I do though yes, just because Bathsuayi (currently) has not lived up to what we thought and even then once he has a full year out on loan under his belt he might.
I don't think Llorente who we would have replaced him with in the summer has been that amazing for spurs if I'm honest, it was looked at so negatively yet batshuayi whilst looking poor in some games is still hugely effective as a super sub so I don't feel Llorente would've actually benefitted us much.
Its a difficult one but I do think those options are not good enough to play for Chelsea.
A lot of players need regular matches and when you play one striker up front the other striker will need to spend a fair amount of time on the bench.
This to me suggests you either need a promising young striker or an older good striker happy to sit on the bench for a chance to get a medal in his twilight years.
There is another option which is to have an attacking midfielder that can double as a striker.
Sadly Chelsea seem short on all options.
Most of the spend was offset by outgoings and the squad was weakened. Also, Man Utd sit on top of Chelsea this season.Erm, we won the league last year, and only spent £25m less in the summer than United who had a much bigger rebuilding job to do.
Most of the spend was offset by outgoings and the squad was weakened. Also, Man Utd sit on top of Chelsea this season.
Morata is a definite lesser striker with his missed sitters than Costa although Costa did want to leave. I would take Matic back in a heartbeat in exchange for Bakayoko who is the worst buy of the summer for any club in the premiership given his transfer fee. Drinkwater is a mere backup and a steady player but adds no additional quality to the team. Zappacosta a good buy? Let's not see everything through blue tinted glasses, shall we? He can't cross for nuts and is a terrible defender who can't even oust Moses from the right wing-back position. Granted Christensen has upped his game but the decline of Cahill the captain and Luiz has meant the defence isn't as strong in depth as it was.The squad was not weakened. Morata has had a few poor weeks, but he's been a good swap for Costa. Matic was average as hell for us for several seasons, and Drinkwater + Bakayoko is a good exchange regardless of how much Matic has come back to life at United and Bakayoko is still struggling to adapt. Zappacosta has been a good buy and Christiansen has been an absolute revelation.
We're not playing as consistently and as well as we did for large parts of last year, but it's also worth remembering that City have absolutely leapt ahead after their two years of mega spending, and United have also taken a big step forward. Despite this we should still be looking with confidence towards 2nd place and hopefully at least one cup.
The only reason people are complaining about spending is because City have set the bar unrealistically high over the last 2 years, while on the continent we have players suddenly moving for insane money and unbalancing the market. Chelsea are trying to be relatively responsible and stop having to rely on Roman throwing vast chunks of cash at the club every season, which is something that most Chelsea fans claimed to want just a few short years ago. Our revenue is rising year on year and we're becoming a genuinely powerful and stable financial club in our own right. That's something we should be applauding not criticizing.
Morata is a definite lesser striker with his missed sitters than Costa although Costa did want to leave. I would take Matic back in a heartbeat in exchange for Bakayoko who is the worst buy of the summer for any club in the premiership given his transfer fee. Drinkwater is a mere backup and a steady player but adds no additional quality to the team. Zappacosta a good buy? Let's not see everything through blue tinted glasses, shall we? He can't cross for nuts and is a terrible defender who can't even oust Moses from the right wing-back position. Granted Christensen has upped his game but the decline of Cahill the captain and Luiz has meant the defence isn't as strong in depth as it was.
No left wing back competition for Alonso and no reliable second striker to challenge Morata while the likes of Pedro and Willian are delcining will make life very difficult for the club to win anything this season besides finish top 4 at best. Only Conte's ability as a top class coach keeps Chelsea in contention for top 4. When he departs this summer, it's going to be a pretty nasty time for all connected with Chelsea.
Morata is a definite lesser striker with his missed sitters than Costa although Costa did want to leave. I would take Matic back in a heartbeat in exchange for Bakayoko who is the worst buy of the summer for any club in the premiership given his transfer fee. Drinkwater is a mere backup and a steady player but adds no additional quality to the team. Zappacosta a good buy? Let's not see everything through blue tinted glasses, shall we? He can't cross for nuts and is a terrible defender who can't even oust Moses from the right wing-back position. Granted Christensen has upped his game but the decline of Cahill the captain and Luiz has meant the defence isn't as strong in depth as it was.
