Italian right/wing back from Torino. Quite good, if you ask me. The Premier League is a big task compared with Serie A though.
Chelsea 2017/18 thread - FA Cup Champs, League chumps
- Thread starter duffer
- Start date
-
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Another player rejects Chelsea?!
Better than Darmian was in Serie A?
For some reason I'm more worried about them getting Drinkwater than Ox or Barkley. Pleased they missed out on Llorente though.
That's four now. It's bizarre that it's happening to them. They're normally pretty good at getting their targets.
Of him, Ox and Barkley, Llorente is the one I'm annoyed about.
£5m less than what we paid for Matic.. Which of course begs the question, why on earth would you sell Matic in the first place? Bet Roman is having kittens over this debacle of a transfer window.
Lukaku, Ox and Llorente, who's the 4th?
Barkley.
Barkley
Barkley, depending on whether he failed his medical or got up half way through and decided he wanted a Subway.
It's conte man. Not a lot of players like such an aggressive manager.
Too late, I'm offended.
Presumably this "mockery" of Luiz came from oppo fans, which is perfectly natural and is in no way a direct representation of a players ability or lack of. We all knew Luiz to be a top player and were more hoping he'd fail on his return. Quite the opposite occured though.
Don't understand this Alonso stuff, he was seen to be quite the talent if I recall correctly. Have never heard of Zappacosta to be fair, that he is an Italian international shows you how much interest I have in the international arena
Apologies!
Agreed that some mockery is to be expected but I thought a lot of it was over the top; you'd have thought we'd signed a totally useless lump of a player.
Re: Alonso, much was made of the fact that he'd largely failed at Sunderland and Bolton, which was fair enough. He really had come on by leaps and bounds at Fiorentina and really was a totally different player than he had been when he left England.
Spurs - behind Kane
Chelsea - behind Morata & Batshuayi
Kane had a couple of spells out injured last year as well, Llorente might be thinking that Kane will get a few rests here and there in which case he'll probably start, or at the very least he's probably there #1 option off the bench.
What do you think is going on?
Supposedly Batshuayi would have been sent out on loan pending the arrival of Llorente. Spurs offered Swansea more money.
Luakau preferred United (I'm sure you can understand that). Ox didn't want to play as a full back.
Llorente and Barkley I don't quite understand.
Must be salary. They were probably banking on the prestige of playing for them landing their targets, rather than the usual massive wad of russian cash.
Perhaps word is getting out that Conte is a cnut. A-cunta-conte.
Could just be a coincidence. Chamberlain felt like he'd get more football in a preferred position with us, Barkley might have had a call from Spurs and changed his mind, maybe Lukaku preferred United because he'd already been at Chelsea before?
I don't really know about Llorente, that seems like he simply preferred Spurs.
This might sound conspiratorial but it wouldn't surprise me if the results of Barkley's medical suggested he'd be out past January and the club promised him a large signing on bonus if he signs a pre-contract in the winter in lieu of having to pay Everton a transfer fee.
Not that this would make me particularly happy; I don't really rate Barkley at all and this strikes me as being pretty underhanded. Still, I'd prefer to not pay hand over fist for him, so if this is what happens then ok I guess?
Not that this would make me particularly happy; I don't really rate Barkley at all and this strikes me as being pretty underhanded. Still, I'd prefer to not pay hand over fist for him, so if this is what happens then ok I guess?
Chelsea are lucky bastards. Somehow contriving to feck up the transfers of bang average players like Barkley, Chamberlain and Llorente. The place would be in meltdown if we bought those 3 players.
If that's true, at this point I'm really questioning Chelsea's transfer policy. Are they doing it purely for his aerial presence? I get that because he scored a lot of goals last year from set-pieces, but he's 32 years old and been a bit of a career journeyman in recent seasons. You've gotta feel for Batshuayi in that situation, one of the better young strikers in Europe recently signed for £32m, gets 1 start in the PL all season yet still scores 5 goals in 230-odd minutes or around 1 per 45 minutes of game-time and they still attempt to replace him.
Llorente would give us an option of having a big target man who can hold the ball up and bring others into play. Morata and certainly Bats can't do that anywhere near as well as Llorente.
I think it'd mostly be for his hold up play-he has ample experience playing with his back to goal, which neither Morata nor Batshuayi really offer at this point. Batshuayi in particular is atrocious at holding the ball up; the first match against Burnley was just painful to watch. He needs to play off another striker in my opinion, and/or needs regular minutes to learn how to impose himself physically.
Worst window of the top 7, even worse than Arsenal's
Nonsense, our window has been nowhere near as bad as Arsenal's, Everton's, or Spurs'.
Dammit Duffer, I swear every time you beat me to the punch!
I was just about to post "Jinx"! So you beat me to that.
Anyway, I'm off to try and write "Zappa" on my Costa shirt.
Morata and Bakayoko are good signings.
Arsenal's is probably the worst. Needed quality signings in midfield and defence. Got neither. Liverpool haven't done too well either. Desperately needed a quality central defender but didn't get one.
Rumour has it that Conte's training methods are too draining on the players and not many want to do double sessions 4 days a week.
How on earth can you think Everton and Spurs have done worse than Chelsea? Laughable
Apparently wanted a longer deal. Was going to get a one year deal with the option of a second year at Chelsea.
Both Morata and Bakayoko are downgrades on what they had thus they're worse of, at least Arsenal have managed to keep Sanchez and got a better CF than Giroud even if it might not make much difference to them come May
Yeah that's bonkers. Only Arsenal have had a worse window.
Though, spurs everton and liverpool have not done much better so top4 should be gettable.
Emenalo is a fecking Ihni binni dimi diniwiny anitaime, how many managers are going to walk over that amateur 
The Italian full/wingback seems like a very good crosser. I can see Conte resorting to having crosses to Morata's head.
4 top Italian teams needed a RB and none of them went for him.
Italian Glen Johnson.