
Ray Wilkins made a good point about Bakayoko and Chalobah. "The former Blues star and assistant boss said: "I was really disappointed to read they are looking at Bakayoko from Monaco. He is 22 years of age, French and doesn't get near the national side, but it was quoted Chelsea might be paying £32million. “Well, in Nathaniel they have got a footballer that can play exactly the same but just needs an opportunity to get in there and play. "You have seen already in the two games he has played up to now [at the European Championship] he looks a class act in and amongst people of his own age. Playing with the top quality players that they have at Chelsea, he can only improve week to week." I still think we need reinforcements in the midfield, I just really hope it doesn't cost us Chalobah.
On one player yes, but that's the only Chinese transfer we've had and our net is still way under the other top clubs. Plus you can't say we spend the same if we don't sell Oscar for that.
Sorry but Bakayoko is far better than Chalobah already and probably has a higher ceiling. There's nothing to be ashamed of for not making the French team right now.
Considering the number of quality youth players Chelsea have had under their umbrella in recent times the inability to turn at least a handful of them into contributing members of the first team has been mind boggling. I get they are looking at it more as a profit generating mechanism regarding player sales but they've let go of some absolute studs and will likely end up doing it again.