No left wing back competition for Alonso and no reliable second striker to challenge Morata while the likes of Pedro and Willian are delcining will make life very difficult for the club to win anything this season besides finish top 4 at best. Only Conte's ability as a top class coach keeps Chelsea in contention for top 4. When he departs this summer, it's going to be a pretty nasty time for all connected with Chelsea.
So ... are Hazard and Courtois going to push for transfers in the Summer. The way they are talking, they have both said : "I'll sign after he does", it's beginning to look that way and that will be a massive blow if it happens (and if CFC allow it to happen).[/QUOTE
No-one is irreplaceable and of course we would get a lot of money. The money does not necessarily provide solutions just look at Spurs post Bale, or Utd post Ronaldo or Liverpool post Suarez. All the departures of the big players need careful transitions to keep the system rolling.
Do we have a good system, the closest comparison to date is with the Costa departure and so far Morata has been good, all be it now with a caveat over his 1 on 1 finishing.
Yeah I think that's why I'm leaning towards the opinion of having a young promising player, that we can rotate in and also doubles up as a winger or attacking mid. ie g.jesus, Keita balde, type player
Very harsh there on Timmy Bakayoko. He’s a decent player and is still pretty young.Morata is a definite lesser striker with his missed sitters than Costa although Costa did want to leave. I would take Matic back in a heartbeat in exchange for Bakayoko who is the worst buy of the summer for any club in the premiership given his transfer fee. Drinkwater is a mere backup and a steady player but adds no additional quality to the team. Zappacosta a good buy? Let's not see everything through blue tinted glasses, shall we? He can't cross for nuts and is a terrible defender who can't even oust Moses from the right wing-back position. Granted Christensen has upped his game but the decline of Cahill the captain and Luiz has meant the defence isn't as strong in depth as it was.
No left wing back competition for Alonso and no reliable second striker to challenge Morata while the likes of Pedro and Willian are delcining will make life very difficult for the club to win anything this season besides finish top 4 at best. Only Conte's ability as a top class coach keeps Chelsea in contention for top 4. When he departs this summer, it's going to be a pretty nasty time for all connected with Chelsea.
How the feck is WILLIAN declining for Christ's sake? Did you even watch his last couple of games?! As for this 'top 4 at best' shite, its fecking nonsense and you should know better. We're well behind City but 2nd is a very, very realistic possibility, as are at least one of the cups.
I'm so sick of hearing this naysaying crap about the club every time we don't splurge 200m a season. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you're not old enough to have seen us get relegated, right? Seeing that combined with waking up every day wondering if you were going to open the news and find we'd gone into liquidation gives you a very different perspective on what a 'pretty nasty time' actually means.
Conte getting some stick from Chelsea fans.
Social media. Not happy with his substitutions apparently.Where?
Social media. Not happy with his substitutions apparently.
Why do you people keep peddling this? Where is the evidence that he is about to get sacked? All the reports seem to suggest that he is unhappy with the club's inability/unwillingness to land his transfer targets and may quit on his own accord, not get sacked. Unless he has a "Mourinho season", he won't get sacked.Conte getting stick from fans is the least of his worries. Abramovich is most likely breathing down his neck; even though he has done pretty well in his 1.5 seasons. If Chelsea don't get the league cup, getting knocked out by Barca could be the final nail in the coffin.
Morata has yet to convince me 100% but time will tell. As of now, he's a downgrade from Costa. Drinkwater is a tidy little player but certainly not meant for a regular first team spot. Not bad but not outstanding either. Bakayoko shows a total lack of technical ability which is truly alarming and I fail to see any potential in him whatsoever. Besides pace, what else does Zappacosta display? I won't say he crosses better than Moses who himself is not a good crosser at all. Moreover, he gets caught out a lot by his positioning allowing attackers to get first touch before him. The RWB position needs a quality upgrade.Morata was absolutely lethal until his injury, you're talking him down because he had a shocker against Arsenal. Guess what, every striker has one of those days now and again. Drogba did, Costa certainly did, shit happens. As for the midfield, Drinkwater has been really good, especially since he was coming back from injury. Bakayoko has been largely garbage, but he's also still young and clearly has a lot of potential. He's shown a few flashes of it already. I'm sure you would love to have the new United awaken Matic back, but that wasn't the Matic we actually had. He was better than Bakayoko has been so far, but I'm just as happy having Drinkwater in there.
