TRon

They don't have to be Lionel Messi, a DM who can win the ball, spot the runs of the opposition and carry the ball is a decent player. Especially as we don't currently have one.

No argument with most of that, but if we have the likes of Ritchie and Alex Murphy on the bench who we aren't prepared to use, then the bench is worthless anyway. Ritchie shouldn't be using up a squad space if he's not good enough to come on when we are down to our bare bones.

I can't see us buying any midfielder who isn't decent on the ball, we aren't even buying defenders who can't bring the ball out. What we need is a deep lying midfielder who can sit in front of the back four and plug any gaps when we lose possession. We don't really have a specialist no 6 and that was why we showed interest in Phillips I would think. He'd be exactly what we need from a defensive POV anyway.

If he's doing the right kind of work that's exactly what we need.

Hello darkness my old friend

You must be confident if you are already chucking youtube videos of him on here. Either that or just desperate for it to be true.

Play the fucker in CM, I don't think there's that many other options.

I'd add another criticism to that, top players don't want to be playing for a team where the rest of the season has been written off because we are waiting for the summer window, ahd they are being flogged like horses because the squad is too thin. As has already been said, we don't need top of the pile players, at this point we just need bodies through the door, on loan will do just fine.

Stupid twat. Nearly chucked my tablet through the window when I read it.

We must be keeping our cards very close to our chests then because apart from Phillips I haven't heard a peep about other midfield options.

With Tonali and Joelinton (allegedly) out for the season yes. I can understand the long term over short term view, but if they are expecting to reach Europe with a threadbare squad I think that's not realistic.

Why would anyone make that up anyway? Even if it's not confirmed there must be good reason to put that out there in the first place.

Luckily we've always got two goalkeepers on the bench to cover for just such an emergency.

Count me in, the evidence will follow shortly.

I doubt it, they will have a fee in mind, doesn't seem like we were ever prepared to pay the alleged £40m.

That's a shame because it made football sense.

Roll on next season.

Not to mention lack of composure when being pressed by the opposition. That's the opposite of what you want from a deep sitting midfielder.

There were quite a few on here who didn't rate him, I remember saying for someone who struck the ball so well he should be scoring a lot more goals. Turns out he was too good for us, surrounded by shite we just made him look worse.

It's just the brazen way he's tossed that in there, he's expected to leave at the end of the season. The arrogance of the big six summed up in one sentence.

Here we go. The fucking cheek of it.

I doubt it. The Premier League is the golden goose and Chelsea one of Britain's most prestigious parts of London. Whatever happened under previous ownership probably died there. Liverpool copped a fair deal in a similar manner.

What will they do? Declare Man City's previous silverware exploits null and void? Because if they are serious, that's what they should do.

Honestly sounds a bit conspiracy theory to me. If a player is half decent of course they would want some return for it. Like I said though, look at the state of that bench. It's costing us game after game.

I'm confident we can have a strong finish as well, but by that time it might be too late. UEFA Conference league looks like the best bet right now but we'll need to be relying on players returning from injury not to have any setbacks.