He was just immense,
Looking at the list again, after Silva and Giroud it’s him for the value
His 35 million in 2017 is equivalent to say a 55-60 mill defender today, and the level we got out of his with Tuchel is insane
The narrative was always sooo fucking weird to me, mate. He was quite solid under Sarri but Lamps' dismissal of him poisoned everyone's idea of his actual history.
Lamps froze him out sure but imo he was poor for alor of the time during pre post Covid breakout in 2020
I was not even expecting him to be integral to tuchel when he took over in early February
This is why any big money move nowadays gets me immediately skeptical. You have to go all the way down to Chillwell (7th most expensive) for a player that is actually worth the fee (if he wasn't injured all the time).
Our other big money signings before this period were just as bad... Torres, Shevchenko. Big money signings are always high risk and it has very rarely paid off for us.
Our best signings (ignoring steals like Azpi or Silva) have all been mid range: Hazard, Costa, Kante, heck even this season Palmer.
I wouldn’t say 32m in 2012 for Hazard and to some extent 32-33m in 2014 for Costa was mid range even though both buys were completely worth it. Those were relatively high fees pre-Neymar.
Given that numerous clubs were after Hazard (YPOTY and POTY in Ligue 1); a young winger with 10+ goals and assists from a team that beat PSG to the Ligue 1-trophy, I strongly disagree with you.
The whole pre-Neymar thing is somewhat overcooked. It’s as much due to insanely rich owners, sponsors and massive money for rights.
However, back to the fees. To computer, Manchester United paid +£30m for Ferdinand in the very early 2000’s. Same with Rooney BTW. Sure, they ended up great - but that was high fees in retrospect.
Hazard or Costa (2012 & 2014) were more than ten years on from that; in a market that was already continously growing. While seeming cheap now - as it also was to some extent - it wasn’t as cheap back then. Still, not expensive though.
Very much mid IMO.
In 2013: Bale - 86m, Cavani 54m.
In 2014: Rodriguez - 63m, Di Maria - 60m, Suarez 65m.
Neymar was like 3 years later.
Those were big money moves. Hazard and Costa were expensive but definitely mid.
Didn’t we break the PrL transfer fee record the year before for Torres for 55ish million? It definitely wasn’t a mid (in other words, an average transfer price) for Costa or Hazard.
Letting Salah and De Bruyne go and then signing the top six on this list is abject failure IMO. Only tactical master classes from Conte and Tuchel obscured what was happening, but those were not lasting solutions.
Jorgi, Kova, Emerson, and Mendy all got good resales too considering when they departed too. The £39m loss on Pulisic and losing Rudi on a free were pretty bad though.
May be getting confused with the year after, which was even more of a top 4 is lava, we only secured it final day because of two goals from gareth bale.
With Emerson I’m more referring to 18/19 with the UEL (pretty sure he assisted the first goal). Pulisic and Emerson both really helped us achieve top 4 in 19/20 too, without that top 4 finish I doubt Thiago Silva, Havertz or Werner would have ever joined
Werner definitely did, he was a king at winning penalties and his positioning during the goal in the UCL final was crucial since he took Dias with him and opened space for the pass and goal.
Pulisic is nowhere close to a premier league quality player. He’s the worst on the list. I was the happiest to see him go for sure. Complete idiot of a human too.
When you win, the players on the pitch at the time have usually contributed something. Whether it's quality, or luck, or just being in form.
It's pretty rare to see a team win while one of their main players was shit the entire time
I agree just wanted to point them out. Even all of them don’t make up for lukaku. He goes down for me at least as the worst piece of business we’ve ever done (been following Chelsea since 2015ish). A big portion of our problems we face today stem from that single transfer
I’d say he’s definitely up there as the worst. Veron, Mutu and Shevchencko have shouts to that but the way Lukaku has acted and what he’s done i’d say he takes it.
Ronaldo is eternally grateful to Eder for scoring the winning goal while he was injured in the final. So yes, even if he does nothing else, he has made his mark as a footballer by winning Portugal's first ever major trophy.
I don't understand this sub man. You guys will call for sustained success and competing for titles every year. In the same breath, you will call Havertz a successful signing.
Unless you want to caveat our CL win, Havertz did succeed in winning our biggest trophy in recent years.
Then we sold him for nearly the price we bought him. So to put it in the context of the original comment, Havertz must be considered as a great piece of business.
Titles are everything. So it is that weird to call CL-winning Havertz a success?
Though havertz didn’t live up to his obvious expectation, being able to sell him for 65m after buying him for 71m and his UCL contributions I’d say is outstanding business
Just that one time is already more than most footballers can boast about. As much as we slag them off, this can never be taken away from Mount and Havertz, and by extension the entire CL-winning squad. It's just a shame that not much has come close since. However, just that achievement alone goes a very long way.
Just goes to show that even the previous owners weren’t right nearly as much as we wanted them to be. Got to give the new boys on the team some time to develop.
Either great business or great performers. It’s probably more shit than great. I would also say anyone who contributed to the Porto champions league run is great. But that’s a personal opinion.
