The club that sold Tammy Abraham because they decided he wasn't good enough probably won't lose an enormous amount of sleep over selling Broja. Whatever brief interest they had in bringing young players through ended when Lampard was fired.
I'm not so sure, they have Mount, Chalobah, Odio, James and Gallagher doing great at Palace, all regularly playing. That's more academy players than most clubs and surely justification that the academy approach is working; both in terms of first teamers and lucrative sales. They get decent fee's for their youngsters (Guehi £18m, Timori £26m, Abraham) except Tino of course Those Guehi and Tmori fees, make me think we could be priced out of Broja.
I’ll be honest. Unless we have a buy option, a second loan season could be a better option for us. If he keeps scoring at the rate he is I think Chelsea will want silly money and there will be 4 other clubs circling at least. Don’t misunderstand me, he has been great for us but there’s a long way to go before I would put him up there with Ings even. Not saying he won’t become fantastic but if we got 2 years on loan and they were good years like this one then that would free up a chunk of transfer money for the goalkeeper and midfield.
A lot of the players that Lampard trusted with significant roles have retained them, at least until the next shiny object comes along. But notably, none of the next generation from their very good academy has gotten so much as a look in under Tuchel. Broja, Gallagher, Empadu and others all farmed out on loan, and those at the club getting a few Carabao minutes and little else. My suspicion is that Lampard had a bit more latitude (briefly) than most Chelsea managers. But now they're back in win-at-all-costs mode and that doesn't leave much room for player development.
Radio Solent made the comment in the build up to the Portsmouth match that the transfer market is expected to be slow this January given the prevalence of Covid. Smaller clubs in particular are not anticipating much business. It looks like Newcastle are going to buck the trend. The signing of Chris Wood is interesting and whilst not quite the marquee signing Newcastle fans might have been anticipating, it has the effect of seriously compromising one of their relegation rivals. You would have bet on Burnley pulling clear at some point butt the departure of Woods will seriously compromise this. I would also say that he does not seem the kind of forward who will pull the Newcastle team up by the boot straps. Trippier's recruitment looks much more inspired from a playing persepctive. I am wondering how Watford fans are taking this news as it will have potentially stuffed Burnley and does not look like the Newcastle re-buildis going to be so inspired.
I wonder whether we should be looking at a new central midfielder The three in the middle option is clearly a really strong one and would be even better with Tino or KWP on the left . But our squad isn’t really suited to that as the odd absence will make it almost impossible to achieve Look at the Liverpool game where it was clearly the plan until Diallo got injured. We only have three central midfielders and only really one like Romeu. Armstrong would be an option in this system but no one else senior Might also mitigate our issues at the number 10 slots. I’d expect it is also easier to find VFM in that role than at 10 albeit i am not basing that on much (Ely + Djenepo vs Diallo and the lad from PSV we couldn’t sign due to a WP)
I think we need another CM regardless of the 3 in the middle idea. Ideally you want 2 players for every position and even using our 4222 formation we currently only have 1 back up in Diallo. We need another CM for depth whereas AM we have depth but not enough quality - so try and shift Walcott/Djenepo and bring in a new AM to hopefully start.
Smallbone's more of a forward operator generally. I'll stump again for Stephen Eustaquio. Tidy ball-mover who posts good interception/tackle figures and should fit well in a pressing side. Wouldn't be expensive.
In the interest of tactical flexibility the optimal purchase would be someone who was a DM who could also play in central defence. That covers two positions that get more stretched when we play either 3 at the back or 3 in midfield (and especially both at the same time). It also gives more chance of them breaking into the side than if they are basically Romeu’s backup. That said we eventually need to replace Romeu - obviously the ideal being with this backup who can become good enough to step in This also provides the benefit of supplementing our existing 4 central defenders + Simeu as the youth option with someone other than Valery. Valery did well in the Spurs match but the Swansea “performance” was brain dead and I don’t see him in the squad next year unless he really shows something spectacular in training between now and the end of the season. Although I expect he is on comparatively low wages and only has one year left so we might just keep him for the remainder unless he decides he wants to go
I’d even go as far as to say that if we are going for a “moneyball” style approach then such a signing should be higher on the list than an attacking midfielder. For two reasons: - it will be cheaper - it is a position we are short in compared to “number 10” Granted I don’t know the details of moneyball as that could well highlight how much more valuable attacking midfielders are than defensive ones who can play in defence. But increased value means increased cost And we have found this. We paid broadly similar fees for Salisu, Diallo, Djenepo and Armstrong. Two have been great and one has not delivered what we would expect. Adam Armstrong hasn’t had much time but appears to be closer to the latter. Che seems like an outlier I have picked a certain period of signing because we also paid very similar fees for Hoedt, Lemina, Elyounoussi and Boufal and three of those were terrible and one is still here and is doing maybe “par”? But after two years of loans Point being that our recent “value” seems to be in defensive positions not attacking ones (especially when you count KWP and Tino). But perhaps all this really proves is that our financial constraints were an issue as we really needed to be going for 20m+ attacking players
They had a transfer ban under Lampard so his hands were tied a bit more. It is probably the reason he got the job in the first place as they were expecting a bad season and wanted someone the fans would stick behind
Boubacar Kamara would be great, out of contract I believe in the summer as well. Most likely will have bigger and better suitors than us. For just CM I mentioned Eustaquio and my dream signing I mentioned in the summer would be Tchouameni. Now he’s being linked to all the top clubs so missed the boat there (if we ever really had a chance)
I assume you mean with regards to “desperation” rather than style of player Although it would amuse me to no end if Burnley signed Carrillo for say 5m and he scored more than Wood and kept them up. But that will never happen Some of their fans seem to still want a tall target striker (even one seemingly saying they should consider taking Crouch up on his joke tweet) but the rumours are they ought be trying to sign more mobile attackers like Cornet. Wonder what Dyche wants ?
We never had a chance. He was linked with Man United and Chelsea last summer Kamara is also linked with Man United and Newcastle and wants to leverage his free agent status into big wages which puts him beyond us. The time to get him would have been last summer but we didn’t have the funds (even if he would have come which is far from guaranteed)
