Chelsea Madness

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.

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.

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

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

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 the rise of Guardiola-ball and the advent of penalty-crazed-VAR refereeing it seems defending is obsolete.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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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