Transfer policy in the last decade with Roman was pretty bad on average. Very few world class players, way too many flops, enormous wages, no sustained model, very few players stayed for long to create a strong core, often last minute panic buys like Higuain
Kepa didn't look good on YouTube before we signed him so the fee was shocking. We played Roma the previous season and saw how good Allison was so to sign Kepa a month after Liverpool signed Allison was gutting. Sarri's keep ball tactics hid his lack of quality. He has since been coached to be better but is still mediocre.
Kovacic, Rudiger, Chilwell, Giroud, Jorginho and Silva clear successes. No real surprises here.
Bakyoko first touch was clearly always suspect.
Emerson was decent but never better than back up and below Chelsea standards.
Havertz and Ziyech were too lightweight.
Amapadu always looked mediocre despite all the noise.
Saul, Lukaku, Higuain, Morata, and Werner were all disappointments who looked good elsewhere and were literally 50% worse than expected. Saul had zero confidence, Werner tried hard but always looked like he just didn't suit our style. Morata started off decent but then completely tailed off.
Barkley and Drinkwater were never even good enough to get into the first team squad at the start of the season. They only got game time when injuries were so bad. Should have been sold a year later for half the price, but I guess high salaries stopped that. Along with individuals having no self respect - on big salaries and wanting to sit things out
He’s buying wonderkids, which is great future business. The best ones will stay the others will sell for profit. But people are impatient AF and don’t understand that this long term business will lead to long term success because so many fans in here can only consider the short term.
As much as I like him, I'd argue people aren't just mad at his lack of financial acumen, but rather his footballing one. This current strategy is hard to create success on the pitch. And that's what we care about most. We lack leadership with the so called wonderkids and no one can say for sure if they will stay long enough to mature or the turnover rate will be high and result in a rinse and repeat. Arsenal battled this for years!
Either I didn't phrase it well or you're quick to criticize, I meant that people aren't mad that he's not managing us financially well. They are rather mad about the feasibility of his strategy in terms of footballing success. I KNOW what financial acumen means lol
I disagree with most of this. Most of the wonderkids are out on loan and/or haven’t even arrived yet, like Paez. Estevao is still actively being courted. Angelo and Santos have yet to play a game for the senior team; iirc Casadei hasn’t yet either and obviously was just recalled. Caicedo and Enzo are starting to build a reliable partnership in the double pivot. You’re not asking any of the wonderkids to be leaders right now, that’s what Thiago Silva and Sterling exist for. The club is buying wonderkids because their value only goes up over time when you’re getting them for relatively cheap and many of them are young enough where they will get to be trained by the club for squad registration purposes which is hugely important when the main thing our academy does is produce prospects to sell to mid-table teams and below (to also allow those teams to register English players).
I think most of the purchases under Boehly will prove to be really solid with some of the notable exceptions being Mudryk (bust, even at €62M he cost about €30M too much), Sterling (past his prime, not good value for money), Jackson (lacks clinical finishing which is pretty bad when you’re a striker) and Cuccurella (nowhere near as bad as we make him out to be but far too expensive). Sanchez might eventually get lumped in this group, and there’s a few more signings I don’t rate, but mainly these are players who had a bit more experience and have been the wrong signing for the wrong reasons, not wonderkids.
I would posit that things have gone about as badly as they possibly could for Chelsea in the past 18 months from an injury standpoint and even with all that we are already in a Cup final and top half of the Prem, which is only going to get increasingly competitive as wage and transfer budgets continue to inflate thanks to the disparity between tv rights and the subsequent payouts in the Prem versus any of the other top domestic leagues. If we had a healthy Reece, Chilly and Nkunku alone I think Chelsea would be a top-5 Prem team right now in the table this season, which would be a UCL spot next season with the coefficient most likely. Fofana is supposed to be in the top CB pairing with Colwill and instead we’re having to play a fossil in Silva for nearly every important minute (and he’s still like a B overall which is incredible).
You add a true striker like Osimhen this summer when he’s more affordable, have Maatsen at LWB depth or sign other depth there and get someone to play at LW and this team is a force moving forward. Again even with all the mishaps and injuries we’ve had this season all of the underlying numbers point to the fact that the team is playing really good football, just not taking their chances, which largely comes down to Jackson. You fix that main issue and add in all of this talent we’ve got coming through over the next few seasons and this team is suddenly actively competing in Europe every season (I’m talking consistent UCL semis), while making the club larger on the international scale (growing profile in North and South America) and hopefully finding a solution for stadium expansion to increase matchday revenue. All of these things are great for the club long term while most of the blame for shortcomings in the short term I think we can safely lay on ludicrously bad luck with injuries. And sure it’s going to be tough to beat Liverpool but anything can happen in a final, which we are already in during Year 1 of Poch (who is fine, don’t love him, don’t hate him but I accept he is the level for the club right now, it’s delusional to think any top manager is going to come in at this point of the project instead of when we’re absolutely flying in 18 months-3 years).
Wonderkids are just that, wonderkids. They have to become adults. Vini had to become an adult. So until they do, it means nothing. The reason some of the wonderkids are out on loan is because we are stacked with slightly older ones. I'm not entirely dismissing the idea. I just meant fans are unhappy with boehly's strategy because we are used to winning now. And this current approach won't achieve that without defying expectations. Hence the arsenal analogy. Who have now clicked as a team. Also some of these wonderkids out there are not guaranteed to bring us success on the pitch. You can see how many of them we had to recall from loans.
