Increased Costa Living - The Transfer Thread

Have you checked out what seltick are saying?

 

In regards to Bats at Dortmund, he will get loads of time. The only other recognized striker they have in that squad is Isak who is even more raw and unpolished than Bats.

 

1. 19 goals, 4 assists in just 1,772 minutes of play. He scored when he got chances.
2. Why did Conte wante? Whatever.

 

Money. And more likely...money.

Mahrez is way overpriced and overhyped.

Draxler, yes. I wish we had money to buy him. But...one out one in and no one else was going out.

Kenedy out, Emerson in.
Musonda out, Barkley in.
Michy out, Giroud in.

 

Giroud official.

 

QUOTE: Pep Guardiola:

🗣 "There are salaries we cannot pay. There are budgets for transfers...so we cannot pay." 🤔💰 pic.twitter.com/2pR78NFEm3

— SPORF (@Sporf) January 30, 2018

 

One out one in.
Future resale (young)
Or help now, low fee, low risk (old)

That's the strategy. We can't afford to make mistakes like a Lacazette. Or Mangala. Etc. The players we put on the pitch perform.

Did you see Alonso's free kick the other day? Glorious. No one mentions it. If Ozil did it, it would be National Mesut Day.

 

Also, it's nothing new for Chelsea to bring in older strikers. Ba, Anelka spring to mind. It's really hard to find that player who is willing to sit but is still quality. Giroud scores off the bench for fun.

You want to argue that we should have kept Michy and Musonda and Kenedy and just sprung the ~40 million on one impact player? That's fine. But we needed help everywhere.

I guess the argument is, why didnt we buy three 40m players?

 

Is no one happy with this window?

Kenedy out, Emerson in
Musonda out, Barkley in
Michy out, Giroud in

Upgrade on quality and/or reliability in all positions (Musonda/Barkley maybe up for debate), and none of the players who left are out on permanent deals. Don’t think any of them are option to buy either. Yeah, we didn’t sign Draxler, Alexis, Mahrez or any other “big name” out there, but for a January window when such signings are a rarity I am honestly pretty impressed. Had we started the season with this set of players I think we would be in a better position across all comps than we are in now. That’s really the key in all of this for me, I don’t understand how this puts us in any worse off of a position than we were beforehand. Michy scored goals but contributed little else - would you really want to give him a long stretch of games while we’re in a position that could easily turn into a race to stay in the top four?

 

Ummmmm, hi

 

Mahrez and Draxler would cost stupid money in the winter break. This isn't when you shop for value.

 

I was wrong. Freely admit it. I also didn't think Arsenal would be this stupid.

 

Musonda for Barkley is the ultimate *shrug* transfer. Barkley is a poor man's Joe Cole, a man with "talent" but with almost no production. He shoots from terrible positions, doesn't pass to other players and is in general far less helpful on the pitch than his talent suggests. Musonda wasn't really good enough to play. So.........meh.

Emerson Palmieri was, by all accounts, a terrific prospect before his injury. Given that we don't need desperately need him right now, this is a terrific purchase. Exactly the sort of thing we should be doing.

Giroud makes a lot of sense. 15M isn't a lot of money in this market, and he really fits our style of play very well. Good feet, good with his head, decent (not great) finisher. Reminds you of someone......
As for Michy - the loan is a great idea. If he comes good, he can come back. After all, his main problem seems to be with our style of play and our manager. If Conte isn't our manager in a year and a half (which is reasonably likely), no reason he can't return. Of course, it's only a great idea if he plays - but that's always the caveat with loans.

 

I don't understand why we seem to wait until the last day of the transfer window to make signings. It's as if the board doesn't realize the window is open longer then just the final 24 hours.

Why we didn't sign a backup LWB in the summer is beyond me. That was a clear area we should have address. I'm very happy with the signing. Alonso has proved himself to be our #1 LWB and I'm quite happy not spending the £60M on Sandro to displace Alonso.

Giroud does make a lot of sense, but why didn't we sign him in the summer? He was looking for a move, Conte clearly never rated bats (rightly so imo), why wait until we have completed over 60% of our matches.

I don't see us being competitive with City for the title while Pep is in charge. If we get 3rd place I will feel as if Conte did a great job with what he as given. My biggest concern is the fact that two of our top assets (hazard and courtois) both have deals running down and I can't imagine they will be too excited by our signings over the past two windows.

 

This times 10! We've been very uninspiring in the window for some time now. We will lose both if we don't change our approach. Courtois is likely gone in the summer and Hazard will follow next year if we keep replacing instead of improving.

 

Not sure where to put this but something I'd like to see tried now that we signed Giroud

--------------------Giroud---Morata---------------
------------------------Hazard-----------------------

 

Doesn't look like a 352

It took Conte being almost forced into 343 for him to realize it was working better and then we lost Willian who was the one really making it work

I'm fine with 343 but would like to see
Hazard - Morata - Willian . It seems real obvious, but I'm not sure how many times we have actually had those 3 up top