Chelsea Madness

Let them carry on. It's the fast way to insolvency.

it's just monopoly money to this new board, don't think they that worried about the "cost of living crisis".

i fancy they have realised buying mostly ageing players is not the way to go and gone full circle and are going in mob handed on younger players with potential at mostly inflated prices and putting them on long contracts.

they are now trying to look long term it seem, will it pay off??...only time will tell.

Chelsea have been doing this for years, ever since Roman took over they have bought up any young player that moves and sent them all out on loan hoping one of them comes good, they had so many they couldn't even see what was right in front of them with Salah and De Bruyne. What mug decided it would be a good idea to buy Cinderella or what ever his name is at left back for 62 million quid The board down there on the south coast must have all laughed themselves off Brighton Pier when that offer came in. This Boehly fella is smart enough to get around FFP but seems clueless of the footballing side of things, Sterling a bad buy, Fofana for 75 mil, he's a good centre back but you could get a player of similar level for a third of the cost anyway, he's not that good and especially bad business with the long term injury he's had. What's the betting they had zero interest in Mudryk but went after him just because Arsenal wanted him.

Yeah, they buy players to stop other teams buying them and just loan them out. Are they still allowed to stop loaned out players being fielded against them? They could field an entire first team of eleven forwards, they have so many.

Rancid club with a history of employing paedophiles, racism rife amongst players and fans, homophobic chanting, bullying and sexism in the workplace. Affairs with other players wives, gun culture resulting in an employee getting shot and illegal transfer approaches.

i gather you not a big fan Storm Alert.

They have about 14 attacking players for 5 places, most signed fairly recently with years on their contracts

Don't think potter even knows who's on the books.. probably say's to a assistant, who's that bloke then... you just paid 50 million for him gaffer

Todd certainly likes to splash the cash. Maybe he wants to build a team of galacticos. Maybe it's all sh!t or bust.

We're no better (Forest) its just that we sign lower standard players so it doesnt get as noticed with us being a newly promoted club. But its the same with us with midfield players not attackers. The two main signings in the summer in that area of thd pitch cant even get on the bench now as weve signed about 6 or 7 others as well 3 just in this window as well. The prem is just utter lunacy in my opinion,  its living in a bubble away from reality. A club like ours shouldnt be able to spend 300 million on fees and wages its utter madness, thd club doesnt rake in even a quarter of that through revenue. Its clearly monopoly money and its created out of thin air. When it goes pop... god help us.

Jan 30, 2023 -- 5:53PM, knot in wood wrote:

it's just monopoly money to this new board, don't think they that worried about the "cost of living crisis".i fancy they have realised buying mostly ageing players is not the way to go and gone full circle and are going in mob handed on younger players with potential at mostly inflated prices and putting them on long contracts.they are now trying to look long term it seem, will it pay off??...only time will tell.

In my opinion its monopoly money full stop

Most of it is created through loans and its the future paying for it

The roman empire did exactly the same thing. Once its dying the corrupted circle and wipd it out, thats what we're seeing happening not just in football but governments and society in general.

Like yourself with forest sont I've been a Chelsea fan all my life and there have been plenty of dark days... there's nothing I can do about all these signings, just watch from my armchair and hope they win

Hard to make sense of what is going on at Chelsea.

The remit under Roman always was 'win or the manager walks'. 'Oh and btw we want to play nice football too'. Abramovic fell in love with english football after watching United v Madrid in the Champions league.
Fair to say that CFC never managed to match the exciting reputations of those two. But they didnt fall too far short and its worthwhile remembering that Fergus openly admitted that he followed the lead of Mourinho era Chelsea to be more counter attack oriented. And for all their great name Real have been far more defensive than their great rivals Barca. Ever since Cruyff rolled into town in the late 80s.

At the core of this great era of Chelsea's trophy haul has been a solid defence. Even two years ago with the UCL win Tuchel built his team around a solid central defence. And Kepa got the elbow to be replaced by the more dependable Mendy.

Only now... the rise of Guardiola-ball and the advent of penalty-crazed-VAR refereeing it seems defending is obsolete.
Goalkeepers and central defenders are supposed to play out from the back. It appears to be non negotiable in their job descriptions. Trying to control a game by being defensively resolute is for the birds. Its pointless.

As others have mentioned, Roman was not averse to throwing large amounts of roubles at forward players. Thing is, if they did overlook Salah and KDB they always had Hazard and Costa to fall back on. Or Droggers and Young Frank before that.
Increasingly tho, those sorts of players are becoming just as outdated. The 20 goal a season ultra reliable forward also seems to be a relic of the past.
The Arsenal, and I strongly believe it will happen, look like running away with the EPL this season without a 20 goal man. Instead Arteta picks 4 front line attackers all of whom will contribute 10 to 15. Which will add up to about 50. The rest of the squad will add another 20 to 25 and thats all she wrote.