As for Zappa, he's extremely fast, is a much better crosser of the ball than Moses (who I do really like also) and has been showing he has a decent shot on him too. He's a great alternative to Moses, allowing us to switch between a crossing fullback and an attacking dribbling fullback, which can change the whole attacking approach. I wish we had someone on the left who we could alternate with Alonso in the same way. As for the defense, let's see how Luiz does now he's back from injury before we start talking about declines.
How the feck is WILLIAN declining for christs sake? Did you even watch his last couple of games?! As for this 'top 4 at best' shite, its fecking nonsense and you should know better. We're well behind City but 2nd is a very, very realistic possibility, as are at least one of the cups.
I'm so sick of hearing this naysaying crap about the club every time we don't splurge 200m a season. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you're not old enough to have seen us get relegated, right? Seeing that combined with waking up every day wondering if you were going to open the news and find we'd gone into liquidation gives you a very different perspective on what a 'pretty nasty time' actually means.
Conte did mention that he preferred Matic to be retained and rotated with Bakayoko. Unfortunately, the Board insisted on selling Matic and that's where we are today. Personally, I was against buying Bakayoko after watching several Monaco matches as he displayed poor technical skills like ball control and a lack of first touch. He was bought probably due to flavour-of-the-month reasons at the behest of Emenalo. A Naingollan type player should have been purchased instead.Drinkwater was purchased as the backup for Matic not Bakayoko per my understanding, I wouldn't want to take Matic back as his partnership with Kante was not the best.
With Azpi crossing from the right we should be asking why can't Alonso do the same from the left to make more from Morata's heading ability.
Bakayoko needs a pre-season before we decide he is surplus to requirements.
Sick of hearing naysayers? Don't read online football forums then, especially a rival one like redcafe.net. If you are emotionally disturbed by what you read that doesn't agree with your views, go the the chelsea fan forums for group think postings and post to each other how wonderful the club is and how great all its players are and the ones that are sold are all shitty anyway. And who's demanding the club to spend 200 million pounds besides making things up yourself? Also lay off this baseless accusation at me regarding my age when you have nothing constructive to post. I have been a Chelsea fan for 3 decades. Different time periods provide different perspectives and harkening back to the past doesn't change the present one iota. You'll be welcoming Carlo Ancellotti this summer hence that will be another era.
With all the transfer spending drying up in terms of net spend, it's best that both the fans and the Board adjust their expectations to Arsenal-like levels and be content with a top 4 finish from now onwards. Some of the fans may have already done so (I certainly have) but I doubt the Board will. Hence, you will continue to see coaches coming and going with players being bought and sold with no attention being paid to establishing a certain playing ethos and with a firm eye on austerity. Only the likes of Ancelotti who is now a coaching discard himself would agree to join Chelsea under such circumstances.
Setting expectations correctly is not laying into the owners. What’s so embarrsing other than you going on an emotional tirade? Mourinho won the title partly because that as the last time the board invested in the right players. Comte won it due to his tactical and Man management brilliance. Bugger off if you don’t like what you are reading or feck off to some Chelsea Fan forum where you can praise each other all day Long like the deluded ones that you are.If you've been a Chelsea fan for 3 decades then frankly it's even more embarrasing that you're laying into the club owners during one of the most successful periods in our history. We've won the league twice in three years, yet apparently half our players are shitty and the owners are leading us into decline. Have a fecking word with yourself seriously.
Setting expectations correctly is not laying into the owners. What’s so embarrsing other than you going on an emotional tirade? Mourinho won the title partly because that as the last time the board invested in the right players. Comte won it due to his tactical and Man management brilliance. Bugger off if you don’t like what you are reading or feck off to some Chelsea Fan forum where you can praise each other all day Long like the deluded ones that you are.
