Brighton set to sign Ferdi Kadioglu from Fener. He was one of the players of the Euros in my opinion, was excellent for the Turks, a lot of my Fener mates understandably disappointed at losing him. I said on Spurf's prediction thread that if a few stars align I can really see Brighton potentially gatecrashing the top four this season, let alone top six/ seven for the Europa/ Conference spots. Minteh and Wieffer (latter we had a brief link with) got off to good starts and seem smart additions, Rutter reminds me a bit of Roberto Firmino in that he was initially signed as a striker but ended up becoming a very good CF/ AM and I think that's where he'll play for Brighton, they're also linked with Matt O'Riley who's been great for Celtic. Keep players fit, especially Mitoma who is comfortably one of the league's best in his position and it's hard not to imagine them being a real problem.
I've seen plenty of reports that they're also looking at axing Chalobah, Chukwuemeka and Disasi. Just £380m or so to shift.
Not sure. The FIFA limit doesn't apply to club trained U21 players but I don't know which of their surplus young players are club trained. I don't think there is a limit on loans out to English clubs.
A club cannot loan a player to another PL club in the same season that they signed them. So, possible loans of all new purchases are regulated by the FIFA and PL restrictions. They can loan such players, but seemingly, only to lower division English clubs once they've hit the FIFA limit of 6. That's unlikely to be what a lot of these signings envisaged when signing massive contracts with a PL club. Is there a transfer ban in the pipeline? Do they have insider knowledge of some future rule change? Have they lost their ****ing minds...?
Yes. The Premier League's CEO, Richard Masters, discussed an ongoing investigation into Chelsea last week. There were significant rule breaches under Abramovich, rather unsurprisingly. Chelsea's new owners highlighted a number of them themselves, which may mitigate any punishment somewhat. The last minute steal of Willian was one of the transfers under investigation. Secret payments were made to secure it, allegedly.
A slew of dirty money has been used by that club under Abramovic and I'd expect that it's still happening in one form or another. City's the same. The idea that the owners of those clubs feel themselves constrained by the rules is comical. They will win, no matter the cost...financial or otherwise. To them, life is cheap, let alone anything else.
Surely that was obvious to most people at the time? Sort of like Man Utd broke something like eight different rules when kidnapping Berbatov, but The FA were apparently looking the other way
Telling you it may only be two games in but I seriously see them being a huge problem this season. One game a week, some more astute signings, pound for pound the best chairman in football right now, a young manager that’ll likely be Chelsea manager in 12 months… the stars indeed may be aligning for them.