Guardiola-ball much like DUtch total football requires technical excellence in every position. Except goalscorers. Look at Paul Mullen for Wrexham yesterday. Boy, that man has an eye for goal but technically he looks like he came straight out of Charles Hughes long ball FA handbook of the 80s.

So where does that leave Todd Boehly and Chelsea?
Well, splashing hundreds of millions on a succession of players who will get you ...er... ten to 15 goals a season. If youre lucky. Only you have to be playing this new sort of Guardiola style football for them to do it. Which takes at least two complete football seasons to accomplish. (It took Klopp 3). Only Chelsea have never been comfortable giving their managers time. Is Potter the man for the job?
Possibly, but the smoke signals of late coming out of the bridge say that the ghosts of John Terry past are alive and well in the dressing room. The players dont fancy the gaffer...

In the good old days regime change on the Kings Road would mean the imminent arrival of trophies.. But the game has changed.
Chelsea FC are going to have to adapt. And I am not sure they can or will want to.

I do not like whats going on at my club Leeds who keep splashing the cash but a tiny fraction compared with Chelsea's recklessness, every time we make a signing its a non English player and with Jesse in charge its 90% sure its either a Red Bull Salzburg/Leipzig/New York player or an American so what kind of short sighted policy is this as again i think it is reckless the sudden rush of all these signings by my club and i really hope there is a plan B for the highly likely event of relegation as will all these signings from abroad who are new to the English league be willing to play 2nd tier football or will there agents be looking for an exit claiming 2nd tier football is no good for there careers, anyway Leeds are currently 5.1 on here for relegation but only 1 point away from the bottom 3 if you disregard goal difference at the moment with the bottom 3 currently odds on for relegation so excellent value at 5.1 so i have put a little on as an insurance policy as IMO the longer Jesse is in charge the more likely we are to be relegated as we have taken 11 points from the last 16 games with 2 games coming up against Utd within a 4 day period where we always lose and a really bad run in at the end of the season its not looking good but the majority of fans are currently still with Jesse and yet to turn however i believe this will change very soon and could well be this sunday should we lose at Forest.

When you consider how much Chelsea are spending on transfers, their bean counters are very creative to avoid falling foul of EUFA Financial Fair Play rules. The very long contracts (many are 6-8+ years !!!) are so they can spread the transfer fees over the length of the contracts. This eventually surely overwhelms the club when they are full of long term contract players? Maybe they also offset monies received from players out on loan?

I'm sure that fans of all clubs rightly grumble about the crazy money players are signed for nowadays. There is too much money slushing around the top clubs for any long term sensible financial planning. The mentality is trophies need to be won now, who cares about long term viability. Does a 60+yo fan care how the club will be doing 40 years down the line?

storm alert is spot on the long term contracts are to get round the FFP,clubs complain about agents but the likes of chelsea have jusat given AGENTS THE WILLY WONKA GOLDEN TKT long contracts on mega bucks,
the wet dream for players and agents ,
no player is staying anywhere 5 to 8 yrs and none of these players are been sold at a profit ,its called the NEIL RUDDOCK bench warming contract

Even if they're using mega-contracts to ammortise the deals, there must only be so far when you're spending this much and the players salaries are added too. Feels massively reckless.

It's a short-sighted policy. Gets around FFP in the short-term but will create problems with spending in a few years when they've already maxed themselves out, unless Todd can get them some bumper commercial deals from the US. Long-term contracts can be a bad idea if they players flop and are hard to move on.  The bigger fees he's paid for some of these players makes it unlikely they'll be sold at a profit too. 

But FFP chicanery is not as simple as it looks. Chelsea prob have a number of players whose cost is either zero or has been written down to zero in their accounts and any fee they get for them is booked as a profit in the year of sale. Jorginho to Arsenal for £12m will more than offset the book cost of Mudryk this season, for example. Chelsea have got in good fees for the likes of Tomori and Tammy in prev years. Could sell the likes of Gallagher, CHO and make a big dent in some of the other outlays in later years.

This is why they keep so many homegrown players on their books and loan them out instead of selling them. If they grow in value or they need to balance the books in a particular season they can sell then. Also why they don't just cut their losses on Lukaku as the loss would hit them in one season just like selling a player at a book profit does.

i,d guess theyve already lost about £40 million on cucu, £60 mill for a squad player even when no 1 left back is out injured

Despo club trying get deals done for over 4-6 years payments
What trying buy a sofa ffs

Potter got take training with 50 blokes Run out of ****g bibs

Yes,I have been a Chelsea supporter for many years,and I am shocked by our continuous bad deals.
Werner,Lukaku,Havertz,Sterling,Ziyech,so few goals.The worst bunch of strikers I can remember.Go on Mudryk,goals please!!!
When back Broja,I think will be good for us,and Gallagher should be kept as he has a bright future.
Meanwhile Koulibaly looks a bad buy,and Ake,who was ours,is doing it for M.City

Rancid club with a history of employing paedophiles, racism rife amongst players and fans, homophobic chanting, bullying and sexism in the workplace. Affairs with other players wives, gun culture resulting in an employee getting shot and illegal transfer approaches.

apart from that though ...