Why do you people keep peddling this? Where is the evidence that he is about to get sacked? All the reports seem to suggest that he is unhappy with the club's inability/unwillingness to land his transfer targets and may quit on his own accord, not get sacked. Unless he has a "Mourinho season", he won't get sacked.
Conte did mention that he preferred Matic to be retained and rotated with Bakayoko. Unfortunately, the Board insisted on selling Matic and that's where we are today. Personally, I was against buying Bakayoko after watching several Monaco matches as he displayed poor technical skills like ball control and a lack of first touch. He was bought probably due to flavour-of-the-month reasons at the behest of Emenalo. A Naingollan type player should have been purchased instead.
The fact that Azpi crosses better than Moses, Zappacosta and Alonso tells us that both wing-back positions need to be upgraded yet the Board did nothing about them. In fact, the Board has refused to spend the purported 60 million pound fee to land Alex Sandro after supposedly chasing him all summer.
With all the transfer spending drying up in terms of net spend, it's best that both the fans and the Board adjust their expectations to Arsenal-like levels and be content with a top 4 finish from now onwards. Some of the fans may have already done so (I certainly have) but I doubt the Board will. Hence, you will continue to see coaches coming and going with players being bought and sold with no attention being paid to establishing a certain playing ethos and with a firm eye on austerity. Only the likes of Ancelotti who is now a coaching discard himself would agree to join Chelsea under such circumstances.
Morata was absolutely lethal until his injury, you're talking him down because he had a shocker against Arsenal. Guess what, every striker has one of those days now and again. Drogba did, Costa certainly did, shit happens. As for the midfield, Drinkwater has been really good, especially since he was coming back from injury. Bakayoko has been largely garbage, but he's also still young and clearly has a lot of potential. He's shown a few flashes of it already. I'm sure you would love to have the new United awaken Matic back, but that wasn't the Matic we actually had. He was better than Bakayoko has been so far, but I'm just as happy having Drinkwater in there.
As for Zappa, he's extremely fast, is a much better crosser of the ball than Moses (who I do really like also) and has been showing he has a decent shot on him too. He's a great alternative to Moses, allowing us to switch between a crossing fullback and an attacking dribbling fullback, which can change the whole attacking approach. I wish we had someone on the left who we could alternate with Alonso in the same way. As for the defense, let's see how Luiz does now he's back from injury before we start talking about declines.
Drinkwater has been really good? Seriously? You must have some low standards. He was OK at best. Last night he was quite average, misplaced too many passes and was overall ineffective. That was his chance to keep Bakayoko on the bench and he failed to impress.
Zappacosta is an average footballer. There's a reason he was bought at the last moment of the transfer window, he was most likely our fourth/fifth option. Top quality fullbacks nowadays go for around 50m. He cost us 22. You do the math. Against any quality opponent he'll be exposed. Can't defend, can't dribble, too weak physically, gets pushed off the ball easily. He may be a better crosser than Moses but what's the point of that, when most of the time he can't get into a position to attempt a cross, to begin with?
I don't understand how chelsea fans can complain about lack of investment considering you have spent close to £200M this season. Yes you lost Costa and Matic and maybe Conte did not get his first choices but wasn't it Conte who sold Costa and not the board. And net spend ( which I am not a fan of as it is something useful for club to look into and not fans) should still be over 100M (correct me if I am wrong). Point being you guys did spend great money, ironically more than Manchester United this season and yet you complain about the investment and yet Jose when he complains about it is laughed at.
Net spend for this season as of now is £19m for this season. Conte wants to build a squad that has depth and is capable of fighting on 4 fronts, yet Roman only spent £19m this season. United's as of now is about £130m. Looking at one side of the transfers just doesn't make sense.
But again you lot have spent close to 200M. So don't understand the logic of using net spend when it was Conte who did not want Costa and you guys did buy two midfielders to replace matic. Conte this season has bought 7 players and also got a rejuvenated Christensen. Apart from Costa and matic you did not sell any major players. So calculating net spend for selling players like cuadrado, ake, Remy, begovic is a joke because they were anyways not in your plans. Like I said in my original post, it is something for club''s finance to look into and not for fans to get giddy about.