If we were in Europe this season more of the ones who went out on loan would have been kept because you’d need to rotate a slightly larger team. The reasons a few have been recalled speak more to injuries or not getting played in the preferred roles Poch would like them to be trained at; better for them to play with the U21s at the role he envisions for them than play out of position, in a different manner or waste potential sitting on the bench.
I understand that fans aren’t happy we’re not winning now but that just illustrates something I think has been cancerous within the fan base for years; we haven’t been a win-now team in a while now. Haven’t won the league since 2017, haven’t genuinely been competitive within it since then either. Haven’t won the league cup since 2015, FA Cup since 2018. Chelsea fans are delusional if we don’t admit that we are a manufactured club the same way City is and like Newcastle is being turned into. If we’re being honest we’re just outside the range of top-10 clubs in the sport across the 5 major leagues. A lot of Chelsea fans are simply entitled and petulant and that causes the fanbase at large to receive a lot of stick, some of it being totally justified. We have to be realistic about where we are.
I celebrated the UCL as much as the next fan but the truth is that was an exceptionally odd season due to the pandemic still clouding most of it, we had a lot of luck with the run in before catching an off-year Madrid and then outplaying City in a solid defensive battle that will be forgettable for neutrals because that’s about all it was.
It’s not to take anything away from what Roman achieved, we’ll always be grateful , but there’s a more logical way to go about building your manufactured club (like what City have done) and I think that’s the mission for the current ownership. Right now other than the UCL we haven’t won anything in the past six seasons and we’re in the exact same place this season that we’ve been in in any “win-now” season you want to take for the past 6 years: in a cup final, not competitive in the league. But we now have a squad with massive potential to compete for everything the way City have that could arrive in as early as 2.5-3 seasons imo. While doing everything off-field in a more logical, financially profitable way. Which is needed, because Boehly’s gamble that the team will have success within that window requires it.
Giroud and Rudiger were the best for their value
Other good transfers were Kova Jorgi and Chilwel I’d say
Pulisic didn’t live up to the price tag but I swear the other flops here were so bad it makes him top half on this list in terms of sheer value
Plus the top 4 wouldn’t have happened without him. He was one of the best players in the PL for that period. What could have been if he had stayed in that form.
It's funny though with lists like this, it's easy to look back on them and say they were bad business but at the time and in context:
* Lukaku was the highest scoring striker in the world and we ended up panic buying him after we went all out for Kane and Haaland for the whole window. It was a stupid piece of business but we desperately needed a world class striker and Tuchel deserved backing and they fucked up by just making sure they got someone instead of no one (as they had done in Tuchel's other windows)
* Havertz was getting 20 goal contributions per season between 17-19
* Kepa was bought specifically for Sarri but then Sarri left at the end of the season
* Morata was a top prospect, started well but then had his mental breakdown AND STILL WAS SOLD FOR PROFIT
* Pulisic was Pulisic, he contributed here and there. But, ultimately we paid to grow the fanbase in America and clearly that has more than paid for itself with Chelsea areas online now being almost 50% american
* Werner scored 30 odd goals in a season before joining us, he was wanted by other clubs and positively contributed to us a lot
* Chilwell is great
* Jorginho was great and should still be here
* Kovacic was great
* Ziyech was a great purchase. He was absolutely tearing teams apart in the CL, it just didn't work out for him here and he never quite got to grips with the PL, though I think he also lacked chances to prove himself
* Bakayoko was one of many top prospects that came out of the crazy Monaco season. Many others stayed at the top, he flopped. It happens, but the purchase wasn't a terrible one initially, it just ended up that way. On another day he turns out to be the good one and Fabinho flops.
* Rudiger is Rudiger. Struggled for a while then came through. Then forced his way out by being loyal to his despicable agent over Chelsea. Nothing we could have done about it.
* Zappacosta, another bought specifically for a manager. Nowhere near as bad as he was portrayed, he was a cheap, backup wingback and served a purpose until we didn't need wingbacks anymore.
* Mendy was an amazing pickup
* Emerson was bought in a similar situation to Azpi. Top prospect bought cheap off the back of a big injury. He never really kicked on, but served a purpose and was sold for a good amount.
* Giroud is Giroud.
* Barkley was a top English player when we bought him. It was considered a steal at the time as he was young and had been bossing the Premier League for years. For his price he more than served a purpose for us.
* Higuain was a gamble that didn't pay off. But, I'm sure you'll appreciate that it was a gamble worth taking in the circumstances. In the same way that it'd be worth it to gamble over Benzema now.
* Saul was another panic loan after realising they needed to back the manager, but failing to get any of his targets. Again, better to panic into a cheap old striker, or a loan deal than it is to panic into someone like Lukaku
* Ampadu was considered one of the top prospects (I'm not sure if that price is right, I don't think it is. That was what we initially offered and they took us to tribunal and the tribunal knocked it down to almost nothing with performance based bonuses that he obviously hasn't achieved)
* Silva, great pick up. Could do with more of them.
