He did, we have enough going for us providing we don’t take the recent defeat to heart. Our challengers are more gash than we are so much hope is warranted.
Thoughts for Bayern?
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Exactly, we beat the yids to move four points clear of them. That was the big game.
Especially after United and VAR.
Bayern was a free hit.
We are probably better than United, though their new signing may help them
We should be talking about beating leicester to third instead of hanging on for fourth.
Not beyond us IMO.
Not beyond us IMO.
We should be, and as soon as we string a couple of wins together and start looking like we did at the beginning of the season, then I will start talking about it.
Right now we are not playing very well, and our results have been terribly inconsistent.
I couldn't really give a **** about the CL loss to Bayern, this team was never going to get past Bayern, barring a miracle. That was assured as soon as we signed no one in January.
It sucked to see us thumped like that but we need to concentrate on the PL.
Our home form is the problem, we have been awful at the Bridge.
If we can shore up the home results against the teams we should be beating at home ie anyone outside the top 6, then we should be good.
Agree. Let's have some positivity.
We finally have a crop of young talented players we have wanted for years.
Mount Tomori Tammy CHO RJ are all fantastic talents. Let's enjoy instead of comparing to Alphonso Davies, who I doubt anyone had heard of until this week
Think Lesta are a bit more compact than us, but you are quite right.
Just got a ticket for Tuesday v Liverpool; cannot wait
And we should have done !!! But as always, seems there was no plan in place for the possibility of the ban being lifted. All we have achieved by not doing so is to make top 4 more unlikely which would put us back another year. I also said more than once that we needed better players in 3 positions, striker, controlling midfield and left back, in order to increase our chances of staying top 4, not to restrict the development of our youngsters as was suggested.
I'm not anti youth, not underestimating our youngsters, not pro buying irrationally, but someone needs to listen to the Manager and get him the players he identifies. They screwed up in January, they can't screw up again in July., and I trust that Frank has made that perfectly clear. Quality buys plus our quality youth will do the job. The Ajax player coming in is a good sign the penny might have dropped!!
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How did they screw up?
You said: the Board needs to stop the instant gratification trip and plan for the next 3 years, not 3 months.
Buying Hakim is for next three years. Rather buy him than 3 overpriced panic purchases in Jan to secure top four.
The ban was lifted and the board landed an excellent signing in hakim ziyech. Good business and planning for future, instead of panic buys
They screwed up by not having in place any plan to bring Frank even one of the players he thought would improve our results and our top 4 chances. Because without top 4, very few of the players we will desperately need to improve us next year will want to come here. The great players out there that we are after, all of them want CL now, not sometime in the future when we're back in the hunt. So I can't agree that chasing the players the Manager identified he wanted in January, was "panic buying".
Our Board has made panic buys at seasons end for many years, Giroud, Drinkwater, Emerson, Zappacosta, the list is not short.
I'm with you about players like Ziyech, but game after game it becomes blindingly obvious we need a striker or even 2, a better controlling midfielder than Georghino, a more stable central defence, and a left back. And that ignores the Goalkeeper.
Keep telling yourself, if it makes you feel better, that all it needs is patience and everything will be fine.
I'm a bit more pragmatic. Like all our opponents, most better run and quicker to understand the change in the market than we are, planning for year on year improvement is the only way to stay at the top.
You can't buy your way to the top anymore.
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I disagree. Liverpool were able to buy some pretty top players even when their team was pants. Chelsea has an attraction that other top teams don’t have. In years gone by, we were able to attract some pretty decent names (Gullit, Viali, Zola, Desailli(?) Le Bouf to name a few).
The top top names will know that it’s only a letter of time before Chelsea are back on top and will likely want to join.
Look at Fernandes at United. This is literally the worst United team I’ve ever seen and he’s mustard. Big teams draw big players.
We do, however, need a clear out and decent competition for places. The kids are doing a great job but can’t cut it for the whole season.
“I’m calm about this window,” Lampard said. “We don’t see so much great business in January. If it’s there to be done it’s right for the club and that’s a conversation for me and upstairs. I don’t think we’ll go crazy just because the ban has been lifted.
"I think the idea of January being a time to buy players, it’s difficult for everybody: for players coming in – especially if they’re coming from a different league – for the club and for the settlement of the group. I think that’s why we have to think ultra-carefully."
1. Absolute rubbish. London club, pays big wages. No problem getting good players.
2. Who were the players he identified? Ziyech?
3. Never said it will be all be fine. But happy to be patient. Fourth in the league and a cracker of a game v Liverpool on Tuesday.
Another great season to be a Chelsea fan
Ok so I kinda agree with you, but can I ask why, if a player is bought in January, he automatically is classified as a "panic buy"?
We didnt need to "panic buy" anyone, they should have looked at the first half of the season, and identified what players were needed in order to improve our squad, in anticipation of the ban being lifted, then tried to sign them. Its not that hard, its called planning.
If they did none of that, but then the ban was lifted and they just went and bought a random player, THAT is a panic buy.
But to increase our chances of top 4 in the short term, there is also an option of loans!
There were a couple of players we might have found useful, that were available on loan.
Whilst I agree that this current squad could likely be improved outside of the CL, as it needs BIG improvements, being out of the CL does mean that
a) Certain players COULD be put off from joining
and
b) We may have to pay players MORE than we would have done if we were in the CL in order to entice them.
Plus there are the straight up financial implications of missing out on a CL place which will lighten our available transfer kitty.
So qualifying for the CL is important. You only need to look at Arsenal to see what a prolonged period outside the CL can do to your squad.
There was no need to "panic buy" because they should have planned to spend in January, and if they didnt:
a) Why appeal the ban in the first place?
and
b) They are short sighted as ****.
Agree Hakim Ziyech is a good example of a sensible non-panic buy. It was worth getting the ban lifted to get him in Jan before other clubs went in for him and price upped.
We appealed the ban, got it lifted, and signed a player as part of long-term planning not for three months.
VVD is a great example of sensible Jan buy, a player Liverpool had targetted for a while.
I could not see any players in the market who were available that would have helped us get top 4 apart from Hakim (and he wanted to finish season at Ajax) and Fernandes (who United lined up).
Haaland was always going to Dortmund.
Who could we have got who would have helped us get top 4 and been a solid long term buy?
Why did it need to do both?
Loans, people, loans!!!
And we could have signed Ziyech even with the ban, we didnt need the ban lifted to sign him.
The ban only prevents us from registering new players in to our squad. Thats why we were able to sign Kovacic on a permanent, because he was already registered in to our squad last season from his loan spell.
Agree loans for some positions a good idea. But certainly anti signing likes of Cavani on big cash as it has not worked out for us previously with Higuain and Falcao.
Surely we would have had to wait until July to sign Ziyech?
Nah because technically it is not a transfer ban as such.
A governing body cannot tell a business that it is unable to recruit people.
What that governing body does have the power to do is limit the players that said business (Chelsea) can register to take part in its competitions.
So effectively it is a transfer ban because no player is going to sign for a team that he cannot play for, but we can still technically sign players, we just cannot register them in to our match day squads.
Thats why there was a loophole that enabled us to sign Kovacic. Because he was already registered with the PL as part of the Chelsea squad, so technically we weren't registering a "new" player. If it was a transfer ban we wouldnt have been able to sign Kovacic permanently last summer, or Sell Hazard to Real Madrid.