I remember when people said Loftus cheek had a bright future, 27 now and still doing nothing at Chelsea.

Sounds like more madness for the Benfica lad just before the window closes.

Chelsea have 3 players in every position who are never given time to prove they are good. But still no striker, Giroud was the best striker they had recently.

Do not forget Chelsea sold Robben, Salah & a certain Kevin De Bruyne.

Stupid club.

100 million sterling for enzo is total madness. looks even worse than the p coutinho purchase. this american guy hasnt a clue.

It's ridiculous to think there's nobody as good as this player for 1/5 of the price somewhere in Europe, I'd imagine scouts have even identified the players that Potter would want but the chubby Yank who clearly knows nothing about football wants a world cup winner in his ranks, is the long and short of it, though he has of course demonstrated the people around him are adept as they come in navigating FFP with convolutedly structured contracts as were PSG, UEFA again made to look a laughing stock. Potter doesn't look like the sort of character that can work within this sort of environment, where players are seemingly foisted upon him, neither was Touchel, but Potter couldn't turn down the chance, I'd be amazed if he's still here by next Xmas.

I think most managers like to work with a squad of around 25 give or take 1 or 2. What size is Chelsea's currently?

Any club can spend what they like provided they have the cash as FFP will only have teeth (if any) come the end of the season when accounts are filed. Chelsea can still offload the likes of CHO, RLC, Gallagher, Broja, Gilmour and even Mount and James if they find themselves in FFP trouble in future years.

We will see after the end of the season but surprised they haven't sold any of these guys in this window as it seems like they would need a few big fees in the door this season to be able to justify their spending and some of them have to be surplus at this stage. They also look like they will lose their CL revenues next season.

Fernandez is considered to be one of the best prospects in midfield but 100m is a chunk overvalued and they are paying a premium purely because he had a good WC. The main problem at Chelsea appears to be the owner. Seems to be even more of a meddler than Roman was so far. But he also seems to be aware of FFP restrictions in signing all of them on very long deals.

It's being reported that one of the owners of Clearlake Capital, Behdad Eghbali, was the main man behind the deal for Fernandez. It'd semm Chelsea's owners can afford whatever they want and with the 8 year contracts have found a way around FFP. For now.

Reminds me of my Championship Manager days in the late 90s.  Inevitably bought any decent player who would sign for me and ended up with an unhappy squad because they weren't playing week in week out.

Just the 17 players brought in since the takeover.

I think Todd is trying to build an American football team.

You'd think though that the club that bought Jose Bosingwa would think twice about giving huge 8-year contracts to loads of players.

Soz, Bogarde, not Bosingwa.

Good luck to Potter trying to rebuild,and in a limited time.Will be many players sulking when left out Tough for the academy graduates as we have produced some good players,and Hall looks like making the grade

I think it is great. They obviously want to make a small fortune.

good for other clubs. Money is coming INTO football for. Change.

Important that other clubs recognise the Emperor has no clothes

Let them burn the cash!

The only rider I would add is if the club goes bust the , redevelopment of the surrounding area cannot be hived off into the owners pockets

Enzo goes from £10m to £107m in 6 months.
Bonkers.

Lukaku went from £90 million to nil
very quickly

It's like that time when Newcastle bought
a player for £8 million off Rangers having
turned him down for free 2 months earlier.

Funny old game.

Felix and Fernandez share an agent, no surprise.

Super agent...

Feb 1, 2023 -- 2:25PM, ----you-have-to-laugh--- wrote:

It's like that time when Newcastle boughta player for £8 million off Rangers havingturned him down for free 2 months earlier.Funny old game.

The 'Bebe' deal was probably the most dodgy example of that. Not sure anyone got to the bottom of that.

FERNAN had a good world cup to be fair sort of went missing after bending that one shot in as others took centre stage
and getting ball giving it to messi isnt actually the tactical master class he,ll be facing at chelski

Do Chelsea still own Lukaku?

Lukaku still a Chelsea player

Well after all the largesse going on at Chelsea i will now be rooting for the opposition starting with Fulham tonight.

I wonder what the business plan of these people is and what they are doing with the land around The Bridge. Is the pitch still owned by a Trust?

Potter's left Aubameyang out of the Champions League squad, amazing, that's one player who'll be moping for the rest of the season

All part of the plan.

So Chelsea have 33 players in there squad oh well only another 20 needed by the owner to complete his roster of 53