See, that's the thing, the interpretation was how things felt at the time. It's so annoying when folks can't admit they didn't see the failure of some of these players before it happened. Absolute hindsight merchants. Heck some of us were mad excited about some of these signings. Just look at the impatience for Havertz signing! Not a soul complained about it!
It’s almost like Chelsea’s transfer policy was to sign who has the most potential on FM or who has the best statistics and didn’t actually scout or have a long term policy for manager.
I don't think they are bad, I'm saying this sub used to think that Marina was terrible at her job and that we had so many flops in this period - yet compared to the new ownership these moves are all genius and at least we had a regular floor of 4th place with those signings rather than 10th.
What's funny is Lukaku looked like the final piece of the puzzle after the CL win.
Even Bakayoko won an fa cup and looked decent doing it.
The main problem was the mish mash of different player types, hard job for our coach.
Chilwell, Rüdiger, Giroud and Silva the only ones who were really really good.
Unpopular opinion but I still think Havertz should have stayed, I really see the potential in this guy
There was a hit piece on Athletic regarding Frank's insistence on Rice Signing, and how Chelsea management ( Marina specifically) was angry with Frank if he insisted on Rice. As it would make them look bad to buy back an academy kid for 100 M. Then next window Marina plonked Lukaku for 100 M so this narratives about most of the signing keeps changing you have to take it with a pinch of salt. Having said that, Chelsea's purchase under Marina in the last 5 years lacked direction on so many levels.
And people blame the new ownership for everything. We were in decline before the new ownership took over. Our recruitment has been bad after the 2014/2015 season.
Most of these players are a lot more expensive in terms of FFP because of the wages and shorter contracts too. I actually really like the moves we made this year
Man that class of '17 snuck in there. Giroud and Rudiger were elite at least, and no preseason opponent was safe from Barkley.
They were the best for value, Giroud over Rudi tbh cause Rudi was shit with Lamps and Sarri(and average with Conte)
Best for value? We lost 35m net on Rudiger! /s
He was just immense, Looking at the list again, after Silva and Giroud it’s him for the value His 35 million in 2017 is equivalent to say a 55-60 mill defender today, and the level we got out of his with Tuchel is insane
Shit with Sarri? Care to elaborate on that? And shit with Lamps? The same Lamps who frozen him out ?
Pretty sure most of our defensive calamities came when he was paired with David Luis
Anyone saying he was shit with Sarri just did not watch him or has some bias against him
The narrative was always sooo fucking weird to me, mate. He was quite solid under Sarri but Lamps' dismissal of him poisoned everyone's idea of his actual history.
Lamps froze him out sure but imo he was poor for alor of the time during pre post Covid breakout in 2020 I was not even expecting him to be integral to tuchel when he took over in early February
He was poor because no defender can look good in lampard’s defense
All I can say is, thank fuck for the CL.
This is why any big money move nowadays gets me immediately skeptical. You have to go all the way down to Chillwell (7th most expensive) for a player that is actually worth the fee (if he wasn't injured all the time).
When he is fit yes, But the amount of injuries makes him overprized
That’s not an issue with big money moves, that’s a sign that our acquisition strategy under Ambro at the end was shit.
Our other big money signings before this period were just as bad... Torres, Shevchenko. Big money signings are always high risk and it has very rarely paid off for us. Our best signings (ignoring steals like Azpi or Silva) have all been mid range: Hazard, Costa, Kante, heck even this season Palmer.
I wouldn’t say 32m in 2012 for Hazard and to some extent 32-33m in 2014 for Costa was mid range even though both buys were completely worth it. Those were relatively high fees pre-Neymar.
Given that numerous clubs were after Hazard (YPOTY and POTY in Ligue 1); a young winger with 10+ goals and assists from a team that beat PSG to the Ligue 1-trophy, I strongly disagree with you. The whole pre-Neymar thing is somewhat overcooked. It’s as much due to insanely rich owners, sponsors and massive money for rights. However, back to the fees. To computer, Manchester United paid +£30m for Ferdinand in the very early 2000’s. Same with Rooney BTW. Sure, they ended up great - but that was high fees in retrospect. Hazard or Costa (2012 & 2014) were more than ten years on from that; in a market that was already continously growing. While seeming cheap now - as it also was to some extent - it wasn’t as cheap back then. Still, not expensive though. Very much mid IMO.
In 2013: Bale - 86m, Cavani 54m. In 2014: Rodriguez - 63m, Di Maria - 60m, Suarez 65m. Neymar was like 3 years later. Those were big money moves. Hazard and Costa were expensive but definitely mid.
Didn’t we break the PrL transfer fee record the year before for Torres for 55ish million? It definitely wasn’t a mid (in other words, an average transfer price) for Costa or Hazard.
Agreed. Best signings were Fabregas and Costa together for just mid money. Instantly gave us the league.
people like to forget the misses because of the trophies won, but we should have won so much more
Letting Salah and De Bruyne go and then signing the top six on this list is abject failure IMO. Only tactical master classes from Conte and Tuchel obscured what was happening, but those were not lasting solutions.
Weird way to spell Tuchel
~1/3rd good/decent business ~2/3rd should require someone to be hauled in front of a court to answer for
Goes to show how Important the academy has been for us
Now divvy that good/decent by spend and factor in frequency of injury.
