The manager wants emergency depth, but it's at the cost of the players' careers. It would be better for everyone to bring in a few journeymen and loan the kids out. We need to address it next season and sort out our loan system across the board. The academy needs an overhaul, too.
Several sources have said that we used an intermediary (CAA Base) who the club have a strong relationship with and who have negotiated for us before. In this case they are also the player’s agents. Which makes the question about who didn’t research the small print of the release clause expiring all the more interesting. Which is to say, this is apparently not unusual.
There's no way that they didn't know about it. It's either incompetence or intentional ****ery. Either way, they should stump up serious cash.
And while us using Base as intermediaries doesn’t seem unusual, surely there would have been a conflict of interest in them repping the player as well.
Look at the original and witty comments from Chelsea fans! Oh yeah, that's why I haven't bothered with r/soccer for 2-3 years at this point...
They seem to represent all of our right-backs ever too, for some reason: https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/caa-base-ltd/beraterfirma/berater/674 Porro, Walker, Walker-Peters, Trippier, Son when Conte goes mental...
I'm not convinced by this Doherty transfer for a large range of reasons. He can cover both wingback positions and he's homegrown for the CL, I believe. Any injury leaves us light and the fixtures are getting very congested soon. The main one though is that I don't think that he suits Simeone, at all. Atletico play a 4-4-2 with narrow wingers and wide fullbacks. Doherty's a wingback that likes to get inside and attack the box. Maybe he can suddenly make a late, dramatic change to his game, but I can't see it.
Unless that happens this window or next we still win. And it's good risk management because we get 10m if that happens which is way more than we budgeted. The final payment schedule is less than the cash buyout on an expected present value basis in most scenarios as far as I can see.
We definitely did. It was stupid. He did it twice in the 19/20 season, apparently. The 2-2 away to Arsenal when we were 2-0 up and the 2-2 at Olympiakos when we were 2-0 up...
Add to that the slight issue that the FB we have on loan with them this season is having with, you know, getting off the bench
I don't think he is homegrown though. We needed to get rid of two players to make space for the two signings. The only other possibilities are Emerson, Lucas and Sarr. Conte definitely prefers Emerson to Doherty, Sarr is currently injured so may be hard to loan out and there is no cover for Lucas.
He's homegrown for the PL: https://www.premierleague.com/players/4229/Matt-Doherty/overview I don't think he is for the CL.
We tried haggling, it didn’t work and we’ve ended up paying exactly what Sporting wanted and some, whilst also going the month without a player that could’ve made the difference in one or two games, there’s no win here other than actually still getting the player - assuming that does still happen.
Get a PL experienced player on loan, to be used as a last resort if an injury plague occurs ?? Which would seem to be the opposite of Conte (don't even rate you enough to keep you here as a last resort , even if an injury plague occurred) .
While I agree that I’d have rather we paid the release clause early in the window and avoided this mess, not at least trying to negotiate would be ridiculous, especially as we held the cards to negotiate in a way that is actually beneficial to Sporting. The complications seem to have come from a mixture of us drawing the negotiations out, the mix-up with the release clause expiring, and Sporting moving the goalposts when wanting him to play the cup final and the administration fees etc. It’s annoying that we could simply have avoided this mess, but at least we have the player over the line.
