I'm convulsing at what our first XI looks like at the start of next season. That attack would be hilariously inept.
Willian/giroud/Pedro needed to be bailed out by CHO, Eden and RLC during the Europa league run but I’m sure it will be fine in the premier league next season.
The CHO will be ready for preseason is crazy. Even if he trains, he won’t be back until Christmas at the earliest. Read somewhere his was only a partial tear and RLC a complete so maybe CHO is back and actually capable of playing by Christmas. TBH I don’t think RLC will be himself at all until the 2020-21 season which is a shame.
Drogba single handedly willed that team to the trophy. He was the best defender on the pitch in Barcelona.
We'll never get back all those missed pk calls in 09 but their inability to score more than 2 goals when they had like 100 good chances over the 2 matches had to be karma.
So if the options are one of these which do you pick? 1) get ban delayed this summer but it stays at 2 windows so we can’t buy in January or next summer 2) serve 2 window ban now and January but get to buy summer 2020 It’s tough because I we can’t get top 4 next season without buying but do we actually have a plan to buy? Still no director of football and nothing makes me think we actually have a good plan. That makes me choose option 2. Blood youth, find out what players can be a part of the new core going forward and buy a few starting XI caliber players at the positions where we don’t have quality like striker or where we gave youth/current squad players a chance next season and they failed.
Before CHO and RLC got hurt it was clearly option 2 for me. I think it's still 2 and just take our lumps next season and rebuild.
Swapping out Pulisic for Hazard and bringing back loanees doesn't exactly inspire much confidence in this squad finishing top 4 next year especially with RLC and CHO likely out. I'd be okay with that as long as Roman is willing to spend on quality players next summer, no Drinkwaters. Are we allowed to take players on loan during the ban?
He has one fucking year of managerial experience. What do you do when we inevitably struggle next season without Hazard?
We have to rebuild. Everyone is going to have to accept that if we sell hazard and can’t buy. If Chelsea board doesn’t accept that, lampard shouldn’t take the job. If they give him the job and give him a pass this year and people are relatively upfront about that it can work.
When has Roman given anyone a pass? Maybe his sentiment for what Lampard has done will get him more than 1 year but it's Roman.
If Sarri wants Juve and they’ll buy him out, then so be it but if we fire him to hire a guy with one year of experience, I’ll be apoplectic. Chaos club gonna chaos club.
Didn't we fight Conte over the money owed to him? There's no reason to pay dead money to a guy who's not working for the club. This isn't the era where we could fire AVB and pay him $10+ million in the drop of a hat.
Apparently it is because we now owe Conte the full $9 million according to the Times and have decided not to appeal.
He isn’t spending money like he used to and the team will be hot garbage next year. No hazard, no RLC and no CHO. We don’t have a striker. There are a few loan guys who will come back but we finish 6 by a good bit without hazard this year. Only reason sarri might move on is because he is getting booed at games and Roman learned from bringing in Rafa Benitez that he wants a coach the match going fans like. If he can’t commit to a rebuild year with no expectations beyond finish top half of the table, I don’t think lampard should take the job. There is 0 chance this team can get champions league without hazard.
Might be the absolute worst time to bring Lampard on. Club is gonna need someone with experience to navigate this upcoming shit show of a season. We'll see how the Villa/Derby match plays out, but if he takes Derby to the Prem, no way he should come to Chelsea.
From his perspective if he gets ironclad assurances he can stay through at least the 2020 summer no matter what then he should clearly take the job. Even if Derby get promoted those clubs don't exactly have much managerial stability in the Prem and they're likely losing at least Mount and Fomori.
Premier league is the most competitive league in Europe. I love the league. Having a player on the team you really like makes it easier to stick with it. Chelsea should be rebuilding somewhat next season which should be fun. We have a transfer ban so a lot of young players should get a chance. This league as a whole is just so awesome to follow. Even if it isn’t Chelsea I would watch more of the sport in England.
That’s a great move. He’s someone who knows the sport who Roman will listen to when marina tries to buy the next Danny drinkwater. All we need is someone who Roman trusts who knows the sport. Roman personally made sure he moved to arsenal and kept his family in London. I think this will be good.
I'm down for getting more of the old guard into the club. Cech is an intelligent guy who cares about the club.
Typically i would agree with you but if Roman doesn’t completely trust the person, will he listen when they tell him that marina’s idea to sign the next drinkwater or zappacosta is a bad one? Emanalo ran Monaco into the ground but Chelsea were much better with him as DoF than we are now with just marina in charge. They key for us is someone Roman trusts enough to listen to.
These recovery timeframes for an Achilles tear seem very ambitious. Granted most of my injury knowledge is from football and it might take people with that much muscle longer to recover but it still seems like a shorter recovery than I was expecting. Maybe neither fully tore it? This is great news to me though. Tell me that CHO and RLC might have a role to play down the stretch next season which I more than I expected.
Yet people can't wait to give Lampard the job no matter what happens in the Championship playoff final
Like what were people's expectations for the season? Top 4 and Europa final seems like our ceiling for this year, with integration of youth we've been asking for (pre injury). I don't love Sarri but he hasn't done a bad job
I'm guessing it's all in how we got here for most. If everyone else didn't throw up on themselves we're probably 6th. We were pretty awful offensively and some of that can be chalked up to our lack of transfer activity but Sarri's rep was for developing the talent he had. His inflexibility certainly didn't help. I get the criticism from fans but we shouldn't sack him.
But when we finish 6th-10th next year is he going to survive that? If he won’t, give me lampard a year early, let him learn and play youth and then spend big summer 2020 and build a team that can compete. Sarri has not done anything to deserve getting fired. He got screwed by us penny pinching with conte and Napoli and didn’t get a preseason. That said, he just hasn’t done anything to try and win over the fans. His comment that he didn’t bother watching Hudson-odoi’s England debut, even if its true, was idiotic. It’s just not going to be a long term marriage. If next year is a true chance at a rebuilding year, I’m not sure he’s the best guy for it. If hazard stayed I would feel differently or if our transfer ban gets delayed I’d feel different. I just have no hope for our team without Eden next season.
Listened to the Calcioland podcast with David Amoyal and the discussion was who will be missed more, Allegri at Juve or Sarri at Chelsea and the answer was Allegri... by a hair.
I don’t think that’s true. I believe it’s 21 days from when Chelsea receive the written reasons why they were banned. Can’t appeal if you don’t know the exact reasons. That said, it is really starting to look more and more likely that we serve the ban this summer and hope to get it waived for January. Worst case we can buy next summer. I think it would be worse to have it frozen, not have a successful summer since we still don’t have a director of football and haven’t fully prepared to buy this summer, and then potentially not be able to buy next summer.
Ideally I would like to get at least 1 or 2 signings done well in advance similar to pulisic or how Liverpool bought naby keita a year early.
Here's the issue, we've got CL to offer this year. There's obviously no guarantee of that next year so player recruitment becomes significantly harder and/or more expensive.