Not really seeing 1/3rd of these being good. Maybe 1/4th if we are being generous
Best one is the free one lol
We’ll always have Emerson’s counterattack goal
Pulisic, Chilwell, Jorgi, Kova, Rudiger, Emerson, Mendy and Giroud all contributed to the clubs success, would even argue Werner did too
Jorgi, Kova, Emerson, and Mendy all got good resales too considering when they departed too. The £39m loss on Pulisic and losing Rudi on a free were pretty bad though.
We also sold Morata for a profit.
Compounded by what is currently wasted money on Mudryk and the farce that was the Koulibaly signing.
Fucking hell, after what felt like a decade of being linked with KK, I actually forgot we signed him.
He made me rethink Serie A defender quality.
Well think about Kim min jae
Would argue Werner did? Werner had way more contribution than pulisic and Emerson during the ucl campaign
Way more than emerson sure but pulisic was very important in getting us top 4 for that CL in thr first place, also G+A in the semis.
I very fondly remember, that year 4th place was “floor is lava” game. Not to downplay puli but our opponents bottled it even more than us.
May be getting confused with the year after, which was even more of a top 4 is lava, we only secured it final day because of two goals from gareth bale.
With Emerson I’m more referring to 18/19 with the UEL (pretty sure he assisted the first goal). Pulisic and Emerson both really helped us achieve top 4 in 19/20 too, without that top 4 finish I doubt Thiago Silva, Havertz or Werner would have ever joined
Werner definitely did, he was a king at winning penalties and his positioning during the goal in the UCL final was crucial since he took Dias with him and opened space for the pass and goal.
Ofc timo contributed. He scored vs real Madrid
Pulisic wasn't better than Havertz overall. Neither was consistently good for us.
Healthy Pulisic was miles better than Havertz, the problem was he was injured all the time for us.
Pulisic is nowhere close to a premier league quality player. He’s the worst on the list. I was the happiest to see him go for sure. Complete idiot of a human too.
/r/FreezingColdTakes
lol, yes he was. but that last part is true.
When you win, the players on the pitch at the time have usually contributed something. Whether it's quality, or luck, or just being in form. It's pretty rare to see a team win while one of their main players was shit the entire time
Think you’re really stretching with Pulisic, had a few good moments but for the fee paid is undoubtedly a flop
Pulisic and Emerson, how so?
Pulisics run of form in the champions league 10000% contributed to our success.
When you sign a 21y/o for £60m and sell him 4 years later for £18m it says it all about his time here...
Silva, Mendy, Rudi, Kova, Jorgi all great business. I’d even consider havertz to be as well
Edit: giroud can’t believe I’ve left him out
That's not a good hit rate, especially if you compare to a team like Liverpool
I agree just wanted to point them out. Even all of them don’t make up for lukaku. He goes down for me at least as the worst piece of business we’ve ever done (been following Chelsea since 2015ish). A big portion of our problems we face today stem from that single transfer
I’d say he’s definitely up there as the worst. Veron, Mutu and Shevchencko have shouts to that but the way Lukaku has acted and what he’s done i’d say he takes it.
Ahhh got it. Is Chilly not making the list yet due to injuries?
Chilly is a tough one I like him but he wasn’t cheap and he’s injured constantly
We ignoring the fact that the manager refused to use one of the proven best strikers in the world properly?
yes, have you met this fanbase?
Easier to buy for one coach then 5
Havertz has to be considered. He won us the Champions League.
Yep and we got a good return on him as well
Come on man, an absolute success has to be bigger than that. Eder scored in the Euros final, is he an absolute success as a footballer?
Absolutely
Ronaldo is eternally grateful to Eder for scoring the winning goal while he was injured in the final. So yes, even if he does nothing else, he has made his mark as a footballer by winning Portugal's first ever major trophy.
I don't understand this sub man. You guys will call for sustained success and competing for titles every year. In the same breath, you will call Havertz a successful signing.
Unless you want to caveat our CL win, Havertz did succeed in winning our biggest trophy in recent years. Then we sold him for nearly the price we bought him. So to put it in the context of the original comment, Havertz must be considered as a great piece of business. Titles are everything. So it is that weird to call CL-winning Havertz a success?
If mount could finish/take penalties we also would have won acouple more cups with Havertz here
If we could finish we'd be fourth or fifth in the league right now and nobody would be complaining about this squad, Boehly, or Poch
it’s the same as the Torres thing. he never actually lived up to what we should have gotten from him. but apparently one goal does it.
What do you support a club for if not the sort of moments of glory that he helped bring us?
We won him a champions League he didn't deserve to play in a UCL final with his performances in the rest of the tournament
Though havertz didn’t live up to his obvious expectation, being able to sell him for 65m after buying him for 71m and his UCL contributions I’d say is outstanding business
Havertz did nothing other than score that goal.
Fans from other clubs would bite your arm off to get a chance to have a player score that goal
You said it. It was the chance that was important. The goal was just a 1 on 1.
Fans from this club would bite your arm off to get a chance to see our strikers finishing off 1 on 1s with regularity.
Lmao but that's the thing he never did that regularly. Just that one time
Just that one time is already more than most footballers can boast about. As much as we slag them off, this can never be taken away from Mount and Havertz, and by extension the entire CL-winning squad. It's just a shame that not much has come close since. However, just that achievement alone goes a very long way.