Net spend is one of the lamest excuse given to a manager considering most of the players sold were never in their plans. The fact remains Conte spent close to 200M buying 7 players this season alone.
I understand what you're saying about how net spend can be bloated by players not in the squad, however selling Ake, Cuadrado/Traore, and Chalobah are what left our squad thin. We brought Ake back from loan last January to be a backup to Alonso and play CB. With Willian and Pedro wetting the bed this season, the 3511 has to be Conte's plan B because our only other forward is injured (Musonda). Chalobah's absence meant Fabregas couldn't be rotated in October/November and Bakayoko had to play injured. So the net spend for 'useful' players brings the outlay to more like 60m.
The fact also remains, due to the club's policy, Conte was given a thin squad and didn't invest that much when there are glaring weaknesses. If you're looking at how a business operates, you would never look at their revenue and use that to determine the merit of that business, you'd look at everything else that goes along with it. I'm not sure why you're insisting it's black and white by just claiming we spent 200m.
It is not the freedom of posting that is the issue. The issue here is that you go ballistic when you see posts like mine that do not agree with yours. I suggested an option for you i.e. a Chelsea fan forum where all the postings are the same as yours hence you won't be sick of reading viewpoints like mine.You seem to misunderstand the basic premise of discussing things in a place where not everyone is locked into constant agreement. You have the freedom to say that you think our club is in decline and our players are shit and I have the freedom to say that I think you're talking a lot of complete bollocks.
There is a certain delicious irony though in you revelling in that freedom yet telling other people that they should feck off when they want to use theirs.
As to the actual topic btw, I'm sure you had plenty to say about how doomed we were in the last Mourinho season or indeed after Conte joined and got off to such a bad initial start. Some people (no matter how long they've been fans) never seen to be able to look beyond the here and now and consider the bigger picture.
I doubt the Board is content with a mere top 4 finish otherwise Conte wouldn't be so antsy about getting more transfers in. They may spend even less than Arsenal and approaching Tottenham levels but their ambitions are like Man City's and PSG's. Which is my bone of contention with Roman and his board. Don't wish to spend big? Then don't expect big things to happen on the pitch.Yes it is possible that we are just content with a top 4 finish and that is not a new concern yet it does rear it's head from time to time. Normally when we appear to have a successful manager that wants more backing in the transfer market. It might just be they are trying to pocket player sales as a kitty for the stadium rebuild in the absence of other corporate donors. As this is a business they will not want their asset to depreciate so interesting times ahead.
We were crying for some squad players, IMO the board has done okay to bring in some. It would have taken lots of money to bring in a significant upgrade for all those positions. Now we have some decent depth at all positions barring left back and striker.
The problem only will be if we continue to buy this quality of players instead of trying to to improve the first 11 from here since realistically we wouldn't need more than 1-3 players (barring people leaving).
Morata has 10 goals in 19 matches (0.53 scoring rate) whereas Costa had 20 in 35 matches last season (0.58) so there's not a lot of difference there, especially considering Morata is still settling in. Chelsea's issue is goals across the whole team with 6 being the next highest scorer after Morata's 10. In the PL you are probably about 10 goals short so far of where you'd want to be.The problem I see is that Chelsea have replaced their first team players with inferior players (Matic for who?, Costa replaced with Morata) while also getting squad players that aren't really good enough.
Willian is an example of a good squad player; him and Pedro share roles and both are top players.
Players like Barkley and Zappacosta are a clear downgrade on Willian/Pedro. And I would say that reuniting the Leicester midfield is still up in the air on whether it will work.
We were crying for some squad players, IMO the board has done okay to bring in some. It would have taken lots of money to bring in a significant upgrade for all those positions. Now we have some decent depth at all positions barring left back and striker.
The problem only will be if we continue to buy this quality of players instead of trying to to improve the first 11 from here since realistically we wouldn't need more than 1-3 players (barring people leaving).
