ikri

Feels like he's been around for ages, doesn't make any sense that he's only 29. Good luck to him, he's not getting a game for us any time soon and we'll save some money from his wages and free up a squad space if we do sign someone. Don't ever remember him complaining either, seems to have been a model professional.

Won't be the full 70m but there'll be a ton of additional commercial income to add this year beyond the Sela sponsorship and kit deals. Existing sponsors will likely have paid more due to increased exposure from European football, additional minor sponsors will have been added, etc. Our commercial income under Ashley was a joke, it barely increased at all under his entire ownership, fixing that to sign improved deals will have been right at the top of the to do list when PIF took over.

There are some allegations against Chelsea dating back a few years that came out recently that suggest they made a number of off-book payments linked to transfers, getting around FFP rules by simply having another linked company pay an agent, etc. If they were to be found guilty of those allegations they'd be massively fucked as it would be seen not just as an accounting error that led to overspending but it would show that they deliberately went out of their way to hide transactions. HMRC would probably be very interested too.

Comfortable win against a much weaker opponent. Shame it wasn't more emphatic.

It's the "Clear and Obvious Error" problem. The referee made the call immediately and VAR looked at the replay. Jota made an absolute meal of it and clearly threw himself to the ground, but there is minimal contact from Dubravka. As there was contact, even if it wasn't enough to warrant the fall, VAR is just there to confirm that the referee's initial call wasn't completely wrong. If the referee had laughed at the dive and waved play on VAR wouldn't have overturned that decision either as it would have simply confirmed that there wasn't enough contact for the foul. There is, or was, a similar issue with VAR picking up fouls in play where the referee hasn't taken any action. As long as the referee says that they saw something happen but then decided to take no action VAR can't intervene further (which Bruno is no doubt extremely thankful for). Whilst we see VAR reviewing a lot of stuff that goes on in the game, it's the referee who is still paramount and their view of the game is what everything else, including VAR, is based on. I don't want to get rid of VAR or we'd end up with games like the Chelsea match where without VAR they were able to get away with an unreal amount of fouls but VAR does need more work, possibly including former players and coaches in the process and they need to be clear about who actually runs the games as it looks like VAR is taking a lot of the criticism away from poor refereeing.

Can't really complain about that. They battered us all game and we were doing fantastically to still be in the game at around 70 minutes, that's when everything fell apart.

Horrific performance, just abysmal stuff. It's not just the result, it's the manner of the results. We've not just been beaten but completely outplayed by Forest today but also Luton and Everton. Something is going very very wrong with the team and fatigue can't explain it all away.

Pathetic performance.

Woeful stuff.

I feel that too many refs have become so used to having VAR around to pick up on stuff that they miss a load of stuff when VAR isn't used because they subconsciously think that someone's going to check it if they miss something important.

What the fuck was Badiashile even trying to do? Hilarious goal.

Nice result and a good performance as well. I just assume at this point that Schar and Joelinton are going to be out for 6 months each.

Gutted. Milan were simply the better team in the second half and we couldn't change the game enough to make a breakthrough.

Another really poor away performance. We seem to struggle against teams who can actually press us well and seem bereft of ideas on what to do when the game isn't going our way.

Absolute fucking trash. Outplayed by fucking Everton. Awful everywhere across the team.

Part of their problem is the huge wages that a lot of the players are on. Sancho is a perfect example, he's on £250k per week. Even if the manager wants rid of him, who is going to match his wages? He's under no obligation to leave until his contract is up and there's every chance that a new manager will come in and bring him back into the team so there's very little incentive for the player to look for their own exit. Then there's players like Van de Beek, over £100k per week. An absolutely insane wage for such a mediocre player. They need a huge clear out but they simply can't do it.

Christ, I hope we have some players fit by then.

I genuinely can't remember another player in the Premier League era dislocating their shoulder but somehow this season we've managed to pick up 2 in 2 months.

It's like us under Bruce. Do fuck all for 80 minutes and only try and get into the game in the last 10 minutes when the game's already lost.

Good performance again. Hope Pope isn't too badly injured.

Not to mention shortstaff. He was considered to be the better prospect of the two but the bacon chasing fuckwit destroyed any possible chance of that happening.

Absolutely never a penalty. Can't fault the team at all. Brilliant performance all around.

Superb performance. Chelsea are such petulant, dirty players.

Shit result but not an unexpected one considering the team we put out, not that there was much choice in the matter.

Josef Martinez perhaps. Contract expiring, former team-mate of Miggy. Would only need to be a 6 month contract as a bench warmer.