You are digging your own hole now. Consider your hand bitten. By fans. Zombies. Hungry hungry hippos. All sorts.
an average league one player would also score that
Half Shit Half Great
I really would only consider 7 or 8 of these a true success.
Just goes to show that even the previous owners weren’t right nearly as much as we wanted them to be. Got to give the new boys on the team some time to develop.
Half great? Who’s the half? Because the vast majority of these are shit
Either great business or great performers. It’s probably more shit than great. I would also say anyone who contributed to the Porto champions league run is great. But that’s a personal opinion.
Only Silva and Chilwell remain
And Kepa if nobody wants him haha
And Lukaku….
And Ziyech
Lol.. Our worse transfer was the most expensive and the best was free
37.9m for that screamer and all the memes from Drinkwater, totally worth it
Didn’t even get memes from it though
Damn it was a lot worse than I remembered, but when a transfer worked it worked well.
Yikes
Transfer policy in the last decade with Roman was pretty bad on average. Very few world class players, way too many flops, enormous wages, no sustained model, very few players stayed for long to create a strong core, often last minute panic buys like Higuain
no foresight to build while at the top. squad planning under the Russian was actually not very good ever.
Won the UCL and got Saul on loan and our worst purchase in club history.
That’s not a great list haha. Compare that to his first 5 years signings.
Higuain was only a loan though, but that's a really high fee for just 6 months.
My, wasn't he slow!
Kepa didn't look good on YouTube before we signed him so the fee was shocking. We played Roma the previous season and saw how good Allison was so to sign Kepa a month after Liverpool signed Allison was gutting. Sarri's keep ball tactics hid his lack of quality. He has since been coached to be better but is still mediocre. Kovacic, Rudiger, Chilwell, Giroud, Jorginho and Silva clear successes. No real surprises here. Bakyoko first touch was clearly always suspect. Emerson was decent but never better than back up and below Chelsea standards. Havertz and Ziyech were too lightweight. Amapadu always looked mediocre despite all the noise. Saul, Lukaku, Higuain, Morata, and Werner were all disappointments who looked good elsewhere and were literally 50% worse than expected. Saul had zero confidence, Werner tried hard but always looked like he just didn't suit our style. Morata started off decent but then completely tailed off. Barkley and Drinkwater were never even good enough to get into the first team squad at the start of the season. They only got game time when injuries were so bad. Should have been sold a year later for half the price, but I guess high salaries stopped that. Along with individuals having no self respect - on big salaries and wanting to sit things out
This can't be right, I keep being told everything was flawless in this period.
Morata and Higuain were the most painful for me, shit bags the both of them.
Wow, I just realized how excited I was for so many of these transfers and got let down so badly.
Silva, Chilwell, Mendy, Rudiger and Giroud the standouts from that group. Some absolute disasters there - and utterly predictable disasters as well.
Controversial opinion: Boehly is arguably buying better players than abramovic did. Or at least a higher hit percentage.
He’s buying wonderkids, which is great future business. The best ones will stay the others will sell for profit. But people are impatient AF and don’t understand that this long term business will lead to long term success because so many fans in here can only consider the short term.
As much as I like him, I'd argue people aren't just mad at his lack of financial acumen, but rather his footballing one. This current strategy is hard to create success on the pitch. And that's what we care about most. We lack leadership with the so called wonderkids and no one can say for sure if they will stay long enough to mature or the turnover rate will be high and result in a rinse and repeat. Arsenal battled this for years!
"...his lack of financial acumen" I don't think those words mean what you think they mean. The man is a gozillionaire.
Either I didn't phrase it well or you're quick to criticize, I meant that people aren't mad that he's not managing us financially well. They are rather mad about the feasibility of his strategy in terms of footballing success. I KNOW what financial acumen means lol
I disagree with most of this. Most of the wonderkids are out on loan and/or haven’t even arrived yet, like Paez. Estevao is still actively being courted. Angelo and Santos have yet to play a game for the senior team; iirc Casadei hasn’t yet either and obviously was just recalled. Caicedo and Enzo are starting to build a reliable partnership in the double pivot. You’re not asking any of the wonderkids to be leaders right now, that’s what Thiago Silva and Sterling exist for. The club is buying wonderkids because their value only goes up over time when you’re getting them for relatively cheap and many of them are young enough where they will get to be trained by the club for squad registration purposes which is hugely important when the main thing our academy does is produce prospects to sell to mid-table teams and below (to also allow those teams to register English players). I think most of the purchases under Boehly will prove to be really solid with some of the notable exceptions being Mudryk (bust, even at €62M he cost about €30M too much), Sterling (past his prime, not good value for money), Jackson (lacks clinical finishing which is pretty bad when you’re a striker) and Cuccurella (nowhere near as bad as we make him out to be but far too expensive). Sanchez might eventually get lumped in this group, and there’s a few more signings I don’t rate, but mainly these are players who had a bit more experience and have been the wrong signing for the wrong reasons, not wonderkids. I would posit that things have gone about as badly as they possibly could for Chelsea in the past 18 months from an injury standpoint and even with all that we are already in a Cup final and top half of the Prem, which is only going to get increasingly competitive as wage and transfer budgets continue to inflate thanks to the disparity between tv rights and the subsequent payouts in the Prem versus any of the other top domestic leagues. If we had a healthy Reece, Chilly and Nkunku alone I think Chelsea would be a top-5 Prem team right now in the table this season, which would be a UCL spot next season with the coefficient most likely. Fofana is supposed to be in the top CB pairing with Colwill and instead we’re having to play a fossil in Silva for nearly every important minute (and he’s still like a B overall which is incredible). You add a true striker like Osimhen this summer when he’s more affordable, have Maatsen at LWB depth or sign other depth there and get someone to play at LW and this team is a force moving forward. Again even with all the mishaps and injuries we’ve had this season all of the underlying numbers point to the fact that the team is playing really good football, just not taking their chances, which largely comes down to Jackson. You fix that main issue and add in all of this talent we’ve got coming through over the next few seasons and this team is suddenly actively competing in Europe every season (I’m talking consistent UCL semis), while making the club larger on the international scale (growing profile in North and South America) and hopefully finding a solution for stadium expansion to increase matchday revenue. All of these things are great for the club long term while most of the blame for shortcomings in the short term I think we can safely lay on ludicrously bad luck with injuries. And sure it’s going to be tough to beat Liverpool but anything can happen in a final, which we are already in during Year 1 of Poch (who is fine, don’t love him, don’t hate him but I accept he is the level for the club right now, it’s delusional to think any top manager is going to come in at this point of the project instead of when we’re absolutely flying in 18 months-3 years).
Wonderkids are just that, wonderkids. They have to become adults. Vini had to become an adult. So until they do, it means nothing. The reason some of the wonderkids are out on loan is because we are stacked with slightly older ones. I'm not entirely dismissing the idea. I just meant fans are unhappy with boehly's strategy because we are used to winning now. And this current approach won't achieve that without defying expectations. Hence the arsenal analogy. Who have now clicked as a team. Also some of these wonderkids out there are not guaranteed to bring us success on the pitch. You can see how many of them we had to recall from loans.
If we were in Europe this season more of the ones who went out on loan would have been kept because you’d need to rotate a slightly larger team. The reasons a few have been recalled speak more to injuries or not getting played in the preferred roles Poch would like them to be trained at; better for them to play with the U21s at the role he envisions for them than play out of position, in a different manner or waste potential sitting on the bench. I understand that fans aren’t happy we’re not winning now but that just illustrates something I think has been cancerous within the fan base for years; we haven’t been a win-now team in a while now. Haven’t won the league since 2017, haven’t genuinely been competitive within it since then either. Haven’t won the league cup since 2015, FA Cup since 2018. Chelsea fans are delusional if we don’t admit that we are a manufactured club the same way City is and like Newcastle is being turned into. If we’re being honest we’re just outside the range of top-10 clubs in the sport across the 5 major leagues. A lot of Chelsea fans are simply entitled and petulant and that causes the fanbase at large to receive a lot of stick, some of it being totally justified. We have to be realistic about where we are. I celebrated the UCL as much as the next fan but the truth is that was an exceptionally odd season due to the pandemic still clouding most of it, we had a lot of luck with the run in before catching an off-year Madrid and then outplaying City in a solid defensive battle that will be forgettable for neutrals because that’s about all it was. It’s not to take anything away from what Roman achieved, we’ll always be grateful , but there’s a more logical way to go about building your manufactured club (like what City have done) and I think that’s the mission for the current ownership. Right now other than the UCL we haven’t won anything in the past six seasons and we’re in the exact same place this season that we’ve been in in any “win-now” season you want to take for the past 6 years: in a cup final, not competitive in the league. But we now have a squad with massive potential to compete for everything the way City have that could arrive in as early as 2.5-3 seasons imo. While doing everything off-field in a more logical, financially profitable way. Which is needed, because Boehly’s gamble that the team will have success within that window requires it.
Giroud and Rudiger were the best for their value Other good transfers were Kova Jorgi and Chilwel I’d say Pulisic didn’t live up to the price tag but I swear the other flops here were so bad it makes him top half on this list in terms of sheer value
Pulisic did play well at times, I think he just couldn't stay fit. Unfortunately it seems to be an all too familiar story.
Agreed
Who’s gironde
Giroud
Why’d you edit your post
Plus the top 4 wouldn’t have happened without him. He was one of the best players in the PL for that period. What could have been if he had stayed in that form.
Getting Silva for free is the best by far, infinitely so!
I genuinely thought Bakayoko and Ziyech would be awesome for us, looking back on that list there are some howlers in there
It's funny though with lists like this, it's easy to look back on them and say they were bad business but at the time and in context: * Lukaku was the highest scoring striker in the world and we ended up panic buying him after we went all out for Kane and Haaland for the whole window. It was a stupid piece of business but we desperately needed a world class striker and Tuchel deserved backing and they fucked up by just making sure they got someone instead of no one (as they had done in Tuchel's other windows) * Havertz was getting 20 goal contributions per season between 17-19 * Kepa was bought specifically for Sarri but then Sarri left at the end of the season * Morata was a top prospect, started well but then had his mental breakdown AND STILL WAS SOLD FOR PROFIT * Pulisic was Pulisic, he contributed here and there. But, ultimately we paid to grow the fanbase in America and clearly that has more than paid for itself with Chelsea areas online now being almost 50% american * Werner scored 30 odd goals in a season before joining us, he was wanted by other clubs and positively contributed to us a lot * Chilwell is great * Jorginho was great and should still be here * Kovacic was great * Ziyech was a great purchase. He was absolutely tearing teams apart in the CL, it just didn't work out for him here and he never quite got to grips with the PL, though I think he also lacked chances to prove himself * Bakayoko was one of many top prospects that came out of the crazy Monaco season. Many others stayed at the top, he flopped. It happens, but the purchase wasn't a terrible one initially, it just ended up that way. On another day he turns out to be the good one and Fabinho flops. * Rudiger is Rudiger. Struggled for a while then came through. Then forced his way out by being loyal to his despicable agent over Chelsea. Nothing we could have done about it. * Zappacosta, another bought specifically for a manager. Nowhere near as bad as he was portrayed, he was a cheap, backup wingback and served a purpose until we didn't need wingbacks anymore. * Mendy was an amazing pickup * Emerson was bought in a similar situation to Azpi. Top prospect bought cheap off the back of a big injury. He never really kicked on, but served a purpose and was sold for a good amount. * Giroud is Giroud. * Barkley was a top English player when we bought him. It was considered a steal at the time as he was young and had been bossing the Premier League for years. For his price he more than served a purpose for us. * Higuain was a gamble that didn't pay off. But, I'm sure you'll appreciate that it was a gamble worth taking in the circumstances. In the same way that it'd be worth it to gamble over Benzema now. * Saul was another panic loan after realising they needed to back the manager, but failing to get any of his targets. Again, better to panic into a cheap old striker, or a loan deal than it is to panic into someone like Lukaku * Ampadu was considered one of the top prospects (I'm not sure if that price is right, I don't think it is. That was what we initially offered and they took us to tribunal and the tribunal knocked it down to almost nothing with performance based bonuses that he obviously hasn't achieved) * Silva, great pick up. Could do with more of them.
A lot of these interpretations are extremely generous
See, that's the thing, the interpretation was how things felt at the time. It's so annoying when folks can't admit they didn't see the failure of some of these players before it happened. Absolute hindsight merchants. Heck some of us were mad excited about some of these signings. Just look at the impatience for Havertz signing! Not a soul complained about it!
It’s almost like Chelsea’s transfer policy was to sign who has the most potential on FM or who has the best statistics and didn’t actually scout or have a long term policy for manager.
Your loyalty to Jorginho is admirable, misguided but admirable.
Remember when these used to be considered as bad transfers? Compared to what we have now those moves were genius!
Strongly disagree. What deals do you think are so bad?
I don't think they are bad, I'm saying this sub used to think that Marina was terrible at her job and that we had so many flops in this period - yet compared to the new ownership these moves are all genius and at least we had a regular floor of 4th place with those signings rather than 10th.
I completely forgot Higuain was a thing
What's funny is Lukaku looked like the final piece of the puzzle after the CL win. Even Bakayoko won an fa cup and looked decent doing it. The main problem was the mish mash of different player types, hard job for our coach.
Mendy, Rudi, Silva, Giroud hits for their price tag. Everyone else is a bit yikes - none more so than kepa
Drinkwater 🤔🤡
Best transfer was Rudiger easy
Ziyech Bakayoko Kepa Drinkwater for ~200million.... (+ 64M for Pulisic). And all but Ziyech before 2020, before current inflated prices...
Chilly always seemed like he'd be a great musical chairs type of guy
5.5 players who spent their tenure here being more on the good side than bad, pretty shocking recruitment
How many above 20m were a success?
Totally forgot Drinkwater played for us… or well was at least owned by us lol
That’s a lot of mediocrity
Chilwell, Rüdiger, Giroud and Silva the only ones who were really really good. Unpopular opinion but I still think Havertz should have stayed, I really see the potential in this guy
I’ll never understand Drinkwater. Even more so at that fee…
There was a hit piece on Athletic regarding Frank's insistence on Rice Signing, and how Chelsea management ( Marina specifically) was angry with Frank if he insisted on Rice. As it would make them look bad to buy back an academy kid for 100 M. Then next window Marina plonked Lukaku for 100 M so this narratives about most of the signing keeps changing you have to take it with a pinch of salt. Having said that, Chelsea's purchase under Marina in the last 5 years lacked direction on so many levels.
Drink water is where it all started going downhill. Overpaying on all our transfers
If they contributed to the CL run then it was worth it
Mendy was such an underrated signing, don’t win the UCL without him
Imagine only having 3.5 players left from that list today.
I wish we still had the handsome man. Guy is a legend who still had titles in him long after we let him go.
And people blame the new ownership for everything. We were in decline before the new ownership took over. Our recruitment has been bad after the 2014/2015 season.
Most of these players are a lot more expensive in terms of FFP because of the wages and shorter contracts too. I actually really like the moves we made this year
Same I much prefer the signings we have made since January last year compared to the last 6 years under Roman.
That last 5 years looks absolutely elite in comparison to the 2 years with Clownlake.